Schoolhouse Politicians: Locality and State during the Chinese Republic 9780824846336

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SCHOOLHOUSE POLITICIANS

A STUDY OF T H E EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE

SCHOOLHOUSE POLITICIANS Locality and State During the Chinese Republic Helen R. Chauncey

University

of Hawaii Press,

Honolulu

© 1992 University of Hawaii Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 92 93 94 95 96 97

5 4 3 2 1

Studies of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University The East Asian Institute is Columbia University's center for research, publication, and teaching on modern East Asia. The Studies of the East Asian Institute were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chauncey, Helen R. (Helen Roberta) Schoolhouse politicians : locality and state during the Chinese Republic / Helen R. Chauncey. p. cm.—(Studies of the East Asian Institute) At head of title: A study of the East Asian Institute. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-1415-0 (alk. paper) 1. Education and state—China—History. I. Title. II. Series. LC94.C5C454 1992 379.51—dc20 92-28367 CIP Designed by Kenneth Miyamoto University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources

To My Mother Joy Rockey Chauncey

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

1. The Issues

1

2. Understanding Locality

28

3. Local School Circles

58

4. Education's Provincial Managers

96

5. Schools, Politics, and the State: 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 2 7

118

6. The Guomindang Decade

146

7. The Communists in Jiangsu

173

8. Conclusion

209

Appendixes

217

A. Size, Population, and Population Density of Yanfu and Suzhong Counties, 1930s B. Jiangsu Provincial and Local School Journals, 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 3 7

217 218

C. Central China Communist Base Area Educational and Cultural Periodicals, 1 9 4 1 - 1 9 4 9 D. Maps

223 224

Notes

229

Bibliography

273

Index

287

vii

Acknowledgments

THIS WORK evolved from a doctoral thesis which preceded it in time, subject matter, and conceptual argument. If the final product bears little resemblance to the dissertation, the debt is to those who made each stage of its evolution possible. Such an acknowledgment must begin with thanks to Harold L. Kahn, Lyman P. Van Slyke, and John G. Gurley, for years of intellectual inspiration, patience, and the encouragement which allowed me to explore the social concerns that have motivated my interest in education and social change. Without the support and criticism of my colleagues Gail Hershatter, Emily Honig, and Randy Stross, the dissertation might not have reached completion. Chen Yung-fa, Jim Cole, Kathleen Hartford, Jon Lipman, Vera Schwarcz, and other colleagues at Stanford University provided my academic travels with both discipline and humor. In Taipei, Nanjing, and Tokyo, I was fortunate to have been in the company of friends and scholars—too many to name here—who also encouraged the work on its way. To Mary Rankin, Bill Rowe, Roger Thompson, and Prasenjit Duara goes a particular debt of gratitude for intellectual companionship and encouragement as this research grew beyond the limitations of the dissertation. Kathy Walker's and Lynda Bell's support and critical insights were also seminal in this process. Keith Schoppa and Lenore Barkan, among others, added invaluable criticism which has sharpened my conceptual senses. To all of these colleagues I owe my deepest thanks. None, of course, is responsible for any of the work's errors or shortcomings. I am honored to have received funding from the Committee on Scholix

X

Acknowledgments

arly Communication with the People's Republic of China, the FulbrightHays Commission, the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, and the Stanford Center for Research in International Studies. As the book took final shape, I was also privileged to receive financial support from the American Council of Learned Societies and Georgetown University. These generous grants have taken me to the far corners of the earth and helped turn intellectual questions into what I hope is now a coherent intellectual inquiry. I am also grateful for assistance from the Kuomintang Bureau of Investigation Archives and from the History Department and Office of Foreign Affairs at the University of Nanjing. Special appreciation goes to Professors Yang Zhenya and Zhang Rongchun, who made my stay in China as productive as it was. I am similarly grateful to Professor Ichiko ChOzO and the librarians at the Modern China Research Center of Tokyo's Tôyô Bunko, as well as Dr. Wang Chi at the U.S. Library of Congress, for their patient assistance. I owe special acknowledgment to the colleagues with whom I worked on the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS). To CCAS I owe an appreciation for the dialogue between ethics and intellect and for the scholar's ability to be of service to society without sacrificing intellectual integrity. My thanks go in particular to John Berninghausen, Gordon White, Christine White, and others who established and maintained Stanford's CCAS chapter and then encouraged often uninformed and sometimes troublesome undergraduates such as myself to join with and learn from their efforts. I am also indebted to the friends in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam who have shared their lives with me over the years. They have done much to remind me of the often pressing concerns in the world beyond our ivory towers. As this work reached its conclusion, I found both discipline and comfort in a community of scholars at Georgetown University's Department of History. Michael Foley and Tom Ricks in particular lent joy to my work as a teacher. I am honored to have been guided by scholarly standards set by Jo Ann Moran, Marcus Rediker, Judith Tucker, Jim Collins, Richard Stites, and John McNeil, among others. I owe a special debt to Matthew M. Gardner, Jr. My contributions to Asian Studies at Georgetown would not have been possible without him. I wish to thank anonymous readers at Columbia's East Asian Institute and at the University of Hawaii Press. I hope they will see that the work has benefited from their critical comments. I am also grateful for the gracious and professional assistance provided by Patricia Crosby and Don

Acknowledgments

xi

Yoder. They have made the conclusion of the intellectual journey this work represents a particularly enjoyable one. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my family for its selfless love and support. My confidence in human intellect and compassion is first and foremost attributable to the inspiration provided by my mother, Joy Rockey Chauncey, and my grandmother, Alice Carey Rockey.

1. The Issues

1932, AN INDUSTRIOUS SCHOOL INSPECTOR visited over 200 primary schools in Jiangsu province's Rugao county. In his report, in addition to such basics as the number of schools, their budgets, and so forth, the inspector singled out dozens of local teachers for minor inadequacies. Ji Baifu, for example, an otherwise insignificant local teacher, was reported to have had students whispering in the back of his class while he lectured. 1 The inspector's report, and thus Ji's paltry plight, were published in Jiangsu jiaoyu, the journal of record for Guomindangperiod schooling in Jiangsu. Jiangsu jiaoyu was published in the provincial capital and circulated widely. As a result, everyone who read about such matters was aware of this petty schoolteacher's problem. For Ji and others like him, however, any public disgrace involved appears to have been a price worth paying. Ji was mildly humiliated and socially acknowledged simultaneously—and the latter mattered more, because this was a time when social status was in flux throughout much of his society. The fact that Ji's name was published in this journal at all was effective confirmation that Ji, however marginal he might otherwise have been, could lay claim to membership in a "modern" social circle. The schoolteacher, the inspector, the journal and its readership, were all participants in the changing values and political voice of China's short-lived republic. IN

The Chinese republic wove into the fabric of its society a diversity of subcultures, from petty clerks and shop-workers to uniquely republican bandits. 2 This study explores one segment of this tapestry—local educational circles—in Central China's Jiangsu province. The most elite educational circles in republican China were associated with its universities; the most local were associated with its lower-primary schools. The administrative interface between the two crossed national, provincial, 1

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SCHOOLHOUSE POLITICIANS

and county boundaries; the political interface informed a postimperial dialogue between national and local elites. At the base of this spectrum, in local cities and towns across the country, lived the protagonists of this account: the managers, teachers, and students associated with westernstyle primary schools. The record bequeathed us by local school circles challenges historical stereotypes on a number of grounds. It argues that the republic's political energies extended into truly local society: out—beyond the province's wealthy provincial core—and down, extending from county seats into local municipalities and market towns. In these local settings, enterprising politicians did more than simply accept the republic's innovations as they were offered by more elite authorities. Instead, local school politics were assertive and proactive, initiating institution building and political dialogue with the state. In the process, local political voices, often assumed to be immaterial in the republic's national arena, played a role in conditioning the parameters of the state, represented here by provincial authorities. To the degree to which they publicly acknowledged the state, these local voices increased its legitimacy; to the degree to which that legitimacy was lacking, the coercive state policies which replaced it undermined the center's political prospects. Thus the dialogue between locality and state influenced the republican state's prospects for survival. It also conditioned the republic's social texture by shaping new social networks—effectively local subcommunities—self-conscious of both their novel and public ties and also the emerging hierarchy within their ranks. Local school circles were bound together by occupation and political aspiration and divided by age, wealth, and the status associated with various schools and administrative offices. Elderly members frequently held gentry status, but the majority did not. Over time, more and more drew their credentials from western-style schools and association with western-style school administration. Through the pre-Communist period, the composition of the social order represented by school circles changed noticeably, driven not by the impact of foreign invasion or changing market forces, but by the management of political authority. This exercise was not without its shortcomings. Local activism and provincial responses to it created a political relationship but did not explore a shared cultural identity. N o effort was made to recreate a cultural consensus between state and civil society of the kind so vital to imperial-period rule. To the degree to which the loyalty of local educa-

The Issues

3

tors mattered to the republican state's fortunes, that was a glaring failure. Even the shared political relationship was accepted only reluctantly. Provincial politicians seldom distinguished political authority from acts of coercion. A preference for predatory power, especially after 1927, ultimately drove local school circles into the hands of more accommodating Communist organizers. From Periphery to Political Activism The subjects of this study were physically and politically local: they were local geographically and in terms of the administrative hierarchy. The entrepreneurs active among them were local to the degree to which their political influence was confined within these geographic and administrative settings. These school circles were located north of the Yangzi River, outside Jiangsu's southern provincial core with its nationally prominent metropolitan centers. Their administrative parameters began at the county seat—traditionally the lowest level of the political system and now nominally in charge of the administration of all primary schooling within its jurisdiction. In practice, the majority of any county's primary schools were located in subcounty municipalities, extending the influence and historical significance of local school circles well below the county seat's administrative divide. In the abstract, there is little dispute over a functional definition of local elites within such settings. Pivotal in this regard is the fact that the resources and organizational affiliations of local elites were not primarily drawn from the provincial or national arena. 3 The sources of their power could be coercive, material, or normative; most frequently they were a combination. 4 It is of value to distinguish local strongmen, bandits, and other individuals whose power was purely coercive from those whose power included the legitimacy implicit in public recognition. The latter might be identified by an institutional affiliation which was explicitly public—as leaders of management committees or self-government bodies, for example, or by private institutional affiliations which were socially honored, such as lineages. Such recognition was of necessity local; local elites were those who were recognized by their communities as such.5 With few exceptions, for established local elites, recognition was also extralocal. Such people operated in the context of local-level politics as distinguished from local politics, the latter entirely self-contained, the former affected by actors and groups outside the local arena. 6

4

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The local republic did not operate in the abstract, however. The tidy, analytical precision which distinguished local from extralocal for established elites gave way to a political free-for-all as newcomers, with no established claim to public recognition, reached beyond their local communities to use the resources of formal school reform, advocated by the court and successive republican governments, to promote their own fortunes. These people were political commoners; that they operated in a setting which was equally undistinguished underscores the degree to which the local republic had the potential to extend into everyday China. Ten counties comprise the core of this study, bound by the Huai and Yangzi river basins to the north and south, the Grand Canal to the west, and the Yellow Sea. The setting is significant because it was so thoroughly ordinary; the region was ecologically unremarkable, its agrarian and commercial wealth average at best. Contrary to expectations, however, the area was not in a holding pattern suspended between an imperial past and communist future; instead, it sustained vital political aspirations through much of the republican period. During the war with Japan, the Communist Party welded these counties into a common administrative unit, the Jiangsu Base Area, but well before the arrival of the Communists they shared common political experiences. In the lexicon of G. William Skinner's macroregions, these ten counties were a periphery to the rich Yangzi Delta core. 7 Jiangsu's central counties shared common "peripheral" characteristics. They had modest economies, for example. While better endowed than the destitute and politically unstable Huaibei region to the north, the counties of central Jiangsu were drier and less luxurious, and trade was less rewarding, than in the province's core counties to the south. Similarly, they were removed from the social status and political power traditionally associated with the south. Analysis of school politics, in this regard, conforms with the dictates of Skinner's regional analysis. Within the status hierarchy of western-style schools, universities and the majority of the provincially managed middle schools were located in counties in Jiangsu's economic core, south of the Yangzi. As we shall see, the majority of the people recruited into provincial management after 1911 in the field of education were also from the south. Central Jiangsu's peripheral economic character did not consistently mandate political caution and conservatism, however. Just as the area was distinguished from the riches and power of the south, it was also a world apart from the dire poverty of the far north. Its political experi-

The Issues

S

ences during the republic were informed by this distinction. Unlike the province's bleak northern counties, the central counties could afford to test new institutional identities. They were in dialogue with centers of political power in the south, yet sufficiently discrete from them and marginalized by their cultural prejudices to experiment with political self-assertion. For the first two decades of the republic, when the central state was weak, that exercise did not result in defensive autonomy sustained by traditional devices. It did not, in short, conform to commonplace images southerners used to describe the north. Instead, local elite society engaged in postimperial institution building, specifically in this case western-style schools.

Political Activism and Western-Style Schools A study of local schools highlights the strategies local entrepreneurs used to secure political recognition in the republic's uncertain times. Such strategies could be highly contentious—political aspirants went to court, competed for control over tax revenues, and aggressively asserted managerial authority over schools, for example. Political designs could also be considerably more subtle—expressed through membership in numerous associations, for example, or through subscriptions to journals, alumni bulletins, and the like. Local school circles experienced all of this through the first decade and a half of the republic. The schools themselves provided institutional confirmation that these activities were not confined to the traditionally politically dominant south. In the early years of the republic, the founding and management of local schools—the local appropriation of these symbols of modernity —spread through central Jiangsu as rapidly as in the south. Indeed, as we shall see, proximity to the central government in the south could actually deter local elite activity in this arena, an inhibition not in evidence in central Jiangsu. Further, within central Jiangsu itself there was also a core and periphery: the region's southern counties were ecologically more stable and fertile than the drier, agriculturally erratic counties to the north. Yet the dynamics of school formation at the local level spread quickly throughout the entire area; they did not follow a gradual progression, expanding over a period of years from central Jiangsu's richer counties on the north bank of the Yangzi, northward to the impoverished Huai. Thus, just as the founding of new western-style schools outside centers of provincial power in the south reminds us that local entrepreneurs

6

SCHOOLHOUSE POLITICIANS

could scramble prevailing political expectations by being unpredictably active, so too do we find unexpected patterns of activism internal to central Jiangsu itself. This was particularly the case with regard to the balance of power between county seats and local municipalities. County seats, for example, were the lowest level of the official political hierarchy, and they are commonly assumed to have held political preeminence within their own county boundaries. In central Jiangsu, however, county seats were often not economically the most prominent local cities in any given county; nor were they consistently home to the most aggressive efforts to establish new schools, education associations, and the like. The striking degree to which such a situation held in this area is significant in considering both the reallocation of political authority after 1911 and the fact that, during the war years, county seats fell to the Japanese while subcounty municipalities often came under the sway of the Communists. Throughout Jiangsu, cumulatively, county seats did not come close to monopolizing the vitality of local educational circles. As we shall see, the number of subcounty schools surpassed county-controlled schools throughout the region, as did the allocation of resources for these schools. This preponderance of subcounty schools calls attention to a local municipal hierarchy which could include but also extend well below the officially sanctioned centrality of the county seat—and which became politically denser and richer in the years following the 1911 Revolution. Few of these municipal schools were pedagogically impressive. All were self-proclaimed modern schools, however, characterized by such course offerings as science and foreign languages, with fixed and measured periods of study, graded evaluation of a student's progress, and a graduated internal hierarchy determined by annual promotions. All of these schools, moreover, were established by people seeking to lay claim to the identity and resources associated with such western-style innovations. It is not the administrative structure of these schools—how many grades one might have, for example, or its curriculum—which is of interest. More instructive is what the institutions tell us about their founders, managers, teachers, and students, who numbered in the tens of thousands by the 1930s and whose politics informed the aspirations and limitations of the local Chinese republic. Such a discussion highlights one of the most difficult aspects of the study of republican-period local municipalities: with few exceptions, the relative obscurity of these local cities has left the historical record short

The Issues

7

of human voices to speak directly to us. For analytical indicators, we are often left with structural devices. Human intentions are embedded in such indicators as the increase or decline in the number of local schools, the founding of local chambers of commerce in defiance of county authority, or the endless drawing and redrawing of subcounty administrative boundaries. While local school circles were not so celebrated as their dashing metropolitan counterparts, they could be surprisingly articulate indicators of their times. The degree to which their story has remained obscure is a measure of the dominance of traditional stereotypes which characterize local social elites through the likes of bullies and conservative landholders; in the historical record, the leaden authority of these stereotypes has frequently obscured any degree of effervescence in republican-period local society. The study of local school communities suggests the need to reassess the record. Precisely because local, western-style schools, teachers, and students were so thoroughly a consequence of the demise of the imperial system, they were a quintessential product of their times. They articulated an anxious, ill-defined social presence as established elites confronted social upstarts, both uncertain as to what the prevailing standards should be. Both lay claim to public recognition and political power as state and local society alike sought to fill the void left by the defunct Confucian order. In contrast to prevailing assumptions about the period, we shall see that local social circles, such as school communities, could be of political consequence beyond their immediate environment. Local managers ensured the credibility of their institutions and associations through a bureaucratic dialogue with provincial offices, securing the communicative trappings of provincial approval. Such exercises bestowed a semblance of authority on provincial managers by default, even when provincial offices were all but powerless, as they frequently were. These activities speak to the need for a reassessment of our understanding of state/local relations during the Chinese republic. Such an evaluation will suggest that local society may understand the state not only in terms of extractive power but also symbolically: as an institution which embodies society's acceptance of the political mechanisms that govern it. In this regard, beyond obligatory submission, a state can command voluntary or symbolic submission, demonstrated through participation in state rituals, correspondence with state offices, or the propagation of state teachings. Here publicity may be as important as material power, such acts being

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effective to the degree to which they are public. When the actors aspire to local political authority themselves, such publicity simultaneously confirms the legitimacy of both the central state and its local correspondents. In a fashion, this is a form of state building through which local political activists, often without material power of their own, can condition the parameters of the state's presence in local society through acts of public recognition or indifference, effectively passing judgment on the state's authority. For local school circles, these acts of public recognition were exercised in a variety of ways—in particular through administrative rituals such as the filing of reports and petitions and by circulating journals, attending conferences, and the like. The symbiotic relationship which developed between local politicians and the state in this regard has been explored in the literature for the Qing but not for the republican period. Republican-period local elites in particular found themselves in communication with a state which was only marginally functional. In the absence of an active central government, in the 1910s and early 1920s much of the initiative for the nonpredatory bond between locality and state lay with local, not central, politicians. Nonpredatory power during the republican period is poorly explored in the secondary literature. Paradoxically, when not threatened by the direct interference of the central state, the local exercise of such symbolic authority favored both locality and state. Coercive power did not. During the Guomindang period, as we shall see, coercive power exercised in the extreme weakened the state it was intended to serve.

State and Locality in the Study of Modern Europe The theoretical constructs used here are indebted to conceptual arguments in European as well as Chinese studies. For the period before 1937, a period which shaped the Communists' wartime inheritance, the analysis has borrowed in particular from the study of relations between locality and state in nineteenth-century Europe. Much of the work on European state building comes from studies of pre-nineteenth-century Europe, in which, as a measure of a society's journey from tradition to modernity, historical inquiry has focused on the centralization of political power in an impersonal, bureaucratic state apparatus. This statebuilding process took the better part of 400 years, reducing over 500 independent states of sixteenth-century Europe to some two dozen by the nineteenth century.8 This dramatic consolidation of the state's power in Europe has given

The Issues

9

rise to negativist characterizations of the central state, understood as a political institution whose administrative agencies monopolize the exercise of physical force. Such a state is seen as predominantly coercive in nature, a malevolent body, imposed on society from above, its institutions shaped in the struggle to overcome local resistance to a single dominant center of political power. 9 This portrait of a powerful, resourcehungry political institution has dominated much scholarly inquiry. The ascendancy of such a state, however, completed only the first stage of European state making. More fruitful for purposes of comparative study with the Chinese republic are insights drawn from the second stage of Europe's modern state-making process, which restructured the state in the nineteenth century. By that time, after nearly 3 0 0 years of intermittent warfare, the nations of Western Europe had well-defined political centers, but the consolidation of the modern state as such was only half complete. The definitive political experience of the century, in both Western Europe and China, was a redefinition of the balance of power between central state and civil society. 10 Writings on the dialogue between state and society in nineteenth-century Western Europe have come to several instructive conclusions. First, the triumph of the modern European state did not include the successful integration of the politics and culture of local society until well into the century. In this later stage of the state-making process, military conquest was of little consequence. The coercive character of state building, embodied in its police and tax collectors, gave way to services provided by the state, from schooling to the building of roads and rail lines, which promoted cultural and administrative uniformity between center and locality. As a result, the late-nineteenth-century triumph of the central state was achieved through power sharing: the state's supremacy was ensured not through absolutism but accommodation with ever more politically articulate urban classes. Initially excluded from any significant political representation, Europe's emerging middle classes typically tested their early political potential in the form of ostensibly apolitical social or cultural associations, ranging from entertainment associations, such as sports and theater groups or drinking clubs, to mutual aid societies. These organizations provided preliminary collective experience for social classes which, by the end of the century, would secure political representation within the state but had to overcome considerable resistance from central authorities to do so. 1 1

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In the end, out of necessity for its own survival, the state succumbed to a sweeping accommodation with the middle classes which altered its character as radically as absolutism had changed feudal Europe in the four preceding centuries. Obligations to the state were now accompanied by services rendered by it, and the state grew accordingly: in services, expenditures, and number of civil servants.12 Control over formal education was a pivotal issue in this symbiotic process which expanded the state's powers and simultaneously increased its obligations to its citizenry. Urban elites called for state support for schooling, for example, in their effort to promote functional skills and overcome the cultural isolation of the peasantry. The benefits of public schooling to local urban professionals were immense. By standardizing skills and cultural values, schooling enhanced their control over local trade and marketing while undercutting the cultural superiority of the landed aristocracy. The benefits to the central state were similarly compelling. State-approved educators waged what amounted to cultural war against the peasantry and urban working classes, creating for the first time a national cultural consensus outside the control of the church. 13 As w e shall see, local elites in republican China failed to achieve a similar cooperative arrangement with the central state. The cultural covenant between state and gentry society had been critical to the longevity of the imperial system; the failure to replace it during the republic would prove fatal. That failure should not overshadow the effort itself, however, one which allows us to appreciate the republic's societal dynamics in their own right and how those dynamics helped condition the republic's cultural and political fate. It is in this regard that the parallel with Europe is instructive. In China, as in nineteenth-century

Europe,

beyond the coercive powers of successive central governments, their success or failure rested ultimately on their ability to engage in a dialogue with local elite society. The effort which was made in China in this regard was informed by the habits of the imperial past. It incorporated paragovernmental management, for example, which was essentially an elaboration in republican times of long-standing late-imperial accommodation between the Chinese monarchy and gentry-dominated society. After 1911, however, the state lost its cultural hegemony. With the establishment of the republic, the Chinese state found itself engaged in an effort to assert control over a variety of new organizations and associations which had the

The Issues

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potential to shape new cultural standards. In some cases—merchant and education associations, for example—these were organizations that the republic's imperial predecessor had promoted in its dying days, organizations intended to activate local elites for the purpose of promoting the legitimacy of the central state, but which subsequently redistributed that legitimacy into more local political arenas. Throughout the province of Jiangsu, as the Qing dynasty collapsed, local elites asserted themselves: engaging in haphazard efforts to modernize local economies, investing funds in schools for agriculture and industry, local experiment stations, and new factories. To secure the physical trappings of a public arena, parks and playgrounds were constructed and local libraries opened. Local activists, not infrequently in opposition to the wishes of central authorities, sought to define and control the public good, much like the gentry of the imperial state before them. Largely nonviolent and overshadowed by the defensive violence of the peasantry, these activities were the manifestation of collective action on the part of local elites. 14 In looking at state making in nineteenth-century Europe, one influential study has distinguished between "reactive" and "proactive" responses to the expanding central state—reactive responses by those who sought to defend against or ward off the intrusions of the state, proactive responses by those who sought to coopt or utilize the actions of the central state to their benefit. 1 5 Recent research has applied these concepts to China, using them to differentiate between aggressive and defensive survival strategies for late imperial China's peasantry. 16 For the early twentieth century, the distinction between reactive and proactive politics may be of particular use in analyzing the behavior of local elites, setting their political strategies apart from the peasantry as a whole. Peasants and local elites alike responded to the changing political fortunes of the times. Increasingly, peasants reacted defensively; local elites went on the offensive. Rather than using the tools of military revolt, their weapons were those of social and institutional organization. For the peasantry, reform efforts by the late imperial government and its republican successors alike were unwelcome and set in motion reactive attacks against the most visible institutions of the state: its local government offices, tax collectors, and schools. 17 For local powerholders, however, the reforms set off an active scramble for newly created political power. Rather than reacting against the intrusions of a central statemaker, local elites became themselves initiators of the action.

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State and Locality in Secondary Literature on China Any effort to look at the changing nature of republican politics from the perspective of local society is indebted to a growing body of literature on the public sphere and state-societal relations in late imperial China. The study of local schoolhouse politics joins ongoing analytical discussions in several areas. It speaks to appreciating developments in early twentieth-century China in the context of societal restructuring as well as more specific political movements. It complicates the debate over the relative degree of cooperation and hostility between state and local elites by arguing that local cooperation was offered in inverse proportion to the state's insistence on direct, intrusive management. Finally, it joins a contentious debate over the changing social character of republican-period local elites. The post-Taiping period witnessed a significant invigoration of local elite participation in the public sphere in a range of functions from tax collection to management of local services. These activities were initially aimed at postrebellion reconstruction and consciously acknowledged the central state's authority. As a result, state and society in the late Qing coexisted in an ambivalent symbiosis in which elites increased their local political presence while accepting and promoting the legitimacy of the central state. 18 This late-nineteenth-century drive for reconstruction served to consolidate extrabureaucratic power in a significantly expanded public sphere.19 Embedded within this process were new types of social mobilization —in particular, new professional organizations concerned with local management—supported by growing numbers of gentry activists. Although such organizations were gentry-dominated throughout the Qing, through them late imperial politics can be seen in terms of long-term societal reorganization, rather than more narrowly defined political reform. Until late in the century, little within these local dynamics directly challenged the authority of the central state. The balance between locality and state then shifted significantly under the weight of the New Policy reforms. Initially nurtured by the state's benign neglect, local activists reacted against the state's efforts by asserting control over the newly crafted public sphere after the turn of the century.20 Those dynamics have been used productively in explaining the 1911 Revolution; analysis of local educational circles argues that they informed relations between state and locality for three decades thereafter.

The Issues

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There is considerable contention within the literature about the nature of state-societal relations after 1911. To what degree did the dynamics of mutual cooptation between state and local society continue after the revolution? What was the relative balance in political initiative between the two? To what degree did the social transformation highlighted for the late Qing continue into the republican period? Philip Kuhn's inquiry into these issues argues that legitimization of late-Qing local activism was triggered by the central state's efforts to expand its authority, through secondary forms of control, beyond appointed officialdom. The impetus for the expansion of local activism, that is, lay with the central state, a pattern which Kuhn argues continued into the brief self-government period after 1911. 2 1 Stephen MacKinnon provides a convincing argument for the successful expansion of provincial authority in Zhili during the waning years of the Qing, but he acknowledges that this phenomenon was dependent on the talents of Yuan Shikai and left a slender legacy after Yuan's tenure as governor-general. 22 Prasenjit Duara, also focusing on North China, argues for the progressive expansion of the central state's extractive capacities throughout the republican years, measured by the state's ability to collect revenue. Paraxodically, Duara argues, the process did not result in the efficient and impersonal bureaucratization of state functions. Rather the state was served, and local society abused, by an expanding army of entrepreneurial brokers, who by the 1920s and 1930s began to replace established local leadership. 23 Shifting attention from North to Central China, Keith Schoppa presents the strongest argument for the willing subordination of local power to the rational bureaucratization of state power. With attention accorded regional variation from provincial core to periphery, Schoppa finds relatively strong county governments in Zhejiang to which local management committees and professional associations willingly surrendered extrabureaucratic authority. 24 While Schoppa's portrait is a cooperative one, Kuhn's is confrontational. His work on self-government focuses on national politicians' efforts to conceptualize this political exercise and on the abrupt demise in 1914 of any effort to put it into practice. Kuhn's argument, although it is important for its appreciation of political idiom, does not distinguish between political conceptualization and political practice—the practice of both local government and extragovernmental management. The lack of focus on local practice produces Kuhn's conclusion that

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"rural elites were left to survive on the basis of traditional devices."25 Thus for Schoppa there was a gradual, centrally managed reform of local political practices, while for Kuhn after 1914 a disenfranchised local society persisted in its traditional political habits. The argument we will follow here, like other work in this field, is indebted to the questions that Kuhn, Schoppa, and others have raised. Its conclusions, however, differ in a number of areas. In Jiangsu, after 1911, the central state was hopelessly paralyzed. Self-government regulations potentially legitimized subcounty political authority, but only if local political initiative chose to act on that potential; the initiative was local, not central. In responding to these circumstances, local activists moved beyond traditional devices and political habits. Physical manifestations of this process included postimperial institutions—notably, for our purposes, western-style schools. Implicit in local society's communications with the state over management of these schools was a kind of symbiosis familiar to late-Qing political practices, but now with an important caveat. The mutually dependent and largely symbolic relationship, in which local entrepreneurs promoted their own interests by acknowledging the legitimacy of the central state, survived only so long as local activists chose to maintain it. When the state sought to strengthen its local presence through more predatory intrusions, the relationship collapsed. The distinct conclusions found in these various studies may be a product of the geographic setting in which each is located. They are also undoubtedly a product of the time period under study. Work on local schooling points to the need to take the 1911-1927 period more seriously than previous literature has done. Unless one understands this formative period, the reassertion of state power after 1927, which Kuhn notes in the context of taxation, appears as modernity challenging the past: a modern state apparatus confronting traditional and corrupt localism. When the political visions of local society accumulated in the 1911-1927 period are given their due, however, the assertions of the central state after 1927 are seen as more complex and less constructive. At the extreme, they become the activities of an irascible, power-hungry state confronting articulate postimperial local politics. Local Elites and the Republican Revolution Beyond its interest in state and local politics during the republic, the secondary literature contains a kindred but conceptually fuzzier debate

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which seeks to determine the changing social character of local elites in their own right. Studies have approached local elites from several different angles. Beyond distinguishing local from higher-level elites, they have joined a sometimes contentious search for new social classes and have addressed the more prosaic task of understanding how local elites actually functioned and how their roles and aspirations changed over time. The search for new classes in China is an effort apparently motivated by a desire to familiarize Chinese politics with analytical tools prevalent in the study of Western European political change. Using the 1911 Revolution as a point of departure, for example, and basing his argument on membership in the provincial and local self-government assemblies, Ichiko Chuzo maintains that traditional elites—gentry holders of metropolitan, provincial, or licentiate degrees—solidly dominated Chinese politics, nationally and locally, at the time of the fall of the Qing. 2 6 Joseph Esherick's masterful study of the 1911 Revolution, on the other hand, argues that the gentry as a status group was in flux by the early twentieth century, although the process was not sufficiently advanced to have defined a distinct Chinese bourgeoisie. Esherick chooses to present the elite political activists of the 1911 Revolution as an "urban reformist elite," an elite defined by its functional activities rather than its economic origins or attributive status. 27 A posttraditional amalgamation of gentry and merchants, in which commercial and bureaucratic wealth became increasingly indistinguishable, has been recognized in research by Marie-Claire Bergère, sustaining speculation about the bourgeois character of early twentieth-century reform movements. 28 The evolution of a gentry-merchant amalgam did not necessarily eliminate either gentry or merchant as distinct categories, however. Keith Schoppa's research has found, for example, that in the late 1910s and early 1920s local political assemblies in Zhejiang were dominated by gentry and gentry-merchants. Merchant interests without gentry affiliation, while not prominent in the assemblies, were more active in distinct mercantile associations such as chambers of commerce. 29 In this search for new social classes, the role of professional educators in local society has been poorly represented. What is one to make of Ji Baifu, for example, the mildly maligned schoolteacher we encountered earlier? As a lower-primary school teacher in Rugao county, Ji may have earned as little as 5 yuan monthly, a salary which might have been months in arrears. 30 Ji is likely to have been a primary school graduate

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himself, which would indicate that his background was at least that of a middle peasant and he must have survived on the largess of his family to sustain his teaching activities. Whatever his family's socioeconomic standing, Ji was in a category of his own: petty urban and postgentry, scarcely bourgeois, but proud of his public association with cultural symbols alien to traditional landed elites. Ji was a direct beneficiary of the fact that potential access to local political authority increased in the republican period with the addition of such postimperial management mechanisms as chambers of commerce and education associations. Studies of republican-period local elites disagree over the extent to which the functional overlap in management roles was diminished, with traditional elites emerging as "professional" elites defined by political and economic specialization. Schoppa's work on local elites in Zhejiang contends that such professionalization was under way well before the Guomindang decade, for example, while Bradley Geisert argues for the increased articulation of interest groups among local elites but sees the process largely confined to the Guomindang period. 31 One influential study argues for the revolutionary impact of these posttraditional developments which together with self-government reforms politicized Chinese society in the final days of the Qing and restructured the context in which political struggle was conducted. 32 Other local case studies caution against overstating the radical effect of such developments on local elite consciousness and values: it was common, such studies assert, for incumbent local elites to accumulate attachments to both traditional and republican institutions, allowing for flexibility in their strategies for maintaining local authority. 33 Inquiry into local school circles stresses that it is this nonrevolutionary politicization which moved local elite politicians beyond Kuhn's "traditional devices," triggering competition for political power after 1911. In that competition, incumbent elites had to be concerned with not only new political institutions but also political challengers: young, postgentry entrepreneurs. While there has been considerable research into the social and political organizations controlled by established Chinese elites, the records are far less conversant regarding the strategies and aspirations of these political newcomers. Understanding the perspectives of such people is complicated by the fact that much of the work on late imperial and early republican local elites understands their power in the context of strategies of dominance, which built upon traditional political structures. Embedding the study of politics in relations of domi-

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nance has a well-established tradition in western scholarship. 34 Commonly, in the context of the exercise of informal power, such inquiry probes the dynamics of patron/client bonds, sustained by a tradition of deference. 35 There may be little to quarrel with here in the aggregate. The shortcoming of such an approach, however, is that it provides little room to understand the aspiring claimant to power who is not already a critically placed strongman. With a few exceptions, local educators were not strategically located in established gentry networks. Where they were, as was the case in Jiangsu's Nantong and Rugao counties, for example, there was little contention between established elites and newcomers. But throughout much of Jiangsu, the situation was highly disputatious. Aspiring local activists in the new political arena associated with modern schooling were not sustained by the existence of an impressive clientele to which pedagogical politicians delivered political and material resources. In large measure, these people were in business for themselves. Their importance came not from the client community they served but from the resources they managed and from the habits of cultural and political prestige traditionally accorded schooling in Chinese society. They did not constitute a distinct socioeconomic class, but they were a distinct social group, defined by their relationship to the highly politicized institution of western-style schooling and the role they aspired to play in republican society. Successive claimants to state power before the Anti-Japanese War worked at controlling local educational circles but devoted little time to managing them. As a result, few compelling patron/client bonds emerged; few elite politicians constructively tapped the political potential which local school circles had to offer. The Chinese Communists, accomplished practitioners of political and social analysis, drew the distinction between coercive control and management. They also had few qualms about adjusting their organizing tactics to accommodate people who did not fall into tidy class-specific categories. In dealing with local educational circles, Communist strategies had more in common with western functionalism than Marxist class analysis. However much educational circles may have been embedded in landed and commercial interests, the Communists distinguished them as a unique functional grouping and organized them accordingly. During the war, the modern-school community may have been grateful for the vague social delineations which allowed educational circles to be viewed this way, whatever ties individuals had with other social circles. By war's end, however, it would become clear that the Communists themselves

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were not comfortable with this flexible form of social analysis. That discomfort haunted them, and their relations with academic society, for decades to come. The Society and Politics of Pre-Communist Local Schools To explore how this state of affairs came into being, Chapter 2 begins with an act of historical recovery, investigating the largely neglected region in which the account is set and the local municipalities which hosted both the schools and the social circles they nurtured. Both imperial and early republican politics inadvertently conditioned this region to assume a good measure of political autonomy. There were few late-imperial administrative centers in this area to accustom central Jiangsu's counties to direct contact with the state. After 1911, subcounty townships and municipalities, politically legitimized by the short-lived self-government reforms, resisted repeated efforts by republican authorities to assert central control over them. The administrative distance between provincial authority in the south and the central Jiangsu counties was further reinforced by the lay of the land: Chapter 2 introduces Jiangsu's blunt division between wealthy southern counties, intermediate central counties, and the grinding poverty north of the Huai. After the fall of the empire, cultural prejudice reinforced this pattern: power and social prestige were stubbornly lodged south of the Yangzi River. The local urban hierarchy is of particular interest here. This discussion highlights the prominence of local municipalities, well to the north of the Yangzi, in economic vitality and in the civic politics embedded in schools and such public institutions as libraries, exercise yards, and newspapers. Although official prejudice assumed the preeminence of the county seats, a range of indicators—population, commercial organizations, postal ratings, and the like—call this into question. These local municipalities are the setting for much of the account which follows. Chapter 3 introduces local educational circles, locating them in physical and human terms. Here we find schools, not as institutions of pedagogy, but as political indicators dispersed by the hundreds across central Jiangsu. The schools grew steadily, in number and enrollments, through the pre-Guomindang period. By 1927, their presence had brought a particular type of postimperial politics and social organization to local towns and municipalities over a wide area, well removed from the province's political heartland. Only when the post-1927 government aggressively attempted to assert its authority over these schools did their

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numbers begin to level off. The majority of the local schools were lowerprimary schools and were not under the direct supervision of provincial or county authorities. They were truly local—under the management of subcounty municipalities which outspent their county-seat counterparts often by considerable sums, as the discussion of tax levies and school budgets indicates. Indeed, the administrative management of the schools emerged early as a test of political wills between subcounty municipalities and higher authorities. To evaluate this issue, Chapter 3 looks into the politics of local school management. While the schools were often weak on substantive learning, their managers were acutely aware of the importance of symbolism in the management of cultural authority. Schools housed in run-down temples, without enough resources to pay teachers' salaries, strove mightily to ensure that they sported western-style blackboards and carefully hoarded supplies for the showcase chemistry class. Sometimes misunderstood even in their own time, such displays should be appreciated not as objects of ridicule but as cultural strategies intended to assure a role in the republic's very public process of redefining cultural values. Finally, Chapter 3 underscores the degree to which local educational circles produced their own internal social hierarchy. There was a community to be found here which was neither culturally nor institutionally egalitarian. It was clearly in social transition, at least in terms of age and formative educational background. As the discussions of both provincial and local educational institutions indicate, common assumptions about the gentry's traditional dominance over local elite circles need to be reexamined, at least with regard to educational circles, even down to the subcounty municipal level. Local schooling was officially under the authority of provincial offices and committees which nominally answered to the national Ministry of Education. Racked by factionalism and revolving-door ministerial appointments, the Ministry of Education was effectively nonfunctional, however. As a result, for local school circles, the central state was represented by provincial authorities. Chapter 4 introduces this provincial rendition of the central state. It notes the degree to which the nature of school reform in the last years of the Qing effectively sanctioned local autonomy and suggests that local elites did not consistently cooperate with imperial authorities in promoting the new schools. In Jiangsu, we will encounter postimperial provincial governments so weakened by military and factional disputes that educational management, at the provincial level, devolved from formal government offices to the quasi-

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bureaucratic Provincial Education Association (PEA), which acted as a surrogate government until the coming of the Guomindang. Understanding the Provincial Education Association provides special insight into the management of provincial politics. Because it was not an official administrative office, and was barely capable of asserting direct authority over local schools, the association encouraged symbolic management instead. It attracted a steady supply of letters, petitions, and reports from local school circles throughout the province, with which it filled volumes of association-approved journals. Through this correspondence, the PEA lent an informal, almost personal, atmosphere to the provincial government, which seemed to allow local educational activists to acknowledge the presence of the provincial state without having to surrender direct control to that state. Both sides benefited from this symbolic arrangement, which transcribed managerial patterns from the failed Qing onto the republic; each was legitimized by it, especially to the degree to which the communications were circulated publicly, as they often were. The Provincial Education Association made up for deficiencies in its formal political structure with a dense social presence. Through journals, public outings, and the like, the PEA was highly visible. Its presence allowed for a greater degree of social mobility, at the provincial level, than might have been possible under more rigid administrative management, mobility which set the republic apart from its imperial predecessor. Through the first two decades of the republic, the PEA's ranks were fed by significant numbers of postgentry educators—who were young and carried modern-school degrees. Yet if the association was socially vital in this regard, its cultural character did not serve to integrate province and locality. PEA activists, from early on in the organization's history, sought to identify culturally with western associations, ideals, and values. At the same time, they were culturally indifferent to conditions in local society, even as local educational circles sought public association with them. The resulting misfit failed to address the republic's need to establish a new, postimperial cultural consensus and threw local school communities back on their own devices throughout the republican period. These local educational circles were intensely politically active, as Chapter 5 indicates. Political awareness included the "small" world of political maneuver, in which schools became trophies, manipulated and fought over by local entrepreneurs. We encounter here local court cases, tax policies, and sometimes embittered public battles over management

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rights to local schools. We will also see the beginnings of new social hierarchies and identities, emerging awkwardly in the early decades of the republic. The political awareness of local school circles extended beyond the likes of local courts and periodical publications. It embraced and incorporated the state—more accurately, in the early years of the republic, the idea of the state—through its lively, sometimes painfully public, correspondence with provincial authorities. The provincial government was not consistently content with this symbolic partnership, however, and on several occasions during the republican period attempted to project a more demanding, authoritarian presence on the local schools. These aggressive efforts, which began in the mid-1910s and were highly unwelcome in local society, are also examined in Chapter 5. They set the stage for the coercive nature of the Guomindang decade, from 1927 through 1937, which is examined in Chapter 6. Throughout the schools provide insight into larger political questions. Here, in particular, they help locate a fatal weakness of successive republican governments: their inability to appreciate the power of nonpredatory politics. During the Anti-Japanese War, Communist perceptions allowed them to avoid this short-coming. As we shall see in Chapter 7, what the party gained in political authority through alliances it struck with local school circles it lost in ideological purity, thus creating political ambiguities with which it would wrestle for decades.

The Pre-Communist Sources This study examines school communities which, for the most part, were truly local, that is, located in towns and municipalities other than county seats. The daily lives of people in such communities existed largely beyond the republican period's cumulative written record. Often their names have come to us with no other meaningful indicators— school principals and inspectors, teachers and students, recorded by their surnames only. Not infrequently, for schools beyond the county seats, not even name lists have survived. What remains are records of institutions, representing people the broader historical record has elected not to acknowledge. Because they are institutions—structures rather than mentalities or agendas for action—schools can be unfashionable subjects of study. 36 This is the case, in particular, because of recent developments in the study of western politics, which have come to view institutions, administrative policies, and political structures with some

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distaste. Instead, encouraged by developments in cultural and intellectual history, political studies have moved beyond the administrative and structural to rediscover human intentions and emphasize individual action and decision making. Human interests, aspirations, and maneuvers are credited as legitimate, indeed preeminent, agencies of political change.37 Given the frequent absence of articulate human voices in the study which follows, institutions, administrative policies, social organizations, and individuals inevitably blur. The most convenient social term to capture this amalgam is one used by the Chinese of the time: educational circles, jiaoyu jie. The boundaries of these local social circles were often ill-defined. Many individuals involved in local educational politics came from families with wealth and standing drawn from other functional identities. They were landlords, merchants, politicians—often simultaneously. At the same time, the frequent references to educational circles in republican periodicals and newspapers indicates that they constituted a discernible social grouping with a recognizable social hierarchy. Government educational officers, school advisory committees, and principals, for example, figured more prominently in contemporary commentary than teachers, who in turn assumed superior status to their students. That educational circles are represented in the literature by institutions and policies, as much as by the people who comprised them, is largely a product of the historical sources available to us. More elite educators, who came to be associated with provincial and national schools, have produced an abundance of personal memoirs. These are rich materials, but for a study of this type they have serious limitations. Their experiences are scattered broadside across China; cumulatively they produce a national voice whose homogeneity poorly represents the dynamics of a local study. More important, when people from local settings succeeded in migrating to major urban centers and integrating themselves into the elegant social circles they found there, their views of their local origins often were expressed in dismissive, condescending tones, at least when talking about local schools.38 Of the hundreds of local school managers and upper-primary schoolteachers who can be identified by name and associated with local schools in central Jiangsu during the republican period—people for whom the schools were sources of political authority, not embarrassment—none have left published memoirs. With a few exceptions, information on the schools comes to us

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through the commentary of administrators and observers outside the schools themselves. Despite unavoidable biases, this material is more valuable than its use in the secondary literature to date might suggest. Such material includes the gazettes of both provincial offices and provincially sanctioned associations. It also includes a rich collection of republican-period surveys—all that remain of often airy efforts at commercial and industrial development. 39 It is in the administrative sources that one encounters the public dialogue between local politicians and the province, for example. It is in the surveys that the economic potential of subcounty municipalities is recognized. The biases in these materials are straightforward. Government records, for example, including school inspection reports and provincial gazettes, were exclusively the voice of external interests anxious to assert authority over the local schools. With few exceptions, these voices were pejorative and admonitory. Gazetteers and newspapers, also in use abundantly in research on local republican elites, are similarly selective sources. Managed by incumbent powerholders, and in the case of provincial newspapers published almost exclusively in Shanghai, they run the risk of understating the potential exercise of power by local newcomers to the arena of local politics. When dealing with nongentry activists, it is from these sources in particular that we get that maddening republican-period specialty: the name without a person, who figures in a given episode and then vanishes from the record without further identification. Such sources may be of most use in the evaluation of traditional dynamics and institutions—lineages, native place associations, guilds— or government-sanctioned political innovations such as self-government assemblies, although even here the sources may be discriminatory. 40 Local school communities did write abundantly of their own accord. The 1920s in particular witnessed a profusion of local school publications, including yearbooks, bulletins, alumni records, research committee reports, and the like. 41 Some of this material survived the successive convulsions of war and revolution which followed and is used here. The bulk of these publications did not survive. That they were published at all is important in attempting to understand efforts by local school communities to assert and sustain their own identities. Although we can no longer read these materials, we do know what was published and when. In periods of relative local autonomy, for example, there were large numbers of local school bulletins. When the state was especially predatory, these ceased publication, replaced by state-managed propaganda pieces.

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As little of this material still exists, it is left to the interested observer today to attempt to reconstruct the daily world of local school circles. We would do well to remind ourselves that the most local of questions— How did the people of these self-defined communities understand themselves? What vision did they have of their future?—are essential ones, even if intractable historical records make it difficult to answer them. The available material provides a different point of entry into local society, through more strictly political concerns such as the transformation of political elites after the 1911 Revolution and their role in the dialogue between state and society, and it is these concerns which occupy much of this study.

Local Educational Circles and the Communists Although most studies of the republic segregate its pre-Communist and Communist periods, this account does not. Even though the nature of the source material and accompanying historiographical debates are markedly different, study of the republic will benefit from exploring the degree to which the legacy accumulated by local elite politics before 1937 conditioned Communist organizing during the war which followed. As one moves into the Communist period, the nature of the sources changes significantly, shifting from plaintive, often confrontational material to carefully managed party newspapers, handbooks, and reports. The historical voice here is clearly different. The schools and their human affiliates become objects acted upon by outside forces. The result has been a tendency in the secondary literature to let the sources drive periodization: republican social studies tend to halt at the 1937 break-line, as if their subjects were consumed within Communist ideology and the wartime mobilization of the peasantry. Understanding the Communists and the fate of the society they came to control calls for rejecting the assumption that 1937 marked a radical historical break and for integrating into studies of the Communist movement historical analysis from the prewar years. By 1937, in local municipalities which came under Communist control, there were recognizable postimperial institutions—explored here from the coign of vantage of local educational circles—a legacy which fell directly to the Communists. At one level, the historical question is straightforward: What happened to these people at the hands of the Communists? Equally impor-

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tant is an understanding of how the presence of social entities such as local educational circles affected Communist organizing. Posing the question in this fashion reverses the standard conceptual understanding of Communist organizing strategies. This conceptualization, something of an impact-response model, asks: What did the Communists do? And then: How did those being organized respond? The Communist-period material on local educational circles suggests that the Communists did not always have the upper hand. They were cautious, sometimes stymied, always uncomfortable in their approach to local school communities. In addition to asking how local educational circles responded to the Communists, we need to inquire as to how the Communists responded to them. The Communist wartime organizing experience was profoundly rural, informed by the economy and culture of China's peasantry. This was particularly true of the most studied of the party's regional experiences: its wartime capital in Yan'an. Literacy rates there, for example, one measure of the region's development, were estimated to be no more than 1 percent. 42 The same did not hold true, however, as the Communists moved outside their isolated northwestern headquarters. Particularly in the case of organizing efforts in Central China, the Communists encountered and held local towns and municipalities over a wide area. It cannot be argued that local municipal culture had a powerful impact on overall Communist organizing strategies. Regardless, it is striking that the Communists adopted distinct organizing strategies, cautious and protectionist, toward local educational circles in these towns and municipalities. As they carefully but relentlessly stalked local elites, they gingerly bestowed favor on a privileged group within these elite circles. The nature of the Communists' approach underscored the degree to which even seasoned Communist organizers could be attracted to the cultural symbols of prewar reform. In the Central Jiangsu Fourth Subdistrict, for example, secured in the early 1940s behind Japanese lines in the counties along the north bank of the Yangzi, unusual educational testing occurred, designed to convince the region's more well-to-do residents that they would be best served by sending their children to western-style schools, now under at least the nominal administrative authority of the Communists, rather than sending them to traditional private tutors (sishu). To make this point, the Communists tested the private tutors on the workings of the Dalton Plan, an American pedagogical argument which promoted emphasis on practical learning and self-moti-

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vation. 43 The Communists were not the first in Jiangsu to explore the Dalton Plan. In 1926, the prestigious Jiangsu Provincial Education Association, most decidedly unsympathetic to China's fledgling Communist movement, had promoted the plan in some detail for Jiangsu's growing number of western-style schools. 44 Two decades later, the Communists drew from the efforts of their non-Communist predecessors without feeling obliged to apologize. The logic behind this strategy may not be difficult to fathom. As antagonism grew toward classic rural elites—landlords, usurers, armed bullies, and the like—it would have been prudent for the Communists not to antagonize "peripheral" elites, such as schoolteachers, whose skills were of value to the Communists and who might be only marginally sympathetic to more established elites. Such decisions, however, were not without potential problems. Educational circles could very well shelter the offspring of powerful local elites, complicating the nexus of Communist organizing strategies by necessitating special policies addressed to local elite youth. Similarly, prewar schooling could harbor potentially subversive ideology. Through the Anti-Japanese War and the civil war which followed, the Communists never devised a consistent and satisfactory strategy for addressing this concern. Organizing strategies, in other words, which so brilliantly mobilized millions of impoverished peasants and simultaneously disenfranchised tens of thousands traditionally privileged with wealth and power, failed decisively when the Communists confronted local subcultures which fit in neither category. Nothing in their organizational or ideological arsenal equipped the Communists particularly well for the management of local social groups which were uniquely a product of the republican experience itself. The war period was the last in which local educational circles operated with any degree of distance from central state control. A study of this period highlights their legacy to the People's Republic, one which was as much ideological as institutional. The secondary literature has looked at wartime Communist policy debates, in the field of education, as the product of struggle within the party—a struggle between those who favored technical expertise and those who favored ideological purity. In the context of the material presented here, we see that the costly uncertainty in policy, played out in the 1950s and 1960s, was indebted not only to conflict within the party but also, importantly, to conflict between the party and the social realities it encountered during the war. However confident the party may have been of its policy

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toward the peasantry, its encounter with local educational circles in this crucial formative period left it without ideological confidence to draw on in the decades which followed. Conclusion Exactly how much the uncertainty of the past was reflected in PRC policies after 1949 may be impossible to determine. We would be well advised, as we consider this, to heed the caution against reading history backwards, ignoring the "complexities, contingencies, and particularities which make the past peculiarly, irrevocably past."45There is merit in the study of the Chinese republic because it is irrevocably part of the past, but there is merit in such study also because the challenges the republic faced, and the dynamics brought forth in the face of those challenges, are not peculiarly part of the past. For the politically weary People's Republic, there may be no way, decades after the Communist revolution, to productively plumb the legacy of the dialogue between local society and the state during the republican period, except as a historical curiosity. In this sense, if the republican past is irrevocably past, we can at least see the republic for what it was, beyond the chaos, as a time of politically contentious and culturally expressive experimentation, as a time when subcultures formed of a defense of the past and a conscious embrace of the future coexisted even within the same social circles. For the observer of China's socialist republic, there may be other issues to consider in the study of the republic which went before it. Latetwentieth-century China has witnessed extraordinary political change and sometimes reluctant, sometimes uninhibited, cultural borrowing. It may serve us to look into earlier such efforts, noting the intense interaction between politics and culture associated with reform which wells up from within society itself but, at the same time, is called forth by a dialogue with the state. The experiences of the Chinese republic remind us that there are historical circumstances in which the authority of that state rests directly on its ability to recognize and incorporate a political legacy which has built toward the state from the bottom up.

2. Understanding Locality

R E S I D E N T S IN LOCAL CITIES and towns throughout central Jiangsu were well conditioned to understand that they were socially marginal and should not confuse themselves with the province's prominent southern citizens. Ecology and its accompanying cultural prejudices confirmed this; so did the province's administrative and urban hierarchies. Even the Anti-Japanese War segregated the province's southern core from what the Japanese considered the less strategic counties to the north. At the hands of the Communists, those marginal counties would become a center of political and military power. When the Communists expanded into them after 1939, the party discovered what municipal residents there already knew: this was not a local backwater. Throughout the region were the social and institutional remains of efforts at postimperial reform, to be found not only in county seats, which were targets of Japanese military designs, but also in subcounty municipalities, which more commonly fell to the Communists. While the Anti-Japanese War did not have the effect of permanently raising the status of these communities, for the first time during the republican period it did provide a national contender for power with an opportunity to consider the people and dynamics of this region directly and on their own terms. When the Japanese invasion of China began in earnest in 1937, the conquest of Central China targeted its major cities and vital communications arteries. Inhibited by internal policy debates and the burden of holding growing expanses of Chinese territory, the invaders expended considerable energy, struggling under poorly defined lines of authority, to build a viable collaborator government and secure the Grand Canal and vital Jinpu and Longhai rail lines—effectively delineating for the CCP its Jiangsu provincial command, encased in an ill-shaped rectangle drawn by the Longhai rail line, the Grand Canal, the Yangzi River, and

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the Yellow Sea. 1 North of the Yangzi, the Japanese held most but not all county seats—the Communists' wartime capital of Yancheng was an exception—and a handful of the most important nonadministrative commercial centers. In the early years of the war, beyond these lines, northern Jiangsu lay largely undisturbed by occupation forces. Under the Second United Front's tenuous alliance, the Communist New Fourth Army was initially assigned target areas surrounding Nanjing, including Jiangsu's southwestern counties east to Danyang and Zhenjiang, and Jiangdu county north of the Yangzi. After establishing a provisional border-region government in the southwest, Communist troops moved east toward Shanghai. The Japanese responded with sufficient vigor to weaken Communist influence in the southeastern part of the province until late in the war. In the spring of 1 9 3 9 , the CCP moved its forces north across the Yangzi, establishing a second administrative area north of Nanjing, from Yizheng to Gaoyou. The remainder of the year was spent securing what would become the core of the Central China Command: northern Jiangsu from the Huai basin south to the north bank of the Yangzi. Linking up with the Eighth Route Army, sent into the province from Shandong, the Communists first established a command post outside the Funing county seat, then moved to their permanent wartime headquarters in Yancheng in 1 9 4 1 . Within two years, they had added most of the Yangzi's north-bank counties, from Tai to Qidong, to their command. 2 The core of the Jiangsu provincial command encompassed most or all of ten prewar counties. The four largest, Funing, Yancheng, Xinghua, and Dongtai, were in the region the Communists designated as Yanfu, which comprised the poorer, northern half of prewar central Jiangsu. Six counties—Tai and five north-bank counties, Taixing, Rugao, Nantong, Haimen, and Qidong—lay in the richer but militarily less secure region the Communists called Suzhong, wartime central Jiangsu. 3 Along the western margins of both Yanfu and Suzhong, the Communists expanded precariously into the eastern districts of six prewar counties along the Grand Canal: Lianshui, Huaiyin, Huai'an, Baoying, Gaoyou, and Jiangdu. 4 Communist administration in Jiangsu did not follow precisely along provincial lines. While most of the province came under the jurisdiction of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee, the border regions were under separate committees operating between adjoining provinces. Counties north of the Huai River basin, for example, in what the Communists called the Huai-Hai administrative region, were under the con-

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trol of a joint Jiangsu-Shandong provincial committee, which answered to party authorities in Shandong province. The lake country west of the Grand Canal, never securely in Communist hands, was under the jurisdiction of a Henan-Anhui-Jiangsu triprovincial committee. That committee, like the Jiangsu Provincial Committee, answered to the Central China Bureau, established in 1941 to oversee the consolidation of Communist power in Central China and headquartered in Yancheng. 5 The rest of the province, from the Huai basin south, was under Jiangsu Provincial Party authority. This administrative patchwork bore a strong correspondence to the preinvasion political ecology of the province, especially north of the Yangzi. Having the political nerve center of Communist command north of the Yangzi reversed the long-standing equation which reserved administrative and political preeminence for the cultured cities of the south. From the cosmopolitan vantage point of Jiangsu's great commercial emporia, cradled in a fertile corridor between the Yangzi River and the Nanjing-Shanghai railroad, these northern counties did not figure prominently in provincial identity. With the coming of the rail lines in the early twentieth century, it would not have been difficult to get from Suzhou or Nanjing in the south to Suining or Ganyu in the far north, but few of the province's wealthy southern citizens ever did so. Few even traveled to Xuzhou, the largest center of commerce in northern Jiangsu, although by the turn of the century the Jinpu line picked up Shanghai passengers in Nanjing, providing them service through neighboring Anhui province and on to Xuzhou. From Xuzhou, the Longhai line ran east along a bleak fringe of the North China Plain through terrain physically and mentally remote from the cosmopolitan elite of the south, through counties such as Pi and Donghai, to the dirty northern port of Lianyungang. A traveler could get from Shanghai to Lianyungang in less than twenty-four hours without ever leaving the relative comfort of a rail car, but most of the northern towns he would have traveled through were notably absent from the lists of early-twentieth-century popular tourist spots, frequented by the likes of provincial officials, scholars, and merchants. While administrative power was determined by the relative presence of public offices and access to public funds, cultural prejudice was less formally defined. One standard of cultural preference was the inclusion of a city in the popular circuit of vacation spots frequented by elite political associations and professional organizations, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. These vacation tours, complete with the prerequisite group

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photograph, seem to have been an important bonding ritual for the postimperial association mentality. Jiangsu's educational associations and student groups, for example, consistently visited the same cities: Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Nanjing, Yangzhou, and, less frequently, Nantong. Yangzhou and Nantong were the only northern cities to appear in the travel reports. Jiangsu's southern elite lived and played in a world which excluded much of its own province.6

Defining Locality: The Ecological Hierarchy By the mid-nineteenth century, Jiangsu was one of China's most populous provinces and one of its richest. A fertile coastal domain, the province was a great alluvial plain of some 10,000 square kilometers with a shoreline steadily pushed eastward by tons of sediment deposits along the Yellow Sea. 7 Jiangsu's low-lying landscape was broken only in the extreme northwest by a branch of the Taishan range and in the southwest by the gentle foothills of the Nanling mountains. The province's land area grew as its shoreline expanded to the east. The sandy, unstable soil along the seacoast was unsuitable for natural harbors and, as a result, Jiangsu's seaports were all sheltered upriver along waterways which emptied into the sea. This was a province of waterways, natural and man-made, which, in addition to providing most of its internal communications, defined its physiographic subregions. In particular, Jiangsu's rivers were the traditional boundaries of three distinct ecological subregions, nature's first broad strokes in the complicated tapestry of land and local society. The most important of the provincial riverways—the Huai and the Yangzi— divided Jiangsu roughly into thirds and formed the northern and southern boundaries of the Communists' wartime holdings. Throughout the republican period, the Huai, lacking natural drainage to the sea, dumped its waters into Lake Hongze, itself drained by narrow and often heavily silted tributaries to the east and the Grand Canal, which ran on a north-south course the length of the province.8 To the south, the Yangzi cut through the lower third of the province as it flowed eastward in the final stages of its 5,792-kilometer journey across China. 9 Nearly two-thirds of Jiangsu's land area lay north of the Yangzi. In common parlance the north was further subdivided, again in areas generally delineated by rivers. The ecological divisions distinguished the central Jiangsu counties from both the south and the grinding poverty of the far north. At the same time, ecology ensured a notable degree of

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local diversity within the central Jiangsu area, exacerbated from the mid-nineteenth century on as natural disasters and man-made disturbances escalated alienation between rural areas and the region's town dwellers. The Ecology of Northern

Jiangsu

North of the Yangzi, Jiangsu was divided by natural and man-made waterways into three distinct regions: Huaibei to the far north, the lake country west of the Grand Canal, and the central Jiangsu counties south of the Huai and east of the canal. Each region was ecologically distinct. The area from the drainage basin of the Huai to the northern boundary of the province was part of an interprovincial region—a desolate expanse of plain running from northernmost Jiangsu and neighboring Anhui north into southern Hebei and Shandong. 10 The counties north of the Huai River drainage area were Jiangsu's poorest. The land was victimized by droughts, flooding, and pervasive banditry. The main crops —winter wheat, gaoliang (Chinese sorghum), and millet—distinguished this region as well. Despite the Longhai rail line and substantial coal deposits in the northwest, the area was economically underdeveloped throughout the republican period. It was dotted with yuzhai, community fortresses which were testament to endemic unrest in the region. 11 Fortified villages were more than reminders of the past. Even government offices had an aura of defensive retreat. Republican-period government inspectors from the south considered the region a disgrace. They were appalled to find local government offices housed in tamped mud structures, behind which county magistrates sheltered themselves, seldom if ever venturing out into the villages, which were small, isolated, and surrounded by heavy mud walls.12 Even in the war years, Communist control in this area was marginal. North and south of the Huai alike, northern Jiangsu was divided on an east-west axis by the Grand Canal. The area west of the canal, along the province's western corridor, was notoriously hard to govern. This was particularly true of the lake region: the two largest lakes in the area, Lake Hongze and Lake Gaoyou, were connected by over 5,000 square kilometers of marshlands and lesser lakes. This swampy stretch was famous for its floods and bandit lairs, said to have inspired Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West and Shi Nai'an's Outlaws of the Marsh,13 Centuries later, this border region, like that north of the Huai, would prove to be one of the most unstable under the Communists' Central China Command.

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East of the Grand Canal, from the Huai south to the Yangzi, lay central Jiangsu, which would become the Communists' wartime Yanfu and Suzhong counties. The latter constituted outer-core counties of the Lower Yangzi macroregion, while the former formed an inner periphery to their north. 14 Although this region was well removed from the glamour of the province's treaty-port cities, it was not destitute. The enduring images of poverty and disorder which shrouded all of northern Jiangsu in the minds of the wealthier and politically more powerful southerners were drawn in particular from the harsh, miserly economy of the Huaibei counties. For Subei south of the Huai, the grim imagery was not consistently warranted. Much of central Jiangsu was productive farmland. East of the Grand Canal, in the area which became the center of wartime Communist activities, northern Jiangsu was a display of wide-open expanses of land which created a broad transitional plain between the rice culture of the south and that of wheat and gaoliang in the North China Plain. The Fangong Dike, first built in the eighth century to protect central Jiangsu from tidal flooding, extended north from eastern Rugao to Funing. 15 Between the dike and the Grand Canal to the east was fertile, well-cultivated acreage. The richest of this land lay along the north bank of the Yangzi. Farther north, the land yielded its surplus ever more reluctantly. The relative wealth of the land was similarly reflected in the area's tenancy figures. In general, tenancy rates were higher for the richer north-bank counties than they were farther north, in Yanfu, although they varied substantially within any one county. According to one survey conducted in the early 1920s, in Nantong, Rugao, and Taixing, on average less than a third of the peasant families were independent cultivators. In Rugao, the proportion of cultivators who owned no land of their own averaged 70 percent with districts reporting as high as 95 percent landless tenancy; there were townships in northeastern Nantong reported to be worked entirely by landless tenants. Moving north, in Tai, Xinghua, and Dongtai counties, self-cultivators averaged 36 percent, but some 20 to 40 percent of the peasant families were still tenant cultivators who owned no land of their own. Only in Yancheng and Funing did owner-cultivators become a significant portion of the population, averaging 50 percent in Yancheng and 60 percent in Funing. While there were fewer full-time tenants in the north, at the same time the Yanfu counties had more and larger old-style landed estates. In Rugao, for example, in any one district, landowners with over 50 mou of land ranged from zero to 25 percent; in Nantong, the range was zero to 15

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percent. In Yancheng, no district was reported to have less than 10 percent of its owners holding over 50 mou; in Funing, that figure ranged from 14 to 80 percent. 16 The cultivation of cotton enriched the north-bank counties in the area which became Communist Suzhong. For Qidong, Haimen, Nantong, and Rugao, cotton was the principal commercial crop. Over half the arable land in each of these counties was sown with it. 1 7 By the late 1910s, just before the first republican-period investment cycle went into recession, Qidong, the smallest of the north-bank counties, produced half a million piculs of the fiber, worth 9 million yuan. Rugao, with over three times Qidong's arable land, produced just under 600,000 piculs of cotton, worth 10 million yuan. Nantong, roughly twice Qidong's size, easily outpaced the other north-bank counties. By the late 1910s, it was producing annually 1,700,000 piculs of cotton, valued at 26 million yuan. 18 Neither fertile land nor valued commercial crops could completely buffer the region from natural disaster, however. Throughout the republican period, central Jiangsu was plagued by salty ocean water and uneven rainfall. The easternmost counties lay along a stretch of coastline which was the province's major salt-producing region. Valuable as salt was, it had been a government monopoly since ancient times; little of the salt trade's wealth went into the hands of peasant producers. By the late nineteenth century, as the coastline pushed eastward and trade on the silt-clogged Grand Canal dwindled, salt revenues declined as well and the sea became a menace. The political disorder of the late Qing and republican periods meant that upkeep of northern Jiangsu's waterworks was increasingly neglected. During the dry season, seawater backed up into canals and streams, its high salinity ruining the fertility of the soil. The current in Yanfu's poorly dredged rivers was too weak to keep them flushed with fresh water. Two to three months without rain was sufficient to leave rivers and canals in eastern Funing backflooded with seawater, for example. Once the soil ingested the salt, it required three successive years of drenching rains to recover its fertility. 19 Temperatures could reach uncomfortable extremes in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties alike. In the winter, they dropped well below freezing; in the summer, they rose above 39 degrees centigrade. Rain came primarily in the summer, carried by moist warm wind from southeastern China. The rains were essential for farming in the poorly irrigated north, but they also posed a potential danger. The Suzhong counties in particular were periodically visited from June through October by fierce

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typhoon-like rains, which at their worst flattened fields and uprooted trees and houses. Although summer storms did reach north into Yancheng, Funing, and beyond to Lianshui, on the whole these counties were drier in the summer months and particularly victimized by arid northwestern winds in the winter. 20 In general, Yanfu and Suzhong counties were large with substantial populations. Overall, the Yanfu counties were larger in land area than those to the south. The Yanfu county of Funing, the province's largest, was 57,767 square kilometers in size and by the early 1930s had a population of just over a million. 21 In addition to Funing, five other central Jiangsu counties—Rugao, Nantong, Dongtai, Tai, and Yancheng, all north of the Yangzi and south of the Huai—also had populations of over a million by the early 1930s. (See Appendix A.) Xinghua county's 2,053 square kilometers put it above the provincial average in size; with an average land area of 5,452 square kilometers, Funing, Yancheng, and Dongtai were over three times as large. The Yanfu counties were generally divided into more subcounty districts (local municipalities and townships) than their southern counterparts, presumably reflecting the relative burden of administering such large counties. As a result, each administrative unit also had lower absolute populations—fewer people to administer and fewer from whom to collect local taxes. In the late 1920s, Funing, by way of comparison, had thirty-nine local municipalities and townships, with an average population of 32,258 people per unit, while Rugao, with the largest absolute population in the province, had eighteen subcounty administrative units and an average population of 79,350 people per unit. 22 Like the land itself, structures of political authority were more densely concentrated as one moved south, away from the Huai toward the Yangzi. Diversity and Crisis Just as the province surrendered its unity to the diversity of nature, so too did any given county. From Dongtai to Funing, the Fangong Dike delineated the eastern districts of central Jiangsu's counties. The dike divided Dongtai's ecology roughly in half, for example. To the west, the land was suitable for rice cultivation; to the east, the principal crops were cotton and corn. 23 Some 40 percent of Yancheng county lay east of the dike. The land was dry and infertile and produced meager crops of beans, millet, corn, and other dry grains. In the east as well lay the once flourishing salt beds, grim saline fields often referred to as "furnace land." Whereas land values in western Yancheng ranged from 10 to 50

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yuan per mou by the late 1920s, furnace land fell as low as 3 or 4 yuan a mou and was easy prey for the gentry-managed salt reclamation companies. 24 To the west of the dike, about half of the county was fertile farmland, but further west still, beyond the market town of Hudang, some 10 percent of the county's land sank into low marshes, producing various grass and reed products. 25 The better portion of Tai and Xinghua counties also lay to the west of the Fangong Dike. Tai county evidenced the same internal diversity as its eastern neighbors. As if to defy the logic of a gradual progression from rice to wheat production as one moved north from the Yangzi toward Shandong, southern Tai county was prominently elevated; the land was dry and given over to a two-year cycle of rotating dry grains, including wheat, barley, beans, and gaoliang, interspersed with hemp, buckwheat, and sweet potatoes. Farther north, the land descended into the more fertile Lixiahe basin where the county's rice was grown. 26 None of Yanfu or Suzhong's county seats were located in their counties' less fertile, more sparsely populated, districts. Distance, relative poverty, and banditry—poverty's tireless companion—contributed to cumulative local prejudice within a given county which mirrored the more general prejudice of southerners against Jiangsu's residents north of the Yangzi. In Yancheng, for example, subcounty prejudice was drawn between those who lived in the arable west and those who lived in the east, on land once given over to the vast salt fields. As the salt beds dried up, beginning in the early twentieth century, unemployment grew apace, and the terms outsiders used when discussing the people of eastern Yancheng became bleaker. 27 Similarly, while a Funing county magistrate dismissed the customs of the entire county as crude and simple, he stressed that in southern Funing, where the land was less arid, the people were relatively pure and frugal; in the north, by contrast, they were lazy, quarrelsome, and vicious. 28 So too, of course, was the land itself. Internal diversity notwithstanding, by republican times Jiangsu was almost uniformly threatened with rural decline. Even in the best of times, peasants often lived within a narrow margin of safety—which disappeared when irrigation canals silted up, rains swelled the province's massive lakes and rivers, or bandits preyed on the villagers. The most dramatic of these pestilences were torrential floodwaters, brought on by excessive rains and compounded by poor drainage from the province's major waterways. In the summer of 1911, some 33,670 square kilometers of land were inundated in the north of the province when the Huai sent floodwaters into the Hongze and down the Grand Canal. The

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American Red Cross Board of Engineers, called in to assist after the 1911 flood, estimated that Jiangsu and Anhui, the two provinces most seriously affected, were subject to a disaster "of equal severity on the average once every six or seven years and a disaster of minor importance every three to four years." 29 The "disasters of minor importance" might be annual affairs. From 1914 through 1917, for example, Xinghua county was visited in succession by an inundation of saltwater (caused by deteriorating water-control gates), flooding, and drought. 30 The province was subjected to major flooding again in 1921. In the aftermath, the China International Relief Commission conducted surveys in which it found that half the population of the counties studied lacked minimal levels of food and shelter.31 Then, ten years later, disaster struck on a far grander scale. In 1931, the Yangzi and the Huai overflowed their banks, seriously flooding some 88,060 square kilometers of land, with another 20,720 square kilometers of land affected by secondary floodwaters. The 1931 flood is considered one of the worst in recorded human history.32 While less tempestuous, drought and insects menaced the republic with equal persistence. For three consecutive years before the 1931 flood, for example, Tai county suffered from locust infestations and insufficient rainfall. 33 Within three years of the flood, western Jiangsu was again suffering devastating drought. The famine which accompanied such disasters turned peasant producers into desperate refugees by the thousands.34 Rural society suffered social ills as well, bequeathed it from late imperial times. In the desolate wake of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), vast stretches of Jiangsu's fertile land lay abandoned, its former cultivators victims of both the Taiping occupation and the government's costly efforts to recover the province. After the Taipings were defeated, peasants from outside the area migrated into Jiangsu to claim abandoned farmland. By the end of the nineteenth century, Jiangsu's vacant land— especially in the fertile southeast—was largely filled. Still, migrants kept coming. 35 The outsiders generally remained outsiders even after decades of resettlement. Different in dress, eating habits, and dialect, they were ignorant or resentful of local social practices and land use customs. 36 Conflicts between natives and outsiders recurred throughout the republican period. By the 1930s, land hunger pushed migrants from the south farther north, into reclaimed coastal land from Rugao to Funing. Perhaps because of their successive migrations, the newcomers were conservative and socially withdrawn. They easily fell victim to more aggressive host populations, recreating the community conflicts which had plagued

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the south since the migrations began. 37 This became a particularly sensitive problem as a decline in rural conditions led to growing unemployment. While the degree of unemployment is difficult to judge because of the seasonal nature of agricultural work and handicraft industries, county governments by the late 1920s frequently reported unemployment rates of 30 percent or more. 38 Defining Locality: The Administrative Hierarchy The early republican decades were not kind to the authority of the county governments struggling with these developments. Under the empire, bureaucratic procedure had ensured county-level authority and, simultaneously, provided the most specific definition of locality—the world which began where the imperial bureaucracy came to a halt: at the county seat. These guidelines were significantly reshaped during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however. The political delineations which distinguished national from local weakened at the top; the officially recognized local bureaucracy became denser and more competitive. The process began in the waning years of the Qing, as imperial offices in Jiangsu began to atrophy. Superficially the traditional distribution of imperial offices in the province formed a regular hierarchical pattern: from the court through the subprovincial prefecture and on to the county itself. In fact, there was a distinct geopolitical imbalance, for government offices other than those of the county magistrate were highly concentrated in only a handful of provincial cities. In Jiangsu, the gap between these elite cities on the one hand and the rest of the province on the other grew steadily through the nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, the imperial presence in Jiangsu was effectively concentrated in two cities, Nanjing and Suzhou, both south of the Yangzi, each with half a dozen imperial offices. 39 Traditionally, several cities along the Grand Canal had also been the site of official administrative offices. By the turn of the century, however, only one prominent supraprovincial office—that of salt controller, located in Yangzhou—remained north of the Yangzi. Silting along the canal and the advent of steam transport rendered obsolete the offices which oversaw the shipping of grain and upkeep of the canal itself. 40 The abolition of these posts, formerly located in the northern canal city of Qingjiangpu, had the effect of reinforcing a political center of gravity along the Nanjing-Suzhou axis.

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In addition to supraprovincial offices, until the New Policy reforms there were two administrative tiers below the provincial break-line— those for circuit and prefectural management—which might have added an administrative presence before imperial authority reached the county seat and the beginnings of the local political system. Only one of the circuit attendants, however, that for the province's rich southeastern circuit, added an imperial office in a city which did not already have imperial officials. Further, the position of circuit attendant was abolished altogether in 1907. The twelve prefectural yamens, which were abolished in turn after the 1911 Revolution, similarly had added an additional imperial presence only in six cities not already host to imperial offices. Only two of those six cities—Haimen and Nantong—were north of the Yangzi.41 In the main, then, despite Jiangsu's long-standing political prominence, the practices and habits of local politics north of the Yangzi operated with little direct interaction with the central state, all the more so as the dynasty came to a close. Then, in its dying days, the Qing issued a series of regulations which complicated patterns of local authority. County-Level Locality Traditionally, the imperial Chinese order was decisive in its delineation of locality. At the bottom of the imperial hierarchy was the district magistrate, of which there were fifty-eight in Jiangsu at the time of the 1911 Revolution.42 The county seat was also the symbol of the cultural resources which underwrote the Confucian state: access to office depended on success in the state-controlled examination system whose most local point of entry was under the jurisdiction of the county magistrate. The late-Qing "self-government" regulations altered the political system's baseline, recognizing levels of political authority below the county seat. They sought to tidy up the natural marketing order into a three-tiered political hierarchy. Administrative seats for prefectures, subprefectures, departments, and counties were designated as cheng. Ranked below them were zhen, those marketing towns which were not official administrative centers but had a population of 50,000 or more. The reforms grouped China's remaining towns and villages with a population of less than 50,000 into xiang, or administrative townships. Prompted by a desire to coopt the call for electoral politics, the reforms did more than determine the official designations of these units; they legitimized representative political bodies at each level. Cheng and zhen

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were to elect councils or deliberative bodies (yishihui), which in turn could appoint executive boards (shidonghui). The xiang were also to have deliberative councils, managed by a locally appointed manager (xiangdong), rather than an executive board. 43 On paper, this was a trim administrative equation. Reality was less tidy, but local society quickly coopted the vocabulary and implicit political legitimacy offered by the New Policy edicts. Self-proclaimed local assemblies began to materialize throughout the province. Even as they did, a relentless outpouring of edicts from the beleaguered throne undermined the logic of the reforms which had initiated them. The court ordered provincial assemblies to be elected in such a way that they did not build on the local assemblies and were not directly answerable to them. 44 Without any particular reason to maintain a precise political hierarchy, the juridical distinction between cheng, zhen, and xiang, as stipulated in the self-government regulations, dissolved into a more flexible twofold distinction between shi, official municipalities, and xiang, township aggregates of less commercially developed market towns and villages.45 Effectively, then, the late Qing added new political resources —subcounty designations—and then cut them loose from central management. That triggered an administrative contest which lasted for decades over the allocation of these designations—specifically over which local municipalities would be designated as shi, official municipalities, and which would be encompassed within the less prominent xiang designation. Subcounty administrative designations were important indicators of relative levels of political authority, access to local revenues, and relations with the county seat. The politics behind the allocation of administrative designations, however, is poorly articulated in the historical record. The twofold administrative divisions of municipalities and townships (shi and xiang) became commonplace after 1911, but the officially designated shi did not always coincide with commercially active market towns (shizhen). By the early 1930s, for example, wealthy Rugao county, with a population of just under a million and a half people, had eighteen officially designated subcounty administrative units. Rugao had some twenty-six prominent market towns (shizhen), of which only eight had officially acquired the coveted shi status. The remaining eighteen shizhen dominated the administrative townships in which they were located.46 The record is silent as to why some municipalities maneuvered more successfully than others in this administrative game, but Rugao's pattern

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was not unique. In the same time period, Yancheng county, for example, with a population of just over a million people, officially had twenty-five subcounty municipalities and townships. The county had eleven commercially prominent shizhen, but only half a dozen held official municipal status.47 The managers of the remaining five commercial centers did not succeed in matching their commercial prominence with appropriate administrative status. The records available to us are stubbornly unyielding as to the political forces which determined these local designations, but there are indications that they were the product of a contest of wills between local politics on the one hand and county and provincial governments on the other. The provincial government was a particularly nervous player in this regard, as if to underscore its anxiety over the degree of local authority unleashed by the formal recognition of subcounty administrations. Throughout the republican period, local society suffered persistent efforts by the provincial government to redraw subcounty boundaries—efforts which would appear to indicate that the government perceived local politicians, while not openly rebellious, as insufficiently compliant for government tastes, and hoped that administrative gerrymandering could be used to weaken local bases of power. In the late Qing, for example, Funing county was reported to have twelve major markets and an additional twenty minor ones.48 Self-government regulations stipulated that the vast northern county should be divided into ten self-government districts for the purpose of electing local advisory committees. Only four of the twelve markets, Funing city, Dongkan, Yilin, and Donggou, were designated self-government districts; lesser markets were assigned to administer six self-government districts, a move which would have significantly enhanced their political status over more prominent market towns, if the reforms had held. By 1912, the self-government districts were a dead letter, and the fledgling provincial government tried again, stipulating thirteen official municipalities and twenty-six administrative townships. By now, the managers of certain municipalities were proving themselves adept at playing this game. Three of the thirteen newly designated official municipalities— Dongkan, Yilin, and Batan, a northern municipality not among the dozen prominent late-Qing markets—had previously secured prominence in the now defunct experiment in self-government. Thus Batan retained its administrative preeminence despite its lesser commercial importance; Dongguo, which remained commercially active, saw its administrative status demoted. In the 1912 designations, in addition to

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the county seat, nine minor market towns also secured official municipal status. None figured prominently in commercial reports of the late 1910s and early 1920s. 49 Officials in the county seat are likely to have had a hand in this. Dongkan, Funing city, and Yilin, in that order, were the three most active commercial centers in the county.50 The promotion of lesser markets through the manipulation of political status may well have been designed to counter the accumulation of status by municipal managers outside the county seat. The use of administrative status to control subcounty activists continued into the Guomindang decade. In 1928, for example, the Nationalists again redefined Funing's subcounty administrative boundaries, designating eight official municipalities (shi) and eight administrative townships (xiang). By then, all of the local market towns listed as prominent in the commercial surveys had secured the administrative distinction of official municipality. Two of the official 1912 municipalities, Kaiming and Goudun, which were not commercially prominent, also retained their administrative status. This arrangement lasted for less than a year. Reeling from dissention within the Nationalist Party and local resistance to the assertion of party authority, provincial authorities abolished the designated subcounty administrative units and divided the county into thirteen districts (qu). In addition to the county seat, three major markets, Dongkan, Dongyi, and Yangbei, as well as Batan, were administrative seats for new districts. Two major local municipalities, Yilin and Donggou, both of which had been commercially important since the late Qing and continued to be more active than either Dongyi or Yangbei throughout the republican period, were denied administrative prominence under the Nationalists.51 Behind this mind-numbing administrative shuffle lurked state recognition of the political authority which late-Qing reforms had bestowed on subcounty administrative units. The resulting tensions ensured political friction throughout the republican period. As we shall see, local schools figured prominently into this calculus, underscoring the vitality and diversity of the republic's local municipal world. Most local schools were located in the very subcounty municipalities which struggled with county and provincial governments over official administrative status. The early years of the republic created for provincial authorities unfortunate bureaucratic habits in this regard, habits which persisted throughout the period. Instead of acknowledging the political aspirations of local managers, provincial politicians tended to treat them as

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administrative problems to be handled through bureaucratic manipulation. That approach did little to incorporate local urban communities into the provincial body politic. Defining Locality: The Urban Hierarchy The local character of towns and cities in central Jiangsu was thus determined by their ecological and administrative setting. Like the land around them they were removed from the abundance of the south, yet were not so remote that their physical destitution crippled potential for political change. Officially marginalized especially in late imperial times, by the early republic the administrative hierarchy had secured a measure of political authority locally which was only uneasily acknowledged by the province itself. Finally, beyond the imprint of the land and the state, central Jiangsu's towns and cities formed the baseline of an urban order, indirectly structured by ecology and political bureaucracy and directly informed by the commercial economy. Jiangsu province's urban order was a rough microcosm of the national order. By the late Qing, nine port cities were open to international trade, including five, Shanghai, Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Songjiang, and Suzhou, which were opened as treaty ports. All five treaty ports lay along the Yangzi. Donghai (Haizhou) and Xuzhou (Tongshan), opened in 1905 and 1922 respectively, both on the Longhai rail line, were the only two international ports in the province located north of the Yangzi. By 1922, two additional port cities, Pukou and Wuxi, were opened to international trade. The commercial activities of these nationally prominent entrepots were supplemented by some half dozen local municipalities closed to international trade but active in interprovincial commerce. Cities such as Nantong, Dongtai, Jiangyan, and Guanyun, all north of the Yangzi, underscored the commercialization of northern Jiangsu's agricultural economy. 52 Below these commercial centers in turn were ever more local commercial centers in ever greater numbers. How many people lived in this urban order is a matter of conjecture. Republican-period surveys of Jiangsu's cities and towns vary wildly in their statistical information. A dozen or more cities in the province may have had a population over 100,000; by Skinnerian standards, all were administrative as well as economic central places. North of the river, these cities included Xuzhou, Huai'an city, Taizhou, Yangzhou, and Nantong city; by contemporary Chinese estimates they may also have

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included Rugao city and Jiangyan, among others. 53 Estimates by Japanese observers in the late 1910s were considerably less generous, listing Yangzhou as the only city in northern Jiangsu with a population of 100,000 or more. The same investigators believed the populations of Nantong and Xuzhou to be as low as 4 0 , 0 0 0 each. 54 Similarly, they argued that Qingjiangpu, the county seat of Huaiyin, and once a city thriving on both trade and lucrative administrative responsibilities, had a population of 15,100. Japanese investigators noted Chinese claims that Qingjiangpu had a population of 4 5 , 0 0 0 , three times the figure the Japanese accepted. Haizhou, formerly a prefectural capital, and Baoying and Gaoyou, both county seats and Grand Canal cities, each had estimated populations of 10,000. From there, Japanese population estimates ranged downward from 8,000 to 3 , 0 0 0 for eight additional local cities north of the Yangzi, all county seats except two, Shannu Miao, a market town 9.5 kilometers northeast of Yangzhou with a population of 7 , 0 0 0 , and Xinpu, 6 kilometers northeast of Haizhou, with a population of 5 , 0 0 0 . 5 5 The Japanese statistics are consistently the lowest available for republican Jiangsu. Other estimates for Nantong city, for example, are almost four times as high. 56 A western estimate for Rugao city, roughly contemporary with the Japanese survey, cited a population figure of 5 0 , 0 0 0 . 5 7 Although this figure may be high, Rugao was widely recognized as an important center for the transshipment of grain and commercial goods north and south of the Yangzi. By the mid-1930s, one estimate placed Rugao's population at over 100,000. 5 8 Similarly, while the Japanese survey noted the population of Taizhou, it did not include Jiangyan, Tai county's most prominent commercial center. Chinese reports claimed that Jiangyan had a population of 1 5 0 , 0 0 0 . 5 9 Although caution against the unexamined use of population figures in Chinese sources is well advised, there is an uneven quality to the Japanese survey of Jiangsu, despite its widespread use, which calls its findings into question as well. 60 According to the Japanese investigators, for example, Yancheng had a population of 3 , 6 0 0 , one of the smallest cities in the Japanese survey. Inexplicably, Funing city, to Yancheng's north and considerably less commercially developed, was listed as having a population of 6 , 0 0 0 . 6 1 As of the early 1930s, Chinese population estimates claimed that Yancheng's most prominent commercial centers, including Yancheng city, ranged in size from 5 , 0 0 0 to 15,000 people. 62 While these figures undoubtedly reflect the general inflation of republican-period statistics, it is unlikely that Yancheng city, the largest of Yan-

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cheng county's local municipalities, would have fallen below the lowest end of the Chinese scale. Despite the conflicting statistical information, it is clear that by the standards of Jiangsu's great southern emporia, local cities north of the Yangzi were not demographically extravagant. Incorporating the range of available statistics, in the area under study here the largest northern city was Nantong, followed by Taizhou, Rugao, and Jiangyan. It is safe to estimate that at least the county seats of the remaining counties averaged between 5,000 and 10,000 people, if not more. 6 3 In the parlance of central-place theory, all were at least "local cities"; Nantong, Taizhou, Rugao, and perhaps Jiangyan would appear to have been "greater cities." 64 From these cities, Jiangsu's urban continuum extended out and down through a network of local municipalities and market towns. Determining the size of this local urban society is largely a matter of conjecture. Late-Qing records give us a reasonable approximation of the number of market towns in each county of the province. By the late nineteenth century, for example, Jiangsu had 59 district cities, over 500 additional major markets, and twice as many minor ones. 65 The Yanfu counties were said to have 52 major markets; the north-bank or Suzhong counties were reported to have 56. The north-bank counties had five times as many minor markets—over 240—than the Yanfu counties, which were reported to have only 56. 6 6 Thus the marketing network was relatively well filled in, more so as one moved south toward the Yangzi, but the numbers offer few clues as to the actual size and overall rank order of most of Jiangsu's subcounty municipalities. Beyond population estimates for the province's major cities, evaluating the size of Jiangsu's "local" urban population is understandably difficult. One estimate, based on figures available in the 1930s, argues that some 16 percent of the population lived in chengshi, loosely defined as cities. 67 As this figure is a provincial aggregate, including metropolitan giants in the south, it does little more than set the absolute outside limit. The matter is complicated by the fact that there is no uniform definition of "urban" in republican-period surveys. Occupation is one possible indicator of Jiangsu's urban population, although republican-period occupational surveys seldom distinguished with much precision where people lived. By the early twentieth century, moreover, commercialization of the economy and the prevalence of sideline handicraft industries made occupation an uncertain indicator of actual urban/rural population distribution. In the southeastern county of Taicang, for example,

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one report indicates that 20 percent of the county's 296,754 people were engaged in commercial activities while another 7 percent were engaged in academic pursuits. The majority of both categories were likely to reside in the county's market towns, local municipalities, or the county seat, along with the likes of local officials and urban-dwelling landlords. The same study lists a remarkable 30 percent of the southwestern county of Jintan's population as being "intellectual" and 20 percent as being commercial, producing unreasonably high estimates for the county's urban population.68 Statistics for this period are frequently inconsistent, although for central Jiangsu as a whole there are piecemeal portraits. The figures cited by John Lossing Buck claimed that over 75 percent of Tai county's families were employed in agriculture, for example.69 Another report from the same period claimed that 50 percent of Tai county's population was employed in agriculture, while 30 percent was unemployed.70 This report estimated that the merchant community comprised 7 percent of the county's population; students constituted an additional 3 percent. This would mean a minimum of 10 percent—or more than 105,000 people—who, in all likelihood, lived in local municipalities within the county. An additional 10 percent were said to be workers, some of whom could also have been town dwellers. A detailed demographic survey for remote Funing produces a credible lower limit of 5 percent of the county's population residing in local municipalities (shi) and the county seat as of the late 1920s. 71 Given a county-wide population of just over a million, this would yield a local urban population of some 50,000 people. This figure assumes that all those whose living was derived from the land were rural dwellers. Since wealthy landlords, even in northern Jiangsu, might dwell in local cities, a 5 percent figure is undoubtedly conservative. A contemporary estimate for Yancheng county, to Funing's south, claimed that the county's eleven official municipalities had a population range between 5,000 and 15,000 people by the late 1920s. 72 At the other end of the spectrum, Nantong, one of the most economically developed counties in central Jiangsu, had an urban population, county-wide, of just under 10 percent, or 135,000 people.73 In the same time period, Rugao had an urban population of 183,165 people, or 13.5 percent of an overall county population of 1,356,777. 7 4 Exclusive of Nanjing and Shanghai, Rugao joined two counties south of the river, Wu (Suzhou) and Wuxi, in having the highest absolute number of urban dwellers.75

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Disorderly Hierarchy: Local Diagnostic Indicators Such figures give us an aggregate picture but provide little flavor of the local distribution of political and commercial activity. Nor do we get much help from a standard set of diagnostic indicators in common use in analyzing China's urban hierarchy.76 The unpredictability of such indicators cautions against unexamined expectations about the local municipal order which give pride of place to the county seat and sharpens the observer's awareness of subcounty municipalities as potentially independent, sometimes preeminent, players in the local municipal order. The extent to which subcounty municipalities could confound the presumed commercial preeminence of the county seat can be illustrated by an investigation of two common diagnostic indicators: local postal ratings and the type and quantity of commercial institutions within a given county's municipalities. Republican-period postal ratings date to innovations introduced in 1896 to complement the Maritime Customs Service. Established as an office independent of the Customs Service in 1911, the Postal Authority replaced a cumbersome network of official and private communication agencies. Cities and towns within the jurisdiction of the Postal Authority were rated according to the types of services provided, ratings which have been widely accepted as a telling indicator of levels of administrative and commercial activity.77 Central Jiangsu's postal ratings were irregular, however; they occasionally reflected prominent status from times past or alternatively lagged behind a market town's commercial growth; by republican times, a town's commercial significance not infrequently exceeded its official postal rating. At the metropolitan end of the spectrum, postal ratings correlated directly with administrative and commercial prominence. Republicanperiod Jiangsu's leading administrative centers—including Nanjing, Suzhou, and Zhenjiang—were all south of the river. The province's central post office was in Nanjing. Jiangsu had only two first-class branch offices, located in Zhenjiang and Suzhou.78 Below the branch offices were second-, third-, and fourth-class postal bureaus. By the late 1910s, of the fifty-five county seats and local municipalities in the province with second-class postal service, more than two-thirds were located north of the river.79 With only a few exceptions, second-class postal facilities north of the Yangzi were concentrated in central Jiangsu, east of the Grand Canal, from the Yangzi to southern Yancheng; with the exception of Xuzhou, Huaibei was effectively without modern postal service. As

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might be expected, these postal ratings underscored the preeminence of the north-bank counties: Nantong, Rugao, Taixing, and Tai all had fullservice second-class postal facilities. 80 Postal ratings, however, did not always correlate with economic prominence. By the early 1930s, for example, the north-bank county of Rugao had eight major commercial centers in addition to the county seat. Rugao city had a full-service second-class postal rating. Only one of the remaining eight municipalities, Juegang, also had a second-class postal facility (offering more limited services). 81 None had third-class ratings. Seven had postal agencies, effectively fourth-class facilities. 82 By contrast, to Rugao's north lay Yancheng county, with a population twothirds that of Rugao, lower levels of commercialization, and a lower population density.83 Yancheng city had a limited-service second-class postal rating, a rating one would expect in comparison with Rugao city, for example. Outside the county seat, the predictability of postal ratings as an indicator of commercial development was less than reliable, however. Four of Yancheng's commercially prominent municipalities had third-class postal ratings. Another three had postal agencies or fourthclass facilities. Thus, cumulatively, the postal services provided Yancheng county surpassed those for the commercially more active Rugao. 8 4 Like the administrative shuffling that juggled subcounty authority after 1911, embedded in these ratings were human activities—commercial associations, political connections—which left their mark through bureaucratic indicators which did not always accord directly with bureaucratic expectations. Within any given county, the county seat consistently had the highest postal rating. But commercial activities, indicated by the location of commercial associations, financial institutions, and less precise but unavoidably important contemporary descriptive surveys, confirm that the county seat was not always the most active commercial center in the county. 85 The dynamics of the wholesale trade in cotton and grain in particular favored geography over the formal dictates of political administration in determining Jiangsu's most active commercial centers north of the Yangzi. In some cases, notably in Rugao and Nantong, the two coincided: the county seat was indeed the commercial hub of the county. Elsewhere, however, the pattern varied. Qidong, on the eastern tip of the Yangzi's north bank, derived considerable wealth from the transshipment of agricultural produce between Haimen and Nantong to the west and commercial markets south of the river. The county seat, however,

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was not the center of this activity. The hub of Qidong's wholesale trade was Jiulong municipality, 14 kilometers northwest of the county seat. 86 The Taixing county local municipalities of Huangqiao and Kou'an similarly handled a greater measure of wholesale trade than their county seat. In Tai county, the local municipality of Jiangyan was the hub of the wholesale trade in grains headed south from Funing, Yancheng, and Dongtai. 87 Jiangyan's worldly merchant community included sojourners from as far south as Ningbo. 88 The character of local commercial institutions further underscores the degree to which local municipalities did not necessarily form a predictable hierarchy subordinated to the county seat. In Rugao, where the county seat was the most commercially active urban center in the county, the chamber of commerce, founded in 1911, two decades later claimed some 70 to 80 percent of the county's merchant establishments as members. 89 On the other hand, by the late 1910s, Yancheng county had three independent chambers of commerce. The chamber in the county seat was established in 1915 by Jiang Yuguang, identified in the records only with the comment that by 1918 he was ill, leaving management of the organization in the hands of its deputy-chairman, Huang Lisan. Huang would appear to have been a more active manager than Jiang. In 1918, he succeeded in establishing three branch offices in Wuyou, Longgang, and Dagang, but made no effort to assert authority over two additional and independent chambers, which were located in Shanggang to the northwest of the county seat and Shagou to the southwest. The chamber of commerce in Shanggang was established in 1916; the one in Shagou was established in 1918, just as Huang was attempting to expand the authority of the county-based chamber. 90 The independent chambers of commerce were established in direct violation of provincial regulations. Wuyou, site of one of the county-managed branch chambers, had the same postal rating—limited third-class service—as did Shanggang and Shagou, home to independent chambers, indicating that all three supported some measure of active intracounty trade. No republican-period records are currently available by which to assess the roots of the apparent independence of local municipalities such as Shanggang and Shagou. The independence of the organizations established there, especially in the face of expanding organizational strategies emanating from the county seat, is all that remains to indicate the assertion, in some measure, of local authority. It is presumably a human factor, not commercial

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development per se, which distinguished Shanggang and Shagou from local municipalities such as Wuyou and Longgang, which submitted to the authority of merchants in the county seat. Yancheng county had no modern or native banks. The bulk of its financial transactions, including brokerage financing, loans, and currency exchange essential to taxation, were handled through local pawnshops. By 1918, the county had seven commercially prominent pawnshops with overall assets of some 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 yuan. Each city with a chamber of commerce had a pawnshop, as did Longgang and Wuyou, each with a branch chamber of commerce. In terms of financial institutions, particularly striking was Hudou, however, 37 kilometers northwest of the county seat. Huduo was the largest of Yancheng's nonadministrative municipalities. It had a limited, third-class postal service but did not have a chamber of commerce, either independent or subordinate to a central chamber. At the same time, two pawnshops in Huduo effectively doubled its financial institutional presence over even the county seat. 91 In Tai county, one of the core northern counties, 1918 surveys note seven prominent commercial centers in addition to the county seat. The county seat's postal rating, a full-service second-class postal facility, was easily the highest in the county, although Jiangyan, not the county seat, was the most commercially prominent of Tai's local cities. Like the county seat, Jiangyan had a second-class postal rating, but one which offered more limited service. This was despite its central role in the grain trade and the fact that, by the 1910s, Jiangyan hosted dyeing and weaving establishments central to the county's fledgling textile industry, producing a cotton twill sold widely in the Lixiahe region of central Jiangsu. 92 The second most active commercial center in Tai county was Hai'an to the east of the county seat, which also had a second-class postal ranking, of even more limited service. In terms of commercial prominence, the county seat ranked third, after Jiangyan and Hai'an. Financial institutions confirmed Jiangyan's importance but underscored the difficulty of directly aligning any two indicators of local commercial activity. The county had no modern banks. In the late 1910s, it was reported to have eleven pawnshops and an unspecified number of native banks. "Three or four" of these were located in the county seat; "the majority" were in Jiangyan. Hai'an, however, had no prominent financial institutions. 93 Commercially active counties such as Tai were not alone in the relatively lower commercial importance of their county seats in relation to

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other local communities. In Funing county, Dongkan, well to the north of the county seat, was indicated by 1918 surveys to be the most commercially active local city in the county. The county seat was second. Yilin, to the south, ranked third. 94 Funing city had a second-class postal ranking with limited daily services. Both Dongkan and Yilin had only fourth-class ratings. All three, however, had independent chambers of commerce. Merchants in both Dongkan and Yilin established their chambers over provincial objection. In 1916, when Dongkan merchants, led by an otherwise unidentified Qian Huye, notified provincial authorities that they had organized a chamber of commerce, they were told not to proceed and informed that Yilin merchants had received the same instructions: independent chambers of commerce, they were instructed, weakened county authority. 95 Provincial inspections two years later confirmed that independent chambers of commerce were operating in both Dongkan and Yilin. The authority of the county seat notwithstanding, Qian and his colleagues had proceeded. 96

Physical Environment and the Public Sphere The people and interests represented by Qian Huye underscore the potential vitality of a network of local municipalities in the Suzhong and Yanfu counties. These economic centers were set apart from local market towns and peasant villages by such indicators as postal ratings, financial institutions, and prominence in intraprovincial trade. As we shall see, they were also distinguished by the presence of western-style schools. With few exceptions, these local municipalities were situated by local rivers, most commonly at the confluence of several waterways. Funing, Dongtai, Yancheng, and Rugao, all of which straddled the Fangong Dike, had one or more commercially active local municipalities located east of the dike, despite the arid, saline soil to be found there. These too were situated on local waterways: their location underscored the degree to which local commerce depended on transshipment of agricultural products. The local municipalities of eastern Rugao are a case in point. Rugao's major north-south waterway was the Yunyan River, which entered Rugao from Tai county in the north, flowing south to Nantong and the Yangzi. 97 At Dingyan, east of the county seat and east of the dike, the river forked. Laterally along its eastern branch were to be found four of the county's commercially active municipalities: Shuangdian, Chahe, Matang, and Juegang, each located 9 to 14 kilometers

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apart, representing a significant concentration of the county's commercial activity along one 45-kilometer stretch of the river. (See Appendix D, Map 3.) Rugao was not alone in this pattern of urban development. In Taixing, for example, three of the county's six commercially prominent towns, Guangling, Diaojiapu, and Jijiashi, were clustered within 8 kilometers of each other along the Jie River, which carried goods from Huangqiao in the north to Jingjiang and from there south of the Yangzi. 98 One provincial effort to estimate the urban area in each Jiangsu county determined that on average the figure was 1.28 percent of any given county's land. The amount varied, of course, as did population density. Urban land in Tai county, for example, was said to be 5.73 percent, while urban land in Rugao was only 0.10 percent, well below the provincial average. Assuming that there was a larger absolute number of urban dwellers in the Suzhong counties, such figures remind us that local cities in less commercialized counties were less densely populated, more open affairs. A higher percentage of land qualified as urban, for example, in Funing, Yancheng, or Xinghua counties than in the more wealthy counties of Nantong, Rugao, or Taixing." By any calculation, central Jiangsu's local cities were not sprawling urban affairs, although the walls of administrative cities might enclose more space than their inhabitants actually seemed to use, as if to physically underscore their political authority. By republican times, city walls had begun to lose their sense of definitive authority over their city, however. This pattern was not confined to major urban centers. Merchant establishments concentrated in the southern section of Funing city spilled outside the southern gate. At the same time, the northern section, securely within the walls, was sparsely populated and rustic: a virtual peasant village within a city. 100 Much of the traditional character of these local cities remained untouched well into the war years. All had a local city temple. Most had one or more Buddhist temples, on occasion consciously revived by conservative opposition to early twentieth-century cultural and political reform. Most local municipalities were divided by a narrow main street or by a main street and single cross street, 2 to 4 meters wide at most. All had commercial institutions, which might include retail and wholesale operations, teahouses, hostels and other social services, bookstores, and financial institutions. Commercial enterprises tended to cluster by specialty at the gates or along the main street. 101 By republican times, however, local municipalities were increasingly

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Locality

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set apart from their rural surroundings by the physical presence of a public arena evolving beyond formal government office—represented by an eclectic collection of projects and establishments, more symbolic than functional, which signified the expanding institutionalization of the extrabureaucratic voice in societal management. Its symbols fell in several categories profitably distinguished from the mandatory offices of local government, including the magistrate's office, police, and tax collection agencies. Beyond such coercive offices lay a physical public sphere (roads, electric lighting, telegraph and telephone lines, for example); an arena of cultural activities which included (in addition to formal schools) libraries, newspapers, exercise yards, public parks, and the like; and a "public economy" which ranged from public nurseries, agricultural experimentation fields, and poor people's training centers to western-style banks. A growing body of literature has highlighted political participation in and social identification with the public sphere from late Qing times. In local municipalities well removed from the self-confidence of major metropolitan centers, the physical symbols of the public sphere assumed particular importance. Parks, for example, one of the earliest physical symbols of the republic's public sphere, were called for by provisional city and township regulations at least as early as 1913. 1 0 2 By the late 1910s, all ten of the Yanfu and Suzhong county seats, and many of the subcounty municipalities, had one or more public parks and a public exercise yard. 103 By the same time, it was increasingly common for local municipalities to maintain both public woodlands and seedling nurseries, though the record in this regard was more uneven than that for public parks. By 1919, for example, Rugao city reported that it had allocated 10 mou of land for a seedling nursery, located next to public parklands, but that the nursery had not proved successful. 104 In the same year, Taixing city had no nursery and only vague plans to use land attached to a public exercise yard to establish one. 105 Yancheng had a nursery which shared land allocated as a publicly managed experimental field. Neither enterprise was reported to be successful. Haimen city allocated 2 mou of land for seedlings, but did not actually establish the nursery. A provincial investigator found gentry in Funing city negotiating among themselves for 70 mou of land they hoped to have donated to a seedling project. 106 The relatively large size of the intended nursery in poverty-endemic Funing was not atypical. Gentry managers in the poorer northern counties took the symbols of public development particularly seriously. The

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Huaibei county of Lianshui, for example, had an experimental field of 160 mou of land. It had plans, as of 1919, to add a forestry nursery, an agriculture school, and a public exercise yard to the experimental field. 107 Like everything else which assumed a public role, these projects overlapped with other agencies within the local political economy. Lianshui's public fields, for example, were worked by tenants whose rents were contributed to subcounty municipalities and townships to encourage sericulture.108 Especially north of the river, the physical manifestations of the public sphere emerged slowly through the 1910s. Xinghua county's education extension hall was not established until 1916. By 1919, it still had no appointed head, leaving it temporarily under the management of the education exhortation bureau. The extension office in its own right, however, was allocated 600 yuan for expenses, drawn from the county budget. In addition, the county government claimed that the extension office had six subcounty branch offices. Generally these were offices in name only, understaffed or not staffed at all, which were symbolically important to the gentry elite who managed local reform in the 1910s. In Xinghua's case, for example, the records are specific about the location of only one branch office, purported to be in the municipality of Anfeng. Anfeng records, however, make no mention of such an office. 109 The collection of institutes generally defined as public proliferated throughout the decade nonetheless. By 1919, Dongtai city had a public exercise yard, two newspaper reading rooms, and an education extension bureau (tongsu jiaoyu guan) with control over three small offices outside the county seat designated as propaganda stations. 110 Rugao city had a poor people's training factory (pinmin gongchang) in which it had invested 10,000 yuan, as well as a training center for women, capitalized with a less impressive 2,000 yuan. 111 In Nantong, the clear trend-setter in public activity for the Suzhong counties, the public sphere included among other things experimental fields, public parks, a museum, a library, and an old people's home. 112 Public services grew steadily through the 1920s, casting the distinction between city and countryside in ever more stark relief as increasing numbers of city dwellers came to be served by postal delivery, phones, roads, newspapers, and—importantly for our purposes—schools. By the early years of the republic, postal service was available to most of Jiangsu's county seats and commercially active local municipalities. By the mid-1910s, Japanese investigators found that—in addition to the provincial office, 2 first-class branch offices, and 55 second-class offices

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—there were 17 third-class offices and 369 branch or fourth-class offices. There were also 55 combined telegraph and telephone offices and an additional 10 offices providing only telegraph service. Among the Suzhong and Yanfu counties four county seats, Rugao city, Nantong city, Xinghua city, Taizhou, and two additional municipalities, Jiangyan and Hai'an, had telegraph and telephone offices. Haimen city had a telegraph office. 1 1 3 Through the next two decades, the number of postal agencies grew steadily. By 1931, in addition to the provincial post office, there were 4 first-class branch offices, 69 second-class offices, 54 third-class offices, and 658 branch or fourth-class offices. By the early 1930s, long-distance phone service was extended into county seats and principal commercial municipalities north of the river as well. One of Jiangsu's two long-distance phone networks, the Jiangbei line, connected over a dozen commercially active local municipalities, in addition to their county seats, in the Suzhong and Yanfu counties alone. 1 1 4 Along with phone service, the late 1920s and early 1930s saw the beginnings of electrification north of the river. By 1933, all of the Yanfu and Suzhong county seats had power generators, for example. 1 1 5 The Guomindang government in particular laid plans for extensive road construction. Within the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, this produced little by way of all-weather roads, however. Provincial roads, of 300 and 360 kilometers respectively, did extend north-south from Donghai to Nantong and east-west from Qidong into Anhui province, although neither was paved. There was a motley assortment of county road-building projects under way by the early 1930s, extending rural roads outward from county seats. Tellingly, in several cases, notably in Taixing, Funing, and Dongtai, county funds were allocated for road projects between commercially prominent subcounty municipalities not connected by similarly serviceable roads to their county seats, an institutional reminder of the potential autonomy of local elite managers. 1 1 6 Newspaper offices, another visible symbol of municipal culture, with few exceptions emerged only in the 1920s. By 1935, every Yanfu and Suzhong county seat had produced at least one newspaper; most produced considerably more. Nantong, not surprisingly, took the lead with eleven daily papers, one of them the Guomindang party paper, ten others produced by private interests. Haimen county boasted four newspapers and Qidong two—in each case, one of the papers was the party paper. In Rugao, Taixing, and Tai counties there were two party dailies apiece. Rugao newspaper readers had an additional three private

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papers; Tai readers had five; Taixing readers had only one. Only in Funing county, which had one daily, and Xinghua, which had seven, were there no party papers. 117 Not all of these dailies were permanent fixtures. A survey of daily papers in Yancheng in 1930 reported that there were five dailies at that time. A survey conducted four years later reported that there were four papers in Yancheng, but none were the same as those published in 1930. Of the four published in 1934, three had been founded only a year earlier; one began publication in 1932. All four of the papers published in 1934 were published in Yancheng city itself. The largest, the Xin gongbao (The New Public), had a reported circulation of 1,320. The smallest, the Minduo bao (The People's Bell), had a reported circulation of 500. 118 The 1934 survey of Jiangsu's local papers indicates that, with few exceptions, publication of these papers was confined to county seats. Xinghua's Anfeng municipality did produce a daily paper, as did Tai county's Hai'an. But subcounty municipal papers of this sort were the rare exception. The distribution of the newspapers stood in stark contrast to the most numerous symbols of the evolving public sphere: its local schools. By one estimate, by 1935, the Yanfu and Suzhong counties were home to more than 1,900 local western-style primary schools which had enrolled, in that year, some 153,000 children. 119 As we shall see, the majority of these schools were located in subcounty municipalities. Similarly, although newspapers flourished only after the late 1920s, the majority of the Yanfu and Suzhong counties' western-style schools were established well before the Guomindang decade. Indeed, these most explicitly postimperial institutions were most actively promoted when the central government's predatory powers were at their weakest: in the formative period from 1911 to 1927.

Conclusion The findings offered here concur only in the broadest terms with arguments which project political development along a predictable hierarchy: from province to county to local municipality. Wealth and power were unquestionably concentrated south of the river. But north of the river, the tidy southern typology of counties and subordinate subcounty municipalities, from core to periphery, tracing the expansion of modern politics, gives way to a situation at once more contentious and less hierarchical.

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Within local municipal society, there was gradation in a wide variety of distinguishing characteristics, from population density to levels of commercial trade, as one moved from the north-bank Suzhong counties north through Dongtai into Yancheng and Funing. More important, however, the Suzhong and Yanfu counties were bound by overarching communality. With the exception of Nantong, there was little legacy of an imperial presence in this area; local politics were not conditioned by the habit of immediate interaction with the exercise of "central" politics. None of these counties had commercially profuse economies. At the same time, in sharp distinction to the Huaibei counties to their north, the Yanfu and Suzhong counties were neither poverty-stricken nor economically dissociated from larger market dynamics. The dynamics of intraprovincial trade and finance solidly bound the region to larger markets. As we shall see, they also sustained a local political mentality which was actively postimperial and which aggressively associated with larger political arenas and agendas. Both the Yanfu and Suzhong counties were host to well-established networks of active local municipalities. With the abolition of the civil service examination and the instigation of self-government reforms, such municipalities benefited from the thickening of recognized legitimate local politics. In his study of the 1911 Revolution, Joseph Esherick has noted a disjuncture between commercially active local municipalities on the one hand and formal administrative centers on the other in the provinces of Hubei and Hunan. Esherick argues that the former were not prominent in late-imperial reform efforts, an argument significant to his assessments of the potential bourgeois nature of the 1911 Revolution. 120 In Jiangsu, while there is little indication that nonadministrative centers were politically aggressive before 1911, the same was not true after the revolution. As we shall see, that fact helps to explain the extension of political activity into local society after 1911. Among its most numerous institutional indicators were local western-style schools.

3.

Local School Circles

The school building and dormitory were decrepit and there were not enough tables and chairs. At the time of inspection, there were only five students present—one was reading Mencius, several were discussing . . . the Thousand Character Classic, [and] one was using the seventh volume of an old national language primer. The principal of the school, Xu Fulong, was also the administrative township head and was not at the school at the time of inspection.1 JIANGSU PROVINCIAL SCHOOL INSPECTOR, G u K e b i n w a s n o t e n c o u r a g e d

by what he found at the Xu Jiagang lower-primary school in the Yancheng county fourth educational district. Xu Jiagang was one of several dozen schools which Gu visited on his inspection tour in late 1932. Other schools merited somewhat more favorable evaluations, although, as a provincial official in Jiangsu, Gu could afford to be harsh on the local schools: as elsewhere in the province, the Yancheng county school system operated virtually independently from provincial educational authorities. The county had no provincially managed schools and thus was not a beneficiary of the provincial education budget. 2 The absence of provincial involvement did not inhibit the growth of local schools. On the contrary, the state's distance from local activists in this regard appears to have encouraged rather than deterred them. In 1933, Yancheng county, with a population of over a million, had some 375 primary schools. By one estimate, 14 percent of its school-age children were enrolled in these schools. More than 16,000 children in the county attended lower-primary schools alone. Province wide, there were more than 8,000 such schools with three-quarters of a million students.3 From the beginning of the journey from imperial examinations to a western-style school system, this conglomerate of people and institu-

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tions carried with it fundamental tensions between local aspirations and the state's claim to political authority.

Late-Qing Origins of Educational Reform In 1901, with considerable reluctance, the Chinese court bowed to pressure from treaty-port compradors, missionaries and their converts, disaffected scholars, and increasingly worried officials and sanctioned the beginnings of a modern school system. Reformist officials understood modern schooling to be defined by its proximity to schooling in Western Europe, Japan, and America, where education had been molded by the political and technological demands of industrialization. By the nineteenth century, in Western Europe and the United States in particular, state-controlled school systems played a pivotal role in securing the ideological hegemony of the central state over local cultural diversity.4 As compulsory public institutions, modern schools reflected the central state's growing authority over the private lives of its citizens; simultaneously, they instilled civic habits essential to public order in societies no longer bound by familial loyalty or church covenants; they structured the learning process to reflect the labor process and answer the technological demands of industry. As such, modern schooling in the West was intimately integrated into the structural evolution of both state and economy.5 In China, it was not. Instead, modern schooling was rooted in defensive and disaggregated reactions to external threats to China's national security. School reform initially focused on technical training. After the 1905 abolition of the examination system, when the symbolic capital previously vested in the imperial examinations went potentially without state guardianship, school reform also was assigned the uncomfortable task of managing the state's ideological authority. Early edicts instructed the new schools to promote morality, patriotism, and loyalty to the emperor, along with reverence for Confucianism and devotion to public welfare.6 Concerns of this sort were not Confucian relics; late-Qing reformers saw a direct link between the strength of western nation-states and the control they exercised over public education.7 How poorly China's elite reformers actually implemented new state-managed educational policies has direct bearing on an interpretive debate about the limitations of late-Qing political reform. At issue in this debate is the degree to which the imperial state succeeded in recovering from the searing crises of the mid-nineteenth cen-

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tury, curbing power surrendered during the mid-century rebellions to the managerial discretion of extrabureaucratic elites. Provincial-level case studies of the restoration period present an uneven picture in this regard. In Jiangsu, Ding Richang, governor from 1867 to 1870, was deeply committed to the restoration of imperial order but alienated from local gentry activism and ultimately ineffectual in curbing the local abuses of power which had so manifestly weakened the Qing state even before the mid-century conflagrations. 8 Hu Linyi, governor of Hubei from 1855 to 1861, while unquestionably loyal to the court, nonetheless set in motion reforms which strengthened provincial prerogatives at the cost of the central state and cautiously validated the participation of local managerial gentry in official bureaucratic processes, at a cost to both court-appointed magistrates and much-maligned subcounty clerks and runners. 9 In restoration Zhejiang, gentry-managers worked without conscious challenge to the court, but effectively institutionalized political activism which became increasingly disillusioned with the court as China suffered further from foreign encroachment in the last three decades of the century.10 Cumulatively, then, the record was only marginally complimentary to the imperial restoration. A review of the late Qing's management educational reform is similarly unsupportive of the court's efforts to expand state power into local society. The limitations these efforts encountered, however, were not those imposed by entrenched local power. Rather, the late Qing, although it understood the importance of ideological control, failed completely to manage the politics of the administrative procedures necessary to enforce it. This inability to develop a politically authoritative bureaucracy for education underscored the limitations of borrowing reform out of its indigenous political context. The working alliance which emerged in the nineteenth century between European states and their middle classes dictated power sharing as a matter of survival. The expansion of the state's bureaucracy in these countries rested on that assumption. 11 Expansion of the state's capacities, in other words, was systemic and grew out of an openly competitive distribution of power. While there may in fact have been competition for power in China, the late imperial state proceeded as if that were not the case. Its efforts to expand its power rested on the assumption that private elite interests could be mobilized not through power sharing but rather to serve the central state. 12 As a result, the court placed a priority on imperial edicts but slighted political development of the local bureaucracy needed to support those edicts. For Euro-

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pean-inspired educational reforms, that approach proved costly to the state's regulatory powers. In the absence of effective bureaucratic expansion, early school reform in China took on a voluntaristic character detached from state management. Regulations in 1901 called for the shuyuan, traditional gentry-managed academies, to be turned into gentry-managed xuetang, effectively western-style middle schools and professional colleges. Commissions in 1901 and 1903 left the responsibility for founding westernstyle primary schools to local authorities, with no specific provisions for state financial assistance or supervision.13 In 1904, the court appointed a director of education (zongli xuewu dachen), responsible for formulating national policy, but no provisions were made for routinized contact with provincial authorities, let alone local gentry.14 With the abolition of the examination system, the court acquiesced to the establishment of a Ministry of Education (xue bu) with a more direct provincial presence in the form of ministry-appointed provincial educational commissioners (tixue shi), but their authority was undercut by the absence of any regular allocation of provincial funds for education. The national ministry itself depended on provincial contributions and was desperately underfinanced. 15 Zealous officials, such as Zhang Zhidong in Hubei and Yuan Shikai in Zhili, were instrumental in encouraging educational reform, but students of their accomplishments generally agree that it was their personal commitment, in concert with local elite cooperation, not the efficacy of state administration, which produced results.16 Late-Qing Local Schools The court's shortcomings in the management of educational reform were most obvious locally. At this level as well were to be found local managers enthusiastic to promote reform institutions but decidedly unenthusiastic about doing so in the interests of the central government. If schooling had symbolized the imperial-period covenant between court and gentry society, increasingly now it came to symbolize the political contention which attended the covenant's demise. In 1906 regulations called for the establishment of local education exhortation bureaus (quanxue suo). Their chief officers, responsible for primary schools planned as the foundation of China's modern school system, were to be appointed from local gentry, not state officials. These gentry-managers (xue zongdong) in turn appointed their own assistants

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(quanxue yuan). Until 1911, these volunteer officials constituted the entirety of the state's educational bureaucracy in local society, outside the office of the magistrate.17 In some provinces, local authorities, presumably with active gentry cooperation, moved quickly to set up exhortation bureaus. As of 1907, Zhili, with 146 subprovincial administrative units, had 152 exhortation bureaus, for example. Henan had 102 subprovincial administrative units, with an exhortation bureau in each one. Jiangsu, however, with 80 subprovincial units, had only 25 exhortation bureaus by 1907. 18 These low numbers indicate that Jiangsu's nonbureaucratic gentry shied away from close cooperation with state-controlled reform in the arena of local schooling. The relative dearth of exhortation bureaus was not coupled with an absence of overall gentry activism. In 1902, for example, the province had twenty-one government-managed schools and thirty-two gentry-managed schools. As of 1907, there were some 300 government-controlled schools; by the same year, gentry-controlled schools had increased to 823. 1 9 As one might expect, most of the province-supported schools were south of the Yangzi. Only three of the province's sixteen commercial schools (shangxue) were located in Yanfu and Suzhong counties, for example, one each in Nantong, Rugao, and Yancheng. Nantong, Rugao, Taixing, Xinghua, and Dongtai each had a teachers' school which received some provincial support. Of the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, only Taizhou had a provincially supported middle school.20 Late-Qing reforms stipulated that the most local of western-style schools to be managed directly by the state were higher-primary schools (gaodeng xuexiao).21 These state-run higher-primary schools, along with the more elite middle schools, were generally designated "government" (guanli) institutes. By 1907, the province had only ninety-two of these schools of which twelve were located in central Jiangsu: two each in Nantong, Dongtai, Yancheng, and Funing and one each in Xinghua, Taizhou, Taixing, and Haimen. This was a relatively weak government showing, and gentry activists easily surpassed it. They focused their attention on the most local level of the emerging school system, lowerprimary schools, which, with few exceptions, were designated as "public" (gongli) schools. By 1907, compared with 12 provincial schools, central Jiangsu had over 200 gentry-managed lower-primary schools: Nantong had 48 lower-primary schools; Haimen had 50, Rugao 47; farther north, Xinghua had 22 lower-primary schools and Dongtai had 12, while Yancheng had 17 and Funing had 4. 2 2

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Patterns of local activism established before 1911 prevailed throughout much of the republican period. In Jiangsu, there was a noticeable distinction in the relative balance of gentry and state involvement in lateQing educational reform, south and north of the Yangzi. In absolute terms, as long as the Qing mandate held, local gentry south of the river, in Jiangsu's economic and political core, were more active than either the provincial government or their northern counterparts: from 1902 through 1907, a period for which we have comprehensive statistics, south of the Yangzi on average there were over four gongli schools founded for every guanli school. The ratio varied slightly, dropping in 1903 and 1904, then picking up again in 1905, reaching a high of almost 7 to 1 in 1907. North of the river, on the other hand, gentry activists started more slowly but there was a steady trend toward increased gentry activism, a more marked trend than in the south. In the north, in 1902, there were 4.6 government schools for every gentryfounded public school. The ratio dropped steadily until, by 1907, it was 1.01 to l . 2 3 Thus local gentry north of the river came from behind but moved faster than their southern counterparts to take initiative in this newly created realm of public activity. Then, in the early years of the republic, many of Jiangsu's gentrymanagers continued to pride themselves on keeping direct state management of their schools at arm's length. Their attitudes in this regard may have been engendered by the constitutionalist challenge to the late Qing state. 24 After 1911, animosity toward the provincial state was tested when the republican government, in tandem with the abolition of selfgovernment regulations, declared all middle-level xuetang to be provincial schools. A study of early republican education in the Shandong provincial capital of Jinan refers to this transition, in which the government effectively declared these schools state property, as confirmation of a decision by the gentry to let the state take direct responsibility for handling local schools. 25 The situation in Jiangsu provides a considerably more ambivalent interpretation. Before 1911, Jiangsu had twenty-one middle-level xuetang, relabeled middle schools after the revolution. By the end of 1913, provincial officials had succeeded in formalizing control over only eleven of these. The remaining ten reverted to lower-status schools or private academies, rather than accept state directorship. 26 For those cases for which records are available, when xuetang were relinquished to the provincial government, the primary motivation was lack of funds, not recognition of the state's superiority as a manager of public education. This was the case with the Huai'an middle-level

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xuetang, for example, the only case study we have for a middle school north of the Yangzi. Facing financial duress, this school was surrendered to the province in 1913, to become Provincial Middle School No. 9. Financial duress was similarly cited by various xuetang managers south of the river as justification for forfeiting their schools to the state in 1913. Public declarations of financial hardship did not always tell the whole story, however. In the case of the Changzhou xuetang, which became Provincial Middle School No. 5 in 1913, financial difficulties were cited as a reason for transferring the school to provincial management; former xuetang managers turned immediately to investment in local primary schools. 27 These schools might have been less expensive, but they also were considerably less likely to be appropriated by the provincial government. Jiangsu's Republican School System In time, this enthusiasm for school building produced a sizable institutional presence in the province. On paper at least, the distribution of managerial authority over the new school system was reasonably straightforward. So too was the distinction between management in theory and management in actual practice. The provincial government, for example, technically held authority over all educational institutes in Jiangsu but directly administered only a select group of schools specifically designated as provincial schools. By the early 1910s, Jiangsu's provincial schools included nine middle schools and seven middle-school-level teachers' schools. A majority of these schools, ten out of sixteen, were located south of the Yangzi. The province also managed eighteen less prominent middle-level technical schools, for which the southern bias was more pronounced. 28 These elite schools were relatively costly: the provincial budget for education in 1913 was over a million yuan, with provincial teachers' schools consuming a disproportionate share of the funds. Teachers' School No. 2 in Suzhou, for example, had a 1913 budget of 20,885 yuan; Teachers' School No. 1 in Nanjing had a budget of 15,964 yuan in the same year. Provincial teachers' schools in Huaiyin and Xuzhou, two of the three northern counties to have such schools, had the lowest annual budgets for the year, with each allocated just under 5,000 yuan. By comparison, the most costly middle school in 1913 was Middle School No. 5 in Yangzhou, with a budget of 5,531 yuan. The average annual budget for all nine provincial middle schools in 1913 was 3,323 yuan. 29

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Just as provincial authorities nominally controlled all schools in Jiangsu but actually managed only a small portion of them, county governments officially controlled all local schools but actually administered a select group of those schools located within their boundaries. Schools under direct county control were generally higher-primary schools, joined over time by a handful of "full" or combined primary schools (liangdeng xiaoxue). Beyond these—below them in the administrative hierarchy—were the lower-primary schools. Statistically and politically, they constituted the bulk of the system. While the number of provincially managed schools did not grow dramatically during the 1910s and 1920s, the number of local schools increased significantly. Impersonal though statistics may be, they are also telling indicators of otherwise poorly recorded human intentions. In the discussion which follows, the numerical growth and distribution of local schools are revealing in a number of ways. First, the numbers themselves are significant. They serve as reminders of the value that local activists, well removed from the prestigious southern emporia, placed in establishing new, western-style institutions. They serve as reminders, too, that local educational activists were unenthusiastic about direct managerial supervision by provincial officials. The relative distribution of schools between county seats and subcounty municipalities also underscores the authority associated with administrative status, as local entrepreneurs endeavored either to secure county status for their schools or to keep county officials at bay by protecting their schools from such a designation. The numbers allow us to assess how many students may have participated in local western-style schooling. Finally, they provide insight into persistent contemporary complaints that the schools were financially voracious institutions with little to justify their fiscal appetites.

The Provincial Government and Local Primary Schools The growth of lower-primary schools after 1911 reinforces assertions of a local predilection for working at arm's distance from the government. From just before the revolution through 1913, a significant number of new schools were founded. Then, with a few exceptions, notably in Nantong, local elite activists reacted adversely to the abolition of selfgovernment: throughout the region, the rate of growth for newly founded schools slowed for the better part of five years, an indication that the end of self-government, by threatening local autonomy, under-

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cut the enthusiasm of local political activism. By the late 1910s, however, the number of new lower-primary schools was on the rise again, reaching a plateau in 1926. Significantly, with the Nationalist takeover in 1927, the founding of new lower-primary schools dropped precipitously. These growth trends suggest that local society was willing to invest in reform when it was reasonably clear that the central state—in the form of provincial authority—was not poised to interfere directly. 30 Behind the aggregate trends, there are revealing irregularities which reinforce the political message that local managers were interested in appropriating new, postimperial symbols but were not anxious to share them with the government. In the opening years of the republic, from 1912 to 1916, for example, nine counties experienced a retreat in lowerprimary schooling. All but one, Huaiyin, were south of the river, including Jiangning county which surrounded Nanjing, the provincial capital, and Jinshan, Taicang, Wujiang, and Wujin in the province's rich southeastern core. From 1916 to 1921, nine counties again experienced a decline in the number of nongovernment lower-primary schools. Four were in the extreme northwest, but again four were southeastern counties in the heartland of provincial power. It is noteworthy that from 1912 to 1921, for none of the counties in our more peripheral area of study was there a parallel remission. Even in the period from 1921 to 1926, at the height of the warlord violence, when twenty-seven counties reported a decline in the number of lower-primary schools, only two of the counties in central Jiangsu, Haimen and Dongtai, were among them. 31 Thus close proximity to the provincial government did not help—and may have been a positive deterrent to—the founding of politically innovative institutions such as western-style schools. While we have no personal memoirs from the founders of these local schools, their cumulative numbers and the marked inclination for the numbers to grow when managers operated at some distance from the provincial government, as was the case in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, give mute testimony to local pride in maintaining some measure of independence from state regulation. This pattern, evident from the foregoing figures in relation to provincial authority, was repeated within the county itself. Statistics indicate a decided preference for founding lower-primary schools, which lay beyond the direct administrative authority of county governments. Through the first two decades of the republic, Yanfu and Suzhong lower-primary schools increased faster in absolute terms than their more

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elite counterparts and with a few exceptions also grew at a faster rate. As a result, by the 1920s the area's lower-primary schools outnumbered higher-primary schools by as much as 50 to 1 or more. 32 The early years of the republic firmly established these dynamics. In Dongtai, for example, from 1909 through 1914, lower-primary schools grew four times faster than higher-primary schools, increasing from twelve to fifty-two, while the county's higher-primary schools increased from one to two. In Funing, from 1909 through 1914, lower-primary schools also increased roughly fourfold, from four to fourteen, while there were no new additions to the ranks of the county's two higher-primary schools. In Yancheng, from 1909 through 1914, lower-primary schools grew at just over twice the rate of higher-primary schools, increasing from seventeen to seventy-nine, while higher-primary schools increased from two to three. In Tai county, lower-primary schools tripled, from ten to thirty, by 1914. The numbers jumped dramatically after the late 1910s, reaching a high of 117 in 1926. From 1911 to 1914, lower-primary schools in Taixing increased roughly twofold, from thirty-four to fifty-nine. The county had one higher-primary school in 1909; by 1914, it had three. 33 Although one might expect significantly greater numbers of schools in Rugao and Nantong, on a per capita basis their accomplishments were no more impressive than those of their more remote northern neighbors. Further, local managers in these counties gave evidence of the same preference for founding lower-primary schools. Rugao's lower-primary schools approximately doubled from 1909 to 1914, from forty-seven to eighty-five, while in 1914 the county's one previously active higher-primary school closed. In Nantong, lower-primary schools increased threefold from 1909 to 1914; the county's higher-primary schools increased from two to nine. This increase in higher-primary schools was an exception for the north-bank counties. By 1919, one of Nantong's higher-primary schools had closed, while the county's lower-primary schools had grown to 203. 3 4 In general, the preference for school building was strongest when the fortunes of the provincial government were at their lowest ebb. For Funing and Yancheng, for example, the greatest degree of activity in the founding of new lower-primary schools came from 1919 through 1926, when the provincial government was at its weakest. In 1919, Funing had 74 lower-primary schools; by 1926, it had 160. 3 5 Thus the number of lower-primary schools more than doubled during the period when the provincial government was at its nadir. In Yancheng, from 1909 through

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1914, there were 68 new lower-primary schools; that number increased by 127 from 1914 through 1919, then increased by an additional 168 from 1919 through 1926 (94 of the new schools added from 1919 through 1922 alone). 36 The most telling proof of local reluctance to work with provincial authorities came in 1927. In the immediate aftermath of the Guomindang takeover, while provincial and county officials poured resources into costly showcase elite schools, local activists in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties generally stopped founding new primary schools altogether. In 1927, for example, Tai county had 109 lower-primary schools; over the next three years, there were no new additions.37 Yancheng had 405 primary schools in 1926; in 1930, it had 400; by 1933, 25 additional schools had closed. 38 Rugao county had 275 primary schools in 1926; that number dropped by 5 in the first two years after the Guomindang takeover, then dropped more precipitously—from 270 in 1929 to 257 in 1932. 3 9 As with much of the available evidence, the outside observer is left to decode the institutional indicators here. Beyond the ravages of the economy, silent political protest appears to explain the declining number of local schools.

Educational Circles' Growing Local Presence By the time of the Guomindang takeover, local schools had accumulated a considerable presence even in the northern Yanfu counties. In the aggregate, that presence was institutionally concentrated outside county seats, which meant that schools, as symbols of the changing culture and politics of the times, reached well into local society. There are few reports, especially for the decades before 1927, which come close to individually locating all local schools within any one county. General descriptions, such as that for 1913 Tai county's forty-two primary schools, place "the majority" of these schools in local municipalities (shi).40 But where exactly were the schools located? The only detailed records come from the Nationalist period. The few Nationalist-period reports for Yanfu and Suzhong counties which locate the counties' local schools by subcounty district indicate that the majority of lower-primary schools were sited outside county seats into the 1930s. Yancheng, for example, had 346 lower-primary schools and 29 higher-primary schools in 1933, the latter designated as full-primary schools after 1927. Yancheng city was located in the county's first educational district, as were two other commercially prominent

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municipalities, Xinxing and Shanggang. Between the three, Yancheng city, Xinxing, and Shanggang, this district had ten full-primary schools and sixty-three lower-primary schools. District Two, including the municipalities of Beiyang, Wuyou, and Dagang, as well as three additional townships, had four full-primary schools and fifty lower-primary schools. District Three, which included Sanfeng, Huduo, and two additional townships, also had four full-primary schools; moreover, it had ninety-three lower-primary schools. Longgang and Shagou municipalities were located in District Four, along with five additional townships. District Four had eight full-primary schools and eighty lower-primary schools. Finally, District Five, with two lesser municipalities and two townships, had three full-primary schools and sixty-one lower-primary schools.41 Thus, at a minimum, 284 of Yancheng's 346 lower-primary schools were located outside the county seat. Assuming that not all sixty-three lower-primary schools in District One were in Yancheng city —a safe assumption given the presence of two other commercially prominent municipalities in the district—the figures were even higher. A 1932 report for Rugao county provides a similar portrait. By 1932, Rugao was divided into eighteen administrative districts. In what was presumably an effort to weaken the autonomy of local educational circles, for purposes of educational administration the eighteen were amalgamated into six much larger districts, with Rugao city and the local municipality of Lugang constituting District One. This particular report registered 257 primary schools in operation in Rugao county. Twenty-nine of these—five full-primary schools and twenty-four lowerprimary schools—were located in Rugao city. While no single local municipality or township outside the county seat had as many schools, cumulatively nearly 90 percent of the county's primary schools were located outside the county seat. The human distribution within local school communities was similarly skewed. Rugao city hosted 148 teachers in its public schools and 3,578 students. An additional 671 teachers taught an additional 19,644 students in public schools outside the county seat. 42 Statistically precise human portraits are not available for all of Jiangsu's counties. There is no question but that many of the westernstyle schools, especially the lower-primary schools, were underenrolled, meaning their numbers were effectively inflated—a phenomenon found in the better developed counties, such as Tai, as well as in more remote counties such as Funing. 43 It was not uncommon for provincial inspectors to find formally registered schools closed when on-site inspections

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were conducted unannounced. 44 In 1924, the province complained that schools were underenrolled by a third or more, according to enrollment quotas required to qualify for public funding. 45 While access to public funding would have been a powerful incentive for founding new schools, whether they were needed or not, social prestige was an equally important motivation—indicated by the continued growth of new schools even during the early 1920s, when warlord disruptions placed maintenance of the local schools almost entirely on the financial reserves of local citizens. Certainly at no time during the republic were the majority of schoolage children in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties enrolled in western-style schools. On the eve of the Guomindang takeover, on average for these counties it would appear that some 10 percent of children aged six through twelve were formally enrolled. There are only partial statistics, north of the Yangzi, for a county-by-county breakdown of the provincial averages, however. On the eve of the 1911 Revolution, Nantong, a leader in early western-style education, had 5 percent of its male schoolage children in primary schools. When the average is calculated for both genders, that figure drops to 3.5 percent. 46 By the late 1920s, Funing, educationally one of the least developed counties in central Jiangsu, was said to have 9 percent of its school-age children in formal schools. 47 By 1930, Tai county claimed to have 10 percent of its school-age children in school. 48 While higher percentages in the south increased the provincial statistics, the Yanfu and Suzhong counties were not far from average in this regard. Zhou Fuhai, provincial commissioner of education under the Guomindang, claimed that Jiangsu had 12 percent of its school-age children in school in 1931, a figure which Zhou claimed he had increased to 23 percent by 1 9 3 3 . 4 9 Overall, the percentages were not high. In absolute terms, however, the schools produced a core of western-educated young people for which both the Nationalists and Communists would compete. Province-wide, by 1913, Jiangsu had 2 9 , 0 0 0 students in its upper-primary schools and 85,000 in lower-primary schools. 50 For lower-primary schools, by the end of the decade, figures for the Yanfu and Suzhong counties ranged from a low of 3 , 0 0 0 students to a high of 20,000. In 1919, for example, Dongtai had 2,939 students enrolled in local primary schools. 51 Tai county had 4 , 5 6 5 students enrolled in lower-primary schools in 1922, a figure which increased by an additional 2 , 0 0 0 as of 1926. 5 2 In 1919, Yancheng county had 5,820 students in primary schools, a figure which doubled by 1922, then increased to 13,800 by 1926. 5 3 One of the high-

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est estimates for the Suzhong counties came from Rugao, which was said to have 20,795 students enrolled in primary schools by 1926. 5 4 By 1929, even remote Funing had 8,171 students enrolled in its primary schools, of whom 6,700 were in lower-primary schools. 55 As Guomindang rule consolidated in Jiangsu, for the ten Yanfu and Suzhong counties as a whole there are estimated to have been just under 2,000 western-style primary schools. The most numerous of these, the lowerprimary schools, were attended by over 150,000 children.56

School Finances There is little dispute about the costly nature of this crop of westernstyle schools. One report estimated that by 1907, with school reform in its infancy, the cost of primary-level schooling had already doubled over the cost of traditional tutorial education. 57 Educational budgets increased steadily during the three decades before the Japanese invasion. Although school budgets were the frequent targets of public critique, as we shall see, the politics of school financing may have been more significant than the actual amounts involved. In 1913, the provincial government spent just over a million yuan on some three dozen provincially managed schools. 58 In the same year, Jiangsu's 404 elite higher and combined primary schools, largely funded by county governments, cumulatively cost 422,121 yuan, while its 2,403 lower-primary schools cost 541,477 yuan. 59 Whereas the annual cost per year for provincial schools ranged from 5,000 to 20,000 yuan, where the figures are available to assess the Yanfu and Suzhong primary schools we find that in the early 1910s, on average, higher-primary schools cost 1,000 to 2,000 yuan per school per year. Lower-primary schools averaged 300 to 400 yuan. 60 Although lower-primary schools cost less, there were more of them. Cumulatively, therefore, their managers outspent their county-level counterparts on these self-defined modern institutions, sometimes by considerable amounts. These dynamics were set early and sustained throughout the republican years. In 1912, in the counties under study, only in Nantong was more spent on county-controlled schools than subcounty schools. In 1912, Nantong spent 80,000 yuan on county schools, 60 percent of its county budget, while its local municipalities spent 40,000 yuan on their schools. Rugao spent 17,000 yuan on county schools. None of this was spent on higher-primary schools, as Rugao had none in 1912; rather the money was spent on a handful of

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county-run professional schools. Indeed, 10,000 yuan alone went to the county normal school. By comparison, Rugao's subcounty municipalities and townships spent 21,000 yuan on seventy-one lower-primary schools. Haimen county, to take another example, spent 11,890 yuan on county schools (a figure which is reported to have represented 50 percent of its county budget), while its localities spent 22,846 yuan on subcounty schools. Haimen county was one of the few counties which contributed funds from the county treasury to subcounty schooling. In 1912, 7,000 of the 22,846 yuan spent on lower-primary schools came from the county budget. The remainder was collected from subcounty levies, school fees, and private contributions. 61 Although figures are not available for all the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, from the available evidence it would appear this spending pattern continued throughout the pre-Nationalist period. By 1919, with a county budget for education of 13,472 yuan and local (shi-xiang) budgets cumulatively reported to be 26,419 yuan, Dongtai's local expenditures, for example, outpaced those of the county by 2 to 1. In the same year, Tai county localities also outspent their county government by roughly 2 to 1, with local educational budgets of 31,318 yuan, while the county budgeted 16,580 yuan for its higher-primary and professional schools. In some cases, the differences were not so dramatic. By the late 1910s, in Funing, local municipalities budgeted 16,000 yuan for education; the county budget was 13,000. 62 In 1926, Rugao municipalities cumulatively reported education budgets of 131,720; the county government budgeted 83,921 for the same year. 63 School expenditures have brought upon the schools persistent criticism as financially ravenous institutions, especially in the Guomindang period. As the foregoing figures indicate, school budgets in general rose steadily during the republican years. Some words of caution are in order, however, to call attention to political messages embedded in the budgetary figures. For many of the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, the highest rates of growth in actual expenditures came before 1927—which is not surprising, given the growth in the number of new schools during that period. Figures were the highest, and had the most to show for themselves, in other words, when finances were under local management. Where budgets grew after that time, the increased funding was generally earmarked for administration and mass education. Both were politically sensitive arenas of activity; and, as we shall see, both were driven by predatory central authorities, not local initiative. For some counties,

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educational expenditures leveled off after the Guomindang takeover; for other counties, the figures actually dropped. Budgets for several counties may be taken as examples of these developments. Taking aggregate budgets for both county and subcounty expenditures, in Yancheng the figures grew from 26,350 yuan in 1914, to 93,540 in 1919, to 110,840 in 1922, to 144,031 in 1926. 6 4 Thus expenditures grew by 250 percent from 1914 to 1919. They grew by a less dramatic 54 percent from 1919 through 1926. To Yancheng's north, in impoverished Funing, expenses grew by 31 percent from 1914 to 1919: from 22,077 yuan to 29,000. From 1919 to 1926, the figures increased approximately 100 percent: from 19,000 yuan to 58,053. While they grew dramatically in the next three years, reaching 142,901 yuan by 1929, by the early 1930s they had begun to decline.65 Although the 1919 budget for Rugao county, which had a better-developed infrastructure than either Yancheng or Funing, is not available, the increase in educational budgets from 1914 to 1926 represented a 338 percent growth: from 49,192 yuan to 215,641. In the next two years, the figure increased another 85 percent to 400,000. At that point, however, Rugao's educational budget remained steady into the next decade. 66 Beyond the absolute amounts involved, the pre-Guomindang figures remind us of the vitality of subcounty educational activists. After 1927, as we shall see, what budget increases there were generally represented the intrusions of central authority, not development within local society.

The Quest for Proper Cultural Form Along with burdensome finances, the issue of irrelevant pedagogy has dominated critiques of modern western-style schools during the republic. This is the case, for example, with the widely cited Jiangsu primary school described by Chinese anthropologist Fei Hsiao-tung in Kai-hsienkung, south of Lake Tai. 67 By the 1930s, this school was a full six-year primary school, structured to the requirements of the Ministry of Education. It offered virtually no practical training in handicrafts or agriculture. Officially the school had an enrollment of a hundred or more children, but no more than a fifth of those actually attended, except when a visit from the school inspector was expected. The school's shortcomings were predictable. Use of the western calendar meant that the school was not in tune with the village's agricultural schedule. Slack work periods, for example, coincided with school vacations. Modern school planning,

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with its strict scheduling and required sequence of classes, made it difficult for students to be absent from class when needed to help in the fields. And once students were out of school, they were discouraged from returning since preset coursework would have moved ahead while they were away. Pedagogically, Fei's description was scathing. For someone like Fei, who had ascended the social hierarchy into the ranks of national prominence, such an attitude toward local schools was both commonplace and logical. For politicians and managers who remained within the local social orbit, however, the very presence of these institutions took on cultural and political significance that had little to do with educational quality. There was certainly little which would recommend the proliferating local primary schools in republican Jiangsu as model institutions. Local schools were usually simple affairs, often housed in several spare rooms of a family compound, a temple, or public building, sometimes scarcely distinguishable from old-style tutorials. The buildings were run-down and poorly lit; schools were under constant pressure from provincial authorities to expand into western-style buildings with glass windows. 68 Most schools had no recreation areas. Local schools might have as many as a hundred students, although most had considerably fewer. Textbooks were not uniform; science equipment, blackboards, and the like were often lacking. The symbolic importance of these emblems of western-style schooling often exceeded their pedagogical value. Many local schools did not have them; their absence attracted the ire of provincial inspectors, whose often condescending reports inadvertently rescued the schools' descriptive identity from historical oblivion. As provincial inspector Gu Kebin's report on the Xu Jiagang primary school in Yancheng indicated, inspectors were appalled by a wide range of shortcomings found in local schools. Inspectors' reports far more frequently complained about the physical appearance of buildings and the absence of exercise yards and blackboards, however, than they did the actual quality of the teaching. The schools reinforced a dynamic we have already seen in the context of public parks, libraries, and the like. They contributed physically to the construction of the postimperial order. When a provincial school inspector visited Xinghua county, for example, he found the Anfeng Lower-Primary School No. 1 to be little more than a traditional private tutorial. The school was supposed to have four

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grades, or ji, though it had a total of only fourteen students. But, worse, to the horror of the school inspector, it had no exercise yard. The Anfeng Lower-Primary School No. 2 was located in the city temple. When the inspector visited this school, it had thirty-one students in attendance. This school also had no exercise yard, and the temple's rich supply of religious icons lined the walls of the makeshift classrooms. Complaints about the absent exercise yard and the religious icons, not the nature of the coursework, consumed the bulk of the inspector's report. 69 Dozens of other reports, filed in the 1910s and early 1920s, echoed these concerns. In 1919, for example, as the Dongtai county magistrate endeavored to dislodge a recalcitrant local powerholder from his joint posts as head of the exhortation bureau and school properties management committee, the magistrate charged that the situation was ruining local school finances—but worse, he intoned, as a result of the man's unshakable tenure, school exercise yards were in intolerable condition and lacked proper exercise equipment. 70 Provincial reports focused on these symbolic representations. Local managers, whenever possible, did so as well. The pressure to duplicate western standards produced striking anomalies. In 1919 Lianshui, on the northern fringes of the Yanfu counties, had an unimpressive twenty schools for a county with a population of over half a million. Struggling to meet appropriate physical standards, the county's only higher-primary school had recently moved to new property in the western district of the county seat, the most rural, undeveloped part of the city, in search of land for a recreation yard and larger classrooms. Thus the search for a playground removed this aspiring prestigious institution to the physical periphery of its urban setting. Although the county was plagued by drought and banditry, its upper-primary school had 139 students, whose curriculum officially included courses in French, physics, climatology, and natural resources. 71 A relatively lengthy inspector's report on 1933 Yancheng's sole lowermiddle school underscores the ill-fitting continuity of the search for proper form and symbol into the Guomindang period. Yancheng county's only public lower-middle school was created in 1927 by amalgamating an already existing lower-middle school and a teachers' college. In early 1933, the school had 294 registered students and an annual operating budget of 2 0 , 0 0 0 yuan. The school's administrative structure, an inspector's report noted, had been unstable since the 1927 reorganization. Initially the institution was divided into three "divisions," one each

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for general education for men and women and one especially for teachers' training. This scheme directly paralleled the original structure of the pre-1927 schools, which may explain why the organization did not last. School authorities moved quickly to reorganize the school a second time, creating two "academies"—predictably, one for boys and one for girls. Each academy had a teachers' division. Such an organizational strategy would have helped undermine residual loyalties to the founding institutions. As superficial as such reorganizations might appear to the outside observer, they were enormously important to school managers who sought the school's promise of wealth and power for the community in an elusive, and foreign, "correct" administrative structure. The 1933 report on the Yancheng lower-middle school commented approvingly on the elaborate internal administration of the school, for example, which, in addition to a general administrative office, had an administrative assembly divided into four sections, one each for general school concerns, personnel, moral guidance, and subject matter. The subject matter section was further divided into committees for Chinese, English, natural sciences, mathematics, and fine arts. The report approved of the regular meetings of a finance committee, without feeling compelled to comment on the state of the school's finances. Such an evaluation concerned itself with appearances and had in mind a clear image of the ideal school. It should have dormitories, an exercise yard, scientific equipment, and a well-stocked library. Lecturing and rote learning were considered old-fashioned; the question and answer approach was now in vogue. Yancheng's lower-middle school, according to the inspector's report, met the national Ministry of Education's regulations by teaching such subjects as algebra, English, modern Chinese history, linguistics, and a catchall course called "practical national learning" (guoxue changzhi). It was the inspector's job to comment on the structure of the school's administration, not to question its efficacy. Nor was it his job to question the value of the subject matter taught. It was his job, however, to make certain that the school's grading system was scientific, indicated by the use of grade point averages, and that both midterm and final examinations were offered. On these counts, the Yancheng lower-middle school passed inspection. 72 This quest for proper cultural form has inspired no small measure of derision in historical and literary writing about the republic. At its extreme, even provincial school officials joined in such condemnations.

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Having demanded adherence to appropriate, largely western-defined standards, disgruntled provincial officials could turn abruptly on their local counterparts, ridiculing small-town schools which struggled to match the complex internal organization of more urban institutions.73 Incoherent though much of the institutional and cultural mimicry may have been, it was not illogical. It represented an effort to create public legitimacy, whose traditional standards had been challenged by the 1911 Revolution, through the crafting of properly constituted institutions. Thus the relatively large number of western-style schools to be found even in such remote counties as Funing and Yancheng, underenrolled, poorly equipped, and oversubscribed to unworkable foreign standards though they might have been, were of cultural value to their founders. They were important in a different way to their young clientele: for a small but growing number of young people, these makeshift modern schools were a formative experience of their preadult years. Finally, the schools were an important political resource for their managers. Managing the Local Schools The particular nature of late-Qing educational reform, self-government regulations, and their subsequent abolition combined to give local offices the power to manage education's hotly disputed resources. One of the first contests of will in this regard emerged over control of the pre1911 exhortation bureaus. That contest was paralleled by persistent instability in the formal structure of local government, which favored county and subcounty autonomy over provincial control and, for some, secured political fortune, now legitimized not by gentry status but control over government office. The accompanying proliferation of county and subcounty education offices was new to the republic and did not go uncontested. For educational entrepreneurs who did not attain government office, the political vehicle of choice became local education associations. In time, these in turn became densely organized, increasing both their political and social presence in local municipal society. Conflict began before 1911, when self-government regulations competed with late-Qing education reforms. Specifically, the establishment of self-government offices was to be accompanied by a downgrading of the exhortation bureaus to a strictly advisory capacity. Not surprisingly, this measure is reported to have created considerable friction, indicating that local gentry did not move easily from one reform institution to the

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next. 7 4 There is no evidence, however, that the proposed self-government reforms threatened those gentry involved in what exhortation bureaus there were in Jiangsu before 1911. Rather, the 1909 regulations began a long, generally ineffectual, provincial effort to rein in authority accumulated in local society through late-Qing educational activism. In an attempt to bureaucratize the management of local schools, the province's military government in October 1912 abolished all exhortation bureaus. In their place, county magistrates were instructed to establish an educational section (xuewu ke) under their direct supervision.75 The educational section came to be designated the Third Section of the magistrate's office, although not all magistrate's offices chose to establish one—and, as we shall see, most did not successfully displace the gentry-dominated exhortation bureaus. Initially, the county magistrate was entitled to appoint the head of the educational section, as well as one or more county school inspectors. In an effort to increase control over the county, provincial governor Cheng Dequan then attempted to take back from the magistrates the power to appoint their own section chiefs. Indicative of the relative degree of local autonomy which would persist throughout the pre-Guomindang period, this ruling was a dead letter from the outset. As veteran provincial educator Huang Yanpei, then head of the provincial Office of Education, acknowledged, to the degree to which the county office had any local authority, power over selection of its own officials was impervious to provincial interference. 76 This ill-fated ruling—one of several such in the first two years of the republic—indicated a measure of provincial uncertainty toward the distribution of political power at the local level. The order regarding the appointment of section chiefs aimed at weakening the power of local magistrates; a second, complementary edict did the opposite. Initially county education inspectors, one tier below the section chief, were to be appointed jointly by the magistrate and section chief. Cheng's administration changed that, giving magistrates the sole authority to appoint county inspectors. 77 Then, further underscoring provincial ambivalence with regard to local institutions, provincial regulations ensured a degree of independence for subcounty education officials by decreeing that these people be appointed by municipal or township managers, not by the magistrate or county section chief. 78 This blather of regulations highlights the obvious: provincial authorities were aware of the political potential harbored by county and subcounty offices, but they had difficulty determining how to manage that potential. The result often left county and subcounty administrations

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poorly integrated at best. Even though locally appointed, subcounty officials were supposed to answer to their county-level counterparts, providing structural integration to the political system. From one of the few reports we have from the early republic on subcounty educational administration, it is clear that only rudimentary integration was achieved. As of 1914, only in four of the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, Nantong, Rugao, Haimen, and Taixing, did county officials even have the names of subcounty appointees. Not surprisingly, Nantong was the most advanced in this regard. Of Nantong's twenty-one subcounty municipalities and townships, thirteen had reported to the county seat the selection of educational officers, two of these through joint appointment with another local municipality. Seven townships also reported educational officers, but only two of these had their own appointees; the remaining five shared an officer with one of the local municipalities. 79 In a variant on this theme, in a number of county seats there were two parallel and unrelated administrations: one for county-managed schools, one for municipal schools. Nantong city had two municipal educational officers, Zhang Shizhan and Gu Naide, for example, neither of whom also held a position in the county government. Gu Niaocheng, Haimen city's municipal officer, also did not have a position as a county educational officer. Rugao and Taixing each listed two municipal officers for their county seats. In both cities, neither of these individuals held offices with the county administration, although in Rugao, one of them, Sha Wenhua, may have been a member of Rugao's prominent Sha family, which produced such elite politicians as Sha Yuanbing and Sha Yuanju, prominent in Rugao schooling and industrial reform. 80 In both Rugao and Taixing, county officials lamely justified lack of knowledge about other subcounty officials on the grounds that since subcounty management offices, gongsuo, had yet to be established in most local municipalities and townships, subcounty officials could not be appointed. 81 This was a bureaucratic cover for a political problem. In both counties, an unmistakable subcounty school community was developing, but county control did not consistently accompany that process. Although there is no comprehensive account of local government gongsuo in republican Jiangsu, it would appear that they were never systematically established. In their relative absence, associations and quasibureaucratic bodies managed local politics and society, instead of official appointees. These bodies operated in some measure of coordination with the county government, but in most cases they were at least a step further removed from the official government bureaucracy than for-

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mally constituted subcounty gongsuo. At the county and subcounty levels, two cases in point were the education exhortation bureaus and the local education associations. If Jiangsu's local exhortation bureaus had not exactly blossomed when the court first called for them in 1906, after 1911 they gave mute testimony to the gentry's unwillingness to facilitate the bureaucratic expansion of the central state by surrendering gentry-dominated reform institutions to the government. After 1911, the provincial government took up where late-Qing efforts left off to downgrade the exhortation offices. Subsequent to the 1912 ruling which sought to abolish the bureaus, in 1915 the Provincial Education Association tried unsuccessfully to have them fused with the county education sections. 82 In 1918, the national Ministry of Education sought to abolish them outright, issuing orders that they were to give way to honorary "educational committees" (xuewu weiyuanhui) at the county level. 83 In 1922, national regulations again ordered the exhortation bureaus abolished, to be replaced with county-level offices of education (jiaoyuju) which were to answer to, but were not located directly in, the magistrate's office. The new education offices came into being only slowly. One report in 1925 noted that, three years after they had been ordered, the new offices were just in the process of being set up. 8 4 Throughout all this, with few exceptions province-wide (and no exceptions in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties), the exhortation bureaus remained active into the early 1920s. In some cases, they operated in the absence of any county office of education; more commonly, both were operative. Tai county, for example, had an exhortation bureau in 1919 but had not succeeded in establishing an educational section within the county magistrate's office. 85 By the early 1920s, Yancheng had both an exhortation bureau and an educational "Third Section" in the magistrate's office. 86 Rugao county similarly had both. Only after 1927, when the Guomindang government forcibly reorganized county governments in Jiangsu, did the exhortation bureaus cease to be an active force in local school politics. 87 The formal educational bureaucracy established after the founding of the republic did not necessarily create opportunities for significant numbers of new officeholders. There is reasonable evidence, certainly at the county level, that in many cases formal educational administration acquired the air of personal political fiefdoms in the course of the republic's first decade. In Xinghua, Nantong, Rugao, Taixing, Funing, and Yancheng counties, some or all of the offices available immediately after

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1911 were taken by individuals who held onto them for years to come. 88 In Xinghua county, for example, the first chief education officer was Chen Qishui, who in 1912 appointed Li Yan and Shi Wuyong his deputy officers. Chen simultaneously appointed himself and Shi county school inspectors. Chen Qishui's position was unaffected by the abolition of self-government in 1913, although he did bring on a new complement of deputy officers. In Nantong, Yu Chen first held the post of chief education officer. He had three deputy officers in 1911, two of whom were still in place after the abolition of self-government. So too was his school inspector, Ge Maochang. In Rugao, Sha Yuanju was assigned the post of chief education officer. He also appointed himself school inspector, along with Xu Shuguan. By 1913, Sha allowed Xu to hold this position by himself. 89 Throughout the decade, Rugao's Sha Yuanju continued to hold his own position, as did his chief assistant, Li Guinian. By 1922, Sha had moved over to head the exhortation bureau, the sometime rival of the county education office. 90 In Taixing county, abolition of self-government also brought about few changes in the staffing of education positions first assumed in 1912. Zou Ji, a county native, who at thirty-one years of age went on to join the staff of the province's first office of education, came to that post having simultaneously held positions as head of the county exhortation bureau and a county school inspector in Taixing. 91 In Funing, there was a change in staff in 1913, although the deputy education officer, Tang Jingshan, remained the same. By 1919, Tang was still a county officer, now in charge of county school inspections.92 In the same year, the Tai county magistrate complained that Lu Rongsui, head of the exhortation bureau, had also taken control of the county education property management committee and was impervious to the magistrate's efforts to fire him. 93 In Yancheng, the school inspector, Li Bingliang, remained at his post throughout the early 1910s. 9 4 One of his assistant education officers, Xu Bingzhang, rose to head the county education section by 1922. Throughout the late 1910s and early 1920s, the head of the Yancheng exhortation bureau, Song Rungui, also remained the same. 95 Finally, the 1919 Yancheng county school inspector, Meng Yichen, had risen to head the county education office by 1926, replacing Xu Bingzhang.96

Widening the Circle of Participants If there was considerable inertia among formal officeholders, there was more room for mobility and new blood as localities set about establish-

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ing education associations. Local education associations, authorized by the late-Qing reforms, were initially intended as advisory bodies; after 1912, their relationship to the county magistrate, his education officials, and the tenacious exhortation bureaus was never clearly spelled out. County education associations were supposed to be constituted only with the formal approval of the provincial government. In the immediate aftermath of the 1911 Revolution, however, associations formed autonomously, especially in local municipalities outside the county seats, provoking complaints from the provincial government that municipal and township-level education associations were being founded well in excess of authorized numbers. 97 Like their provincial counterparts, county and subcounty education associations were not part of the formal administrative structure; in reality, however, they played a role at least as vital as the administrative apparatus. They also gave testament to organizational energy within this local arena and to the correspondence between public management and social status. From scattered reports received by the Provincial Education Association, we can form a rough sketch of local education associations in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, beginning with the observation that what information the province had appears to have come directly from the local associations, not from county authorities. Local associations, that is, appear to have steered clear of the potentially intrusive power of the county, while confirming their legitimacy through communication with the more remote but symbolically commanding authority of the province. In 1915, for example, associations in twenty of the province's sixty counties sent communications directly to the provincial association. Of those twenty, three were in Yanfu and Suzhong counties. In 1915, the Yancheng county education association had 130 members. Set up in 1906, the association was officially reorganized in 1912, although the nature of the reorganization is not clear. After 1911, it was headed by gentryman Tai Xiaoshi and located in the Wenchang temple in Yancheng city. The Rugao county education association was not established until 1914, at which time it had 160 members. In addition, however, Rugao city had a municipal education association, established two years before the county association, which by 1914 had 320 members. Thus this association was older and larger than its county-level counterpart. 98 Outside county seats, local municipalities also had education associations. Their relationship to county-level associations is not always clear. Without exception, those for which we have records were located in commercially prominent local cities. The municipal association in

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Huduo, in Yancheng county, for example, was set up in 1913. It had sixty members and was located in the municipal gongsuo. Notably, this is a subcounty municipality which did have an established gongsuo but did not report the appointment of school officials to the county." In 1915, the only education association in Tai county which communicated with the Provincial Education Association was that in Jiangyan, the county's major commercial center, located to the west of the county seat. The Jiangyan association had been founded in 1912 and by 1914 had sixty-eight members.100 Rugao presents one of the more interesting cases among the Yanfu and Suzhong counties. By 1914, when the county association was founded, Rugao county already had five subcounty education associations in operation, in addition to the Rugao city association; yet another subcounty association was established the same year the county association was formed. All five were founded in 1913, including the Fengli association with 115 members, the Juegang association with 132 members, the Lugang association with 70 members, the Chemahu association with 46 members, and the Motou association with 59 members. The sixth subcounty association was founded in Matang in 1914, with 160 members.101 There is some evidence to argue that in Rugao in particular, county and subcounty associations coordinated their interests. The Fengli association, for example, took it upon itself to communicate with the PEA on behalf of the county with regard to the location of a newly planned research bureau. 102 The Juegang association, to cite another example, received financial support from the county association after 1914, although it was apparently the only subcounty association which did so. 103 Evidence of similar cooperation between county and local associations is absent for other counties. From the foregoing descriptions, we know that associations varied in size; the earliest were founded before the republican revolution, but they continued to be founded for years thereafter. With rare exceptions, they were financially independent, albeit precariously so. In 1914, for example, the Yancheng county association was chided for planning to use interest from county-managed school properties for its own expenses despite regulations which specifically required these meager funds be spent on the schools themselves.104 The associations were as much social clubs as they were quasi-bureaucratic bodies. The Matang association, for example, established a monthly schedule of public lectures on modern education. It also set up a local research committee, which met at Municipal Primary School No. 7, and a travel club, which regularly sent

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its members on visits to Shanghai and Suzhou.105 The Fengli association arranged similar activities.106 Educational organizations quickly moved beyond quasi-official administrative bodies, adding school boards, teachers' associations, principals' associations, students' associations, alumni associations, property management committees, and financial audit committees among others to the roster of groups within local educational circles. 107 School travel and sports clubs as well as research activities such as those in Fengli and Matang were particularly common. In the wake of the May Fourth movement, research associations grew in popularity. In Yancheng, for example, which by 1992 had over 300 primary schools, there were functioning research committees to study primary school education, vernacular Chinese, and mathematics, among other subjects.108 The county education association went so far as to suggest a committee be formed to conduct research on Yancheng's own primary school principals.109 Such committees provided social structure to the school community and increased the status of the specific office or association which organized them. Given the numbers involved, it is clear that such local organizations provided membership to people well beyond official degree-holders. Slowly but unavoidably, the community of recognized local elites was expanding. Many participants were degree-holders, but as the example of Tai county's youthful Zou Ji indicates, others were not. It did not take the provincial government long to recognize the attraction that extrabureaucratic organizations held for educational entrepreneurs and the relative weakness of its own formal offices. While it tinkered with the structure of those offices, the province encouraged the counties to manage education through new administrative assemblies (xian jiaoyu xingzheng huiyi). By 1914, however, less than half of Jiangsu's counties had constituted such assemblies. Only two Yanfu and Suzhong counties, predictably Nantong and Rugao, were among them. The reports filed by each of these two assemblies are revealing on two counts in particular. The first concerns the degree of political integration experienced by these two counties, which appears to have been unique north of the Yangzi. The second underscores the wide variety of participants involved in educational management. The fact that these two counties followed provincial administrative guidelines by establishing these committees indicates that they were better attuned to provincial politics than other northern counties. Similarly, in these two counties, county and subcounty educational activists

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worked in some measure of close coordination. In Nantong, for example, county inspectors visited subcounty schools and educational assemblies. They investigated salaries and teachers' qualifications in local primary schools and considered specific requests for the establishment of model schools, research projects, and the like. Representatives from local municipalities attended the county administrative assemblies. Subcounty education associations and at least one municipal officer, from Guanyung municipality, both attended the Nantong assembly, for example. In Rugao, representatives from Libao, Matang, and Shuangdian municipalities are listed as having been in attendance. The Matang officer submitted for approval his own investigations of local primary schools. 110 It is striking that even in these two politically well integrated counties, those attending the assemblies reflected the dispersed nature of effective authority in the field of education. The fact that educational assemblies in other Yanfu and Suzhong counties did not submit reports indicates less enthusiasm for provincial planning. Here again, the absence of reporting to higher authorities did not mean a dearth of local developments. By the late 1910s, county and local education associations had developed complex bureaucracies of their own. Most had full councils, standing committees, and specially appointed subcommittees. Most had their own publications. (See Appendix B.) These undoubtedly played, along with a growing number of local newspapers, an important role in helping define local society as a shared experience, distinct from that of the province or nation as a whole. Through these shared events, local publications simulated membership in a politically self-conscious local community.111 Local Educational Circles and Their Social Hierarchy From early in the republican era and well removed from the urbane reform politics of the south, beyond the political contest over administrative offices, central Jiangsu's schools also sustained a postimperial social agenda. Slowly the traditional character of local urban society began to give way, making room for postimperial social identities and hierarchies. The schools and their governance drew forth from their communities a distinct if poorly delineated social order, neither a social class nor a formal organization, designated in the literature of the time as local educational circles (difang jiaoyujie). These social circles were delineated by a range of criteria, all associated in some fashion with the world of western-style schooling. There were a handful of elder states-

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men within them, men such as Zhang Jian, who were provincially or nationally prominent but who were also guiding lights in their native communities. Far more commonly, however, the constituents of local school circles were local: their offices, social affiliations, and aspirations were drawn from local resources and public stature. The most official members of these communities were associated with formal administration, from the late-Qing exhortation bureaus to county offices. The likes of Tai county's Lu Rongsui, Xinghua's Cheng Qishui, Nantong's Yu Chen, and Rugao's Sha Yuan Ju—all owed their public stature to these offices, for example. The most prominent of these people were also, as far as can be discerned, examination degree-holders, but more junior appointees were not. Greater numbers of people were associated with school circles not through formal offices but through parapolitical social organizations. The most prominent of these organizations were the education associations, and most of their membership is unknown to us. At best, the records indicate the name of an association head or manager. Anywhere from 50 to 300 others, in any given association, left no direct presence in the historical records. Beyond the education associations were the even less formally constituted organizations, which considerably outnumbered the formally constituted ones. From research clubs to local editorial committees—all of these groups provided a public presence for individuals who sought to be associated with school communities. Finally, by far the greatest numbers of people within these circles came not from management bodies but from the schools themselves. The largest numbers of such constituents were teachers and students. What is known about the social identity of this growing assembly of people? Any effort to answer such a question must begin with the realization that the appeal of association with the local schools was not so strong that it attracted everyone. Leaseholders of school lands in the Yanfu county of Funing may serve as a case in point. Funing, one of the province's largest counties, also had the largest amount of publicly designated school lands, estimated at some 892,000 mou. The full benefit of rents from those lands, however, was beyond the grasp of county or local education offices. The properties, some donated for public use, some inherited from imperial-period public lands, were scattered in two dozen different locations throughout the county. In Funing's case, the problem was not that school managers did not know where the lands were. Generally they did—and knew to whom the lands were rented. The lands were leased under lengthy contracts, however. Seventeen of

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twenty-four leases for which we have information were signed in 1921 or before. Two expired in 1936; the rest expired in 1939 or later. The rents paid to the county for these lands were well below those fetched for similar, privately owned land, which rented for anywhere from two to over four and a half times the sums brought in by school lands. Virtually all school land was subleased at market prices, netting the contract holders tidy profits. 112 As with a good deal of the fragmentary material from the republican period, one finds politics embedded in the Funing land records which are of interest even if difficult to decode. None of the districts or villages in which school lands were located were commercially prominent, nor had they been in the late Qing. The largest concentration of public lands, outside of border land between Funing and Huai'an, was in Qianqiugang, a small market town in eastern Funing, on the Sheyang River. All other lands were in the vicinity of lesser villages. This does not necessarily mean the leaseholders lived in these villages. Significantly, however, none of the leaseholders for which we have names were prominent in school circles in Funing at any time during the republic, either in secure positions or as contenders for those positions. Here, in other words, despite significant resources, the leaseholders apparently did not find the attraction of securing status in posttraditional educational circles particularly compelling. For thousands of others in local society throughout the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, however, this was not the case. As their numbers grew, so too did the social hierarchy which ordered their ranks. The administrative hierarchy in this context was straightforward. Its local base was composed of higher- and lower-primary schools. In the main, this administrative order correlated with the municipal one, in which higher-primary schools were concentrated in the county seats while the bulk of the system resided in subcounty municipalities. Administrative status was somewhat fluid, however. Over time, primary schools with county-level classification did emerge outside county seats, while within a given county seat not all local schools held such a designation. This was true even in Yanfu's more northern counties. Yancheng, for example, which had only three county-administered higherprimary schools in 1914, had twenty-one by 1919, sixteen of these located outside Yancheng city. In the same time period, in Funing, the number of county-administered higher-primary schools increased from two to eight, three of these located outside Funing city.113 Expansion of elite county-financed schools outside the county seat is a mute indicator

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of a political process about which the historical record is otherwise silent: subcounty school managers were either particularly well connected within the county elite, or they were particularly politically adept in their own right, acquiring county resources while still maintaining authority over their schools. Ironically, within the county seat itself some of their counterparts were less successful than they were. In county seats themselves, that is, as the numbers of schools grew, so too did administrative distinctions among them. In addition to countyadministered schools, most county seats also had less prestigious municipally managed schools (shixue), for example.114 Circumstantial evidence indicates that municipal schools located in county seats were often smaller than their county-administered counterparts. In Yancheng city, for example, in 1922, the largest county-managed primary school had 175 students. One municipal school, Primary School No. 2, was close, with 120 registered students, but other municipal schools in the city averaged between 65 and 70 students.115 Municipal schools were frequently located in temple buildings, although this was not always the case. While Yancheng city's Higher-Primary School No. 1 was located in the old Taishan temple, for example, at the time of the 1922 inspection Municipal Primary School No. 4 had just moved to newly constructed quarters outside the west gate of the city.116 Where we have information, we know that municipal schools were frequently the domain of private individuals or municipal education associations. Thus even within the relatively elite world of western-style schools in the county seat, there was a social hierarchy implied by the administrative status of the schools. Beyond the administrative order, local school circles produced a distinct human hierarchy as well. Gentry educators were particularly prominent in this local social ranking, and, as we have seen, initially they dominated the eclectic collection of offices, bureaus, and associations which governed local schooling. At the provincial level, lower administrative positions, such as those of the early provincial Office of Education and post-1911 staff in the Provincial Education Association, came to be filled by younger men educated in western-style schools. By the Guomindang period, this pattern had repeated itself for county-level administrators as well. In 1930s Yancheng, for example, the personnel in the county office were generally young—between the ages of twentyfive and forty. All staff members were male. While they were natives of the county, all had educational experience outside Yancheng. With the exception of the office heads, who were usually university graduates, the

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staff was made up of graduates of provincial normal schools or the teachers' divisions of provincial middle schools. 117 While there is no evidence of prejudice against these elite young newcomers, there is evidence that their most local counterparts, the teachers and students of the proliferating primary schools, were viewed with some measure of cultural ambivalence, which seems to have increased through the 1910s and 1920s. Elderly, examination-trained literati, for example, were inclined to view themselves as part of "educated circles" (ziskengjiaojie) and looked down on the new primary school teachers as "teachers' factions" (xiansheng pai) rather than an integrated part of literate society. Local teachers were not unaware of these prejudices. A graphic in an early Guomindang-period educational journal of a man riding an ox along a rocky road illustrated at least one view of the educator's social hierarchy under the republic. The man riding the ox was labeled "intellectual class" (zbishi jieji). The ox itself was labeled "primary school teacher" (xiaoxue jiaoyuanj.118 Western-educated local teachers brought some of this scorn upon themselves. They were known to strut about the streets of their local municipalities, dressed in western suits, with high hats and walking canes, demanding special attention from passersby.119 Perhaps fashionably novel in the province's southern metropolitan centers, such behavior was fundamentally alienating elsewhere. Also potentially alienating was the growth of a small coterie of female teachers. If it was socially innovative for these young women to be teachers at all, they did not always take to their new roles easily. A school inspector in Yancheng reported with some consternation, for example, on the female teachers of the county women's lower-primary school. The school was considered a model pilot project, yet the female faculty retreated in panic to the faculty room when the inspector arrived. When he followed them there, presumably to discuss their coursework, they fled the school altogether. The inspector chastised the teachers, but not before he had homed in on the quality of the faculty room itself, which was disorderly and poorly lit —not at all up to western standards.120 Salaries also reflected this emerging social hierarchy. With few exceptions, both formal government positions and membership in quasibureaucratic associations assured some regular income. As early as 1913, for example, by provincial decree, county school inspectors were supposed to receive a salary of 50 yuan a month. 121 By the mid-1920s, PEA members, the elite of this literate social order, drew salaries upward of 150 yuan a month, although for the lowest-ranking support staff

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monthly salaries were the less-than-princely sum of 10 yuan. 122 Salaries for local teachers were considerably lower. By the 1930s, teachers' salaries officially ranged from 25 to 60 yuan a month, but that could easily drop as low as 5 to 10 yuan a month—and even that frequently went unpaid. 123 Protest over unpaid salaries revealed fissures in education's local hierarchy sometimes obscured by sharper distinctions between county and local schooling. Staff members in county offices of education, for example, favored themselves, at least financially, even over teachers in the county-managed schools. A particularly telling case in this regard surfaced in the southwestern county of Lishui, where in 1926 teachers in all the county's primary schools went on strike over unpaid wages. While the county Office of Education pleaded insolvency, provincial inspectors found that it had allocated 64 yuan a month to four members of its own school committee and an additional 16 yuan a month each for two physical education inspectors. Although the figures were small, they were galling to the unpaid teachers. Further, the head of the county Office of Education and his staff had also assumed responsibility for the county library and were collecting double salaries. 124 It seems safe to assume that if such divisions existed within the county administrative elite, they were similarly in effect between teachers and administrators in the county schools on the one hand and the municipal schools on the other, including municipal schools located in county seats. Thus it is probable that when Ji Yantian, or Sun Hansan, met up with Wang Ji or Xu Yinggeng in the streets or teahouses of Yancheng city in 1922, Ji or Sun, principals of county-managed schools, assumed a sense both of community with each other and superiority toward Wang or Xu, who were principals of municipal schools in Yancheng city. Both may have assumed some degree of social preeminence over the likes of Liu Zhonghan, who was at that time principal of Upper-Primary School No. 1 in Yancheng's Xinxing municipality. 125 Throughout the republican period, individual primary school principals and teachers, who presided over the lower echelons of the school community, tend to be represented in the records only by their names and institutional affiliation. There is little we know about Yancheng school principals Ji Yantian or Sun Hansan, for example, other than their job status. School inspector reports filled pages with such references, praising or criticizing job performance as they went. There is no evidence that their recommendations carried much weight in local society, but they did serve to preserve the names of countless individuals

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who would have been aware of themselves not only as teachers but also as part of a social affiliation—local educational circles—which the government sought to control. An early Guomindang inspector's report for schools in Nantong and Rugao may serve as a case in point. The school inspector reported that the county-established North City Primary School's principal, Sun Liqing, had not been active in his work, resulting in a decline in quality in school affairs, although no corrective action was recommended. The inspector's report found that Gu Weikang, the principal of the Wulu Primary School, and Gu Xixie, principal of the Chongjing Middle School's attached primary school, frequently failed to come to work and should be replaced. On the other hand, the report found that the principal of the Baitangmiao Lower-Primary School was doing a superior job and should be congratulated. The report noted that Sun Xifu, head of the county Peasant Education Hall, was also doing an excellent job and should be honored, while it found that the head of Nantong's public exercise yard, Xia Mianzhi, was ignoring his work and should be fired. In Rugao, the inspection found that Shen Tiaoyin, head of the compulsory education section of the county Office of Education, often did not come to work and should be ordered to work harder. The principal of Rugao city's privately established Jingjiang Primary School, Zhao Bocheng, the investigation determined, was also employed in Shanghai and should be replaced. Hong Zhitian, principal of the county's experimental primary school, was found to be doing an excellent job and was recommended for a bonus, while Gu Qishi, in charge of the county's public park, was found also to teach twelve hours a week at the county middle school. Gu should be told, the report argued, to work only on the park. 1 2 6 It is unlikely that Gu would have chosen work in the park over that in the middle school, but, in any case, the inspector's report provides us all the information we have about Gu and the others whose work was the object of the inspector's scrutiny. The report also provides us an example of one of the strategies at work within local school communities to secure status in the republic's socially uncertain times. This is the case for Rugao county's Ji Baifu, whom we encountered earlier, under rebuke from a provincial inspector because his students talked in class. In addition to criticizing Ji, the inspector's report ensured that Ji's place in the social hierarchy was clear. From comments on the Anding school, where Ji taught, it is apparent that this was a municipal, not a county-managed, school. Further, Ji lectured on the plebeian subject of "practical skills" (changzhi), rather than

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more fashionable material such as foreign languages or science. 127 All this information would have been immediately understood by the magazine's provincial readership. Ji had made it into a socially recognized circle, but he was not in the elite of the elite, even within this small cultural order. The largest segment of the primary school community, the students, have left us the weakest historical record, especially with regard to their social background. Background is difficult to determine with certainty because socioeconomic categories, such as gentry or merchant, became increasingly interwoven. One contemporary study, for example, argued that schools in the county seats and larger local municipalities could draw up to half their students from merchant families. 128 Another study claimed that most primary school students came from landlord and rich peasant families (collectively designated as "nong") and from "intellectual" families. In the main, it is safe to assume that the "nong" were seldom poor peasants. Villagers surveyed in the 1930s consistently complained about the irrelevance and extravagance of formal education. 129 By the early 1930s, the student body of the Nantong middle school, certainly an elite school among those north of the Yangzi, was drawn predominantly from what were called self-cultivator families, yet just under half of the school's students came from families with an annual income of 1,000 yuan or more. 1 3 0 Claiming that one was of moderate economic status was common in Guomindang-period surveys of students' social background, although "moderate economic standing" varied considerably throughout the province. A survey of the county middle school in the northern canal county of Huaiyin in 1927, for example, found that a majority of the students considered themselves to be "of middle economic standing," although the average income of the families in this case was 620 yuan, predictably lower than average incomes for students in Nantong. 1 3 1 It is unlikely that the "intellectual" families referred to in school surveys sustained themselves through intellectual activities alone; this category may have been a republican honorific for gentry families now active in western-style schooling. Tellingly, by the 1920s, political party activists and government officials emerged as a sociological category of their own, accounting, according to one study, for up to 10 percent of the student body in local primary schools. The best that can be unscrambled from this is that students in the local western-style schools were from the families of a broadly defined social elite which repre-

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sented commercial and landed interests. Western-style intellectuals and politicians were relatively new sociological categories; hard as they are to define, their use tells us that elite observers were testing new social labels with which to understand and identify republican society. A social base somewhat widened in comparison with imperial times may have had access to such labels, as the available school surveys indicate a preponderance of agriculturists and merchants over children of identifiable scholarly families. 132 If the women teachers who fled a provincial school inspector in Yancheng were symptomatic of a society in flux, the students in schools such as theirs were equally transitional. Female students with bound feet were a common sight in local schools north of the Yangzi. One school inspector complained that male students in Tai county primary schools commonly wore queues; more unsettling were those spotted with earrings; one presented himself to the disapproving school inspector with a ring through his nose. 133 Just as the student with the queue or bound feet might have been a misfit in a western-style school, there is evidence that both students and teachers were aware of themselves as distinct interest groups, ill-fit in their own society, from early in the republican period. A strike at the Tai county Normal School Lecture Center in 1913 is a case in point. Xu Zhengping, a teacher, was fired by the center's principal while Xu was on home leave to mourn the death of a parent. Xu was an active member of a local organization of teachers and students which, the principal complained, was founded not to study new forms of education but to promote the interests of its members. Xu's firing prompted a strike by faculty and students at the school. 134 Xu's local support group appears in equal measure to have irritated authorities and appealed to the presumably less socially secure teachers and students. Social malaise, not a high degree of political consciousness, was a predominant characteristic of students in western-style schools in county seats and local municipalities in northern Jiangsu. Discipline among these students was poor. Many students were older boys who found the formal regulations of the new-fashioned schools restrictive. School disturbances were not uncommon as a result. Interestingly, students in these local schools assumed the right to a measure of direct collective control over their new institutions. Their failure to get that control resulted in repeated demonstrations, such as the 1913 protest against a strict dormitory supervisor in Qingjiang, whom students demanded be

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fired. As this was a southern school, where provincial authority held some sway, provincial investigators backed up the supervisor and expelled half a dozen students. Student demonstrations followed. 135 Disgruntled students moved from school to school—to the great irritation of school inspectors trying to determine the number of students at any one school. Student unrest was endemic in local primary schools, motivated largely by local and immediate concerns virtually untouched by broader political dynamics. While military governors and civilian politicians debated the character of the newly established provincial government in the south, for example, primary school students in the north rioted over poor food. 1 3 6 As in the case of the Qingjiang school mentioned above, northern students frequently rioted over school personnel who did not meet with their approval. 137 Nor were they alone in such parochial concerns. Provincial Normal School No. 4 , in the provincial capital, was badly damaged in 1920 when students, protesting poor food, wrecked property in the school cafeteria. When the student leader in this incident was expelled, the rest of the student body walked out in protest. This action led to a mass expulsion of the protesting students. 138 Students attacked each other's schools over rivalries which could last for years. Middle Schools No. 7 and No. 10, for example, began a feud over a football match in 1920 which simmered for nearly a decade. The Yancheng county Office of Education, whose staff had all received modern schooling outside the county, was bitterly divided in 1933 between supporters of the rival Normal Schools No. 5 and No. 6. The majority of the county education officers were graduates of these two schools and the quarrels between them gradually forced others to take sides as well. 1 3 9 Some measure of social dissatisfaction was not new to local schooling in China. By the late imperial period, primary education was not infrequently measured with meager respect, its teachers the brunt of social ridicule, its student body fluid and unstable. 140 The examination crucible and its direct claim to political power, however, salvaged a measure of authority for classical learning. By the 1910s, dissatisfaction originated with the students themselves. The restlessness of students in western-style primary schools was a function of the poor quality of pedagogy. It was also a function of the structure of the schools, logical in a western society but profoundly irrelevant in the uncertain times of the early republic. Physically, where schools did meet western standards, they were set apart in special buildings which served no other purpose

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and were not integrated into other social structures, such as those of the family or local religious communities. The temporal and social discipline of the western-style classroom, designed to prepare its young for industrial society, must have seemed equally alien. 141 These students, caught between past and present, often restless and frustrated, were poorly regarded by their more elite counterparts and were the targets of repeated attacks in the early issues of the PEA journals. A leading educator, Wang Zhaoyang, for example, complained at length in an early issue of Jiaoyu Yanjiu (Educational Research) that the 1911 Revolution had seduced students into storms of indignation and a dangerous attraction to anarchy. Lamenting their anger and frustration, Wang painted a grim picture of republican students as a pessimistic, disorderly bunch incapable of finding purpose in their lives. Nowhere in his lengthy diatribe, which seems to have set the tone for numerous subsequent articles, did Wang endeavor to understand the students' discontent in the context of their daily lives. 142 Nonetheless, schools continued to grow in number; they absorbed increasing amounts of local resources; the number of students attending them grew steadily. The dynamics of their growth are more easily explained by politics than pedagogy: the local schools figured directly in the politics of the republic, both within local society and in local society's dealings with central authorities. The transition to a postgentry society could follow ostensibly "natural" dynamics, in which strategies for social promotion were hidden from the arena of open political activity. This social transition was also marked by more contentious and openly political struggles, however, between province and locality and within local society itself. It is to these more contentious forms of political dialogue that we now turn our attention.

4. Education's Provincial Managers

FOR TWO DECADES, local society's dealings with the state in Jiangsu were informed by the peculiar nature of that state. For all practical purposes, the central state at the national level was an irrelevant entity. The closest approximation of a central state for local educational circles in Jiangsu was provincial. In the handling of civil affairs, the provincial government itself was only marginally functional. By the end of the 1910s, this shortcoming was linked directly with warlord hostilities, but martial violence was not the only problem. Through the early 1910s, provincial powerholders proved to be poor organizers and managers. In the arena of education, they failed to produce a stable administrative system. They repeatedly reorganized their offices and staffs—juggling the physical symbols of government rather than using their offices and resources to actually govern. In the vacuum created by these dynamics, political management devolved from formal government offices to parapolitical associations, notably in this case the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association (PEA). At first, this elite organization assumed the task of provincial management only reluctantly. In time, however, it became the preeminent political voice at the provincial level, a position it held until the Guomindang takeover of the province in 1927. The nature of this entity—the fact that it was not a formal office but rather a hybrid social body and political organ—elicited a kind of voluntary participatory administration. Local educational activists, both those who controlled local educational resources and those who aspired to, engaged in a lively, often contentious, public correspondence with the PEA. They did so to secure public acknowledgment of their own political presence. Where local resources were in dispute, they did so in the hopes

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of acquiring provincial-level allies. Because the PEA was not strong enough to be a heavy-handed, predatory central manager, however, local correspondents engaged in these maneuvers with the full knowledge that they operated at a safe distance from coercive central power, should provincial mandates run counter to their specific interests. Far more than any provincial edict or policing mechanism, it was the letters, petitions, reports, and the like which flowed between the PEA and local educational circles that effectively created and legitimized a kind of governance which loosely integrated local politics and the provincial center. It was this public dialogue, more than any direct administrative capacities, which in the field of education ensured that Jiangsu had a provincial political system at all. The link between province and locality, in this regard, was possible because local educational activists had invested in institutional resources similar to their provincial counterparts, producing a bond which made at least symbolic governance possible. This process was also possible because of the nature of the Provincial Education Association, which as a quasi-formal body presented less of a direct, intrusive threat to its local associates than formal bureaucracy might have done. This was also the greatest weakness of the arrangement, however. As we shall see, beyond administrative management the PEA had an agenda of its own, an agenda to secure new cultural moorings for its membership. In its effort to define its postimperial identity, the PEA turned outward, away from local society, toward western-style organizations and cultural expressions. If it was politically aware of local society, generally the PEA was culturally indifferent to it. The result weakened the potential bond between province and locality, conditioning the predatory intrusion of authority which especially characterized the post-1927 period.

Early Provincial Government Republican government did not come easily to Jiangsu. In the aftermath of the Wuchang uprising in 1911, assembly chairman Zhang Jian personally urged Nanjing-based Manchu general Tie-liang to use military force against the rebels.1 Constitutional activists, including PEA leaders Yao Wennan and Lei Fen, joined with governor Cheng Dequan in furtively petitioning the court to call a national assembly in hopes of undercutting the revolutionary movement. When the court failed to respond to Cheng's anxious requests for troops to defend Jiangsu, with the support of reformist gentry and Suzhou's merchant community, Cheng

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declared Jiangsu's independence in a preemptive effort to ward off a more radical seizure of power. 2 Cheng's declaration of independence did not initially take the entire province with it. Nanjing, the stronghold of Qing loyalist Zhang Xun, held out until Cheng's troops assaulted the city in December 1911. While most of the southern counties declared their allegiance to the independent government within a matter of weeks, it was three turbulent months before the final counties in the north did so. County-by-county declarations of independence from the Qing underscored how far local society had traveled from the relative homogeneity of prereform imperial politics. With few exceptions, county declarations of independence were issued by gentry activists, but explicit sources of political authority ranged widely. In Dongtai and Taizhou, for example, the county chambers of commerce issued the declarations. In Haimen, a member of the provincial assembly assumed responsibility for this. In Rugao, Tongmenghui activists declared the county's independence. Elsewhere in the province, secession from the Qing was similarly handled by the likes of local self-government bureaus, chambers of commerce, and merchant defense forces. Finally, in perhaps a third of the province's counties, declarations of independence were issued by Qing-appointed magistrates or gentry without explicit affiliation with reform politics. 3 While little happened to ensure political order within Jiangsu, provincial authorities were immediately drawn into national hostilities which consumed their time and energy and left the province with a revolvingdoor government in Nanjing for nearly two decades. After the provincial government moved to Nanjing in June 1912, Cheng and such leading provincial gentry as Zhang Jian displayed a predictable reluctance to support Sun Yatsen, to whom Zhang, then in charge of Lianghuai's salt revenue, refused to release much-needed cash reserves. After Song Jiaoren's assassination and Yuan Shikai's subsequent dismissal of Guomindang military governors in Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Anhui, Huang Xing, operating out of Nanjing, compelled Cheng Dequan to declare war on Yuan. When Huang fled the province a month later, Cheng was forced to resign.4 Even before the 1913 hostilities, Jiangsu had been infested with military forces. On the eve of the revolution, the province had had five New Army commanders, two of them protégés of Duan Qirui, chief military lieutenant to Yuan Shikai. 5 Although the New Army military commanders were officially relieved of their posts after 1911, Duan maintained effective influence over the province. After Huang Xing's ill-fated 1913

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revolt, the ousted Zhang Xun was given the pleasure of leading troops into Nanjing, sealing his victory over Cheng Dequan by allowing his troops to loot the city for three days before his own triumphal entry. 6 After Cheng's resignation, Zhang was initially appointed his successor —an appointment which provoked such a storm of protest that Zhang stepped down, to be replaced by former Qing military commander Feng Guozhang. Zhang, appointed inspector-general of the Yangzi provinces, did not move far, choosing to garrison his troops in Xuzhou, which he quickly made a near-independent power base in northern Jiangsu. When Feng Guozhang attempted to pressure Yuan Shikai to resign in 1916, Zhang responded by holding a conference of military governors in Xuzhou in support of Yuan. Despite Yuan's death in 1916, Zhang Xun held two further conferences in Xuzhou, designed to cement the solidarity of the military governors of the north China Beiyang clique. Zhang's northern Jiangsu power base weakened only after an abortive restoration attempt in 1917. 7 In the same year, Feng Guozhang ascended to the presidency of the republic and was replaced in Jiangsu by Li Chun, a Duan Qirui protégé who arrived in the province with substantial military forces of his own. 8 Opposed to Duan's growing military power, Li Chun joined an alliance with military governors in Jiangxi and Hubei which attracted the retaliatory anger of Fengtian forces, used to intimidate Central China's governors into submission into 1918. 9 After Li's death in 1920, Duan replaced him with yet another protégé, Qi Xieyuan, who held power in Jiangsu until 1924. Squarely aligned with the Zhili warlord faction, Qi joined in an invasion of Zhejiang province, then aligned with the Anhui faction, which resulted in a victory for the Zhili group and Sun Quanfang's accession to the governorship in Zhejiang. By the end of the year, however, the Fengtian faction, now securely in power in the capital, ordered Qi's resignation. When Qi refused, war visited Jiangsu again. 10 With Qi's defeat in 1925, the Jiangsu governorship was briefly held by the only Jiangsu native to have the post during the republican years: northern Jiangsu gentryman Han Guojun. 11 Han relinquished the post to Zhili militarists within a year. In late 1925, fearing the growth of Fengtian power in the north, Sun Quanfang seized Jiangsu for himself, ruling as military governor until his own defeat at the hands of the Guomindang in 1927. 1 2 Thus, until 1927, Jiangsu's provincial government was at the mercy of factious national politics, which repeatedly sent resource-hungry troops into the province, most noticeably in 1913, 1920, 1924, and

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1925. There were formal provincial government offices, but their staffing reflected the vagaries of warlord politics. Financial offices, for example, were staffed by those loyal to the military government, but other offices were less well attended or not staffed at all. This was the case with the Bureau of Commerce and Industry, for example, the shiye si, which was established after 1911 and included offices for finances and education as well as economic development. Half a decade into the republican era, none of these offices had regular personnel.13 Education's bureaucratic authority, which predated 1911, was sturdier, but not by much. Jiangsu's two education commissioners oversaw offices (xuewu gongsuo) in Nanjing and Suzhou, which formed the core of the post-1911 provincial Office of Education. The staffing of these offices was of particularly low quality, however. In 1911, there were thirty-two staff members in the Suzhou office, for example, who were described by a disgruntled provincial assembly report as poorly trained outsiders, mostly from Hunan and Zhejiang, who drew their pay but otherwise did not bother to show up for work. 14 At the provincial level, any hopes of rectifying the situation with regard to the authority of an office of education were undercut in the early years of the republic by the repeated restructuring of provincial offices. After the declaration of independence in Suzhou, a provisional education office (jiaoyu ke) was established which answered to the military governor indirectly through a Bureau of Civil Affairs (minzbeng si). After the final conquest of Nanjing, the provincial government set up headquarters there and took the occasion to restaff most of its education office. In December, military and civil administrations were separated, which resulted in further staff changes in the Office of Education.15 Six months later, as Zhang Xun's troops ravaged Nanjing, factional dissention within the provincial government is said to have weakened the authority of all its civilian offices.16 Provincial government offices were restructured in 1914 and again in 1916. Each of these administrative adjustments changed the offices to which county education officers were supposed to answer. Finally, in 1917, in an effort to buffer educational administration from the highly personalized politics of the warlord republic, provincial education associations nationwide lobbied for and got Bureaus of Education (jiaoyu ting) at the provincial level, which answered to but were organizationally distinct from the governors' offices.17 This move was accompanied by an ill-starred effort to assert provincial authority over highly autonomous county and sub-

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county politics. By the early 1920s, as we shall see, these efforts foundered under the weight of warlord violence. In the absence of bureaucratic stability, provincial governance initially fell back upon political associations authorized by the late Qing, most notably the provincial assembly and, in the field of education, the PEA. Like the province's bureaucratic offices, the provincial assembly was barely functional. Nominally, the assembly worked in concert with the province's military governors throughout the pre-Guomindang period. While an evaluation of Jiangsu's provincial assembly is beyond the scope of this study, preliminary indications point to its having been effectively emaciated by the 1911 Revolution. After the republican seizure of power, the 1 9 0 9 consultative assembly was in limbo until new regulations were issued in late 1 9 1 2 for the first postrevolution provincial elections. 1 8 The prospects for the new assembly were not particularly bright. When it met in February 1 9 1 3 , less than half the elected delegates attended. A highly unpopular northern gentryman, X u Dinglin, seized an opportunity to maneuver himself into the chairmanship. Although X u resigned within days, his usurpation caused an uproar. Angry delegates, asked to register for the assembly, refused outright or, in an act of political defiance, listed themselves by names of the now-deposed royal family. Of sixty proposals eventually brought before the assembly, delegates managed to pass only four. After seventy days in session, the assembly closed, only to reopen abruptly to address growing hostility over the allocation of provincial funds for new local schools and factories. That the assembly was now driven by the designs of local patronage rather than more inclusive provincial concerns was underscored by the resolution of this minor crisis: without an effort to justify the allocation of funds on the basis of overall provincial planning, the assembly magnanimously authorized each county to establish at least one poor people's factory—an opportunity less to help the poor than to secure local elite access to provincial funds. 1 9 Whatever the implications of this less than auspicious start for other aspects of provincial politics, in the field of educational administration the provincial assembly proved itself utterly irrelevant. In the volumes of correspondence between schools, county and provincial educational officers, the Provincial Education Association, and Jiangsu's succession of military governors, the voice of the provincial assembly was effectively silent from 1911 until it was disbanded in 1 9 2 7 . 2 0 With the pro-

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vincial government run by military strongmen and a largely ineffectual provincial assembly, political authority over education in the 1910s drifted from formal, bureaucratic offices to an uneasy alliance of local government officials, quasi-official organizations, private associations, and individual citizens. The Provincial Education Association Throughout the republican period, this uneasy coalition presided over a starkly two-tiered system: an elite core of provincial schools, on the one hand, and county and local schools on the other. County and subcounty schools were vastly greater in number and received insignificant provincial revenues. Until 1927, when the Guomindang completely revamped the provincial government in Jiangsu, the most active administrative body in the field of education was the Provincial Education Association. The PEA was founded in 1906 as part of the post-Boxer reforms. 21 This kind of newly sanctioned professional organization was intended to encourage the exercise of private power in the interest of the state, incorporating elite activism into the court's agenda for local reform, and to act as an elite self-policing agent. 22 In the event, the Qing legitimized the organizational basis sustaining educational politics well into the 1920s. Unlike the provincial assembly, the PEA was not reconstituted after 1911; although new members joined steadily through the 1910s and early 1920s, they were always introduced by other active members. 23 The PEA had a capital endowment of its own, but by 1913 it was also receiving 4,000 yuan annually from the provincial budget. By 1918, that figure had been increased to 7,000 yuan, drawn from a provincial education budget of just under 1.5 million yuan. 24 In the early years of the republic, there were personal connections between the PEA and the provincial government which sustained the PEA better than these modest sums did. Through 1914, the PEA was headed by provincial assembly chairman Zhang Jian. 2 5 The provincial Office of Education was headed by gentry-educator Huang Yanpei, a leading PEA activist. 26 Huang, a native of Chuansha county in southeastern Jiangsu, earned a juren degree and then studied at Nanyang College in Shanghai. A constitutionalist, he served as a staff member for the 1909 provincial assembly. His long-standing interest was education, however, and he accepted the post of provincial commissioner of education immediately after Suzhou's declaration of independence.27

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Despite such prominent support, the early provincial offices of education were emaciated affairs. The PEA routinely communicated its educational concerns directly to the governor's office—as it did with some fanfare, for example, in 1916, when a national survey indicated that Jiangsu was falling behind in the development of modern schools. Alarmed and determined to extract provincial funds to rectify the situation, the PEA engaged in a prolonged public dialogue with the provincial governor, which at best garnered a weak statement of gubernatorial sympathy. 28 The PEA was not alone in its apparent lack of enthusiasm for the provincial Office of Education. In 1915, the office called for statistical surveys of county-level education; two years later, a scant third of the counties, most of them south of the Yangzi, had reported. For the record, the provincial governor was only marginally more successful in extracting statistics from county governments. In response to a request from the governor's office in 1916 for information on county budgets, less than half of the province's counties had reported by 1917. 2 9 Although a provincial Bureau of Education was created independent of the governor's office in 1917, it was another year before the bureau began publishing an independent gazette. Until then, petitions to the governor's office, pronouncements of official regulations, and the like were handled through PEA publications. Even after the creation of the new bureau, the PEA was known to step in and override its management. The fate of the beleaguered provincial middle school in the treatyport city of Zhenjiang is a case in point. In 1920, faculty from the school petitioned the provincial Bureau of Education after rebellious students disrupted the school. An unidentified bureau staff member then moved into the school and, according to the faculty, swindled it out of operating expenses. Appeals to the bureau produced no results. Appeals to the governor's offices produced a communiqué to the bureau which was ignored. After the school principal resigned, Wu Fansheng, a school inspector sent from the bureau, himself took charge of the school under orders from the bureau which were sent to the county magistrate but not to the school itself. By way of response, the students rioted again and appealed to the PEA. Wu was then challenged by a second provincial school inspector, who himself had designs on running the school. When the PEA stepped in to investigate, it found that the bureau had ordered certain students expelled, ostensibly on the grounds of poor test scores, but the PEA found that no tests had been administered, raising obvious questions about the nature of the expulsions. By this time, the school was dysfunctional, leaving appalled PEA

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investigators to chastise the bureau and sort through the ruins of the case on their own. 30 On several occasions, military governors effectively acknowledged the limited ability of the provincial offices of education by convening special committees to assist in educational administration. Without exception, these committees were staffed by members of the PEA. As early as 1913, for example, the governor's office established an extrabureaucratic administrative committee, the Jiangsu sheng xingzheng huiyi, to assist in school management.31 In 1916, when the governor's office decided to implement a province-wide lecture series to promote popular education, it provided the funds from its own coffers and then commissioned the PEA to organize and manage the project. As some indication of how loosely defined the bureaucratic structure was, the PEA's suggested local contacts for this project indiscriminately included county, municipal, and township administrative personnel; county, municipal, and township self-government bodies; county, municipal, and township education associations; and school administrators and teachers.32 Cooperation between the governor's office and the PEA continued into the 1920s. In 1921, for example, the Jiangsu jiaoyu canshi hui (Jiangsu Educational Advisory Committee) was established, staffed entirely by PEA members, to advise Li Chun's government in educational matters. In 1922, a special committee, also staffed by PEA members, was set up to oversee the implementation of what was known as the American Plan. 33 In 1924, the Bureau of Education established the jiaoyu jingfei weiyuan hui (Educational Funding Committee), with similar PEA influence, to straighten out and allocate provincial revenues designated for educational expenses.34 In 1925, another advisory committee was established to help implement the then-fashionable calls for military education (junjiao), which undercut the 1922 American Plan. This committee too was PEA-staffed.35 Ideologically, the PEA was an unremarkable organization. From its early years, when constitutional monarchists such as Yao Wennan and Lei Fen threw their support behind Cheng Dequan, the PEA established the pattern it maintained throughout the 1910s and 1920s, working closely with the province's steady succession of military governors. This collaboration reached a peak with the association's affiliation with Qi Xieyuan, whose office directly financed a variety of PEA exhibitions and school surveys and who personally attended graduation ceremonies for PEA-endorsed model projects.36 At the same time, the PEA was generally not used as a political stepping-stone. After 1911, few of the PEA's

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prominent members were politically aggressive outside their chosen professional field. Social Makeup

of the PEA

The Provincial Education Association was an elite body. Its founding leadership was drawn from prominent gentry, although in time it accepted increasing numbers of young, modern-school-educated members. This trend represented both a generational and a cultural change, but in one regard the PEA remained largely unchanged throughout. With few exceptions, its membership was comprised of individuals whose home counties were south of the Yangzi. The preponderance of southerners reinforced the cultural bias of the provincial elite whose understanding of the province as a whole rarely extended north of the river. Full lists of the association's membership are hard to come by. Even PEA journals, published more or less continuously from 1913 through 1931, do not contain full membership lists. 37 It is clear from partial membership lists and interim working sessions, held weekly in the early years of the republic, that the PEA's leadership was generally concentrated in the hands of a dozen or so individuals who were gentry degreeholders. Although the chairmanship rotated, it stayed within this circle of elder statesmen, which included Zhang Jian, Huang Yanpei, Wang Chaoyang, Shen Enfu, Jiang Jihe, and Yuan Xitao. 3 8 Association members included late-Qing officials, some of whom were still active in educational circles in the Guomindang period. In 1932, for example, Hou Hongjian, who had been Jiangsu's education commissioner in 1906, was writing for Jiangsu jiaoyu (Education in Jiangsu), the provincial journal of record for education during the Guomindang period. In 1906, Hou had fashioned himself into a specialist on "single-grade teaching methods" (danjijiaoshou fa). In 1932, he wrote as a specialist on compulsory, western-style education. 39 From the outset, the PEA's institutional presence was heavily southern. When established in 1906, the organization had a main office in Shanghai and branch offices in Nanjing and Suzhou. 40 While the association's mandate did not limit its concern to provincial-level education, its public forums and exhibitions were consistently held at provincially managed middle and normal schools, also concentrated south of the Yangzi. PEA membership reinforced this southern bias. While we do not have the full background on the pre-1911 members, we do have the home

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counties for several hundred new members brought into the organization in the 1910s and 1920s. Almost all the new members were southerners. In early 1913, six new members were introduced, for example, the youngest twenty-three years of age. All but one, the former head of the Suining county education association, in the extreme northwest, were from south of the Yangzi. All were active in county-level educational activities. Two months later, another thirty-four new members were introduced into the PEA. Only five of the thirty-four were from the north, including Yang Chanlin, a primary school teacher from Yancheng, recommended to the PEA by his county education association, Li Shengwu, who had been vice-chair of the Yancheng county education association, and Chen Qirui, who had served as the chief educational officer in Xinghua county. 41 In August 1914, six additional members were added to the association; all but one, a twenty-five-year-old primary school principal from Dongtai, were from the south. A month later, there were thirty-five new members, only two of whom were from north of the Yangzi. 42 In early 1915, there were thirteen new members, all from the south. 43 This pattern was generally maintained throughout the decade. In 1920, for example, four new members were introduced, all four recommended by Huang Yanpei and Shen Enfu. Their ages ranged from twenty-four to thirty-one; three of the four were from southern Jiangsu. One, Cai Junqu, from Taixing, was a northerner. Cai was thirty-one years old, a middle school graduate, and a member of the provincial assembly. 44 These new members were young—generally thirty years of age or younger—and predominantly graduates of the new schools. As a result, the formal gentry status of this elite body's membership gradually gave way to educational credentials acquired from western-style schools. The emergence of youth and modern-school pedigrees over examination degrees was not confined to the Provincial Education Association. This phenomenon was also notable, for example, in Huang Yanpei's first provincial Office of Education. Huang oversaw a staff of twentythree people. All were natives of Jiangsu, their average age just over thirty-six. As far as can be determined, none, other than Huang, were PEA members. All twenty-three were graduates of western-style schools in China or Japan. Of the twenty-three staff members, only three were from north of the Yangzi: one each from Guanyun, Jiangdu, and Taixing. The thirty-one-year-old Taixing native, Zou Ji, whom we encountered earlier, had graduated from and taught at the Nantong teachers'

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school. 45 Thus recruitment patterns were similar in both the provincial Office of Education and the more active Provincial Education Association. New staff members were young and school-educated. They also found in school-related activities a new source of political influence: individuals from north of the river, that is, came to the attention of their provincial superiors through their activities in local education. As we shall see, the political franchise which linked locality and province in this fashion held as long as the central state was comparatively weak. Managing Provincial

Education

The Provincial Education Association engaged in activities which demonstrated its quasi-governmental role; simultaneously it engaged in less overtly political activities which built a sound social presence for its members and the broader educational circles they represented. In its surrogate governmental role, the association effectively managed provincial education. It acted as a clearinghouse for communications between the governor's office and the host of individuals and institutions involved in public education. It publicized formal government guidelines, investigated complaints, and offered recommendations to both the governor and the complainants. The bulk of each issue of the PEA's journals, through 1927, was taken up with such communications, even after the provincial Bureau of Education began to publish its own bulletin in 1918. 4 6 Although the Provincial Education Association established its advisory relationship with the provincial government well before the revolution, it seems to have moved into its role as a public manager with some initial reluctance. For the first year or two after the founding of the republic, the PEA seemed somewhat reticent to become involved in local controversies. In the first issues of the PEA's Jiaoyu yanjiu, the majority of the government communications were petitions from the association and responses from the governor's office, outlining regulations with regard to such issues as membership and finances. In 1913, there were several instances in which the PEA directly refused to become involved in local disputes. In response to a request from Maqiao township to intervene in a quarrel between its schools over township school properties, for example, the PEA directed the township to address its request to its county government. A petition from Zhi Maoming, a graduate from Tai county's self-government research office, calling for the PEA to intervene to help recover county-owned school properties (illegally occupied by private landowners), met with a similar response. The education

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association in Fengli municipality, Rugao, announced on behalf of the county association plans to establish a research bureau independent of the county magistrate's office; the PEA sent off sharp rebuke, reminding the Rugao educators that since the county magistrate was the ultimate authority for local education, the research bureau should be located in the magistrate's office. 47 As the year progressed, however, this reticence faded and the association began to respond to local disputes both by publishing official regulations and by conducting investigations and passing judgment on local conflicts. As a result, the PEA was drawn into the densely organized, highly contentious order of the province's western-style schools. The variety of institutions and individuals whose petitions and reports were filed as official communications is revealing with regard to the complex, competitive nature of that order in the pre-Guomindang period. Official material was filed by county magistrates, their chief educational officers, county school inspectors, exhortation bureau heads, county and subcounty education associations, school principals, schoolteachers, students, and private citizens. Initially, much of this material took the form of reports—announcing the appointment of local officials and the establishment of schools, for example. By the end of 1913, however, as the PEA moved to fill the void left by a paralyzed provincial government, the material became increasingly plaintive, a tone it maintained through the warlord period. The flood of disputes addressed to the PEA over specific, local issues spoke eloquently of the general emaciation of county-level governments. This was particularly true of complaints from individuals, local schools, or subcounty associations, which appealed directly to the governor or the PEA, rather than to their county magistrate's office. (The subcounty education associations in the southern county of Jingjiang, for example, petitioned the PEA, not the county government or the county education association, for approval to establish a united subcounty education association.) 48 Not all the petitions were so narrowly concerned with education's administrative bureaucracy. By the mid-191 Os, they became increasing eclectic: some rightfully addressed educational concerns; others belonged in a court of law; still others showed little sense of the distinction between juridical grievances and a personal sense of wrong. By reporting their concerns to the PEA, local petitioners ensured for themselves participation in a kind of symbolic governance. When disputes were involved, correspondents may have hoped for provincial interference; but even in its absence—and absence was the general rule—they en-

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hanced their own status anyway through public association with provincial authority. Over time, in the absence of a viable and predictable political system, they referred to that authority a bulky, undifferentiated accumulation of grievances. Provincial Women's Teachers' School No. 1, for example, petitioned for redress when an electrical company's faulty wiring job in the school kitchen caused a fire. The PEA investigated and found in favor of the school, although there is no indication that its investigation produced remunerative benefits. The principal of Teachers' School No. 5 petitioned in protest because members of a local research society, the Jiangsu jiaoyu yanjiu she, had insulted his school. Eleven teachers in Provincial Middle School No. 6 petitioned for redress, charging that harassment by their students had driven off the school principal. Students expelled from Teachers' School No. 1 for rioting over poor food appealed for an investigation of their case. A gentryman from Huai'an petitioned for an investigation, charging that the county office for the management of educational property was embezzling funds. The Jiading county education association and the Jiading county exhortation bureau each filed separate complaints, charging that a recent county investigation of schools and school property had been unfairly conducted. The county magistrate filed a report of his own, defending the survey. The dispute in Jiading was presumably over the allocation of county revenues; the PEA promised to investigate. In a similar dispute, the exhortation bureaus of Fengjian and Songjiang feuded over rental income from school property held jointly by both counties. Each appealed to the PEA to support its case. 49 Such complaints continued unabated from the early 1910s until the worst of the warlord violence in 1924 and 1925. Then there was a noticeable tapering off of reports and petitions from the local world of individual schools and private citizens, a situation indicative of the retrenchment of local society as the province sank under the weight of its warlord competitors. 50 What is most striking about the petitions to the PEA until that time, however, is their persistence in the face of a lack of concrete evidence that the PEA's responses, which generally included investigations and unenforceable recommendations for resolving disputes, were particularly effective. N o contemporary sources commended the PEA for its influence in local society, while similar complaints were filed again and again, heedless of proffered PEA solutions. Petitions were filed steadily, regardless, in a kind of symbolic recognition of provincial authority under circumstances which saw disputes settled

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locally in any event, without any real expectation of provincial intervention. The PEA's Social

Agenda

Beyond its role as a political broker, the PEA also pursued a social agenda, defined by an effort to reinforce linkages between individuals and institutions within the social world of school reform. This was an elite world, compared to the majority of China's disenfranchised poor; its social mandate effectively sought to secure new terms of identity for an elite which had securely fused politics and culture before 1905 but, especially after 1911, no longer did so. Part of this social agenda was addressed when other elite associations and government officials publicly affiliated with the PEA, which they did by mailing in communications published regularly in the association's journals. Provincial education associations from Fengtian to Sichuan sent reports to the Jiangsu PEA, citing recent activities, changes in association officers, and the like.51 Individual schools in other provinces, some considerably less than prominent, also sent in reports, such as that from the Anhui women's sericulture lecture center informing the association of its planned activities. Finally, the PEA issued occasional statements of support, such as its concern for teachers in Beijing, on strike in early 1920. 52 Within the province, offices and associations, such as the provincial Office of Commerce (shiye ting) and the Jiangsu Chamber of Commerce, also sent in gazettes and surveys.53 In no particularly regular fashion, county and local education associations sent in notices and reports, as did individual schools. In 1913, to cite an early example, reports and journals received by the PEA included the following: the Yunnan provincial association's magazine, Yunnan jiaoyu (Education in Yunnan); annual reports from education associations in Hubei, Zhili, and Zhejiang; the Wuxi county education association's journal, Wuxi jiaoyu (Education in Wuxi); a report from the Rugao county education association; a Wujiang county school inspector's reports; a report by the chairman of the Zhejiang Physical Education Association entitled "A Justification for Physical Education"; separate reports from the Shanghai county magistrate and the chairman of the Shanghai education association; and the Yugang Primary School (Huai'an county) annual report.54 The PEA frequently did not publish the content of these reports; rather, it reserved a special section of its journals for announcements that the reports had been sent and received. This policy obviously saved

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space; by default, it also shifted the reader's attention from the content of the reports to the fact that the PEA had received them. In addition, the PEA did selectively send copies of the reports to county education offices and associations, circulating information and simultaneously reinforcing the PEA's centrality to the professional community associated with the local schools. This it did, for example, with the Wujiang county school inspector's reports, mentioned above. 55 Although, with a few exceptions, we do not know the authors of these reports—indeed, most of the reports have not survived—we do know that behind each one stood a group of people—an association, a school faculty, the staff of a public office—which sought to ensure its place in an evolving social order associated with modern school reform. In some cases, this effort to secure public recognition was bluntly explicit. In 1913, for example, two gentry-educators, Wang Yinhou and Lu Peixuan, from Provincial Teachers' School No. 1 in Suzhou, sent the PEA a copy of a 100-page manuscript they had prepared on teachers' education and physical education in Japan. Wang and Lu, neither of whom were PEA members, requested that the booklet be copied and sent to all provincial education associations in the republic. 56 Thus, rather than publishing their work on their own, the authors hoped to see it published and circulated by the PEA, which would reinforce their ties with a prestigious provincial organization. Another part of the PEA's social agenda was manifest in the wide variety of conferences, exhibitions, and public lectures which orbited around its general educational mandate. By the early 1920s, for example, the PEA had set up a lecture society for primary school pedagogy (xiaoxue sboufa jiangxi hui), a separate research society for primary education (xiaoxue jiaoyu yanjiu hui), a lecture series on vocational education (zhiye jiaoyu jiangyan hui), a public exhibition of primary school library skills (xiaoxue xiao tushu shougong chengji hui), and a society to inspect libraries (tushu shencha hui).57 A number of the committees sponsored by the PEA, such as the committee for the advancement of Chinese primary school education (guomin jiaoyu zujin hui), met annually.58 These gatherings were attended by 50 to 100 people at a time, usually from the association and from provincial middle and teachers' schools^"Many were held in the summer, lasted from two weeks to two months, and added liberal doses of sightseeing to the academic agenda. Such activities sustained a persistent public presence for the PEA and its claim to public authority. They also reinforced a common social identity for those who attended. 59

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Finally, as we have seen, the PEA's social agenda included a kind of provincial recruitment, which drew a small number of enterprising young educators from county education offices and associations into the more prestigious activities of the Provincial Education Association itself. Routinely, the PEA notified county education associations about scheduled meetings and exhibitions. Where we can assess attendance at these meetings, participants from the county associations were generally southerners.60 Social bonding was most clear in the form of membership recruitment. As we have seen, most of the new members recruited into the PEA were from south of the Yangzi. Since few of the individuals for whom we have names, drawn from county educational circles into those of the province, reappear in the literature subsequently, it is impossible to know if they retained local ties, bringing the PEA's symbolic capital back to their localities, or generally migrated into more elite southern circles, allowing their active local ties to atrophy.

The Search for Cultural Identity If the social composition of the PEA did little to encourage provincial integration, the evidence indicates that the PEA's cultural indifference to the local conditions from which it drew its recruits was particularly entrenched. In stark contrast to the concrete, politically specific complaints addressed to the PEA, for example, were the abstract theoretical concerns which the PEA consistently chose to address in its more scholarly pieces. This was an organization acutely attuned to its political role in relation to the provincial government, yet thoroughly detached from a broader dialogue encompassing local concerns. In no issue of Jiaoyu Yanjiu, for example, was there a concrete study of local society and culture in Jiangsu, outside the brief, official reports by school inspectors. The Provincial Education Association did not begin its quest for a new cultural identity in this fashion. For late-Qing local gentry willing to embrace educational reform, patriotism was a driving force. Critical of the western intrusion into China but not of the sources of western strength, these local early-modern educators viewed China's past with disaffection and its future with uncertainty. Their understanding of the republic was as much social as it was political, as they sought to determine who within the Chinese social order was a potential participant in the effort to redress the humiliations of the preceding decades. Through early western-style schools, local gentry expressed indignation over foreign encroachment into China. Their schools joined in sin-

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cere but futile efforts to collect funds to pay off the national debt, for example. There were repeated calls for new textbooks—something in scarce supply in northern Jiangsu—on grounds of national pride rather than the books' pedagogical value: the old books were considered disgraceful. 61 Even in Jiangsu's northern counties—not immediately in contact with treaty ports or the foreigners who dominated them—western education presented itself as an attractive weapon against the West itself. "Ever since the Europeans began to come to China," complained a degree-holder active in late-Qing educational reform in Tai county, "the people of the country have been unable to improve agriculture, and industry and commerce have been unable to [learn from] the foreign countries. It is inevitable that China has withered and the foreign countries have become strong."62 This plaint went on to argue that a republic (gonghe guo) was China's hope for the future. Without providing a definition of his own, the author estimated that at best 10 percent of Tai county's population understood what this word meant. That percentage, he concluded, must improve. Other writers agreed. While Confucianism sought social authority in the wisdom of the past, republican China was going to have to rethink its relation with that past, noted one northern writer, a past which was going to have to loosen its grip on society: "The tendency has been to continue to live in the past. [Even now] there are those who want the life of traditional scholars, living on government grants. But recently there has been some rectification of the situation, with attention paid to the use of concrete learning. [Our hope] lies with the development of commerce and industry."63 The author of this comment then plunged into an informal sociological survey, much in vogue among literati in counties such as this. Who, he wanted to know, really understood the meaning of the word republic? His list, similar to others developed at the time, included scholars, military figures, and merchants. The study was scarcely scientific; its importance lay in its effort to cast about in local society for allies as the republican order took shape. Consistent throughout such reports was a measure of disdain for peasants and laborers, who were said to harbor much of the crippling residue of past, their loyalty limited to family and clan, while popular religious beliefs blinded their ability to see into the future. Moreover, gentry authors complained, superstitiously bound to old ways, peasants failed to appreciate the value of industry or vocational education, so essential to China's modernity. 64 This was a refrain which would later be expressed by Guomindang officials and Communist activists alike: three

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generations of elite activists shared at least this bond. They each saw in the poor the cultural roots of Chinese society's resistance to change. Although such writings fell short of defining the republican state, it would appear that, in their understanding of the state, local reformist elites were fusing the legacy of China's central state with images of western states. Political reformers effectively borrowed from Europe and North America what they perceived to be a modular and transferable experience: that of a powerful national state. This state was not so much a geographic locale, such as Beijing. It was political promise in the form of institutions of a certain character. In particular, the state was secular and "popular." It was somehow to be controlled by its citizens. One indication of the effort by citizen-reformers to identify with such a state was the changing administrative designation assigned to the newly established local schools, from pre-1911 through the mid-1910s. By the early 1910s, as the number of local schools began to grow, the designation "official" (guanli) fell into disuse even for provincial schools. For local schools, "citizen" schools (guomin xuexiao) or the more common "public" schools (gongli xuexiao) were the titles of choice, significantly outnumbering private schools (silt xuexiao), although a considerable number of institutions in both these categories were in fact privately funded and managed. 65 "Public schools" were supposed to acquire their official status with the approval of local officials or assemblies. Beyond the potential access to public funds, the titles were clearly of enormous psychological importance; all newly founded schools sought to secure them. There was a similar importance in presenting one's pedagogy in terms of "guoxue" (national studies) rather than "yingxue" (enlightened studies), which were associated with Confucian learning. This was a name game. It did not affect the contents of the schooling; it affected the public status of the educator. The vocabulary quickly spilled over from schools to the charity works that were traditionally the purview of the local gentry. In the early years of the republic, the infrastructure which emerged out of foundling homes, paupers' schools, and the like came to be designated guomin or go«g-controlled—which had a negligible influence on local welfare but a significant impact on the visible imagery of the public in local society. In a move loaded with political importance, Guomindang loyalists would change these terms, variously using "popular" (tongsu) or "mass" (qunzhong) to describe the institutions. For the Guomindang, this ostensible rectification of names shifted attention away from a local public toward unrefined masses in need of political tutelage.

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Sensitivity to political vocabulary did not ensure similar sensitivity to problems and challenges in local society, however. Instead, from early in the republican period, on any given issue, the PEA's Jiaoyu yanjiu might have a collection of articles on such topics as "Research on the Use of Colored Pencils in Primary Schools," "The Washington Monument," "Research on the Methods of Teaching Science in American Primary Schools," or "Various Factions in German Educational Circles."66 jiaoyu yanjiu's tone was replicated in similar journals which flourished within westernized educational circles. Zhonghua xuesheng jie (The Chinese Students' World), for example, published in Shanghai in the mid-1910s, included articles such as "Chemistry and War," "Doubts Regarding the Cessation of the Earth's Rotation," and "Large Vessels on the High Seas."67 The authors of these journals were fascinated with foreign "isms"— utilitarianism, experimentalism, emotionalism, implementationalism.68 In the famous debate between the liberals and their radical counterparts, Hu Shi condemned isms for their excessive commitment to dogma. In the early 1910s, the fascination with isms seems to have had a rather different significance. Ostensibly out of touch with hardcore Chinese reality, the journals of Jiangsu's provincial educational elite did reflect at least part of that reality. The focus on things western was a dogged effort to define new terms of cultural legitimacy. The obsession with things western indicated how uncertain that legitimacy was. The authors of these articles sought to secure a place in an international community of educators, a community less uncertain than that of Chinese educators. Without conducting local surveys of their own, Chinese writers identified with western organizations which conducted rural surveys. When they painstakingly noted, for example, the local work of the Oxford University National Educational Association, or the Presbyterian Council's Department of Church and Country Life, PEA authors were doing more than approving these rural surveys: they were seeking to identify their international allies and define their own cultural identity in the process.69 At the same time, when addressing China itself these leading educators were remarkably stagnant in their lines of inquiry. While none of the leading essays in Jiaoyu Yanjiu addressed the challenges and limitations of education in Jiangsu in concrete practice, article after article in this and other leading educational journals in the 1910s repeated the vocabulary and logic of Zhang Zhidong's Exhortation to Learning (1898). In 1915, for example, Jiangsu PEA luminary Shen Enfu wrote a lengthy

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article entitled "Cultivating Students," which was a near-perfect paraphrase of Zhang Zhidong. Education, Shen intoned, was for the purpose of strengthening the Chinese nation. A civilization with early and great accomplishments, China had failed to recognize that the laws of evolution ensured that other nation-states would advance as well. As a result, China must learn to compete, drawing on the skills of technically more advanced nations. 70 The problem with an article of this sort was not its logic, but the absence of any effort to evaluate China's progress over the decade and a half since Zhang Zhidong had argued along identical lines. When addressing the West, in other words, the terms of discourse were curious and inquiring; when addressing China itself—especially circumstances and needs in local society—they were not. This indifference toward local society was directly reflected in the passive way in which the PEA contributed to expanding the authority of the provincial government. Until 1927, there were few significant instances in which provincial authority, directly or through the venue of the PEA, was put into effect in the counties against the will of local educators. As we shall see, until the mid-1910s there were few instances in which the effort was even made. At the same time local society, at least as represented by educational circles, found it prudent to maintain the semblance of operation within the framework of a larger, legitimate government: local educators, that is, accepted the legitimacy although not the coercive power of the provincial government. Both province and locality supported this understanding. They did so primarily through the steady flow of official communiqués—reports, complaints, requests— which filled volumes of government gazettes, journals, and school reports. The filing of these reports was largely symbolic: repeated provinciallevel efforts to remove local officials, determine curriculum, and evaluate teachers in local schools went unheeded; similarly, petitions from local education offices, teachers, students, and concerned citizens, which generally took the form of requests for dispute resolution, brought little direct intervention from provincial authorities. The volumes of paperwork were politically important, nonetheless. The symbolic linkage between provincial and local levels, acknowledged on both sides by the filing of these reports, created the appearance of an overall political system which assured political legitimacy for both sides. Given the uncertain terms under which the republic came to Jiangsu, confirmation of such legitimacy was unequivocally important. Overall, such legitimacy rested on a kind of governance by symbolic

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association. Within local society itself, however, educational circles were capable of far more quarrelsome political activities. For the first two decades of the republic, their own internal struggles occupied much of their energies. At the same time, twice during this period, the province attempted to intervene directly in local management. Twice its efforts failed.

5. Schools, Politics, and the State: 1911-1927

As INSTITUTIONS OF PEDAGOGY, northern Jiangsu's local schools left a good deal to be desired. As political markers, they were more revealing. In the historical literature on republican China, schools commonly appear as objects of protest—institutions which to the peasantry in particular represented material and ideological violations of accepted patterns of power and authority. They are revealing in other ways, however, notably with regard to political dynamics within local society. Locally, schools became instruments in elite strategies to assert control over social and material wealth. They were fought over as resources in their own right—in battles over the establishment of schools or in their administrative control. They figured in tax collection strategies and in local investment schemes. When successive central governments tested their authority through efforts at regulatory control over the schools, schools became gauges of the relative distribution of power between center and locality in the larger arena of Chinese politics. Although the Guomindang government has emerged notorious in the secondary literature for its failure to integrate local and national politics, this failure built upon a cumulative test of wills between local society and the Guomindang's political predecessors.1

Political Violence and the Schools The schools have figured in literature on the early twentieth century most commonly in the context of the violence they engendered.2 Any assessment of such disorder should be set against a background of endemic unrest in the late Qing and early republic. Common robbery, salt smuggling, and the like are by far the most frequently reported inci118

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dents of unrest throughout the last three decades of the Qing, for example. 3 A recent study of banditry during the republic argues that the political culture of the bandit effectively became that of the republic as a whole. 4 Whether or not such a sweeping generalization holds true, endemic violence undoubtedly conditioned more politically conscious acts. Although the dynamics of the interaction have yet to be studied in detail, a particularly dramatic instance of this phenomenon occurred in the fall of 1928 in Yancheng county. When an infamous massacre occurred there, during which disgruntled local power brokers counterattacked Guomindang efforts to turn the city temple into a people's recreation center, the violence was conditioned by long-running, widespread, secret society activity, notably that of the Big Sword Society, across numerous northern Jiangsu counties. 5 Habits of "traditional" unrest, in other words, informed more contemporary political protest. Beyond feeding off of endemic unrest, the schools engendered unrest of their own. The New Policy reforms in particular elicited hostility from peasant communities, for whom new schools, police stations, and government offices were financially ravenous symbols of elite political power and frequent targets of popular attack. This local violence in the waning years of the Qing has engendered a lively interpretive debate. A common line of argument understands hostility toward institutions such as schools from the peasant's perspective—cast in largely fiscal terms. Attacks on the schools, and similar symbols of modernity, are accordingly associated with the increased tax burdens which accompanied the New Policy reforms. 6 In Jiangsu, late-Qing indemnities and reform levies measurably increased the tax burden, which was effectively passed on to the peasant poor. 7 At the same time, although food riots were common in the late Qing, overall economic conditions did not uniformly deteriorate for Jiangsu's peasant producers in the last decade of the dynasty. Moreover, increasing rice prices and new tax burdens were also felt heavily by local urban dwellers, consumers rather than producers, who lived in market towns and local cities. 8 This emphasis shifts attention, especially with regard to leadership in political violence, from rural communities to more elite strata of local society and opens the door to understanding local violence not in strict financial terms, but rather in terms of perceived violations of the established social contract. Seen in this light, the symbols and agents of political change, from modern schools and police offices to changing market mechanisms, threatened accepted social norms. When wealthy rice merchants in Yangzhou city were attacked in 1906, for example, the confiscated rice

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was thrown in the river rather than eaten: the rioters were attacking the broken contract signified by excessively high rice prices. In 1909, rioters assaulted a brick-maker in the far northern county seat of Suqian who refused to pay a traditional bribe to local officials. The brick-maker had apparently counted on his customers, foreigners and reform-minded merchants, to protect him from the traditional squeeze, which his assailants considered their rightful due. 9 Thus modern schools may have been costly; but equally important was their threat to the legitimacy of traditional cultural institutions. This dynamic held throughout the republican period. The 1928 Yancheng Massacre indicates that in the area of local religion, at least, peasants believed that modern elites—party activists and their educated nonparty allies—broke established covenants by converting local religious institutions into modern educational institutes. 10 Finally, it has been suggested that the New Policy reforms, which included western-style schooling, effectively separated local elites into county-seat-based "commercial" or reformist elites, on the one hand, and more broadly defined "agrarian" or rural elites, on the other: commercial elites were more inclined to ally themselves with the central government, whereas local or subcounty elites resisted such alliances. 11 While peasant participation in rural protest was spurred by the growth of tax farming and the escalation of local levies, sub county elites—landowning cultivators, township and village heads, small merchants, and the like, who were instrumental in organizing rural protest—railed not against the absolute measure of the tax burden but against the relative arrogation of tax-levying privileges to county elites and the proliferation of tax farmers who served them. 12 Strictly malevolent interpretations, however, may undervalue the political importance of school communities in their own right. To assess that importance, it is useful to look beyond schools as hostile institutional intrusions into peasant communities—not for the purpose of rescuing the reputation of often hopelessly inadequate schooling but to provide vantage points from which to evaluate local elite politics. Beyond the predations of bandits and tax collectors, this approach invites investigation of the local elite project to define postimperial political relationships and cultural values. Understanding local politics in this light also questions stark distinctions between reformist county seats and conservative local towns. Resources and the accumulation of authority associated with the local schools emerge as more evenly distributed than such dichotomies would suggest. This is true vertically in the move from

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county seat into more local municipalities and true geographically in the move from the southern core northward. School politics, quite distinct from the politics of force dispensed by the likes of warlords and bandits, were prominent in local society in the Yanfu as well as Suzhong counties, although Yanfu's counties were removed from the province's political core by considerable distances. This does not decisively refute the cumulative weight of descriptions of local society outside the Yangzi corridor as conservative and violenceinfested, but it does complicate that image. Interspersed with brigands and local strongmen were political communities of reformers and aspiring managers active in the postimperial redistribution of authority. Local schools emerged as contested objects in this project. With schools as the object of their confrontations, established power holders fought with upstart contenders for elite status; local municipalities contended against the county seats' claims to political preeminence; officials within county governments themselves contended with each other. From the early years of the republic, local political entrepreneurs fought over the right to found new schools. There was contention as well over the staff positions in schools and local management committees and over material resources available through the schools. The number of individuals and groups active in these disputes proliferated through the 1910s and 1920s. Local Politics in the Early Republic In the early years of the republic, this contention often assumed the form of suits submitted to local magistrates. Such suits without exception were instruments of protest exercised by those threatened by the potential recrafting of local elite status under the republic. They did not ensure their authors direct accumulation of power; instead they constituted a strategy for attempting to curb the power of others. These contests commenced almost immediately with the founding of local western-style schools. In 1912, for example, the Yancheng county magistrate reported an epidemic of lawsuits over the founding of western-style primary schools. The founding of every new school, he complained, brought a new lawsuit. 13 The magistrate called attention to a particularly striking suit which pitted local "notables" (renshi) against "educational circles" (jiaoyu jie)—a distinction which underscored the relative disjuncture, at that time, between traditional elites and those whose social presence was determined in relation to the new reform

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institutions. The suit brought by the notables objected to the opening of the Qixin primary school, located in Yancheng city, and noted that the school was founded by graduates of two western-style schools outside the county: the Jiangbei normal school and an unidentified middle school maintained by the neighboring Huai'an county government, presumably Provincial Middle School No. 9. The magistrate does not tell us how the notables justified their arguments. The objects of the protest, however, the founders of the Qixin school, were identified as "local educational circles." Thus it would appear that more tradition-minded literati resented these outsiders who were assuming authority over such obviously prestigious local institutions as schools and, more important, who represented a new professional-style elite, its identity defined by association with those schools. 14 Ironically, the protests of local notables were joined by those of magistrates themselves, targeting prominent individuals who successfully manipulated school resources in defiance of government authority. In 1912, for example, a suit developed when the Ming Da primary school, originally located in Funing city, was forcibly moved to a township in eastern Funing by a local citizen identified in a report from the provincial governor's office as Gu Enpu. 1 5 It is not clear exactly what Mr. Gu moved, as it is unlikely that the original Funing city students moved with the school into the county's impoverished eastern scrubland. What "moved" was an institutional symbol and, in all likelihood, access to revenue. Gu and fellow educational entrepreneur Xu Gancheng lay claim to income from a portion of the county's 5 8 , 0 0 0 mou of endowed school lands, a claim bolstered by the school's original designation as a countylevel public school. 16 Financial resources were not the only issue, however. Gu underscored his claim to the social authority implicit in school management by establishing a local education association in his township. This association may or may not have cooperated with others in the county, but its origins clearly were independent of any county-managed bureaucracy. This determined local independence openly angered the Provincial Education Association, which cooperated with Funing county-seat residents Xu Fengbao and Long Tong in suing Gu. In bringing suit against Gu and his colleagues, Xu and Long explicitly pitted the county seat against local municipalities in a battle over revenue. The governor's office, relying on memoranda from the Provincial Education Association, weighed in to excoriate the politicized nature of local education associations, a thinly veiled reference to Gu's new organization, officially charging them with

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undermining the quality of local schooling.17 Since the suit acknowledged the absence of quality schooling even at the county seat, however, the issue in the case of both the plaintiffs and the Provincial Education Association was clearly the distribution of local power, not the quality of local pedagogy. Xu and Long's suit had no immediate impact on the Ming Da school, but by the following year provincial school inspectors had begun a subtle campaign of their own against the school by retroactively altering its official status as reported to provincial authorities. In the spring of 1913, for example, inspectors reporting to the Provincial Education Association uncomfortably acknowledged that the Ming Da school retained county-level status although it was not located in the county seat—a phenomenon unheard of in Funing at the time. But the reports also argued that the school had initially been a private, not a public, school. While this assertion was patently at odds with the records of the 1912 lawsuit, it marked the beginnings of an effort to devalue the school's claim to public revenue. The 1913 inspectors' reports echoed the civil suit of the previous year in demanding that the school be closed.18 While the provincial inspectors' concerns focused on the unmanageable dispersal of local power, various litigants in the Ming Da case highlighted the variety of claimants to the power that schools and school revenue called forth. Nothing in the 1912 civil suit indicates that either Gu Enpu and his colleagues, or their county-seat challengers, were degree-holders. There is no evidence that county-seat residents Xu Fengbao and Long Tong were county education officials or members of the county education association. Finally, while individuals such as Xu and Long may have been prominent in this case, they were not prominent in other school-related ventures. Although Ming Da, like other county schools, had access to county income, none of the litigants, on either side of this case, succeeded in securing actual long-term rental contracts for Funing's extensive and lucrative school-endowed agricultural properties, for example. 19 As local power accumulated in the hands of successful political entrepreneurs in the decade following the revolution, petitions against the founding of new schools declined. A growing community of petitioners now focused on the phenomenon of double employment—a charge leveled against school managers, principals, and teachers who simultaneously held other management positions or seats in local assemblies. This was not a new phenomenon in the politics of local management in

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China. In the context of postimperial schooling, the complaints about double employment were telling for a number of reasons. They underscored the degree to which some had succeeded where others had failed at manipulating resources symbolized by the unruly world of posttraditional local schooling. That the petitions were addressed to county and provincial authorities also underscored the degree to which the petitioners continued to believe that association with the authority of formally constituted government offices served their interests. Paradoxically, petitions also underscored the relative powerless of those offices, as shown in government responses to complaints over double employment. In 1917, noting numerous complaints from local citizens about educators holding more than one job, the provincial governor's office publicized a proclamation from the national Ministry of Education which enjoined school principals and middle school teachers, the elite of the local formal schools, from having second occupations. 20 The ruling had no effect then or in the remaining pre-Guomindang years. In 1926, for example, an investigation from Rugao county queried the province about primary school principals who simultaneously held political posts as local assembly members. Significantly, this investigation, which was apparently instigated by the magistrate, focused on double office holding in local municipalities, not the county seat. The object of this particular case was a primary school principal by the name of Sun Ying, found to be simultaneously serving on the municipal council of Lugang municipality. Despite the 1917 ruling, the enfeebled provincial Office of Education responded with no specific regulation against double office holding. The province lamely suggested that double employment inhibited the development of local education and thus should be discouraged on pedagogical grounds. 21 Abruptly, a month later, another provincial communication abandoned any efforts at intellectual suasion and summarily ordered all primary school principals who were also municipal assembly members to give up one of their posts. 22 Then, by the end of the year, provincial authorities reversed themselves again. In November, Zhang Yilin, an otherwise undistinguished private citizen from Yancheng, petitioned the governor's office complaining about local educators who simultaneously held other political positions—specifically, in this case, positions on the county Office of Education's management committee. Zhang was clearly confident enough of himself to petition the governor's office directly. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Zhang expected someone like himself to benefit when he argued that an open political system was preferable to

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one monopolized by private interests and that the number of officials in such a system should be increased.23 The province agreed, but its response to Zhang's petition was subtly self-deprecating. The provincial governor's office argued that the local assemblies created by the lateQing reforms, while technically legitimate, were still juridically temporary in nature; in the absence of definitive regulations governing the assemblies, the province could not rule directly on the activities of assembly members. Republican government, in other words, in the eyes of the province's own officeholders, had yet to assume its final, legitimate form. The provincial response to Zhang's complaint lamented the present situation not because it violated the law—there was no law to violate—but rather because it created civil discord.24 The Widening Circle of Local Contention In Zhang Yilin's case, provincial authorities were reduced to acknowledging their relative lack of political influence. Wherever possible, they avoided such outright admissions. A flurry of correspondence, for example, concerning poorly registered school lands, bounced back and forth between the provincial capital and Chongming county, which in the mid-1910s had acquired administrative autonomy from the Suzhong county of Qidong on the Yangzi's north bank. Active correspondents in this case included a township education association, the county magistrate's office, the head of the Education Properties Management Office, the Provincial Education Association, the provincial governor's office, and representatives from educational circles in several northern counties. Having collected a sizable stack of paper concerning the hopelessly poorly registered lands, provincial authorities absolved themselves of any responsibility in the matter by noting that several of the papers filed were missing the appropriate official stamps.25 A provincial sigh of relief over the discovery of this bureaucratic loophole was almost audible. The range of petitioners in the Chongming case indicates that ever more people, offices, associations, and organizations had become involved in posturing and maneuvering over local power in the Suzhong and Yanfu counties. In 1923, for example, the Funing county magistrate's office levied a new grain surcharge purportedly to assist countylevel schools, sending a notice of the new levy to the provincial Office of Education. Simultaneously, the governor's office received a petition charging the magistrate with tax abuse, filed by a private citizen by the name of Long Gueifen. Long's petition complained that the magistrate

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had arbitrarily increased the grain tax for his own personal gain. The Funing county Office of Education then weighed in with a communiqué of its own, supporting the levy, only to find itself accused in yet another petition, sent by the peasants' association of Funing's Dongxingyong municipality.26 Peasants' associations, authorized by the New Policy reforms, were generally dormant organizations, although where they did exist they often provided a means for landowners not directly involved in commerce or education to remain at least on the periphery of the emerging swirl of political activities through the 1910s and 1920s. 2 7 In the Funing case, the Dongxingyong Peasant Association wrote to protest any additional levies. Informed of the Dongxingyong letter, the county magistrate filed another communication of his own, charging irregularities in the levying of subcounty taxes, a communiqué presumably intended to discredit the Dongxingyong landowners. The magistrate concluded his argument by claiming that the petitions from citizen Long and the peasants' association were really for the purpose of discrediting his levies so that the local associations could order new levies of their own. 28 None of this flurry of letters had any noticeable impact on which surcharges were levied in Funing and which were not. The provincial response was little more than an order for an investigation. A petition concerning a local school bulletin in Rugao county also highlighted the degree to which the community of litigants who publicly assumed the right to a political voice grew as the years passed. This particular case also serves to remind us that valued resources associated with local schooling were not measured only by direct control over educational institutions and their revenues. The very vocabulary in which this community expressed itself could become an object in contests over local authority. In early 1920, disgruntled petitioners filed a local complaint because of activist vocabulary in the Rugao normal school's bulletin, New Heart. School journals such as New Heart, which proliferated in the late 1910s, were symbolically important in defining community for school participants and supporters. New Heart, a PEA investigation found, had disturbed conservative complainants because of English-language entries and romanization of Chinese characters. This was, the magazine's accusers had charged, evidence of excessive activism (guoji zhuyi.)29 The investigation also made clear that conservatives were disturbed by an internationalization of intellectual inquiry, in the wake of the Russian Revolution abroad and May Fourth movement at home, which challenged traditional cultural authority.

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While the Provincial Education Association cleared the magazine of wrongdoing, sensitivity about the appeal of the Russian Revolution to China's youth cut to the heart of the provincial investigation, which went out of its way to stress that English and English transliteration were not proof of bolshevism. The PEA did not leave New Heart entirely untethered, however; it suggested that in the future the editors submit the journal to the provincial Office of Education for review. New Heart's relative exoneration may have come about because of a coalition of petitioners who sent copies of the magazine to the PEA in an effort to ward off their accusers. Included in the coalition, along with leading individuals in school circles, were the countywide Rugao students' association, the school employees' association, and the Rugao educational travel association. 30 The consternation over New Heart's choice of linguistic style was not the only evidence of the influence, outside the political hotbed of southern Jiangsu, of new cultural currents in the wake of the May Fourth period. In 1922, the Yancheng Teachers' Education Lecture Center's vernacular Chinese courses, for instance, used as their basic text Cai Yuanpei's lecture in honor of John Dewey's birthday. 31 In the Yancheng case, the use of Cai's speech was considered noteworthy by a school inspector but elicited no known opposition in Yancheng itself. Two ostensibly contradictory phenomena run throughout the political petitions and legal suits of the late 1910s and early 1920s. In many cases, these activities were strikingly personal in nature. Often they were addressed by individuals who were not, in any obvious way, exceptionally prestigious nor distinguished by degree-holding or political office but who believed in their personal right to be heard. At the same time, their petitions conferred legitimacy on the impersonal formal offices of the provincial government, despite its relative lack of power. When Yancheng's Zhang Yilin, for example, petitioned the governor's office to complain that members of local educational management committees were simultaneously serving on municipal management committees, colleagues led by a Cheng Tongfan, not demonstrably prominent in Yancheng schooling, traveled to Nanjing to deliver petitions in person in support of Zhang. 32 Direct petitions to Nanjing are indicative of the degree to which aggressive local activists might attempt to override political authority at the county level. In some cases, such as that of the Zhongshan middle school in Yancheng city, the tactic assumed dramatic proportions. In 1926, military troops occupied the school and issued orders for the students and teachers to relocate their academic activities

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elsewhere. During winter vacation, a hundred students from the school demonstrated publicly against the troops. In the meantime, while the principal, Xia Xingyuan, offered to locate a new school in his home, he and other school managers turned to Nanjing to petition for the troops to be removed from the school's buildings. Frustrated in these efforts, the school managers decided to move the school, complete with faculty and staff, not to an alternative site in Yancheng but to Nanjing itself to reinforce their appeal to provincial authorities. This decision must have provoked some measure of pride within the county, as the exodus was paid for by contributions from prominent families and educational circles throughout Yancheng county. Infuriated military commanders in Yancheng, on the other hand, who considered the move an affront to their self-proclaimed authority, called on Nanjing to investigate whether the school had the right to move without the explicit approval of local authorities. 3 3 As in many cases of this type, we do not know the outcome beyond the school's relocation to Nanjing. What is instructive here is the relative silence of county authorities, other than the military, and the direct appeals by both the military and the school's managers to Nanjing itself. Thus a wide range of players assumed that they were politically licensed to determine the exercise of local power. From the magistrate himself, who often was at best first among equals, to New Policy-sanctioned public associations to private citizens, the self-defined community of political participants was extensive and combative. Yet if personal initiative was seminal to such activities, what is equally striking about this profusion of suits and petitions is that it happened at all. Through much of the 1910s and 1920s, Jiangsu had governments at the county and provincial levels which lacked the power to resolve local disputes. Yet lawsuits, petitions, and personal appeals effectively projected the assumption of authority onto these offices anyway. Throughout the republic, political contestants accepted the principle of such authority beyond the confines of local society, associating local correspondents with the offices and officials of the central state.

School Politics and the Local Economy The schools grew steadily in number through the pre-Guomindang period. The political voices associated with them grew, as well, both in confrontational political disputes and in symbolic association with the state. In their own local settings, educational circles were not self-con-

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tained entities, however. Their aspirations and activities overlapped with other local interests, notably those of commercial circles. Local taxation and to a lesser extent investment strategies also found schools prominent as means through which activists lay claim to status and material wealth. As a result, there emerged an appreciable interaction between self-perceived "educational circles" and highly organized local merchant communities. The connections were logical but often competitive. Both schooling and commerce had inadvertently been pushed toward postimperial standards by the late-Qing reforms. Both sustained activities which connected them with counterparts beyond county boundaries. Activists in both competed for similar local resources. Local merchant communities under the republic experienced a proliferation of associations similar to that which developed within local educational circles. In the field of commerce, the institutional equivalent of the education associations were chambers of commerce (shanghui), which the imperial court had intended to use to replace a variety of existing commercial associations with a single, nationally controlled hierarchy of organizations. 34 If independent local chambers of commerce in counties such as Yancheng and Tai are any indication, like many of the court's reform plans this one proved less than amenable to central management. In addition to their resistance to a tidy, centrally managed hierarchy, the shanghui joined an assortment of commercial organizations politically active during the early republic. Traditional business guilds, for example, grew in number and became politically invigorated by the waning decades of the Qing. 35 Gongsuo, Qing-period professional guilds which had their post-Taiping revival in the growing specialization and politicization of modern industry, also grew rapidly in number. 36 In Jiangsu, they ranged in size from the true giants, such as Wuxi county's silk gongsuo, to a tiny lumber gongsuo in Rugao. 3 7 By the late 1910s, various commercial firms and offices had begun to form assemblies, yegonghui, representing their constituencies in local municipalities over such matters as taxation, defense, industry, and schooling. More than a thousand yegonghui were locally operative in Jiangsu well into the 1930s. 38 In this highly organized arena, activists cooperated and competed over a variety of material resources, first and foremost over tax revenues. Taxes have become a symbol of the republic's dereliction, misdirected reforms, and heavily overstaffed government offices that consumed public funds on salaries rather than services, expensive, self-appointed sym-

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bols of modernity which alienated local communities. 39 Recent research on North China has argued that the result of these developments was to dissociate the accountability of the central state from local politics, as increasing surcharges and commercial taxes also increased a largely unofficial army of rapacious tax collectors. 40 One study refers to the growing number of people intervening in the tax process as "state brokers" who were more mobile than traditional tax brokers, less loyal to local society, simultaneously less susceptible to restraint by local custom, and less liable to supervision by the central state. 41 Jiangsu's experience constitutes no exception to the argument that the management of local finances eluded effective state control. At the same time, in the context of educational politics, the dynamics of local tax collection signified more than unadulterated financial abuse. Like the petitions and lawsuits which contested control of schools, specific patterns in the collection of taxes, especially by local municipalities and townships, indicated that municipal managers consciously arrogated the functions of the central state in an effort to secure legitimate control over the public sphere, ensured by providing essential services in the fields of schooling, commerce, and defense. This is best understood by shifting our focus from the absolute size of the tax burden to the dynamics of taxation—especially the relative balance between central and local tax authority—and the allocation of tax revenues within local society itself. As is true of tax figures throughout the republic, the absolute amount of revenue available to Jiangsu province, especially in the pre-1927 period, is the subject of some dispute, although there is little doubt that the tax burden grew. Guomindang-period scholars reported different figures for provincial income during the pre-Guomindang years, and they reached no agreement as to what portion of the land revenue, the traditional cornerstone for tax money, left the province and what portion remained behind. 42 Through the 1910s, most of it seems to have been claimed by the national government, although the province steadily encroached on the land tax, which officially reverted to its control entirely in 1927. 4 3 Throughout this period, the province depended heavily on the land tax surcharges. That income fluctuated through the 1910s but generally declined from 1915 to 1923. 4 4 On the other hand, Jiangsu's land tax and surcharges nearly doubled between 1915 and 193 3. 4 5 The comparison underscores the growth of the tax burden after the mid-1920s, as well as the relative weakness of central taxation through the 1910s, a period when the growth in local schools indicates particular municipal vitality.

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Of interest for our purposes is the relative balance of financial power between the province and local society. In the context of the land tax, there were shared interests between province and county governments. It was in the county's interest to collect provincially designated taxes, as the county was allowed to retain a measure of that money for its own use. While the base tax was owed to the province, both the province and the county levied a surcharge on it. In line with taxation patterns throughout the country, surcharges vastly exceeded the absolute amount of the base tax. Suzhong's Haimen county, a north-bank cotton producer, had a land tax surcharge as high as twenty-six times that of the base tax. 4 6 Early Guomindang-period estimates indicate that by that time in none of Jiangsu's counties was the county surtax lower than that of the province. 47 In Rugao, for example, seven out of seventeen surtaxes on the base land tax were shared between the province and the county in 1931; ten were for county use alone. In each of the seven shared surcharges, county figures equaled or surpassed those of the province. 48 If the land tax represented something of a shared claim between province and county, commercial levies and income from public properties generally did not. The formal abolition of late-Qing self-government regulations, in particular, wrecked havoc on local finances by undermining the 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 0 9 regulations for the monitoring and distribution of such funds. 49 In Jiangsu, the result was weakened central control over local finances. Provincial authority after 1911 was weak to begin with; with the abolition of self-government, the province spent more than a decade fighting a rearguard action to reassert its fiscal authority. Furthermore, after 1914, county governments found themselves vying not only with the province but also with municipality and township managers over control of local revenues. Such contests highlighted overlap in the revenue strategies of local managers who associated with commercial and educational circles; their cumulative activities provoked a considerable degree of provincial ire.

Schools, Commerce, and Local Tax Collection While absolute tax figures are impossible to calculate, it is clear that in the wake of the 1911 Revolution, provincial authorities were no longer the undisputed masters of Jiangsu's revenues. In Rugao in 1915, for example, a year for which we have official statistics as recorded with the province, 42 percent of the county's reported income went to provincial

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treasuries; 58 percent remained within the county. Of this, 12 percent was officially designated for subcounty treasuries.50 These figures understate county and subcounty revenue. In 1915, they list lijin revenues, local commercial taxes, of only 260 yuan, for example. By contrast, elsewhere lijin records for Rugao for 1916 report an income, to the county's central lijin office, of 4,960 yuan.51 Furthermore, the Rugao figures were those in the official budget; the portion of county funds which did not reach provincial repositories was undoubtedly higher, as counties were widely known to keep funds earmarked for provincial treasuries unrecorded for their own use. A complaint was filed against Yancheng county in 1919, for example, after it was found that the county was keeping the hydraulics surcharge on the land tax (some 500 yuan a year). The tax was technically designated for the province, but by 1919 Yancheng had used it to accumulate nearly 5,000 yuan in its own coffers.52 The absence of reporting on commercial levies in particular helps explain anomalies in tax reports well into the Guomindang years. Consistently, for the counties for which figures are available, the land tax and surcharge figures indicate that more revenue should have gone to the province than remained in the county.53 Nevertheless, in 1931, one estimate suggests that on average Jiangsu's sixty-one counties kept at least 53 percent of their revenues.54 Other estimates put the percentage of revenue retained within the county at even higher figures. Jurong, not a county central to this study, is one of the few of Jiangsu's counties for which the relative distribution of total county and provincial revenues can be calculated for the early Guomindang period. In 1931, about 70 percent of Jurong's tax revenues stayed within the county.55 Tax collection procedures themselves increasingly reflected local managers' claims to public revenues. The emergence of local municipalities as tax collection agents is striking here. Throughout the pre-Guomindang period, managers of municipalities and townships widely levied taxes and surcharges specified for local use. With few exceptions, these were levied in commercially active local municipalities and were commercial levies, not surcharges on the land tax. This made both financial and political sense. Commercial levies were feasible and lucrative. Moreover, they were easier to keep out of the hands of county authorities than surcharges on the land tax, which generated revenues shared with the county and province. Presumably for that reason, after 1911 they were commonly associated with local public works, including schooling and commercial investment.

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By the end of the 1910s, activists associated with the growing arena of local schooling began to maneuver to collect school-related taxes themselves. In one common arrangement, representatives of the county office of education's management committee went to tax stations every five to ten days during collection periods, bringing funds directly to the office of education. 56 In 1922, provincial governor Han Guojun effectively recognized the extent of fiscal authority local educators had acquired by drafting a series of five alternative plans for the collection of land-taxgenerated local educational levies. All bypassed the magistrate's office, relying instead on representatives from the county property management offices and the school exhortation bureaus to monitor and distribute funds. A 1926 survey of tax collection procedures, in line with Han's recommendations, procured information from two dozen of the province's counties. Two, Rugao and Nantong, were Suzhong counties. In Rugao, property management and school officials opted to directly collect and distribute school revenues; managers in Nantong selected a somewhat less direct route, choosing instead to routinely monitor the records of magistrate-appointed tax collectors. 57 If schoolteacher tax collectors were something of a novelty, merchant tax collectors were not. By the republican period, the collection of commercial taxes designated for both provincial and county use progressively devolved to the subprovincial merchant community. 58 While the lijin initially prompted merchant protest, by the early twentieth century commercial interests began to assert themselves aggressively into local tax collection procedures, a process which included the organization of special merchant-managed tax offices. 59 At the subcounty level, lijin collections in particular appear to have been prominent in the early funding of "modernization" projects, notably schools. By 1913, for example, transport surcharges and the salt lijin were commonly collected by local commercial authorities and allocated directly for the support of subcounty schools. 60 The local allocation of tax revenues in this regard indicated a new and increasingly dense linkage between commercial interests and local schooling. Particularly complete records of local commercial levies for Suzhong's Tai county provide some insight into this situation. In 1917, in Tai county, municipal managers and local merchants in over half a dozen prominent municipalities, including Jiangyan, Sigangkou, Qutan, Baimi, and Hai'an, collected dozens of commercial levies specified solely for local use. In line with patterns established elsewhere, although the taxes were numerous, no single levy was particularly large. Converted into sil-

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ver dollars, Tai county's municipal-level commercial levies listed in the 1917 report averaged 25 yuan per line item. 61 Without significant exception, these levies were designated for use by one or more of five areas of public activity: municipal schools, police, the upkeep of public infrastructure, charitable institutions, and commerce. Baimi municipality collected a levy on local water transport, for example, which amounted to some 900 yuan in 1916. The funds, collected by the municipal public works office, were allocated to education and local defense. Both Jiangyan and Hai'an's municipal public works offices levied a surcharge on cotton cloth—72 and 163 yuan respectively for 1915—which was also divided between schooling and local defense. Jiangyan levied a charge on grain-carrying boats, which brought the city 40 yuan in 1915. This levy too was divided between municipal education and police.62 That local taxes were not given over to general revenues is significant: public managers apparently felt more secure in their relationship to specific arenas of activity than they did as representatives of local government in any generic sense. Their sense of legitimacy was defined by those activities; it was not yet embedded in formal government structures. This lack of institutionalization sheds light on two related phenomena common to local financing in the pre-1927 period: each arena of activity was commonly funded from multiple sources, and, once collected, funds for each project were often managed and stored in different facilities. In one of the more extreme cases, local school managers secured funding from over three dozen different local levies. Police, public charity works, and local industrial projects all drew from the same revenues.63 What emerged, in other words, was a conspicuous splintering of the authority determined by access to public management, represented by the likes of schools and local commerce. Each of the collecting agencies involved in this process was at liberty to select its own "treasury," or repository, for the collected taxes. In Suzhong's Haimen county, for example, while numerous small levies earmarked for education were managed by the general property management office, education's share of the land tax surcharge was managed by the operationally distinct education property management office. Each had its own financial repository.64 The various repositories were a catchall of local pawnshops, native banks, provincial institutions, and, in the metropolises, foreign banks. 65 Since local financial enterprises were often beholden to specific economic enterprises, the fact that they

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were used as treasuries for local tax revenues had the effect of returning public revenues to a largely private banking system, closely integrated with a variety of commercial interests.66 None of this escaped the notice of provincial authorities. Although subcounty lijin and other commercial taxes were frequently small in amount, when provincial authorities began an effort to reassert control over local finances in the late 1910s, they complained in particular about these levies. In southern Jiangsu's Jintan county, for example, a local lumber guild collected an annual 60-yuan levy on the sale of wood, a collection first registered in 1904. Designated for local schooling, the 60-yuan levy was small compared with others in the county. The contract tax surcharge, first levied in 1911, for example, brought in 13,395 yuan in two years of collection from 1911 to 1913. The lumber levy, however, was stipulated for municipal expenditures and was stored at the education property management office; thus neither in collection nor storage did it pass through the magistrate's hands. Provincial inspectors noted this practice with particular disapproval.67 In neighboring Jurong county, a 60-yuan theater tax levied by local township managers was similarly designated for municipal schools and similarly provoked provincial ire. 68 Given the small amounts involved, one cannot escape the conclusion that it was not the money but the managers and the authority implied by their right to collect these levies which caused provincial concern. Schooling and Investment Strategies In addition to funding general schooling, a variety of local commercial interests also financed commercial schools (shangye xuexiao) and an eclectic collection of vocational schools (most commonly zhiye and gongye xuexiao), schools which had their roots in the post-Taiping period. These institutions were encouraged by republican authorities and, importantly, were entitled to public funds.69 Merchant interests were known to take the initiative in such matters, as when an intercounty merchant coalition, representing interests from Tai county to Shanghai, borrowed substantial funds from the late-Qing Tonghai xuetang to found two new schools specializing in banking and commerce. 70 By the same token, however, the access to public funds for commercial schools was not infrequently abused. In Funing county in early 1913, an inspection of the privately established Fenggang Sericul-

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ture Middle School, a school which qualified for public funds, revealed that there was no information available in the school about sericulture and none of the students had graduated from primary school. 71 At the same time, in a fashion which revealed more about the nature of the local political economy than prospects for wide-scale industrialization, by the early years of the republic the managers of local schools had joined private individuals as investors in commercial enterprises from the provincial level to the local. From the early years of the republic, well-endowed schools, such as the provincially controlled Middle School No. 1 in Nanjing, for example, deposited funds in the Lianghuai Salt Administration. Provincial Normal School No. 5, in Yangzhou, deposited some 5,000 yuan with the Shanghai Transportation Bank. 72 More commonly school management committees, especially those of the primary schools, the most local of institutions, invested locally. The sums involved could be considerable. In 1916, for example, local schools throughout the province were invited to support officially designated "public forest lands" and invested nearly 5 0 0 , 0 0 0 yuan there over the next ten years. By the early 1930s, the invested capital was estimated to have increased to over 2 million yuan. 73 These investment strategies did not go uncontested. It was not uncommon for local entrepreneurs to exploit their role in local education for personal gain or to undercut their more successful competitors. In 1913, for example, two aspiring entrepreneurs in Yancheng charged each other with corruption, each laying claim to commercial levies. A certain Xu Hongquan brought suit against Yi Buqi, principal of the Chongshi primary school, charging Yi with using excessive amounts of local commercial levies for his school. Xu bolstered his claim to the revenues by establishing a chamber of commerce in the market town of Gangmen, where the school was located. Although Xu claimed that commercial interests in Gangmen supported his charge against Yi, his chamber of commerce lasted less than a year. In the meantime, Yi countersued, charging that Xu's claim to the commercial levies interfered with local education. 74 Such mutual recriminations, in efforts to control commercial levies pegged to the local schools, could prove embarrassing for all involved. In another Yancheng case, two groups of citizens, whose principal spokesmen were identified as Ji Dezheng and Wu Hongbi, charged each other with the misuse of rental income from school lands, designated for use by the Yuren primary school. When authorities attempted to investigate, they found that although some 300 mou of land was involved, the

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school existed in name only. Peasant cultivators in the vicinity of the school reported that the building was frequently vacant. 75 In the overlay of commercial and local educational activities, individual cases of malfeasance were also common. One enterprising primary school principal in Taixian was found to have usurped a local levy on canvas-topped vehicles, which he was channeling into his own electrified flour mill venture.76 Such cases extended to local officeholders as well. A county magistrate in Yancheng, for example, attempted to commandeer the school properties of a public primary school in Shanggang, with the intention of using the funds to set up a factory. In this case, the county Office of Education, which ostensibly answered to the county magistrate, countered with plans of its own to replace the primary school with a vocational school. The school's managers, predictably, opposed both projects, pitting the school against both the magistrate and his office of education—each, in turn, with conflicting designs on the school and its properties.77 By the late 1910s, then, the growth of local schools, commercial organizations, and tax revenues spoke less of local advances in pedagogy and commerce than of local elite efforts to secure their place in a postimperial political order. By the end of the decade, the area under study had also begun to experience a consolidation of local elite power—reflected in the growing number of complaints about entrenched interests in exhortation bureaus, education associations, and the like, as well as the overlap of authority between political positions and school management.

The Coming of a Central State If the late 1910s were formative for local politicians, these years also witnessed a concerted effort by central political authorities to reassert control over local society. At the provincial level, as we have seen, quasiofficial professional associations, such as the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association, were effectively more prominent than official bureaus in this regard.78 At the same time, such organizations intensified their sense of national identity in the late 1910s, as elite education associations evolved in the shadow of sweeping national movements, from the New Culture movement through the rebirth of national political parties in the early 1920s. While the politics and mentalities of these organizations are beyond the range of a study on local society, the degree to which self-conscious national identity contributed to a weakening of

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their ability to integrate local society into the national polity is of direct interest. Swept by the populous spirit of the period, projects such as those of the Vocational Education Association, the Society for the Advancement of Education, the Society for the Promotion of New Education, and the Society for the Promotion of Commoners' Education, all claimed as their constituency China's commoners: peasants, workers, and the unemployed. 79 Jiangsu's Provincial Education Association was deeply enmeshed in these efforts, reporting them in its journal and displaying its personnel prominently at their local public functions. The result was a proliferation of the organizational identity of the provincial educational elite. When the Vocational Education Association was established in 1917, for example, its leadership overlapped significantly with the PEA. In 1924, the Vocational Education Association established a provincial branch in Jiangsu, which set up four subsidiary organizations and developed cooperative projects with five additional schools and research associations, all affiliated directly or through overlapping membership with the PEA. Indirectly, by their own count, provincial educators were affiliated with 102 organizations associated with the Vocational Education Association by 1 9 2 6 . 8 0 Rather than providing vocational and agricultural skills, however, "commoner education" tended to serve a relatively elite clientele. On the eve of the Northern Expedition, over half of the Vocational Education Association's schools were agricultural schools, for example, but 78 percent of these were urban-based. 81 The most publicized elite effort to reach out into the countryside, James Yen's Mass Education movement, included in its methods of operation public lectures given in major urban centers, a strategy designed to attract powerful supporters. 82 In 1925, the Nanjing committee, for example, was headed by the former viceminister of education, Yuan Jidao, with financial contributions from leading military figures. When Yen held "graduation exercises" for those who attended public lectures in Nanjing, he recruited the provincial governor to pass out diplomas. 83 The pronounced urban focus of such projects continued well into the 1930s. There were a dozen or more provincially managed mass education projects in Jiangsu by the early 1930s, all in the vicinity of major urban centers, all south of the Yangzi. 84 What is most telling with regard to these pedagogical efforts is what did not happen. The extensive journal literature left by these elite associations contained few accounts of efforts to coordinate the elite project to educate the masses with the extensive network of local schools and educa-

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tion associations in place throughout Jiangsu. 85 The national elite, defined by its associations and journals, claimed the obligation to rescue China's illiterate millions, but it had little interest in cooperating with the resources—and, one presumes, legitimacy—of local educational elites. This indifference to local elite society helps explain the particular manner in which the provincial government attempted to reassert control in Jiangsu in the late 1910s. The Provincial Education Association, which might have worked through its social counterparts at the local level to encourage an identity of interests, made no detectable effort to do this. As a result, when the central state attempted to revitalize its local commission it came as a coercive, regulatory body: an administrative antagonist concerned with control, not cooperation. This development was first discernible in a series of pointed complaints from provincial authorities about lack of accountability over local educational organizations in the mid-1910s. 86 At the same time, the provincial government began openly expressing distress over the financial independence of local educational circles in the form of a phenomenon we have seen well exercised by this time: levies issued locally which remained within local municipalities and townships. The province's financial concerns did not address absolute amounts of funds spent by local school managers. They complained instead about funds being used for "unauthorized" purposes—funds which were being collected and dispersed locally, without first passing through the magistrate's office. 87 The provincial concern for the authority of the magistrate's office similarly resonated with other local developments: the province charged, for example, that since the early years of the republic, positions within county-level educational organizations, even countygovernment educational staff, had been monopolized by local people, weakening magisterial authority. 88 As we have seen, such charges could be well founded. In some cases, the concerns reached extreme proportions. When the newly appointed county magistrate arrived in Funing in 1918, for example, the magistrate's yamen had been empty for fourteen months, a vacancy caused by local resistance to proposed provincial appointments. 89 As provincial complaints grew, the government began a campaign to reclaim its local authority. Its efforts took the form of a blizzard of regulations, issued from the center, as if local society were a passive object to be manipulated from above. One of the earliest efforts to assert control came in 1916 when the governor's office issued an order to divide the

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province into six supracounty educational districts, each of which was supposed to be inspected every three months. 90 When the supracounty educational districts were drawn up in 1916, they gave evidence that provincial politicians planned to use redistricting as a form of political management. Most strikingly, the powerful Susongtaicang circuit, in southeastern Jiangsu, was weakened through its division into two distinct educational circuits. Other changes were less dramatic but no less significant. Suzhong counties were largely cut off from contacts south of the river, for example. They were removed from the late-Qing Changzhentonghai circuit, which had straddled the river, and were concentrated instead in the north-bank Fourth Educational District. Such wealthy entrepots as Wuxi and Changzhou were reassigned to districts south of the Yangzi as a result. Farther north, the Yanfu counties were assigned to the Fifth Educational District, which was considerably smaller than its late-Qing counterpart, the Huaiyang circuit. Among the resources removed in the process were the wealth and influence of the Grand Canal city of Yangzhou. 91 The result for the Suzhong and Yanfu counties in particular was to produce more confined, resource-limited districts, districts less capable of administrative autonomy. The use of newly drawn districts spoke of the need to assert control through administrative devices because of the inability to do so through the dynamics of direct political legitimacy. Given their disjuncture from the natural local order, such districts were administrative weapons of choice. Relying on manpower from the Provincial Education Association, the circuits were to be used for propaganda-style lectures, with provincially appointed lecturers to be trained at special province-run training centers. In addition, authorities sought to use the inspection tours to monitor local school finances. 92 This effort to assert provincial control was not restricted to the educational arena. In 1918, provincial commercial-promotion agents (shicha yuan) were appointed to conduct inspection tours which revived the traditional subprovincial circuits; inspection districts for schools and commerce were thus designed not to overlap. The inspectors expressed particular interest in reviving commercial dispute resolution offices (shangshi gongduan chu), which had initially been called into being after the 1911 Revolution. These offices were to have been established in county seats and presumably were called for with an eye to consolidating at the county level the power to mediate between the proliferating associations and organizations within local commercial circles. By 1918,

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the majority of the Suzhong and Yanfu counties inspected did not have these offices. Ironically, one of the few counties which did have a dispute resolution office was the northern county of Funing. Funing's office was located in the county seat, which ranked third in the county in terms of commercial activity. The head of the office in 1918, Fan Chen, was not the head of any of the three prominent chambers of commerce. Laconically, the inspection report on this county noted that few disputes reached Fan Chen's office. 93 The inspectors were also given the mandate to work with county magistrates to promulgate new county-managed commercial development levies. Without exception, in the Suzhong and Yanfu counties, the inspection reports indicate that the magistrates did not have sufficient authority to issue these taxes. Instead, they gathered prominent gentry and merchants to discuss them. None of the reports indicate that these gatherings produced new revenues. 94 Because we know local managers issued levies for activities under their own control, the reluctance here was evidently not to development per se; rather it spoke of resistance to provincial control over such activities. If inspection circuits were a front line of defense, the provincial government pushed on with determination to assert direct control over organizations and individuals associated with the local schools. In 1918, it issued edicts calling for the registration of all local education associations and the downgrading of education promotion bureaus. 95 Then the province sought more direct control over the burgeoning number of local educators by enforcing qualification standards officially on the books of the emaciated national Ministry of Education in Beijing. When it began publicizing the regulations, a spate of county magistrates wrote requesting details, underscoring their interest in provincial support for magisterial authority. 96 Reports indicate that examinations to determine teacher qualification were offered sporadically throughout the province, although provincial complaints also charged that the examinations were not infrequently undermined by local officials guilty of what the province condemned as favoritism and corruption. 97 Not surprisingly, there were no similar requests from the schools themselves. On the few occasions when an education association expressed interest in the official qualification standards, the circumstances of the requests could be revealing. In 1922, for example, when the Yancheng county education association wrote to the province regarding qualification regulations, it was interested in one set of regulations— those governing higher-primary school principals. In 1922, out of some 330 primary schools in Yancheng, under three dozen were higher-pri-

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mary schools, all under direct county authority.98 The Yancheng education association, in other words, was preparing to clean someone else's house, specifically that of the county government. Retrenchment and a Second Try By the end of the 1910s, the province had little to show for this flurry of regulations. In the decade which followed, school inspectors turned in regular reports on local schools, but they bore no discernible relation to the six-division lecture circuit devised in 1916. There was nothing to show for demands that local school associations register with the province; educational exhortation bureaus remained active until 1927. As late as 1937, the Guomindang government was still struggling to no avail with plans to hold province-wide teachers' qualifying examinations. Qi Xieyuan's ascendancy to power in Jiangsu in 1920, and the military violence which subsequently convulsed the province, effectively postponed provincial efforts to tighten the reins on local control. By the early 1920s, local investors began to withdraw capital from circulation in the economy north of the river." Troops in search of temporary barracks headed almost by instinct for local schools; demobilized soldiers often stayed in the buildings long after the hostilities subsided, leaving local managers to survey the damage and fund repairs. 100 As military unrest weakened tax-collection capacity, funds available for local expenditures began to decline. The shortages fueled political conflicts which deepened the fault lines within local elite circles. Municipal and township management committees not specifically associated with educational circles were reported to be in open conflict with school managers over local tax revenues. At the county level, there was similar hostility between county assemblies and county offices of education. 101 Unintentionally, then, warlord violence weakened prevailing patterns of cooperation among local managers, creating fissures that widened after the Guomindang takeover of the province. As mid-1920s hostilities grew, the provincial tone, reflected in government publications, retreated into the voice of slighted authority. Most commonly, in this regard, county magistrates joined the provincial Bureau of Education in complaining about the lack of central control over subcounty schools—which, it was repeatedly acknowledged, were surviving because of the financial largess of local elites. Worse, argued these authorities, the number of local schools was growing despite the

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political chaos. In 1922 Rugao, for example, the county magistrate protested a spate of newly founded lower-middle schools, three in one district alone. These schools, the magistrate claimed, were being set up by people "using the excuse of education" to promote their own fortunes.102 If this was true, they were well enough informed to establish the most elite schools the dynamics of subcounty schooling could tolerate. The litany of complaints continued until the Guomindang takeover, targeting the Suzhong counties, the more developed of the northern counties, which experienced a proliferation of locally managed institutions as the warlord violence grew.103 While the government complained, it was known to adapt to the circumstances confronting it when possible. Despite gubernatorial displeasure with the emaciation of county magistrates, for example, Han Guojun's financial rulings, mentioned earlier, specifically sought to manage local school finances through committees located outside the magistrates' offices. Warlord violence appears to have spurred provincial-level educators to shore up their own access to government offices. In February 1925 they successfully pressured the governor's office to set up a provincial educational finances management bureau, which had a treasury independent of other provincial funds. The new management office did not directly collect revenues. Rather, counties were to send educational revenue to the appointed treasury and financial reports to the management office. Like much of everything organized during this period, this new office was not integrated into the dynamics of local administration. It had no local representation; its funds were earmarked entirely for provincial education.104 After the province settled into Sun Quanfang's rule and warlord prédations eased, the provincial Bureau of Education returned to the project of curbing local educational circles. This time it did so by urging county governments to set up newly designed compulsory education programs. Here the provincial government worked through provincemanaged educational institutes, notably the Provincial Teachers College in Wuxi and its almost predictable panoply of social committees. In 1926 the Association of Branch Schools of the Teachers College filed a report with the Bureau of Education which became the basis for an order to county magistrates to establish a network of "peasant primary schools" (xiangcun xiaoxue), under the sole management of the county magistrate, effectively bypassing everything from the county office of education to educational associations and local school management committees and, of course, the local schools themselves.105 Provincial

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officials acknowledged that these plans would provoke the resistance of local managers, who controlled the majority of every county's local schools, and accordingly urged that the new programs be directed only by the magistrate. The response underscored the fissure between county and local politicians: provincial plans were accompanied by complaints from county magistrates about excessive political power in the hands of subcounty localities. 106 Although government records, the only ones currently available with regard to these plans, were reluctant to be specific, it is clear that resistance to the plan was widespread. One provincial report, issued in midsummer 1926, acknowledged that in over two-thirds of the province local elites had prevented successful implementation of the new program. 107 As in much of the historical record for this period, the voices of the people responsible for resistance to the government's plans are not clearly audible. We do know that the number of schools beyond county control was growing and that the plan was designed to circumvent them. The unavoidable conclusion is that it was school managers, not backwater conservatism, which scuttled provincial designs. By the end of the year, under the weight of resistance to provincial management in local society, the governor's office compromised. It shifted its attention from compulsory education to the management of local finances, calling for the creation of new committees to take over management of school properties and revenues. These were to be established at the county seat, echoing the short-lived rural education campaign's emphasis on the county as the province's point of entry into local society. At the same time, however, managers from every municipality and township were to be represented on the committees. 108 This was effectively an effort to assert provincial authority over subcounty politics, drawing them toward the province, by locating a committee of subcounty representatives at the county seat, effectively acknowledging the power of local citizen-politicians.109

Conclusion Before 1927, management of the schools—schools suggested to local society by the central state—involved little by way of direct state control. They were not politically unproductive, however. They kept alive active communication between local politicians and central government institutions, a process which supported the aspirations for political legitimacy on both sides of the equation. With time, they also put local activ-

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ists on notice of more predatory provincial intentions. The increased number of local schools through the mid-1920s, seen in this light, emerges as a political statement by local entrepreneurs anxious to increase their resources before the central government—represented by provincial politicians—intensified its efforts to manage local politics. On two occasions before the coming of the Guomindang government in 1927—once in the late 1910s and once in a milder form in the mid19208—the "central state" flexed its muscles in an effort to assert local control. Local society's ability to contend with these efforts, to fend them off without severing its symbolic ties with the center, conditioned its reaction when the central state intruded again, with greater powers of enforcement, under management of the Guomindang government.

6. The Guomindang Decade

is often viewed through a grim haze of warlord violence and a blundering decade of Guomindang rule. In examining the latter, much has been made of the apparent resonance between the Guomindang and entrenched conservatism within local elite society. Revisiting these issues through the eyes of local school communities softens this conservative verdict. The Guomindang held deeply ambivalent attitudes toward the symbols of western-style modernity accumulated in local society before 1927. Shortcomings in its effort to manage them had less to do with ideology than with its decision to follow in the footsteps of its provincial predecessors. Chiang Kai-shek's government picked up where pre-Guomindang provincial authorities had left off, asserting control over local society in a largely predatory fashion. Conventional wisdom argues that this approach alienated the Guomindang from reformist elements in local society. The Guomindang, however, was building on the efforts of those who had preceded it. As a result, the failure was a cumulative one. By 1927, local school circles had already been conditioned to resist such efforts, piecemeal though they may have been before that time. Like those who had gone before it, the Guomindang addressed local school circles through a variety of administrative maneuvers. After debilitating party purges, the new government turned to dry, gray management procedures—restructuring, redistricting, inspection tours, teachers' qualification examinations—in its effort to undercut local political potential. When these attempts failed, the Guomindang, unlike its predecessors, moved on—turning to a conscious effort to create a new voice within the social arena of local educational circles. The result was the period's costly and highly visible mass education campaigns. These brought with T H E REPUBLICAN PERIOD

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them bitter charges of excessive educational expenses which haunt the history of republican-period schooling. Beyond their cost, these campaigns served less to educate than to fracture, consolidating conservatives within local school circles solidly behind the Guomindang. Locally, others within these amorphous communities drifted. Education associations continued to meet, but they were politically unassertive. Activists stopped founding new schools. The most restless and least secure segments of the school hierarchy—primary school teachers and students—turned to acts of overt political unrest. By the end of the decade, inadvertently, Guomindang rule had divided and alienated a once vibrant arena of local activity. The beneficiaries of these developments swept into the province in 1939 behind the banner of the New Fourth Army. The Coming of the Nationalists An extensive body of literature has analyzed the decade during which Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party nominally ruled the entire Chinese republic and directly ruled its rich central provinces. Research on the Guomindang decade has addressed the nature of the party itself, including its political ideology, as well as the social character of its allies.1 Much of this work has been quick to move beyond the party in its own right—to assess the Guomindang not as party but as government, evaluating how well the governing institutions in the 1927-1937 period managed political power.2 Here the literature has been informed in particular by the Guomindang's failures, both before 1937 and after 1945. Such work is cognizant of the role of the party's 1927-1930 rectification campaign in marginalizing the young reform-minded activists who had previously dominated the party. In their stead, long-established local elites reemerged from the brief ravages of campaigns against local bullies and evil gentry to dominate local politics until the Japanese invasion.3 The conservative tone of the post-1930 period is widely recognized, owing to alliances struck between the Guomindang and pre-1927 local elites. At the same time, there is an argument to be made for a modern face to the Nationalist Party itself, which may have "constituted an immense welfare apparatus for the modern intelligentsia."4 Viewing the Guomindang decade from the vantage point of local educational circles—which by 1927 were adept at resisting the subordination of local politics to the central government but at the same time were manifestly reluctant to completely sever at least symbolic ties with that

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government—helps explain the apparent paradox. It supports the view that by the early 1930s, local elites' communication links with higher levels of government had weakened, enduring a standoff with Guomindang-managed politics which kept subcounty elites in particular out of the official political arena.5 Simultaneously, it recognizes that by the time of the Guomindang takeover, local municipal society had become increasingly diversified.6 The lines of postimperial pluralism were not starkly drawn, but they were discernible—and made possible the apparent anomaly of conservatives allied with modern intellectuals who were hostile to interests encompassing in turn entrenched conservatism and local intellectual circles. While, as we shall see, the provincial government was not successful in incorporating the resources of the local schools under central authority, it sufficiently consolidated its control over provincial offices such that paragovernmental organizations, notably the Provincial Education Association, which had been central to educational management before 1927, were politically sidelined. It is beyond the scope of this study to probe the reactions of individual provincial educators to this process, although many prominent educators are known to have welcomed the Guomindang government in the hopes that it would bring about muchneeded order and stability. Huang Yanpei, for example, supported the Northern Expedition in the hopes that national reunification would expedite education.7 With the coming of the Guomindang, however, the Provincial Education Association ceased to be a voice for official government concerns. Its journal, Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu huí yuebao, which since 1917 had published provincial edicts and regulations, as well as petitions and reports sent to the provincial Bureau of Education, ceased publication altogether in February 1927. 8 By 1927, the resources and political loyalty of local school communities in Jiangsu were not irredeemably lost to the Guomindang. If the party had altered political dynamics established in the 1920s, when an opportunity was lost to build on the voluntary cooperation between local and provincial educational circles, it could have drawn on the reserves of an extensive network of potential allies. That it chose not to do so was not because of a preemptive condemnation of western-style schooling. In Jiangsu province, Guomindang party members were drawn in significant measure from the modern schools. Local leadership was predominantly made up of middle-school and college graduates; the right wing of the party, such as the Western Hills faction, was even more heavily indebted to the universities and technical training institutes.9 Ini-

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tially, the new administration favored its institutional origins, combining Jiangsu's eleven provincial middle schools and twelve provincial normal schools into twenty-one provincial-level middle schools, on which it was spending an average of 81,000 yuan a year by 1932. 1 0 The government's interest in higher-level education was underscored by a call to expand the number of students in the upper levels of these middle schools. 11 These policies did little to encourage culture bonding between provincial educators and their local counterparts, however. The provincial educational elite lived as it had before 1927 in a mental world whose points of reference were frequently alien to local Chinese society. Articles published in the journal of the Guomindang-sponsored Central University, which reported on the likes of American classroom management or discussed advanced techniques for the measurement of human intelligence, continued to probe a western cultural environment well removed from local conditions in Jiangsu. 12 When Kong Chong, a political functionary with the Guomindang, drafted plans in 1930 for combining the civilian-managed public property management offices with the county finance offices, for example, he explained to his reading audience that the local notables who dominated the committees were guilty of "mengluo zhuyi" (Monroe-ism). 13 To the well-read in Jiangsu's treaty ports, those actively involved in a dialogue with foreign politics, the reference was clear: local notables were guilty of imposing a Monroe Doctrine mentality on local finance. To the local communities in question, the reference was less than commonplace. Foreign points of cultural reference could assume immediacy for elite educators which overwhelmed any appreciation of local conditions, as illustrated when Commissioner of Education Zhou Fuhai responded to resolutions passed by the provincial primary school teachers' association deploring the teachers' growing immiseration. Zhou acknowledged the problem. Salaries for full-time primary school teachers in Rugao, he noted by way of example, should have been between 25 and 28 yuan a month but often fell below 10. Elsewhere in the province they went as low as 5 or 6 yuan and some areas were half a year behind in payment of any kind. In the solution Zhou offered, however, the chaos and poverty of local China figured not at all. Rather, he cited the theories of American educators Lang, Almack, and Cubberly regarding the standards appropriate for evaluating primary teachers' performance and determining their income levels—according to background, training, teaching experience, and so forth. 1 4 Zhou's salary evaluation, in other words,

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was thoroughly uninformed by the poverty and disorder of republicanperiod Jiangsu. Controlling Local Society Not surprisingly, the Guomindang decade was not a bright one for local school circles. In 1934, for example, a particularly discouraged district educational supervisor, Ding Zhou, described education in Yancheng county as being in a period of dark retreat. Ding's gloomy assessment of Yancheng education was particularly poignant because Ding, a native of the county, was one of the few subcounty education officials to publicly align himself with the Guomindang government.15 Since the sources do not let local society speak openly for itself, one is left to evaluate government policy to determine what produced this grim verdict by a party supporter. By the time Ding issued his verdict, the government had settled into an uncomfortable routine which had begun with a reign of violence and culminated in the alienation of a large number of local teachers and students. Bloody anti-Communist purges began in April 1927, after the Guomindang seizure of the province. The purges, intended to clean out Communists and leftist sympathizers, also removed some of the Guomindang's most able local organizers. In their wake, the province dissolved into destructive factional disputes. Party loyalists, supporting feuding factions within the Guomindang at the national level, armed themselves and staged military raids on each other's offices. Some county-level party branches were thoroughly destroyed. In others, personal rivals raced to accuse one another of being Communists. The resulting cloud of political charges and recriminations poisoned the early years of provincial administration.16 In spite of pervasive intraparty disorder, the government quickly joined the project of asserting control over local schooling. Hauntingly, its first venture in this regard was to restructure local administrative districts, returning on a grander scale to the efforts by provincial education authorities in 1916, by replacing existing administrative townships and municipalities (xiang and shi) with subcounty wards or districts (qu), each having newly appointed officers.17 Each county was redivided, its xiang and shi subdivisions amalgamated into considerably larger administrative qu. Funing county's thirty-nine shixiang divisions, for example, were condensed into thirteen qu, whose managing officials were appointed from Guomindang loyalists.18

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Moreover, inspired by efforts to pacify Communist activists in South China, the Guomindang government attempted to breathe life into the supracounty circuits. While subcounty qu increased in size over the preexisting municipalities and townships, supracounty circuits were significantly smaller than the late-imperial circuits. There is little evidence that these supracounty circuits had much political authority; there is circumstantial evidence that provincial authorities had difficulty forming them anyway. By early 1933, for example, the province was divided into thirteen circuits, which were contracted, at the end of the year, into nine. Two years later, circuit lines were redrawn again, this time for a total of ten. Unlike pacification districts in the south, in Jiangsu county magistrates could not simultaneously hold the position of district inspector—a regulation which may have reflected the Guomindang's uncertain relationship with county magistrates in much of the province, especially north of the river. Finally, in early 1936, new circuit boundaries were again proposed. A swath of counties extending from Zhenjiang, the provincial capital in the south, northward along the Grand Canal to Yangzhou, were without even nominal inspectors as late as the spring of 1937. 1 9 In the absence of a popular political mandate, the Guomindang asserted itself through the manipulation of administrative mechanisms and social institutions. For schools, this effort began with a determined push to abolish local associations and committees which had been the bane of the pre-Guomindang provincial school administrators. With no more luck than they had had, their successors now attempted, for example, to abolish education associations, which were to be replaced with newly convened education consultative bodies (jiaoyu xiehui).20 The Guomindang similarly attempted to replace merchant associations with commercial xiehui. While it had somewhat more luck in this endeavor than in the arena of education, it was commonplace for xiehui, where they were constituted, to coexist with rather than replace existing organizations, as was the case in Yancheng, for example, which hosted both. 21 In some counties, such as Rugao, pre-Guomindang merchant associations (shanghui) were successfully abolished by the push toward Guomindang-controlled bodies, but no functioning xiehui materialized in their place. 22 Resistance was reported when the new education consultative bodies were announced and, overall, education associations appear to have held out against the transition more effectively than their commercial counterparts. Although membership statistics are sketchy for the

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Guomindang period, one set of figures highlights the contrast. According to these statistics, by the early 1930s some forty-six people were registered members of a government-recognized county merchant association in Yancheng. At the same time nearly a thousand people were members of both county and local education associations with preGuomindang origins, while the county had no educational xiehui. Similar figures were reported in other Yanfu and Suzhong counties. In Tai county, the membership of the party-recognized county-level merchant association consisted of 20 people; some 480 were members of preGuomindang county and local education associations. In Funing 200 people were reported to be in pre-Guomindang education associations. 23 Notwithstanding its meager success with the establishment of new education associations, the new government dramatically escalated its efforts to assert its control through manipulation of the bureaucracy. Inspired by the French model of school administration, the Guomindang established the University System (daxue zhidu), which combined administration and pedagogy into a single hierarchy with a national Central University as the highest administrative and academic body in the nation. Jiangsu University topped the provincial structure. Government administrative offices, distinct from the schools themselves, were to be absorbed into the ranking academic institution at each administrative level. Predictably, schools at each level plunged into contests over which school should have preeminence. 24 Political factionalism and disorder plagued the University System and its tenure was short-lived. Abolished in the fall of 1928, its offices lingered on through 1929, to be replaced by a provincial Bureau of Education in 1930. If the University System had held, it would have been logical for the Guomindang to have abolished county-level offices of education, merging their functions with the designated county-level pedagogical institute. While the province's new political managers almost predictably issued orders to abolish any of the stubbornly independent exhortation bureaus which might remain, there was no similar effort to abolish the county education offices. 25 What the provincial government attempted to do instead did not make sense pedagogically but did make sense politically. The French system was government-dominated and thus attractive. At the same time, the Guomindang needed governing mechanisms in local society which were recognizably governmental: it needed a professional bureaucracy to assure its ascendancy over the long-standing amalgam of local committees which managed pre-Guomindang politics.

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The party was thus loath to abandon official offices, such as the county offices of education. Precisely because they were offices, they were attractive; but at the same time it was necessary to root out potentially unsupportive officeholders.26 Although it countermanded the dynamics of the University System, rather than abolish the offices of education the Guomindang therefore retained them, while a number of incumbent office heads—sometimes their whole staff—were replaced. Some officials were fired; office heads in other counties resigned. The chaotic results weakened the integrity of such an office, already only marginally tolerated by local school managers. By August 1928, in at least fourteen Jiangsu counties, the head of the county office of education had been fired. In a dozen other counties, office heads had resigned their posts. None of those who resigned specifically condemned the Guomindang; rather they cryptically cited what amounted to an epidemic of poor health or less specific "other reasons." The timing of the resignations makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that Jiangsu's new government was an issue, although not necessarily as a specific result of the Guomindang itself. Among Yanfu and Suzhong counties, Yancheng's Zheng Kaiqi resigned, as did Funing's Liu Zhenru and Taixing's Wang Lansheng. Similarly, within the first year of Guomindang rule in Jiangsu, ten county-level school supervisors quit their posts; another six were fired.27 Zheng, Liu, and Wang appear to have been relative newcomers to their posts. None is mentioned in the 1926 provincial records.28 Only on a few occasions do the records permit detailed speculation into these developments. When possible, it would appear that the turmoil of the late 1920s was used by provincial politicians to promote individuals from inner circles at the capital. When the head of the Haimen county Office of Education resigned in 1928, for example, he was quickly replaced by a Nanjing University graduate on good terms with authorities at the newly created Central University.29 Local officials were known to work to prevent this kind of situation, however. In 1928 Tai county, the head of the county Office of Education, a Mr. Wang, announced his intention to resign because of unspecified "difficulties," a phrase common to individuals who resigned their posts at that time. To Wang's surprise, his resignation, submitted to Central University officials, was initially rejected and then abruptly accepted. If Central University had wanted to control the Tai county position, however, it never got close. The Tai county magistrate offered his own replacement, but he did so over the objections of local professional associations (fa-tuan),

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which in this case presumably meant the local education associations. While the magistrate's nominee was on his way to Nanjing for official approval, pressure in Tai itself grew to sufficient proportions to dissuade the magistrate, who then persuaded Wang himself to stay on. 3 0 The result of such activities was predictable: the offices quickly lost any possible measure of reliability and authority. Between 1927 and 1933, the head of the Yancheng Office of Education changed five times, for example. Then in 1934 alone, the office went through two more heads. Subsequent to Zheng Kaiqi's resignation, his immediate successors were caught in the factionalism of the late-1920s political purges. 31 Then the general collapse of the office's integrity set in. Greed and corruption took over where politics left off in battering the county offices. Former office heads schemed with relatives, friends, even local school principals, to embezzle funds, only to lose their posts when the scandals became public. 32 The turnover involved more than heads of offices, as lower-ranking officials frequently were ousted at the same time. In late 1933 Yancheng, for example, the entire office—including the office head, the county school inspector, a representative for each of the five county educational districts, eight office employees, and three servants —left their posts. 33 In the ruins left behind by such transfers, in a number of northern counties, notably including Rugao, office employees began to exploit the county office in the interest of individual municipalities, adding local factionalism to the political hostilities burdening governance during the Guomindang decade. 34 In Yancheng's case, the transfers undermined the only recorded example of an effort at fiscal cooperation between the county seat and a local municipality. Education officials in Yancheng city and Longgang municipality to its west developed collection procedures for educational taxes which excluded participation by the Office of Finance, believed to condone particularly high levels of corruption. Continued changeover in the Office of Education staff rendered the plan unworkable. 35

Reassessing Policy The withering of Guomindang control over county offices paralleled its own growing disenchantment with modern schooling. By 1933, enthusiasm even for products of the elite provincial schools soured noticeably and the Guomindang began to turn on its own institutional base. In Jiangsu xuesheng (Students of Jiangsu), a new Guomindang publication

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first issued in late 1932, the provincial Bureau of Education leveled a barrage of articles accusing students of a variety of offenses which cumulatively short-changed the country. The provincial educators who wrote for the journal complained of excessive student activism and an unhealthy concern for politics, for example, as well as individualism and material greed.36 The provincial commissioner of education, Zhou Fuhai, began to complain publicly that the middle schools had grown too fast. 37 He charged their graduates with failing the nation, especially in the all-important task of securing loyalty to the government in rural areas, and charged the schools themselves with providing neither the moral guidance nor the skilled work force a modern nation needed. For Zhou, a product of western schooling, his institutional base must have appeared to him to have failed his own political aspirations, although none of his complaints acknowledged the battering the schools had taken during the political purges of the late 1920s. 38 Instead, Zhou charged education in Jiangsu with what amounted to bureaucratic incompetence. There was a steady proliferation of schools, Zhou argued, all requesting public funds despite serious underenrollment. At the same time he complained of schools churning out too many students. The provincial middle schools, the commissioner of education irritably decided, should all be converted into vocational schools. 39 If the likes of Zhou Fuhai soured with regard to institutions as elite as provincial middle schools, there was little redemption to be found in the welcome the Guomindang received in local primary schools, especially beyond the orbit of major urban centers in the south. Schools in considerable numbers closed in the aftermath of the Guomindang takeover. Particularly notable was the closing of subcounty schools. In Tongshan, the county surrounding the northern city of Xuzhou, for example, over half the local or subcounty schools were closed by early 1928. 4 0 The Yanfu county of Dongtai similarly reported a large number of its local schools closed by fall of the same year, closings attributed in press reports to clashes between local activists and party-appointed government officials. 41 In a phenomenon we have already encountered, most commonly in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, the school communities' lack of enthusiasm for the new regime was measured by the virtual halt to the founding of new local schools. With their institutional base weakened, local teachers understandably displayed little support for the new government, an attitude the Guomindang returned in kind. Guomindang hostility toward primary school teachers, who had never been especially favored by its policies, increased

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noticeably when the government encountered resistance to "national salvation education" (quiguo jiaoyu), a campaign which would have increased government propaganda in the classroom. When teachers resisted the campaign, the government responded in 1933 with efforts to require loyalty oaths of the province's primary school teachers, oaths the teachers were reluctant to take. 42 Frustrated government officials reached into their ideological grab bag, branding local school teachers "individualists" guilty of "factionalism" and "rural points of view." Increasingly disenchanted with its opening to the West, symbolized in the heart of local society by western-style schools, the Guomindang called for the destruction of all corrupting or politically objectionable cultural materials and a thorough political cleansing of the schools. 43 Despite the absence of guidelines for such a purification process, the provincial Bureau of Education announced that it would establish examination committees aimed at investigating all of the province's teachers, particularly its primary school teachers. 44 Thus, by 1934, the Guomindang was recycling pre-1927 policies. Provincial authorities set to work devising an elaborate plan which would require the counties to mutually inspect and report on each other, under the province's authority. The province was divided into six new districts, coterminous with none of the existing administrative or defense districts, each of which was to be presided over by a specified normal school. The inspectors were systematically to inspect township and municipal primary schools, the principal objects of the surveillance exercises. They were to include inspections of county-controlled primary schools and mass education organizations only as time allowed. 45 While Guomindang authorities did succeed in conducting sporadic local qualifying examinations, there is no recorded evidence that the mutual inspections were carried out. Overall, by the early 1930s, the cost of Guomindang interference in local schooling had begun to mount. While the government fidgeted with formal local offices, the real vitality behind the system—its associations and social organizations—became increasingly quiet. Although education associations resisted being disbanded, they were silent in the daily management of local school affairs. More tellingly, the number of new schools founded in the Yanfu and Suzhong counties dropped to zero. The drying up of this source of energy may help explain why another arena within local school circles did have considerable energy. While managerial voices fell silent, teachers and students increasingly took to the streets in open protest.

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School Violence By the early 1930s, school-related unrest was commonplace. Disorder in local school communities was not new to the Guomindang decade, but it was exacerbated by Guomindang policies. This was true both of violence against the schools in the aftermath of the takeover and increasing duress within school circles themselves as the decade wore on. School communities were frequently the focal point of hostilities during the political purges of the 1 9 2 7 - 1 9 2 9 period. Where the party members of a particular branch had been predominantly recruited from a certain educational institution, as was the case in Xuzhou, Songjiang, and Nanjing, among others, the schools themselves were implicated in factional attacks. 46 There were also periodic announcements of arrests of local Communist activists, who were often identified as having been local schoolteachers. On occasion, fellow teachers came to the defense of the accused, as was the case when over two dozen alleged Communist activists were arrested in Suzhou in early 1928. One of those arrested was a member of the Suzhou education association, which rallied to his defense and worked to secure his release. 47 Nonetheless, such arrests cast a shadow over local schools in the mind of the public, as these institutions were common targets for Guomindang hostility. Violence of another sort developed as disenfranchised local power brokers responded to what they viewed as Guomindang interference in local politics. In a development which recalled local violence in the last years of the Qing, party attacks on religious idols and confiscation of temple properties triggered violence against not only party and government offices but also modern schools and republican administrative offices, which were often the publicly designated beneficiaries of confiscated religious property. In some cases, the schools were unintended victims, as in the Yancheng Massacre in 1928. Enraged at confiscation of the city temple, a mob swept through the county seat attacking primary and middle schools and causing the death of at least one middle school student—although the confiscated temple (which the mob burned in its fury) was designated a mass education institute, which was distinct from and, as we shall see, often antagonistic to the formal schools. School circles could also bring some measure of public protest upon themselves, as the arrival of the new government in Nanjing fueled existing tensions built less of ideology than local struggles for power. Unrest followed the appointment of Shen Jiaoren, a new head of the county Office of Education in Dongtai, for example. Shen took up his post

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before the arrival of the Guomindang. After the takeover, however, teachers in the county, who resented his efforts to interfere in the administration of their schools, mobilized against him, their timing undoubtedly intended to exploit the arrival of the Guomindang. Shen responded by firing several school principals, who then organized public protests against him. 48 Eventually Shen left office, but not before the public demonstrations had come to the attention of the press in Shanghai. 49 Even more severe, and more directly linked with the coming of the party, was school unrest in Baoying, to Dongtai's west along the Grand Canal. Yuan Shaopu, the county office head, was a Guomindang appointee, initially praised for his work until he found himself unable to collect a newly imposed universal education levy. Yuan announced his resignation; provincial officials twice asked him to reconsider, then abruptly fired him and sent inspectors to the county, charging Yuan with incompetent bookkeeping. While the Guomindang fussed with its bureaucracy, all of the Baoying county teachers went out on strike. By the time this action reached the notice of the national press, the Baoying teachers had been without pay for four months. 50 The Baoying strike was not unique. Although student activism during the Guomindang decade was carried on in the shadow of earlier, more dramatic events from 1919 through 1925, it was occasionally of national significance after 1927, despite active government efforts to discourage it. With few exceptions, student nationalism of the post1927 period retained a markedly elite character: the student associations which responded to Japanese aggression, beginning in May 1928, were composed largely of students in colleges and middle schools in China's major urban centers. 51 But the Guomindang decade opened with a frenzy of demonstrations and strikes in far more local schools, as well. Here such activity was generally an expression not of nationalism but of more local concerns—concerns for immediate survival but also concerns which derived from the uncertainty accompanying the Guomindang seizure of power, which threatened a fragile balance between local autonomy and symbolic integration with the political center. One measure of the shoring up of local defenses was how quickly teachers now joined in acts of public protest over abuses they had once been inclined to tolerate, notably the nagging issue of unpaid wages. Beginning in the fall of 1928, there was a rash of strikes, and threatened strikes, in Jiangsu. In the south, primary school teachers in Suzhou and Fengxian county struck within weeks of each other. Both strikes were over unpaid wages. 52 Within a month, teachers in Huai'an county

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schools were also out on strike. 53 In Jiangyin, a similar strike was narrowly averted. 54 While strikes at the county level were the most commonly reported, there were more local strikes as well, such as a strike of lower-primary schoolteachers in Rugao's Fourth Educational District in the fall of 1928. 5 5 As the primary school teachers' strike in Suzhou indicated, provincial emporia were not immune to the unrest: in 1928 alone, primary school teachers also struck for unpaid wages in Nanjing, Yangzhou, and Wuxi, for example. 56 Even teachers within elite provincial schools welcomed the Guomindang with threats of strikes motivated by pressing local concerns. In November, provincial middle-school teachers met to demand back wages which amounted to 3 5 0 , 0 0 0 yuan. Although the teachers stopped short of a strike, they publicly petitioned to Central University authorities, demanding payment. 57 Principals of Central University-supported primary schools also petitioned—to the provincial government, national Ministry of Education, national Ministry of Finance, the provincial Bureau of Finance, and the national Legislative Yuan, in each case protesting unpaid wages. 58 School-related violence persisted well into the Guomindang decade. In Rugao, which had experienced a subcounty strike in late 1928, teachers in all the county schools struck in early 1929, demanding tens of thousands of yuan in unpaid wages. 59 In June 1930, teachers in Funing struck; they had not been paid for two months. 60 Weakening economic conditions further exacerbated the situation. In Tai county, for example, income in 1927 fell as a result of a drought; with a predicted education budget of 2 5 9 , 0 0 0 yuan, actual income was estimated to be only 123,000. Then, after the 1932 flood, educational expenses were further cut to 60,000. By 1932, teachers throughout the county went on strike for back wages. 61 While school unrest was informed by financial distress, it was also inspired by nonfiscal dynamics within local school communities. Strikes against schools as schools reached from the most local of primary schools to the most national of universities. These practices, continued from the pre-1927 period, were part of local urban society's restless efforts to articulate republican-period political expectations. In the southeastern county of Jiading, for example, primary school teachers went on strike against the county Office of Education after it had requested the county magistrate to arrest a teacher. 62 Primary school teachers went on strike against the head of the Office of Education in neighboring Jinshan county to protest mismanagement and corruption. 6 3 In one six-month period, students in a county middle school in

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Jinshan, in the south, struck to protest winter examinations; in a county-managed middle school in northern Pei county, they struck to protest nonnatives enrolled in their school; in Lianshui, they walked out of their classes to protest school fees. 64 In Liuhe, a county student association organized demonstrations when the county Office of Education fired several teachers. 65 Students from the Qidong county middle school went on strike when student activists were expelled by the principal. At the same time, when unpaid teachers went on strike in the southeastern county of Taicang, students went on strike to protest the teachers' absence. 66 Solidarity between teachers and students was not commonplace in this troubled period. Middle school students in the Grand Canal county of Huai'an succeeded in driving their principal out of his post in early 1929; as a result, teachers in the school refused to teach; the students then demonstrated in protest. 67 Funing county established a new middle school in 1930; when the principal did not arrive at the school, despite having accepted the post, the students went on strike. 68 As with financially motivated disturbances, such protests were felt in elite schools as well as local ones. By the summer of 1932, for example, lack of funds had closed down several national universities, including Central University in Nanjing. Angry students demonstrated against the school, whose former president (and now minister of education), Zhu Jiahua, had allegedly misappropriated some 3 0 , 0 0 0 yuan in funds raised by the students for flood relief. Student demonstrators attacked and beat Zhu's replacement, Duan Xibeng. 69 In June 1933, students at private middle schools in Nanjing went on a one-day strike to protest a new examination system ceding authority to a municipal examination board. 70 In a number of instances, activists in local school circles reached out into the wider community for allies. Their efforts indicate how highly transitional their social order was: their contacts ranged from wellestablished secret societies to newly empowered Guomindang party branches. In Lianshui, for example, which straddled the Yanfu counties in the north, a spring 1930 demonstration brought some 100 primary school teachers into the streets of the county seat in a protest over unpaid wages. The disturbance was organized by Li Yan, a primary school teacher himself, who associated with local secret society activities. Li was said to have drawn on those contacts to help organize the demonstration. 71 Where the Guomindang figured as a player in local school strikes and demonstrations, its political role was uneven. In 1928 in the southeastern county of Changshu, for example, teachers unpaid

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for three months appealed to the party office for relief. Only when it failed to provide assistance did the Changshu teachers strike. In Jiading, on the other hand, also in the southeast, students struck to protest party interference in the local schools.72 Predictably, given factionalism within the party, with the passage of time the local Guomindang became an ever more ambivalent factor in school unrest. In the southwestern county of Jintan, for instance, demonstrations to protest unpaid salaries in 1930 caused substantial damage to the county Office of Education. The demonstrators constituted a broad alliance ranging from old-style private tutors to western-educated teachers, an alliance which notably included disgruntled local Guomindang activists protesting party interference in local management. 73 Such wide-ranging protests reminded local communities that their schools could be uncertain institutions: a shadow had been cast over them by Guomindang factionalism; the government offices which officially administered them were riven with internal disorder; provincial authorities were at best ambivalent toward them. As unrest by teachers and students alike made clear, the social circles associated with the schools could be assertive. Provincial authorities did not, however, attempt to close down the local schools. They concentrated instead on exercising control through management. One of the resources they sought to manage was county finances—an effort which met with little success but heralded a decade-long battle over local expenditures. School Finances In 1928, the national government called for the establishment of countylevel financial bureaus (caiwu chu) which answered to the provincial not county government. Because of financial insolvency, however, these bureaus were abolished almost immediately in seventeen of Jiangsu's sixty-one counties, mostly north of the Yangzi. By 1931, when they were abolished in an additional eight counties, the central government had lost its bid for direct provincial fiscal control in just under half the province.74 Within the field of education itself, the principles by which funds had been allocated before 1927 did not change appreciably after that time. Provincial funds paid for provincially managed schools, primarily the elite middle schools and their attached experimental schools. County funds supported county middle and primary schools and a burgeoning assortment of mass education institutes. Subcounty funds continued to

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support the lower-primary schools which made up the bulk of the formal school system. 75 By category, at least, local constituents still claimed their own funds. Of greater concern, however, were escalating educational budgets, at the provincial and county levels alike, despite the fact that new schools tapered off in number. For provincial schools, the budgetary increases were most pronounced in the early years of the decade, while official attitudes toward western-style schools were generally positive. Budgeted expenditures for provincially managed schools briefly decreased in 1927, then climbed in subsequent years, although with declining rates of increase. The largest annual increase, of 25 percent, came in 1929 when the province spent just over 2 million yuan. That figure increased by 12 percent in 1930 and 8 percent in 1931, then dropped to a 3 percent increase in 1933. Revenue figures, which for formal schools were in excess of budgeted expenditures at the provincial level, were more erratic. There was a sharp increase, of 45 percent, in revenues collected in 1927. The year 1928 posted a 16 percent increase. In 1929, revenues dropped by 25 percent. By 1930, they had increased less than 1 percent over 1928 figures; by 1931, they had dropped again by 36 percent. 76 Thus provincial finances in this particular field do not consistently bear out the thesis of exorbitant tax burdens during the Guomindang period. Complicating the assessment of the financial burden imposed by the Guomindang at the provincial level was the reallocation of several significant sources of funds, including the land tax, previously a national tax, which reverted to the province after 1927. Some 1 , 8 0 0 , 0 0 0 yuan of this levy was allocated for provincial school expenses in 1928. By 1930, the land tax contributed 2 , 7 8 0 , 0 0 0 yuan to provincial education. Also in 1927, the provincial slaughter surtax was reassigned: first to national schools, then to the counties for educational expenses. By 1930, this surtax produced 1,280,000 yuan for the schools. 77 As a result, increased budgets were not necessarily sustained by new tax burdens. Far more significant increases came at the county level, however, which provincial administrators never brought under control to their satisfaction. It is here that one sees the burdensome budgets associated with Guomindang rule, with increases of 100 percent or more in the first several years of the decade alone, although overall expenditures for the Suzhong and Yanfu counties tended to level off after the early 1930s. If the central government was a pivotal player in these increases, so too were the dynamics of local elite society. After 1927, for example, the national government was responsible for

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what easily became the most infamous new levy with regard to local schooling: the compulsory education tax, first levied as a county surcharge on the land tax in 1928. The tax was regressive: it was supposed to be 8 fen per mou of land. At the discretion of local officials, however, it could surpass that. 7 8 Even in counties which did not officially surpass the suggested limits, the levy quickly emerged as the largest single county surcharge. By 1930, in Rugao, for example, a surcharge on the land tax for general administrative expenses was supposed to bring in 120,333 yuan. Other surcharges for public services ranged from 10,000 to 80,000 yuan. The universal education levy, by comparison, was intended to net 204,677 yuan. A similar pattern was evident in Tai county, where levies for public services were lower—the highest single levy other than education, a levy of 26,219 yuan, was for road construction. In Tai county, in 1930, the universal education levy was budgeted to bring in 41,951 yuan. 7 9 The universal education levy exacerbated endemic bureaucratic rivalries since the battered county offices of education and finance were supposed to cooperate in setting the rates and collecting the revenues. 80 Such cooperation proved elusive, however, and county offices attacked each other for mismanagement and usurpation of funds well into the 1930s. 81 The legacy of dispersed local management, characteristic of the first two decades of the republic, haunted the Guomindang decade. Individual offices designed to be legitimate political resources because of their association with the construction of the republican state became mutually hostile combatants, cut loose from a publicly acknowledged state structure. Whereas dispersed treasuries had fit local management styles before 1927, for example, now they emerged as an administrative burden. In Rugao, the universal education levy went directly to the county education office. The agricultural improvement levy, a surcharge on the grain quota, went to the local branch of the provincial agricultural bank, along with an agricultural bank levy, calculated as a surcharge on grassland taxes. Funds for water control and road construction, surcharges against both the grain quota and the base land tax, were stored at the county construction office. Financially distinct from both, the magistrate's office collected and managed the base surtax on agricultural land, grasslands, and riverbanks as well as the grain quota. 8 2 In the absence of active local managerial circles which had characterized the pre-1927 period, such an arrangement now encouraged stagnation. At least in one area, Guomindang policy not only failed to improve

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upon the existing situation; it measurably worsened it. By the early 1 9 3 0 s , Guomindang authority faced the disenchantment of elements within subcounty merchant communities. Many local miscellaneous taxes bluntly depended on merchants' willingness to pay them. Especially with the abolition of the lijtn, the merchants' resistance to commodity and transit taxes noticeably increased. This opposition would appear to indicate resistance to centralization of commercial tax collection under county and provincial government agencies, since local levies were not abolished but rather reassigned as county commercial taxes. 8 3 Where reassigned levies threatened individual schools with loss of income local school managers were said to be stepping in to collect the levies anyway. 8 4 The result antagonized relations between merchants and local school managers. Accordingly it contributed to a fracturing of local elite society, begun during the pre-Guomindang warlord violence, which would influence Communist management of local elites after the Japanese invasion. Provincial appreciation of local political dynamics was abysmal, but that did not stop the Nanjing government from leveling scathing attacks on how local managers spent their money. One of the most persistent provincial complaints was that local schools spent too much money on administrative expenses, a complaint which inspired provincial efforts to limit such expenditures. 8 5 Local administrative expenses during this period were in fact high, but the new provincial administration itself was partly to blame. In some cases, school administrative expenses at the county level increased as much as fourfold through the course of the decade. Although the reasons for the increases varied, all were tied to the coming of the Guomindang. In Yancheng, where no significant new administrative positions were created, the increases resulted from the endemic chaos of the early Guomindang years. In other counties, the costs came from restructuring efforts, as Guomindang magistrates attempted to create new consultative bodies and conducted qualifying examinations to weed out undesirable teachers. Administrative increases prompted an indignant provincial attempt to limit such expenses to 1 6 , 0 0 0 yuan per county. 8 6 In the event, however, statistics compiled for the province in the early 1 9 3 0 s indicate that of the ten Yanfu and Suzhong counties only three—Nantong, Rugao, and Yancheng—exceeded this figure. Rugao, with administrative expenditures of 2 3 , 1 4 6 yuan, had the highest absolute administrative costs, although they amounted to only 5 . 5 percent of the total educational budget of 4 1 6 , 6 4 2 yuan. As a percentage of the overall budget, the Yanfu

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county of Dongtai had the highest relative administrative costs, which amounted to 10 percent of its 110,095-yuan educational budget. Taixing and Xinghua averaged 9.8 and 9.2 percent of their budgets respectively on administrative costs. Qidong allocated only 3.6 percent of its budget to administration. Nantong, like neighboring Rugao, spent 5.5 percent of its 320,933-yuan budget on administration.87 Thus to local officials the publicity surrounding the 16,000-yuan provincially imposed limit rang somewhat hollow—all the more so given provincial spending habits. In 1930 alone, the province itself spent an average of 19,000 yuan each on its fifteen experimental primary schools.88 The administrative limit, which was honored in the breach in counties such as Nantong and Rugao, rang hollow for yet another, more immediate, reason. The greatest growth industry in the arena of administrative costs was "mass" or "social" education—an activity laden with political intent and actively promoted by the provincial government. While the province sought to limit county administrative expenses, in other words, it was encouraging activity in a costly new public arena that was under its control.

The Conservative Alternative: The Politics of Social Education There is a line of argument which suggests that the Guomindang turned to western-style education as an alternative to radical mass mobilization associated with the Communists.89 More accurately, by the early 1930s, what the party actively sought was a conservative alternative within an arena of activities and a social order associated with formal schooling. It settled on mass education (qunzhong jiaoyu), a variant of earlier campaigns for popular or commoner education. Mass education had been used aggressively by popular organizers as the Northern Expedition began its march from Canton in 1926. 90 After the seizure of Jiangsu, however, concern for popular mobilization gave way to concern for control. Hostile to any activity associated with mobilization, the party's executive committee initially banned any form of mass education. Under pressure from a range of interests, including provincial educators, the party then lifted the ban, allowing carefully monitored rural reform and mass education projects in which popular education's previous concern for basic literacy ceded ground to emphasis on general political tutelage.91 For our purposes the relevant aspect of these developments is the interface between Guomindang-sponsored mass education efforts and local educational circles. In this regard, mass education took two forms:

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direct party-led campaigns in local municipalities, which lasted only into the early 1930s, and the evolution of a mass education infrastructure, largely in county seats and under the control of county governments, which lasted through the decade. Officially, mass education was intended as a tool for struggle against a variety of village elites, ranging from "old-style intellectuals" branded as "tribal leader-type gentry" to "village leaders protected by gun turrets." 92 Huaibei in particular had its share of the latter—powerful landlords owning 10,000 or more mou of land who lived in rustic fortresses defended by their own personal militia and answered to no authority but their own. 93 It is clear, however, that the Guomindang planned to cast a wider net; its instructions to mass education workers carried clear undercurrents of hostility toward local school circles. After the purges of the late 1920s, all party branches were given orders to take peasant education as a main task. 94 Instructions included no consideration of working with existing educational organizations. On the contrary, party activists were to expose the flaws and errors of "urban propaganda" (dushi kaihui xuanjiang).9s Party activists, in other words, regarding themselves as competitors with their erstwhile colleagues in the local schools, complained pointedly about revenues needed for mass education which were being consumed instead by formal schooling. 96 While active campaigns into local municipalities and towns were short-lived, a more permanent and elaborate institutional structure evolved in the 1930s. With its formal pinnacle the provincial Institute of Education in Wuxi, a network of mass education institutes and committees proliferated, largely under county authority and located in county seats. 97 Each county was to have at least one mass education hall and a galaxy of supporting institutes, including libraries, newspaper reading rooms, and exercise yards. These were to be paralleled by a distinct hierarchy of peasant education halls in order to monitor co-ops, peasant teahouses, and the like. Even education experts admitted that there was no appreciable difference between the two hierarchies. 98 The emphasis in planning was not on economic efficiency; it was on the symbolic importance of these highly visible public structures. Mass education projects could be dazzling affairs, rich with both resources and the public approval of established elite families. A garden in Xinghua established by the provincial Mass Education Institute in 1929, as a prelude to the founding of an experimental consumers' co-op, was a case in point. Although initially seeded only 200 yuan, an additional 500 shares were sold to the public at 2 yuan each. Further, funds

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of 19,840 yuan were allocated for the first three years of operation. Plans for the garden included recreation equipment, a public lecture room, a reading room, a game room, a music room, and a wall newspaper. In addition to the chairman, there were six staff committees. These oversaw a variety of subcommittees such as those for music research, painting research, children's reading, and a preparatory committee for vocational discussions. The principal activities of shareholders, apart from use of the recreation facilities, were sightseeing ventures, including a much publicized visit to Japan by the chairman of the garden project." At the provincial level, the preference for mass education is starkly evident from revenue figures. From 1927 through 1931, for example, provincial expenses for universities grew by an insignificant 1 percent. Expenses for middle schools grew by 67 percent. They increased by 87 percent for primary schools, although in 1931 the province was still spending more than five and a half times as much on its middle schools as on its primary schools. During the same period of time, however, provincial expenses for mass education increased by 250 percent, the fastest-growing line in the provincial budget for education. 100 Because of the absence of year-by-year statistics for county budgets during the Guomindang decade, both absolute expenditures and the rate of growth for county-level mass education are more difficult to judge. By one estimate, by 1933 the average expenditure per mass education institute in Jiangsu was 3,500 yuan annually, with 69 percent of this figure spent on salaries. 101 This figure, of course, includes costly showcase projects in southern Jiangsu. Another report estimates that Guomindang-period provincial authorities set a target figure of 30 percent of county education funds to go to mass education. 102 Statistics for the Yanfu and Suzhong counties indicate that by the early 1930s the percentage of expenditures allocated for mass education ranged from a low of 11.8 percent in Taixing to a high of 19.8 percent in Xinghua. On average these ten counties spent 14.3 percent of available resources on mass education. 103 While this figure was below the 30 percent target, it took a substantial bite out of county budgets nonetheless.

Local Elites Respond If political power in the arena of local schooling had retrenched by the early 1930s—a process indicated in particular by the failure of the number of new schools to grow as they had done steadily since 1911—the

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same was not true of mass education. Political entrepreneurs largely residing in county seats responded to it with enthusiasm. The result was a new social voice within local school circles, a voice antagonistic to those who did not support the Guomindang. Tai county, for example, burdened by some 30 percent unemployment and endemic banditry, reeling from an abortive Communist uprising, and in arrears in paying county teachers' salaries, nonetheless in 1930 found the revenues to staff a mass education institute, a public library and exercise yard, public parks, a peasant education hall, public lecture teams, numerous public parks, and twenty-two mass education halls. 104 Much of this exercise was more symbolic than real. By the early 1930s, Yancheng county had elaborate plans for mass education and claimed to have six active mass education halls—as well as plans for an additional three peasant education halls, a mass education experimental zone, a library, a public park, a lecture hall, a music center, twenty-eight mass education schools, and a labor education committee. 105 A 1933 investigation revealed, however, that of the six mass education halls planned for the county, four were still on the drawing board. The head of the county's Mass Education Hall No. 1, Liu Shuzhuan, although reputedly the county's leading expert in research on mass education, had taken leave "sometime back" and failed to return. Mass Education Hall No. 2 had changed chief administrators three times since 1927. At the time of the inspection, neither of the two hall employees appointed to temporarily replace the absent head were present either. A bystander offered the explanation that one was simply off for the day, while the other had left the area entirely. 106 Within a year, a second school inspector reported no improvement in mass education in Yancheng and condemned the local elite's manipulation of the issue. The county magistrates and educational authorities, the second report revealingly argued, were using mass education as a way of "exchanging toasts" with local notables, holding banquets and public receptions for their own benefit, in the name of the community's educational needs. 107 Mass education was becoming a social event for the wealthy and well connected. The individuals associated with local mass education do not appear to have been consistent ideological conservatives; rather, like their formal school counterparts, they were entrepreneurs interested in revenue and social status. Mass education, actively promoted by the Guomindang government, encouraged an additional arena in which to pursue such interests. "Local elites," often not distinguished in the literature by any professional association with formal schooling, took the opportunity to

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attach themselves to mass education's numerous institutions and activities. Private citizens donated resources—sometimes even land and buildings for mass education facilities—while figures prominent in local management committees could sometimes be identified as having secured management positions for these new institutes. 108 There was clearly political profiteering here, which was nothing new in local republican politics. The Guomindang's preference for staffing local offices with graduates of the western-style primary and middle schools would indicate, however, that it drew from the same community which had otherwise proved so resistant to provincial control of the local primary schools. To head the newly crafted subcounty wards (qu), for example, the Guomindang arranged training courses open to certain middle school graduates. Graduates from full-primary schools were similarly trained for ward staff positions. In 1928, as the new regime consolidated in Rugao, for example, sixty middle school graduates were trained for six months as chief administrative officials in wards and local municipalities. Another 100 graduates of full-primary schools were given two-month courses which qualified them for various staff positions. 109 Figures compiled in 1933 indicate that membership in county branches of the Guomindang continued to be dominated by relatively young people, overwhelmingly male, and educated in significant measure in western-style schools. In Yancheng, for example, out of 223 party members, 218 were forty years old or less; 124 were thirty years old or less. Of the 223, some 96 were either students or teachers. An additional 73 were either party officials or government officials, categories likely to have required modern education. Thus some 75 percent of the county membership appears to have received western-style schooling. The figures were similar for Rugao, where out of 211 registered party members, 194 were forty years old or less and 123 were thirty years old or less. Of the 211, some 150 were students or teachers, while 56 were government or party functionaries. Thus 71 percent are likely to have been educated in western-style schools. The percentages for western education could drop lower—in Tai county, 58 percent of 210 registered party members were western-educated; in Dongtai, 51 percent—but the figure never dropped below 50 percent. 110 Photographs in mass education journals make it clear that the committees of these projects were well-established "urban" types who gathered in immaculate western business suits and starched white shirts for the obligatory group shot at the opening of new institutes. 111 Thus it is

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not unreasonable to speculate that those who benefited from an alliance with local government administrators were not necessarily culturally more conservative than the primary school teachers who had resisted the national salvation education campaign or government loyalty oaths. The mass education institutes did more than open up new avenues to public revenues. They were also remarkable for very public displays of community actively encouraged by the Guomindang—as if to underscore the fact that Guomindang officials knew they needed to assert control not only over pre-1927 institutions but also over the social identities which had built up around those institutions. Institutes associated with the provincial Institute of Education began annual conventions in 1928, for example. The early meetings established the pattern which persisted throughout the decade. With the exception of Nantong, convention sites were always in the south: the first annual convention was in Wuxi; the second in Suzhou; the third in Nantong. The meetings were always festive events, including sports competitions and extensive sightseeing. Sixty-five people from forty-two counties were represented at the Nantong convention, which was held in the Nantong Chamber of Commerce and opened with a province-wide sports competition. That spectacle and speeches of welcome from Nantong notables occupied the delegates the first day. The convention closed the following day. Several dozen of the participants then joined in a sightseeing expedition, driving through the countryside in a half-dozen motor cars, stopping to admire model projects and purchase souvenirs. 112 Government-affiliated educators seem to have been acutely aware of the sense of community such activity promoted and moved quickly to establish a variety of new education associations and committees to reinforce it, organizations which extended beyond specific mass education projects. In 1928 alone, in addition to the association of institutes affiliated with the provincial Institute of Education, an association of lower-middle schools was formed and convened in May; an association of county offices of education met in September; representatives from all existing popular education institutes were invited to form a new association which convened in October. 113 In a single week in October, conventions were held by the Central University Rural Primary Schools Association, the County-Level Compulsory Education Administrative Officers' Association, officials of the Central University County-Level Office of Education Examinations Division, and the Central University-affiliated educational associations. 114 The new government expected the sense of community provided by

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this flurry of associations to bolster its own authority and was predictably displeased when it did not consistently do so. In Suzhou and its immediate environs, in the southern heartland of Guomindang control, authorities disbanded a newly organized association of primary school guidance counselors, for example, when it found that the newly recruited members, instead of attending citywide meetings, were organizing neighborhood associations under their own control. 115 Indeed, what is striking about many of the Guomindang-period associations is the degree to which their activities resonated with well-established patterns by which formal schools ritually confirmed their own sense of community. In the spring of 1928, for example, as the new government was forming these organizations, Suzhou Middle School students took annual school trips to Hangzhou and Wuxi and welcomed a delegation from Zhejiang Middle School No. 1. Student journalists announced the visits prominently in their school bulletin along with the announcement of a planned return visit to Hangzhou the following month. On the day the Zhejiangese arrived, a delegation from the Yixing Middle School also arrived, mingling with its elite colleagues in a week-long visit.116 Such travel activities were not limited to southern schools. In 1932, for example, Rugao was financing county school trips to locations as far afield as Tianjin, despite the fact that the county was nearly 400,000 yuan in arrears.117 The sense of community this activity built was commonly reinforced by descriptive write-ups in school or institutional journals. While some journals continued publication from the pre-Guomindang period, it was more common for authorities to encourage new ones, as if to underscore the importance of beginning a clean slate with regard to these important written symbols of community. This phenomenon was most striking in the provincial middle schools—the elite of the provincial school system. The Suzhou Middle School, for example, published Suzbong xiaokart (Suzhou Middle School Bulletin), beginning in 1928, continuously until the Japanese invasion of the province.118 Middle and normal schools from Xuzhou to Shanghai, including Nantong, Rugao, and Taixing, all began new publications after 1927. (See Appendix B.) Some, such as the Xuzhou Middle School Weekly (Xuzhou zboukan) and the Rugao provincial normal school's Rugao Normal School News (Rushi xiaokan), lasted less than a year. Others, like the Suzhou school bulletin, had longer runs. The persistent effort to begin new journals speaks to the importance assigned to them in defining—or, in the case of mass education, redefining—the local subculture. Newly formed associations were

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similarly encouraged to publish association bulletins, as was the case with the Jiangsu Middle Schools Association, which first met in 1932 and immediately announced plans to publish a new journal, Jiangsu zhongdeng jiaoyu (Middle School Education in Jiangsu). 119 For those who did associate with the Guomindang order, the sense of community provided by public gatherings, school bulletins, and associations was important in general; it was all the more so in times of crisis. After the Yancheng Massacre, for example, the National Student Association (quanguo xuesheng zonghui) met in Nanjing, passed a resolution of sympathy for the victims of the massacre, and decided to send a delegation to Yancheng to console the survivors.120 Through such activities, even local school circles could see themselves as part of a larger social community. If the Yancheng Massacre presented a particularly severe crisis, the Guomindang decade as a whole constituted a prolonged endemic crisis for local educational circles. This crisis was most visible with regard to its impact on political institutions and social organizations: from ravaged local education offices to threatened local education associations and sullen local schools. The repercussions of the Guomindang decade played themselves out locally after 1937, when the Communists found available to them the remains of self-conscious local school circles who had never really assented to the Guomindang project. Undercut by a decade of Guomindang policies, they were anxious to regain access to the political authority they had claimed for themselves before 1927. The Communists deftly provided that access and then maneuvered to assure that it served the party's political ends.

7. The Communists in Jiangsu

THE WARTIME EXPERIENCES of thousands of people were anchored in the politically battered local western-style schools. A handful of these individuals were well-known provincial organizers for the CCP during the war, some continuing on in provincial positions after 1949. Wu Tianshi, for example, prominent in leadership positions in numerous educational organizations in the Jiangsu Base Area, was director of the Jiangsu provincial Office of Education until the early 1960s. 1 Others less politically consequential during the war itself nonetheless began what would become lifetime careers at provincial and local educational and technical institutions. By the early 1980s, many high-ranking officials—from the provincial party to Nanjing University, the Jiangsu Television College, the Nanjing Municipal Library, and the Jiangsu Academy of Education, among others—had originally been recruited into the party apparatus in the Jiangsu Base Area during the Anti-Japanese War. In Yancheng county, CCP headquarters during the war, the county Office of Education as well as a variety of county middle schools and teacher training institutes were similarly prominently staffed, decades after the war, by wartime recruits. 2 Many more individuals remained outside the party's political apparatus entirely. A handful of these were famous in their own right or because of their families. The liberal educator Tao Xingzhi visited the Jiangsu Base Area during the war, for example, while one of Liang Qichao's daughters was said to have added luster to political work within local school circles. 3 Most of the people whose wartime experiences were defined by local educational institutions, however, remain relatively unknown. What these people did—their qualified decision to accept Communist Party

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authority during the war and their simultaneous resistance to Communist politicization or, conversely, what was done to them by the party and the limits of that effort—is a matter of importance even if we know them only through the filter of wartime party records. They provide a rare perspective on the degree to which local politics before 1937 created potential for and limits on the Communists' wartime mandate. Local school communities were of extraordinary symbolic importance to the Communist Party. That importance indicates that the party did not have free ideological access to local society. In addition to confronting traditional peasant conservatism, the party found that reaching the peasantry ideologically required coopting the prestige which local elites had accumulated. Just as the party had to undermine the economic and political hegemony of landed elites, it also had to undermine traditional cultural hegemony complicated by the impact of republican reform. The wartime experiences of the largely nameless people associated with local schools provide testimony to the complexity of the circumstances in which the Communists worked. Their importance to the Communist organizing effort complicates prevailing pictures of polarized rural society, in which Communist success depended on direct mobilization of a disenfranchised peasantry to isolate and disenfranchise a landlord elite. Their experiences are also one of the last episodes in which a segment of local elite society operated in its own interest before the triumph of Communist politics. Local school circles were part of an unusual facet of Communist mobilization efforts. Although they were well removed from the Communists' self-defined natural peasant constituency, the party lavished attention on them. This process began early, as CCP organizers went about undermining solidarity among local elites, singling out elite subgroups by cultural attribute—such as professional educators or elderly gentlemen with a fondness for culture—for special representation in base area assemblies. Subsequently, the formal schools, along with their teachers and students, were treated to uniquely dense organizing strategies. The party oversaw an extraordinary proliferation of often overlapping CCP-initiated associations, designed specifically to manage local school circles in the base areas. Finally, when local educators resisted party efforts to politicize their institutional base, midway through the war, the party retreated, leaving its prewar legacy largely intact and its policy toward the local school community precariously ambivalent as it moved toward the postwar seizure of power.

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Securing the Jiangsu Base Area Although base area construction in Jiangsu was begun by the spring of 1938, with nominal regional governments established along the northbank counties by early 1940, it was not until October 1940 that the Central China Bureau settled into its wartime headquarters in Yancheng. South of the Yangzi, the Communists confronted local hostility and suspicion, but little by way of direct conflict with Guomindang regulars, who were withdrawn from most of southern Jiangsu in January 1939 in any event. The Communists headed for more serious military confrontation with Nationalist forces after they crossed the river. By 1940, Japanese control had consolidated along lines already familiar in the south: Japanese forces held the major urban centers, county seats, and lines of communication. The Guomindang's acting provincial governor, Han Deqin, established his headquarters in Huaiyin, east of Lake Hongze. 4 The Communists' North Yangzi Command, established in May 1939, battled Guomindang forces for five months in order to secure a foothold in Jiangdu, Yizheng, Gaoyou, and Liuhe, north of the river. By that time, Communist forces were poised on the western edge of the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, which would be their base of activities for the next six years. In their drive to secure the Jiangsu Base Area, the Communists relied on more than military might alone. In their early organizing efforts in the province's impoverished southwest, the Communists recruited among anti-Japanese landholders, striking a much-praised alliance with the wealthy landlord-entrepreneur Ji Zhengang. Ji, who made his fortune from the tea trade, sipped the brew and exchanged poetry with the Communists' erudite military commander Chen Yi. Ji then proceeded to mobilize his wealthy friends to support the party's first provisional antiJapanese base area in the Maoshan region southeast of Nanjing. 5 North of the river, the Communists found this anti-Japanese approach to local elites particularly profitable. Having crossed the river, their forces attacked and seized Guocun, a commercial center in Jiangdu west of Taizhou, then took Huangqiao, a prominent local municipality and wealthy grain entrepot in neighboring Tai county, and finally occupied Jiangyan, Tai county's most prosperous municipality. Han Deqin's efforts to dislodge the Communists from Jiangyan prompted local elites to telegram Chongqing, arguing indignantly that Han should turn his forces against the Japanese. Here was a new element in Communist

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interaction with Jiangsu's local elites. Local powerholders in the southwest apparently did not have functional connections with national-level provincial elites, those now sheltered in the relative safety of the Guomindang's new national headquarters. The Japanese had seized northern county seats, but in Jiangyan, less than 5 kilometers outside the Tai county seat, were local citizens prominent enough to demand and receive a hearing in Chongqing. 6 Chen Yi capitalized on their anti-Japanese sentiment. With considerable public fanfare he called a meeting of Huangqiao's prominent citizens to establish a provisional administrative committee, which he subsequently grandly renamed the North Jiangsu Assembly. Nominally at least, prominent local citizens were now an acting government, governing by committee, in a situation not at all unfamiliar to elite residents of subcounty municipalities such as Huangqiao. In reality, the North Jiangsu Assembly's power was minimal. It became the model for a series of hastily organized county assemblies, however, which provided the Communists their first chance to begin dismantling local elite social circles—importantly, for our purposes, by according special attention to local intellectuals.

Local Elites and Mass Mobilization By formal political definition, local intellectuals included middle school and elementary school teachers as well as individuals with more than a fifth-grade education; they might have diverse class backgrounds from landlord to poor peasant. 7 In the early years of the war, the Communists classified local intellectuals on a par with hired hands and poor and middle peasants. They remained in the definition of "basic masses" (jiben qunzhong) even though the class content of the term narrowed as the war progressed. 8 In practice, in the early years of the war, local rural intellectuals were loosely defined, incorporating the likes of old-style gentry and private tutors along with westernized-school graduates and teachers. At the same time, from early in the war special attention was paid to the latter. If the Guomindang had failed to coopt the legacy of local reform in this area, the Communists did not make the same mistake. They recognized early the political potential in local school circles and worked to control it. The New Fourth Army needed little prodding to see the political value of intellectuals. Hundreds of progressive young intellectuals entered Jiangsu along with its forces, forming the core of its mass mobilization

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cadres. 9 After New Fourth Army forces crossed the Yangzi in 1939, the CCP launched a much-needed recruitment drive, focusing on local modern schools which lay in its path. From this specific target audience, each party member was instructed to introduce five new members monthly. 10 Although there are no indications that this ambitious goal was attained, it would not have been entirely unrealistic, as Communist forces moved through the north-bank counties of Tai, Taixing, Rugao, and Nantong, with their relatively developed prewar local school systems. As Communist power expanded into the countryside in areas nominally under its control, party cadres headed with determination for local educational circles, following orders to develop close ties between school representatives and party activists.11 To encourage this effort, when party activists entered market towns in areas targeted for political organization, cultural elites were routinely called to specially designated meetings. The Communist arrival in the town of Bingcha in eastern Rugao was typical in this regard. Party activists chose a market day for their work. Flanked by New Fourth Army soldiers, they called a meeting of local notables (renshi) "with a fondness for culture." While party activists entertained market-goers with anti-Japanese theater, the gentlemen with a fondness for culture engaged in a lengthy discussion with high-ranking Communist guests, not only about the Japanese occupation (Bingcha itself was not directly occupied) but also about culture, specifically how to develop China's new culture. The participants at this meeting ranged from a local middle school principal to an elderly gentleman whose call to use private tutors and local storytellers in anti-Japanese cultural work met with guarded Communist approval. 12 These meetings with local notables, designed to explain party policies and win at least their verbal compliance, were a characteristic first step in securing CCP control behind Japanese lines.13 The presence of local intellectuals added considerable prestige to these gatherings; while it can be assumed that many such individuals were easily drawn to the anti-Japanese cause, the Communists took no chances. As the meeting in Bingcha illustrated, the Communists went out of their way to specifically organize those recognized as cultural elites.14 As the CCP moved to establish early political assemblies, it continued to differentiate local elites along cultural lines—a process which allowed for a distinction between those more likely to be old-style degree-holders, on the one hand, and those who were the products of western-style schools on the other. When the party called the second provincial assembly in Yancheng in June 1941, for example, while 42 percent of the

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assembly seats were to be allocated to gentry, an additional 15 percent were allotted exclusively to representatives of "educational circles." Some portion of those from educational circles were undoubtedly also gentry; singling them out as educators set them apart within local elite society. This process of singling out educational circles, then carefully subdividing them, could be quite refined. In the Yancheng second assembly, for example, "educators" were further subdivided on the assembly roster to include those generally employed in educational activities (.xuezhi, 3 percent) and middle and primary school teachers more specifically (12 percent). 15 The apparently dominant position of the gentry was not uncharacteristic of early county assemblies in the Communist-held areas, although the term gentry may have been used generously: by 1940, the youngest degree-holders, the last recipients of formal degrees before the examination system was abolished in 1905, would have been in their fifties, if not older. Although gentry were not as prominently represented in all assemblies, Yancheng's categorization of assembly membership was commonplace. When the Funing county assembly met in 1942, for example, approximately a third of the participants were gentry representatives; some 10 percent were from "professional circles." 16 The less formal subcounty assemblies repeated the same pattern, stressing the presence of both "enlightened gentry" and educated youth, although the reports on these meetings were generally imprecise as to the relative representation of these groups. 17 The pattern was repeated late into the war, as Communist-controlled territory expanded. Thus when Dongtai opened its first expanded administrative assembly in spring 1944, gentry were allocated 29 percent of the seats; workers and peasants were jointly allocated 29 percent. Sun Weimin, identified as a representative of local educational circles, was elected chair of the assembly.18 This differentiation of educator representatives extended beyond assembly membership. When the provisional Rugao county government called meetings to discuss rent and interest reduction, for example, it chose the Jiama X primary school as the site for the meeting. Newspaper accounts of the session called attention to the participation, among the some 4 0 0 people reported to be in attendance, of "older-generation educational circles" (qianbei jiaoyu jie), themselves carefully distinguished from the "enlightened local gentry" (dixian shenshi) also reported to be present. 19 Work teams set up for land registration were similarly categorized by profession. The team set up in the northern Yanfu district of southern Lianshui, for example, comprised two gentry, five representa-

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tives of peasant organizations, two primary school teachers, and three district government representatives. The distinction in status between the peasants and the teachers is noteworthy: since the peasants were all said to own less than 10 mou of land apiece, they were among the poorer of their class. The two teachers were both primary school principals, the elite of their particular social stratum. 20 The Rugao rent and interest team which gathered at the Jiama X school was typical in several ways. From early in the war, the precedent was established that teachers, students, and administrators were expected to participate in a wide range of government activities. In June 1 9 4 1 , for example, students from eleven central Jiangsu Base Area middle schools were organized in Yancheng to form an anti-Japanese propaganda team, to be financially supported by their own resources. 21 Early assignments for such teams may have been heady experiences: in July, when the Yancheng eighth subdistrict formally inaugurated its peasant patriotic association (nongqiu hui), student performers provided cultural entertainment for some 800 people. 22 Teachers' work teams were organized in Yancheng to help promote rent and interest campaigns. 23 Summer grain requisition and rent and interest reduction teams in Funing included peasant cadres and teachers from the local schools. 24 Dongtai's grain bureau, organized early in the war, depended on primary school teachers as managers. 25 Township-level elections, which began in earnest in Yancheng in 1942, relied upon primary school students and intellectual youth to promote election propaganda in peasant villages. 26 Similarly, using local schools such as the Jiama X primary school as the sites of political meetings symbolically reinforced their support for the Communists. The Taixing county assembly met in the Subei Middle School, for example. 27 At about the same time, the Dongtai county peasant association, comprising some 300 representatives, met in an unidentified Dongtai primary school. 28 The CCP seldom missed a chance to reinforce this political symbolism. When the summer 1941 session of the Yancheng county assembly met, for example, the Yancheng primary school teachers' patriotic association was called into session simultaneously. With a local Communist newspaper calling attention to both meetings, over a hundred primary school teachers met to discuss government proposals for administrative cooperation between the government and the schools and to listen to government suggestions for improvement of educational activities in the area. 2 9 Such meetings commonly were held in local municipalities which had

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been commercially prominent before the war. When the Subei fourth district cultural consultative assembly was formally established, for example, it met in Juegang in Rugao county. The fourth district middle school association was also inaugurated in Juegang, as was the Suzhong Youth Association.30 Rugao's Matang municipality was the site of an anti-Japanese education association formed in July 1941 to support grain collection.31 One of the few subcounty government education offices actively mentioned in the CCP press was established in Dongkan. 32 Yancheng's Hudou municipality was host to one of the few merchant associations organized by the Communists. 33 In such municipalities, the potential for reviving prewar schools was particularly high. Recovering the Local Schools While political authority was the party's supreme concern, the CCP unequivocally recognized that the habits of authority they hoped to reform were embedded in specific institutions, including local schools, and thus they worked hard to reactivate the local schools, disrupted by the Japanese invasion. In so doing, almost without deviation, the Communists duplicated the prewar distribution of administrative authority over the schools. Jurisdiction over all middle schools was assigned to countylevel government offices. Model or full-primary schools were also under county government authority. All remaining lower-primary schools were under subcounty administration.34 The formal administrative structure of the schools themselves was also indistinguishable from the prewar period; primary schools were divided into two levels (either four plus two or three plus three years each). Middle schools were of three types: regular academic schools, normal or teachers schools, and vocational schools.35 This last category meant very little in practice; indeed, it may have been kept on the books as a symbolic effort to reinforce the formal replication of the prewar system. By the time the Communists secured a foothold in Central China, general directions in educational policy had already been established in the Communists' national headquarters in Yan'an. There the Communists had announced policies which markedly departed from the poor peasant guerrilla-style schools of the Jiangxi soviet period. 36 Of the three components of the school system—cadre education, "school" or formal education, and education for the masses—cadre education was officially given top priority. But directives were issued encouraging formal civilian schooling: regular sequential courses were to be developed, and schools

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were to avoid discriminatory measures against the more elite student body of the prewar schools. 37 In Central China, cadre education also officially ranked first in political importance, a fact linked with the party's ongoing and often desperate need to train new cadres as it expanded throughout the area. Officially, the two highest institutes of learning in Communist Jiangsu fell under the category of cadre education. The fifth branch of Kangri Daxue, the Anti-Japanese University, was founded in Yancheng in 1940 under the jurisdiction of the New Fourth Army. The Central China branch of the Lu Xun Art Academy was also set up in Yancheng in 1941. 3 8 In sheer numbers, however, for both schools and students, these official cadre schools were surpassed by regular, civilian ones. Almost immediately after the New Fourth Army crossed into Jiangsu, with its administrative structure still skeletal at best, cadres set about organizing the first middle school in CCP-held territory in Jiangsu: the Maoshan-based Hubin Middle School. The school's twenty-two teachers were supposed to be party activists, but most were "privately introduced"; they were, in other words, drawn from local school circles. 39 After securing its Yancheng headquarters, virtually without political debate the party spent the next several years encouraging the reopening of prewar schools, many of which had been closed following the Japanese invasion. 40 In the first few years in particular, in a move remarkably reminiscent of early Guomindang policy, the party put its efforts into reviving and organizing middle schools. 41 The party's most appealing salvo, in the campaign to restore prewar schools, was the offer of military protection against the Japanese. 42 There also is circumstantial evidence that there were active private middle schools in the Yanfu region at the time the CCP consolidated control there, as the second full Yanfu assembly called for guidelines to regulate them. 43 Since the party tended to name its own CCP-established middle schools generically—the Subei Middle School No. 1, for example—it would appear that most, if not all, of the eleven middle schools represented at an anti-Japanese middle school association formed in June 1941 were revived schools. The eleven were the Juegang Middle School, the Qidong Middle School, the Nantong County Middle School, the Nantong Academies No. 1 and No. 2, the Nantong Normal School, and the Shangyi Middle School (in Shangyi Nantong), along with four schools whose location cannot immediately be determined. 44 In Huai'an, to the west of the Yanfu area, in the summer of 1943, for

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example, the party reported that it had revived twenty-seven schools in three subcounty wards there and, moreover, planned to add fifteen new ones of its own. 4 5 The party's own statistics indicate it was reviving prewar schools at a faster pace than it was creating new ones. Since subcounty administration was often only loosely controlled by Communist authorities, the majority of the region's lower-primary schools were thus beyond the direct reach of party control. As late as 1946, party educators complained that the base area was peppered with schools which levied local taxes to cover their expenses or survived on the interest from past investments—all activities thoroughly familiar to prewar school financing. 46 In 1940, as the party moved into Subei in the wake of the Japanese invasion, some 500 primary schools were said to be in operation. 47 In early 1942, Yancheng and Funing, the heart of the Communists' Subei administrative district, were reported to have only 26 primary schools in operation, although neighboring Jianyang, a new county unit the Communists created north of Funing, had 107 in operation only a year later. 48 By 1943, the party claimed it had authority, in the northern Jiangsu administrative region, over 700 primary schools, 7 middle schools, a normal school, and a vocational school. 49 Bai Tiao, a leading Communist intellectual in the Jiangsu Base Area, claimed that an additional 200 primary schools were opened by the close of the year. 50 By 1945, the Communists' Subei counties—the northern half of prewar Suzhong— claimed to have 1,986 primary schools and 19 middle schools in operation, while Communist Suzhong—the southern half of prewar Suzhong and now administratively distinct—claimed to have 1,548 primary schools and 39 middle schools. For Central China as a whole, the Communists claimed to have 11,389 teachers and 4 0 1 , 1 8 7 students in western-style local schools by 1945. 5 1 Within a year, the Communists claimed even more impressive numbers, asserting that Central China had 77 middle schools with 15,916 students and 8,688 primary schools hosting 4 5 4 , 3 5 9 students. 52 These statistics were almost double those for the same area as of 1935. 5 3 The Communists inflated their figures, but they did not do so dramatically. For Rugao county, for example, which Guomindang sources reported to have 2 7 0 primary schools by 1928, Communists claimed "over 2 0 0 " for the same period. By 1946, the Communists maintained that Rugao had 340 primary schools. 54 Even the inflation of the statistics may have been politically signifi-

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cant. While the Communists had every intention of isolating and undermining the traditional elite order, the modern schools were an elite identity set apart from that agenda. As events through the course of the war and subsequent renewal of the civil war would prove, the Communists had no intention of overseeing their demise. The institution of the local modern school was a font of wealth for the Communist Party. It provided enlightened political recruits in numbers the peasantry could not provide. It provided a much needed ideological antidote to rural conservatism, complementing party political propaganda. It provided a mechanism for fracturing the collective identity of local elites. Properly managed, the impact of this local institution on the political character of society was considerable.

Organizing Local Educational Circles While educational circles had been singled out in the early base area assemblies, party activists quickly moved beyond that stage by developing complex organizing strategies for these school circles in their own right. Here the Communists set themselves apart from all other prewar authorities who had sought to control the local schools. The CCP asserted control by drawing local school circles out from the larger social community in which they lodged; they then attempted to restructure the makeup of those circles, all the while leaving the institutions which represented them intact. To achieve this, there was intentional ambivalence in Communist organizing strategies within this particular community, exemplified by the party's organization of two overlapping but distinct types of associations—one for culture, the other for education. Among the earliest cultural organizations were the wenxie hui (cultural consultative associations), set up in tandem with the early appointed assemblies. Intended for "gentlemen with a fondness for culture," old-style literary elites, they gave organizational identity to the cultural elite whose goodwill was so essential to early Communist legitimacy and came the closest to being elite mass organizations in the Communists' armamentarium of organizing tactics. Still, the emphasis on culture was carefully highlighted. The wenxie hui were distinguished from more general gentry gatherings, for example, such as gentry conversation sessions (shishen zuotan hui) and gentry assemblies (shishen dahui), called to order to discuss such issues as grain collection and rent and interest reduction.55

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The wenxie hui had no particular administrative assignments but were treated to considerable public fanfare and nurturing visits from the highest-ranking base area officials available. The Subei poetry and song xiehui, established in June 1941, was a case in point. Some thirty local literary figures attended the founding meeting of this group. Considering its relatively small size, the Subei poetry and song consultative assembly had a remarkable infrastructure. An assembly chairman and vice-chairman were appointed, along with six section chiefs. The assembly was considered important enough to be addressed by Chen Yi himself.56 As this particular body does not appear again in base-area press reporting, it appears that it quickly outlived its usefulness. Other cultural consultative bodies were larger—the inaugural Subei fourth district wenxie hui, for example, was attended by over 100 people. The first meeting of this organization was held in late April 1941 in the prominent Rugao municipality of Juegang. It assumed the innocuous task of encouraging cultural sentiment (ganxiang). The Communists took no chances with its leadership, however, which was firmly in the hands of party educators such as Wu Tianshi, Luo Hongxuan, Sun Yongjian, and Qian Suofan, who were simultaneously appointed to leadership positions in other party-managed education organizations.57 Their usefulness apparently exhausted when base-area construction was considered secure; as elected assemblies began to replace appointed assemblies, the wenxie hui faded into obscurity. While they figured prominently in early base area press reports, by 1943 they were no longer mentioned.58 In their place, a parallel organization, the wenjiao hui (cultural education associations), gained prominence instead. First formed at roughly the same time as the wenxie hui, the wenjiao hui had worked in the shadows of the consultative assemblies since their inception. Overlapping membership indicates that the wenjiao hui may have used the wenxie hui as recruiting grounds. Thus in a strategy which roughly paralleled that adopted toward the representative assemblies, the Communists created an organizational arrangement which allowed them to mobilize the crucial prestige of more elderly cultured elites and then gradually replace them, shifting authority over culture and education into the hands of the younger educated "technocrats" who staffed the wenjiao hui.59 From initial appearances, the provincial wenjiao hui, which held its first working sessions in the winter of 1940, within weeks of the New Fourth Army's arrival in Yancheng, was a gray bureaucrat of an organization charged with the mundane task of administering the local schools. Especially in the early years of the war, it was accordingly

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pedestrian, engaging in such activities as supervising school budgets, monitoring teachers' salaries and living conditions, surveying available textbooks, assisting in relocating schools which had fled Japanese occupation, and encouraging private individuals to set up new schools. There was an apparent ordinariness to its activities which was compellingly extraordinary given the context of war and revolution in which they took place. 60 The mundane nature of its tasks also understated its political purpose: wenjiao hui were clearly designed to nudge aside the cultural prestige of elder literati cultural assemblies. Cultural and educational assemblies were only the opening salvos in complicated CCP efforts to salvage and control local educational circles. For no other segment of local society did the party produce such a wide variety of multiple, overlapping organizations. To counterbalance the relatively elite wenxie and wenjiao assemblies, the Communists organized a welter of popular associations which provided public identity to local school circles—distinct now from a more broadly defined cultural elite, itself in turn distinguished from local elites generally. The earliest of the mass-style organizations were patriotic or anti-Japanese associations. These were organized early in the war, usually on the county or subcounty level. The Nantong Anti-Japanese Education Association, for example, was formally inaugurated in June 1941 with thirty people in attendance.61 Anti-Japanese associations continued to be the popular organizations Communists established first even in areas which came under party control late in the war. In Xinghua, for example, an antiJapanese education association was not organized until spring 1944. Only twenty-one people attended the organizing meeting for this association, all described as "high-level intellectuals." The meeting was reported as a breakthrough in relations between "local gentlemen" (difang xiansheng) and the New Fourth Army.62 Where the party was secure, the anti-Japanese organizations gave way to formal education associations (jiaoyu hui), distinct from either the consultative or administrative bodies. Thus, as the anti-Japanese association was being formed in Nantong, where the party presence was not strong early in the war, a full-county education association was also inaugurated in Funing, with 200 representatives in attendance.63 Supracounty associations were formed, as well, such as the Jiangsu fourth district middle school association, at whose first meeting the eleven middle schools encountered earlier were represented.64 Primary schools were encouraged to establish school clubs (julabu), which then sent representatives to an impromptu assembly of their own. 65 Educated youth garnered their own line item on the CCP's organizing

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agenda. Although there were youth to be found in all social classes, peasants were seldom members of formally constituted youth associations. The youth associations, which most closely resembled mass organizations such as peasant and women's associations, were drawn from the children of local elites—the same children who were the students of the local modern schools. Although the Yancheng Youth Group, the first in the area, was inaugurated at the same time as that county's educational assembly in 1941, youth organizing picked up steam beginning in 1942. 66 At that time, in addition to county committees, subcommittees for research, propaganda, and the like were also set up. 6 7 Youth group members were literate youth. Members of the Jianyang youth group, for example, ranged from upper-primary through middle school students. Established in the spring of 1942, the Jianyang association was said to have 1,100 members. Its members claimed subsequently to have mobilized an additional 5,000 peasant youth into literacy clubs. 68 When the Full-Yanfu Youth Association was convened in October 1942, two-thirds of its membership was specifically referred to as zhishi, or intellectual youth. 6 9 There was considerable flexibility in membership criteria for the youth associations. In 1942 eastern Funing (Fudong), which had few western-style schools, was said to have 3,500 people in its youth organization, for example, while Yancheng county was said to have only 300. 7 0 As the Communists consolidated control over northern Jiangsu, the region found itself awash in educational organizations and gatherings. In June 1941 alone, more than a dozen formal associations were inaugurated along with half a dozen youth groups and another half dozen cultural gatherings. 71 Without saying as much directly, the party's organizational strategy recognized the linkage between institutions and social consciousness. In this case, thousands of people, while small in number compared to local society as a whole, were of pivotal ideological importance. The party's organizing strategy indicated that these people defined themselves and were viewed by local society in terms of a particular institution: the local modern school. Organizing

the Private

Tutors

Prior to the war, teachers in the local schools were at the outer limits of a self-consciously western-style school system; if they appeared rural to the provincial educator, for them the peasant village defined that which was truly rural. The war, and the arrival of the Communists, reoriented local educators away from the larger urban world of the provincial elite

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toward the peasantry. In their encounter with the peasant village, they also encountered the most traditional of educators: the private tutor. As with everything else, the Communists recognized the need to organize this aspect of traditional culture. The Communist strategy for transforming the private tutors was not large doses of political education but rather exposure to their westernized counterparts in the formal schools. The exercise proved to be a telling one: in organizing the private tutors, the party was forced to recognize that traditional rural conservatism could condition and limit its power. Several years into this organizing effort, the party would be further forced to acknowledge that rural backwardness was not its only problem. The western-style educators it had mobilized to confront rural conservatism came to pose conditions and limits of their own. In the summer of 1941, the party began to mobilize primary school teachers to meet with private tutors in large public meetings. In June, for example, some 500 people participated in such a gathering, two-thirds of them private tutors, the rest primary school teachers from the Yancheng fifth district. 72 Within a year, specific primary schools had been given responsibility for monitoring private tutors in their areas. 73 Both Communist opprobrium of and ambivalence toward the private tutors were a matter of public record. According to a lengthy article in one of the base area newspapers in the summer of 1941, private tutors were "the products and promoters of feudal society. They [were] dark and useless elements." Ideally, an order should be issued to put them out of business, "gathering them together to boot them out of society and breathe a sigh of relief for the spirits of the children oppressed by them for several thousand years." Unfortunately, the article explained, the situation was not that simple. Conservative families respected the tutors' teaching methods and, moreover, found the tutors easy to exploit. Their working hours were flexible, depending on the families' needs. They could work long hours with few vacations, typically engaging in such activities as keeping accounts and handling the landlord's litigation against tenants. The private tutors prompted considerable policy debate, the article noted. To those who thought the tutors should be completely disenfranchised, the party felt compelled to say that the tutors' influence was too great at the moment to do that. Since many of the region's school-age children were still being educated by them, the base area government had to face the fact that it did not have the resources to replace them all in the immediate future. Despite having labeled the tutors dark and useless elements, the base area government now offered

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them its reluctant support. Private tutors should be persuaded to change their thoughts, but, the article uneasily concluded, the revolution was for the sake of China's masses, including the private tutors. 74 This kind of article was a public admission of the limits of Communist power and recognition of the complexity of local elite authority. Especially during Japanese counterinsurgency campaigns, when the Communists dispersed schools into the rural areas, students and teachers melted into the private tutors' educational dynamics, reinforcing their influence. 75 Predictably, with time, the Communists' growing confidence in their own authority dissolved their tolerance toward the private tutors. Events in the Funing municipality of Yilin in the spring of 1943 provide a case in point. Communist activists claimed that they had attempted to revive modern schooling in Yilin since they moved into northern Jiangsu. After the mopping-up campaigns of 1943, the party identified some 500 children from twenty-two private tutors in the area. In addition to food and lodging, some 12,000 yuan (base area currency) was set aside to fund a new school. The soon-to-be-unemployed private tutors were to be gathered into a private tutor improvement association, presumably to encourage their political enlightenment. Even after intense government mobilization, however, only twenty students were willing to attend the new school. Charging that the tutors were intimidating the children, government organizers took unspecified "politically necessary steps," which halted all private tutorial sessions in Yilin.76 Politically necessary steps did not mean liquidation. Instead, the tutors were publicly subjected to examinations, which conveniently proved that a full two-thirds of them could not handle basic mathematics and nearly a third could not teach elementary Chinese. The Communists reported that these examinations were highly influential in encouraging families to send their children to the new school. If so, this success was due as much to the publicity of the examinations as to their actual results. The public deflation of the private tutors' intellectual competence undercut their cultural authority. It is worth noting that the exams did not threaten anyone with socialist polemics. Consistently, throughout the war years, the focus of such examinations was on basic learning, not politics, a fact which increased the prestige of the Communists' schoolhouse allies. In one of the more interesting variants on this approach, private tutors were tested on their knowledge of the Dalton Plan, which in the mid-1920s had also been endorsed by the Jiangsu Provincial Education

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Association. 77 Wartime CCP educators borrowed the approach wholesale, freely crediting it to Dalton. It was left to the historical record to enjoy the irony of this relatively obscure bit of American pedagogy, put to use in wartime base areas, determining the success or failure of Communist efforts to control and administer rural intellectuals. 78 There is another intriguing aspect of the Yilin case. The new school was designed specifically to compete with the private tutors, but it is not clear why other modern schools in Yilin, one of Funing's leading prewar municipalities, were not revived, if indeed they were not. What is clear is that the Communists considered the promotion of formal schools a solid organizing tactic in prominent municipalities of this sort. The schools they established in Yilin were unabashedly western. Following the opening of the primary school, party activists encouraged a private citizen, Ji Jinan, described as being an experienced educator, to establish a middle school in Yilin. The school gave an entrance examination to 2 0 0 applicants and 162 passed. This was a showcase school. The Communists built for it impressive western-style buildings, including a basketball court, exercise yard, and an auditorium large enough to hold a thousand people. The auditorium alone indicated the school was intended for purposes beyond the needs of its 162 students. Under the circumstances, its thoroughly predictable curriculum was noteworthy: the school taught Chinese, English, math, history, geography, civics, music, and hygiene. The only subject conspicuously (and inexplicably) absent from a prewar curriculum was science; the additions were courses on physical labor and current events. 79

Reaching Rural Society In the early years of the war, rural landlords were not completely excluded from prestigious intellectual circles, as there were highly publicized instances of landlord cooperation in the founding of new civilian schools. Central Primary School No. 2 in Funing, for example, was established with public fanfare and contributions from landowners in the four townships which the school was set up to serve. 80 Landlord cooperation was particularly praised when it encouraged lines of cleavage within local society. One of the first lines of cleavage appeared even in Maoshan, the first area organized in Jiangsu, as the party targeted temples and temple property for confiscation in order to support the new schools. 81 When Central Primary School No. 2 was established, temple buildings were torn down and a twenty-room western-style

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building replaced them. 82 This policy was not new to the Communists; the Guomindang had used the same approach. During the war years, it enjoyed limited success. When local powerholders moved to encourage the takeover of temple lands, apparently in hopes of ensuring the safety of their personal property, Communist authorities praised their efforts. This was the case, for example, in Funing's Chen Ji municipality, in which local landlords cooperated in selling off 12 mou of temple property to finance improvements for the Chen Ji primary school. 83 There are only scattered examples, however, of this kind of cooperation—a fact which underscored the relative social distance between rural landholders and the formal school community willing to cooperate with the Communists. To the degree to which local landowners figure in wartime Communist material on schooling, they generally did so with less enthusiastic reviews, particularly in the management of what were called dispersed schools. These "schools," necessitated by Japanese counterinsurgency raids into Communist-held territory, were composed of small groups of students scattered throughout the rural areas, and often on the move, to avoid Japanese troops. 84 Most of the dispersed schools were actually more like field trips than schools; they were mobile groups of ten to twenty children under the supervision of a teacher.85 Political problems accompanied the dispersal of these schools into the countryside. They increased the difficulty the party experienced in bringing the traditional private tutorial schools under control, since the dispersed schools approximated private tutorials in form. More important, the survival of the children and teachers alike depended on the goodwill of wealthy rural families, who were called upon to provide them shelter. There is some evidence that local landlords did not welcome their student guests. Under pressure from the Communists, they were known to go out of their way to make public displays of support, bringing the children tea and sweets and leaving their houses open so children billeted there could come and go at will. Family treasures, however, were carefully packed away well before teachers and children arrived. 86 Despite this kind of attitude, landlords who did support the local schools, concentrated or dispersed, felt little political pressure to open them to peasant students. If nothing else, this was a matter of financial expediency: the better-endowed schools seem to have been viewed by the base area government as a potential source of extra income. Their students were frequently mobilized to collect from their families food and clothing, which were then presented with a good deal of fanfare to

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local military units. At the Nantai primary school in the Yanfu fifth district, for example, in the spring of 1942, some 200 children gathered to present eggs, handkerchiefs, even bullets and boots, to high-ranking military officials present for the occasion. 87 Wealthier students from the Shiji primary school in Huai'an could not have missed the point when their contribution to a massive water control project was to arrive at the labor site, with the work almost completed, and offer their eggs and towels as thanks for the days of peasant toil the work represented. 88 Nor did the handful of poorly endowed peasant schools, set up by local activists, receive much by way of outside financial support. Party proclamations encouraged the poorer schools to engage in local production efforts instead. Propaganda, portraying these poorer students happily taking control of their lives by collecting grass and manure to make ends meet, could not have had much obvious value in convincing the wealthy that there was political fulfillment in poverty. But the base area government's message was unmistakable: the party had no plans to take from the rich to give to the poor in the field of education. 89 None of this meant that the Communists intended to exclude the peasantry from the benefits of education. But the policies the Communists enacted for Subei's peasants were strikingly similar to those of their political predecessors. "Social education" (shehui jiaoyu), which was aimed specifically at the peasant masses, was explicitly stripped of much of its basic pedagogical functions and devoted instead to general political mobilization. Social or mass education, policy statements explained, was not for the purpose of teaching millions of Chinese to read. Rather it was a means of explaining to them the importance of base area political tasks at any given time. 90 Mass education was also equated with public entertainment. "Cultural recreation," one announcement read, "provides proof that social education has triumphed." 91 The winter mass education campaign of 1942 took as its motto "political understanding first, literacy second." 92 This policy did produce some apparently unexpected contradictions between "cultural cadres," recruited from the local schools, and "peasant cadres" recruited from peasant villages. Cultural cadres, whose institutions were coddled by base area policies, were critical of the deflated emphasis on literacy in peasant education; as best we can tell from the records, peasant cadres expressed no similar objections. 93 By 1943, peasant access to formal education was even further restricted. In that year the winter study sessions, held when peasants would have been most available for even part-time schooling, were consciously narrowed

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from the previous year. Criticized for wasting energy trying to reach too many people at once, social education cadres were informed that winter study was to be confined strictly to efforts to cultivate new activists. 94 Politicizing the Schools Despite their manifest attraction to modern schooling, the Communists did hold ambivalent attitudes toward the local schools themselves. The party would clearly have liked to put a Communist political stamp not only on school personnel, but also on the schools. The party was not certain, however, how much of what the schools had to offer—their prestige and their pedagogy, for example—it was willing to jeopardize to do this. Predictably the Communists' supportive policy toward local intellectuals ruffled feathers among more radical Communist cadres who complained about the landlord and rich peasant background of the schools' teachers and students. 95 The party's official response was couched in terms of New Democracy. The reality of the matter may have been more pragmatic. Party activists knew full well that the support of local school circles could be tenuous. Not everyone welcomed the Communists with open arms; many teachers refused to join the Communistorganized associations and complained loudly about the disruptive activities of patriotic youth who did join mass organizations. 96 Even as the party began political recruitment from the school community, it was careful not to disrupt the normal school calendar. For political education, it favored, instead, special summer sessions to which the schools were invited to send representatives. These sessions began in the summer of 1941 and became a regular occurrence throughout the war. 97 Initially propaganda occasions for the party, they quickly metamorphosed into "research sessions" which provided the party public exposure in peasant villages. Summer sessions were virtually painless for their classroom recruits. Organized into survey teams, the school community's summertime activists visited peasant villages assigned to them by the party, shared tea and conversation with passersby, and papered the walls with anti-Japanese slogans. Typically, their accomplishments were reported in a whirlwind of numbers. A Huaisi middle school summer team, for example, ordered to assist in land investigations in 1943, declared itself successful on the basis of having posted nineteen wall newspapers, performed three street plays, and written 135 wall slogans. 98 This much accomplished, its members returned to their schools and homes without any political obligations to

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the villages they had visited. The party intended these educated investigators to provide it with much-needed information about the largely uncharted world of peasant society; it may also have hoped that visits to peasant villages would have a positive political influence on the relatively elite participants of westernized educational circles. In either case, the Communists were so protective of this arrangement that they provided summer vacations, to facilitate rural visitation, even to students in their own cadre training schools. To the party's chagrin, more than a few of these select students took advantage of the vacation periods to go home and relax for the summer." By the summer of 1942, with Communist control over the Subei administrative district reasonably consolidated and several hundred schools reported to be in operation, government authorities made their first, tentative efforts to evaluate and politicize their prewar educational inheritance. 100 The timing coincided with the party's belief that by early 1942 it had basically consolidated control over the Central China base areas; the time had come for the second stage of the base-building process: undermining local elite power. 101 Initial posturing toward the schools was relatively mild. Party directives sought, for example, to increase political reading material in the summer sessions and expand the number of political cadres attending those sessions. 102 These efforts do not seem to have had much political impact, perhaps because the structures through which they were implemented were too familiar and associated with party support for the status quo. In the summer of 1942, for example, the party called a meeting of the primary school principals in Huai'an county, which straddles the Yanfu region and the Grand Canal. The party-appointed head of the county, a Comrade Zhao, addressed the assembled educators. Zhao was eager to turn their attention to the political issues of the day rather than routine administrative concerns. He lectured on the united front and the distinction between GMD and CCP educational policies—presumably stressing the incompetence and corruption of the former. Zhao then entertained questions. Ignoring the distinctions between old and new education, the principals insisted on addressing more mundane but from their point of view more pressing matters. They complained in particular about the lack of teaching equipment and textbooks and called for increases in their salaries. With some frustration, party officials resorted to dividing the educators into small groups which could be directly confronted with the party's political concerns. 103 At the same time, the base area government made its first attempt

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at monitoring the political performance of primary school teachers through what were intended to be periodic formal examinations—a project which echoed the repeated and never-successful efforts of preCommunist governments to assert authority over the local teachers through government-controlled qualifying examinations. The testing project was thwarted by military campaigns which occupied much of the base area government's attention in the winter and spring of 1 9 4 2 1943. By the spring of 1943, this first effort to assert political control over the schools was largely a dead letter. Following the Communists' recovery from the spring Japanese counterinsurgency efforts in spring 1943, they began an ill-fated, all-out drive to politicize the schools. The campaign began with exhortations to the schools to take a stand against fascism and Guomindang militarism, themes reflecting the party's concern over growing hostility between the CCP and GMD. 1 0 4 Pressure increased in the network of education associations and consultative bodies throughout the base area for more political study. In particular, the party pushed civilian schools to study rectification campaign materials in circulation within the party itself. The rectification movement was designed to homogenize political standards for a growing number of wartime recruits and weed out subversives who had made their way into party ranks during its rapid expansion. 105 There was manifest need for this kind of political housecleaning in the Jiangsu Base Area. Above the township level, most party cadres were outsiders. 106 At the local level, many were recruited from well-to-do families. By 1943, complaints against them, from civilians and government officials alike, ran the full gamut of political errors from arrogance and commandism to free-wheeling political indifference. Newly recruited activists were themselves complaining in growing numbers, particularly over their meager government salaries, a complaint especially telling about the comfortable economic circumstances to which many new recruits apparently had been previously accustomed. One report on these matters noted, for example, the concern of the wealthy families of poorly paid local activists, families whose dissatisfaction with their children's livelihood could translate into ill-feeling toward the Communist government. 107 For the party, the rectification campaign meant intensive study and political self-criticism; in Jiangsu, the local schools were the only nonparty institutions systematically singled out for similar study. As the campaign got under way, it also heralded an uncharacteristically abrupt

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and thoroughly unsuccessful effort to dismantle the prewar school system. Local Educators in Opposition This poorly documented effort at rectification, over almost before it started, underscored the Communists' persistent ambivalence toward the institutional integrity of the local schools. That ambivalence was strong enough to effectively limit the party's organizing potential in this regard. In all of this, there was a bittersweet moment to be savored by local prewar educators. In their relations with higher authorities before 1937, they had made themselves politically attractive while resisting any outright, predatory takeover from above. Now, in the face of far more competent organizers than they had previously encountered, the scenario played itself out again, although ultimately at far greater cost to local school circles. As rectification began, Communist authorities issued sweeping administrative reforms intended to thoroughly politicize the civilian schools. 108 They called for all upper-primary and middle schools to be converted into cadre training institutes. Lower-primary schools, for the most part privately managed, were to be turned over to local mass political organizations. 109 Complicated rules were to govern who could attend the cadre institutes and where the graduates were to be assigned after finishing their training sessions. Finally, the proposals called for the administrative reorganization of the schools to be complete within a year. 110 Simultaneously, the party planned intense political propaganda in the teachers' summer sessions, turning them wholesale into party recruiting grounds. There are indications that the party expected resistance to this campaign from the outset. The Suzhong fourth subregion, for example, which consisted of Nantong, Rugao, Ruxi (western Rugao), Haimen, and Qidong, approached the task by setting up a new education committee, the education improvement committee (jiaoyu gaijin hui), in the summer of 1943, which it expected all civilian educators to join. Public announcements noted that local educators did not have to join the new organization, but hinted broadly that the future might be bleak for the holdouts. In a postwar commentary, Wu Tianshi apologetically noted that this announcement was intentionally "a little ambiguous." 111 The reason for ambiguity does not seem hard to fathom: it did not take local teachers long to realize that the education improvement committee was

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not going to focus its efforts on improving textbooks or raising teachers' salaries. By the end of the year, hit hard by the Japanese counterinsurgency campaign, the Jiangsu Base Area government was in quiet retreat. It was also in retreat from local civilian educators. Without publicly scrapping the reforms, it announced that the initial proposals had generated considerable confusion and should not be implemented too hastily. 112 In place of an ambitious administrative overhaul, a revised program called instead for model schools to experiment with the high degree of politicization intended in the 1943 reforms. Schools were allowed to keep their civilian status in exchange for an agreement to conduct loosely defined political study. 113 This retreat was particularly significant for the civilian middle schools, which now were generally kept beyond the reach of the political commissars. Instead of being transformed wholesale into cadre schools, county-level schools, including private and government middle schools, were given the considerably milder obligation of accepting as students cadres from lower administrative levels. Private middle schools could continue to operate, as long as the period of study was long enough to allow for practical work as well as academic topics. 114 The details of this retreat from radicalization are elusive. Communist press reporting of the time focused on policies and institutions, yet neither regulations nor schoolhouses resist reform—people do. While we do not know the actual source of the resistance to the proposed reforms, some speculations may be in order. The reforms coincided with the Communists' first township-level elections, which began the process of politically displacing established local powerholders. The Communists' local bureaucracy was substantial in size—larger than that in place under the Guomindang. New township governments were assigned direct control over local education through assembly subcommittees and mass organizations. 115 To the degree to which the elections were successful, the educational reforms would have thrown the schools under the control of party-approved authorities, weakening the institutional independence of local educational circles. Resistance to the reforms would hardly have been surprising as a result. In retreat from this position, leaving the formal institutional structure in place, party activists focused instead on a considerably milder campaign to influence "political attitudes" at the teachers' annual summer sessions. In effect, they individualized the focus of their political efforts, shifting their attention from institutions to people. 116 The material available to us records only the most elite of these sessions, held at the

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county level. Through 1943, before the reforms were formally rescinded, summer sessions were fairly large in size: a hundred or more educators and intellectuals might attend any one session. The Jianyang county session, for example, had 180 primary school teachers in attendance. The Funing county session of the same year was similarly attended by several hundred. 117 With the growing possibility of military hostilities between the CCP and GMD, it was nationalism, not radical social transformation, that dominated the political agenda. The 1943 summer sessions also continued to encourage village-level investigations. 118 Public criticism, however, a powerful form of political persuasion, began to increase significantly in the 1943 summer sessions. Teachers were singled out, one or two at a time, for a laundry list of criticisms. Local intellectuals were criticized for practices, such as usury or cooperation with corrupt GMD officials, that predated the establishment of the base area government. A common catchall charge was that local intellectuals were not sufficiently democratic—a veiled complaint against elitism. Even Communist youth organizers, recently recruited from local schools, were called on the carpet for such errors as being insufficiently resolute in the face of the Japanese invasion or trying to protect their own families from rent and interest reduction or land registration. Of all these charges, the most telling was that of protecting the status quo, an endeavor to which base area educational policy had been dedicated since the early years of the war. 119 By the summer of 1944, with administrative reform squarely on the back burner, pressure on individual intellectuals attending the summer sessions increased. The sessions were smaller and longer now, lasting up to three months at a time, and political indoctrination was more intense. Postwar recollections present these intense study groups as being among the most important factors in the political conversion of many elite young educators. Although these sessions did succeed in some impressive political conversions, the new cadres seem to have been predominantly activists from outside northern Jiangsu. They were not, in other words, home-grown products of local educational circles. Guo Guanwu, who reflected on his wartime experiences thirty years after the 1949 revolution, typified many whose lifetime commitment to Marxism was a product of these sessions. 120 Guo was a nonparty intellectual who fled Shanghai for Hong Kong after the Japanese invasion and then made his way behind Japanese lines to the Jiangsu Base Area. Guo recalled the party's initial suspicions toward privileged people like

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himself. Nonetheless, he became a teacher in one of the civilian schools and was drawn into a research group in the summer of 1944. Guo's group had twenty people in it, all of elite intellectual background. None were northern Jiangsu natives. The session lasted three months and by its close all twenty participants had decided to join the CCP. Thirtyseven years later, Guo reported proudly, all were still alive and active party members. For all those like Guo, however, there were apparently a considerable number of others who were less enthusiastic about party politics. This was particularly true of a sizable number of local intellectuals who had resisted Guomindang political campaigns before the war and now did so again, defending "education for education's sake," to the distress of local Communist authorities. 121 While the Communist records are quiet as to their identity, these are likely to have been local reformers, native to the region, not drawn there by the extraordinary circumstances of foreign invasion and the relative merits of the Communists and Nationalists. Such people are likely to have identified closely with the schools as socially definitive institutions and would have had every reason to resist the party's 1943 effort to politicize the schools. Organizing Local Youth Faced with recalcitrance it was unwilling to confront directly or discuss publicly, the party threw itself back onto an earlier agenda: working to isolate component parts of the local elite community. Specifically, as it reluctantly restored the relative political independence of local schools, it increased its efforts to wean away impressionable local elite youth. As it did so, it unintentionally acknowledged fissures from the Guomindang period. As we have seen, as school circles reeled from the organizational predations of Nationalist authorities, students expressed their frustration through strikes and demonstrations. It was precisely that youthful potential to which the Communists now turned their attention. Although the Communists had been setting up youth organizations since the early war years, the last three years of the war witnessed a marked upsurge in such organizing, an upsurge which had initially coincided with the policy review of spring 1942. At that time, the Yanfu regional government opened a drive to mobilize intellectual youth by establishing a youth problems research committee. 122 The Yanfu branch of the party threw itself into this new organizing campaign with a frenzy. Hastily constituted county-level committees toured Communist-con-

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trolled territory, signing up hundreds of people a week and establishing along the way at least nominal subcounty youth organizations. Within three months, the Communist press claimed Yanfu organizers had enlisted some 14,000 people in the various youth organizations.123 Many of these groups may have been paper organizations at best. The county-level associations were generally established after only three or four weeks' organizing effort, yet even the region's more remote counties, such as Liandong, carved out of eastern Lianshui, claimed membership of a thousand or more. 124 With dogged consistency, peasant youth were unenthusiastic about these campaigns. Party youth activists acknowledged that peasants viewed their efforts with suspicion—an impression not helped by the glorification of the handful of intellectual youth who chose to go from youth work to the military.125 When the Full-Yanfu Youth Association was formally inaugurated in October 1942, two-thirds of the representatives present were described as intellectual youth. 126 Support for this approach came from the highest echelons of party leadership. Chen Yi, acting commander of the New Fourth Army, praised elite youth organizing before a gathering of "local influential people" in Yancheng in the spring of 1942. Chen was acutely aware that there could be problems with intellectual youth—some enthusiasts were ultra-leftists, for example, while other elite youngsters were committed anti-Communists, he lamented. Still, he explicitly urged the gentlemen present to send their children to join the Communists' anti-Japanese effort, noting that the most serious problems the party faced were with "youth at the local level," a none-too-oblique reference to the lack of intellectual youth in peasant villages.127 Political debate regarding this approach to youth organizing surfaced almost immediately, as unidentified political purists opposed the attention being paid to educated youth rather than their peasant counterparts. The party's response was relatively unembellished. Local party theoreticians argued that emphasis on intellectual youth was a product of the developed state of local education in Jiangsu. As a result, under the general rubric of youth work, intellectual youth and primary school teachers were to be given organizational priority.128 Significantly, by 1944, as the party retreated from its efforts to politicize the civilian school system, it reconfirmed its commitment to intellectual over peasant youth. It stopped publication of a leading base-area youth magazine, Dazhong zhishi (Intellectuals of the Masses), and after a five-month hiatus brought out a new version, entitled Xin zhishi (The

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New Intellectual), which in title and content moved the organizing strategy away from the peasant masses. Then, in early 1944, the Central Jiangsu Public School was established with considerable fanfare in the market town of Dingsuo in the Communists' Hai'an county. A one-time military training institute, now the school's goal was to train youth organizers for work within local school circles. For this assignment, the party picked from the most elite of local society. When the school opened in February, it had 300 students, between the ages of eighteen and thirty. All but a small number, detailed from the New Fourth Army itself, were graduates of civilian middle schools. Although postwar memoirs stress the cadre nature of this new school, press accounts at the time of its founding went out of their way to divorce this school from cadre-style institutes such as the Anti-Japanese University and Lu Xun Art Academy. Technical training courses, in law, finance, and public administration, easily outranked political theory courses, for example. 129 A year later, on 4 May 1945, the Central Jiangsu Public School was the site of a meeting, called to order by the youthful son of a Haimen county landlord, to inaugurate organization of the United Youth Association of the northern Jiangsu fourth subregion. With some 1,300 persons in attendance, Communist activists reconfirmed their loyalty to the allies of the May Fourth movement, Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy, and solemnly declared that the survival of both depended on the Chinese Communist Party. 130 For the intellectual youth present, the meeting and the organizing strategy it represented came as something of a relief, but for reasons more personal than concern for the well-being of Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy. The school simultaneously hosted a well-publicized meeting—officially for the purpose of allowing representatives chosen from various schools and youth associations throughout the base area to formally welcome young intellectuals who had just arrived from Japanese-held territory. Buffered by calls for intellectual youth to overcome class prejudice, high-ranking party authorities used the opportunity to reconfirm their own class-conscious priority with regard to youth organizing. 131 The strategies adopted at this second meeting, and dutifully confirmed by the United Youth Association, assured intellectual youth they would be given priority over peasant youth, despite the increasing radicalization of Communist policy as the war drew to a close. For Zhang De, the landlord's son who chaired the May Fourth assembly, the following months were hectic ones. The party launched a blitz

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organizing effort which swept through central Jiangsu and encompassed hundreds of young people. Within three months, party organizers convened the full Central Jiangsu United Youth Association, its executive committee drawn from the leadership of the region's local youth associations. 132 Zhang De, appointed to the executive committee, personified the Communists' success at mobilization within educational circles. A normal-school student with a fondness for romantic songs, Zhang had watched as many of his wealthy classmates fled to the southwest to escape the invading Japanese. Zhang recalled scattered GMD loyalists who stayed behind, fulfilling their patriotic duties with unconvincing lectures about the invincibility of the Three People's Principles. In the ensuing political void, Zhang remembered no mass mobilization, no spontaneous resistance to the Japanese. The absence of indigenous organization worked to the advantage of local CCP organizers. By late 1939, Zhang was a political instructor for a local Communist military unit. By 1940 he was a party member. 133 By 1945, he was in the vanguard of an all-out effort to recruit intellectual youth.

The Civil War However enthusiastic the party may have been about intellectual youth in Jiangsu, when the Anti-Japanese War ended in 1945, it found itself with a cumulative policy toward local school circles which was notably unstable. The CCP had successfully drawn significant numbers of individuals—from intellectual youth to schoolteachers and administrators— into its ranks during the war. The institutions from which these people came, however, survived largely intact. So too did their intellectual identity. In the dramatic swings in policy toward the schools during the civil war period, it would become abundantly clear that the Communists were ill-equipped to handle these circumstances. As the war with Japan came to a close, the CCP's tolerance toward the local schools weakened. In the intense drive to mobilize cadres in the spring of 1945, school principals came in for frequent attack. These attacks indicated the party's mounting frustration with the schools as protective institutions operating under their own internal authority. 134 Because of the drive to recruit new cadres, the schools themselves became suspicious institutions in the eyes of many nonparty civilians. The Communists reported difficulties setting up new schools during this period because of people's fears that they would be used as a conduit for military conscription. 135

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In the closing months of the war, party authorities began to discuss reimplementing the ill-fated 1943 school reforms. In the spring of 1945, in the Yanfu area, it experimented with a reorganization of the schools reminiscent of Jiangxi soviet-style schooling. Grades and classes were abolished. The "collective and flexible" approach was put into effect to allow students to evaluate and pace themselves. Students were organized in paramilitary fashion and courses kept short to minimize the difficulties caused by military disruptions. 136 These reforms seem to have been inspired by expectations of imminent military hostilities, rather than any decisive resolution of party policy toward western-style schooling. There was more at work than this, however. The party wanted to move against the independence it had allowed the local schools. A CCP survey of schools in Rugao, for example, lamented the fact that there were no party-managed educational mass organizations at the township level; the administration of local schools was effectively beyond party control. 1 3 7 The party conducted a sobering survey of student associations in the schools themselves. The survey acknowledged what school circles had known throughout the war: the schools had not been transformed politically. Student associations, so thoroughly familiar to school communities from prewar experiences, had been used to shore up school spirit, for example, rather than fight the Japanese. Reviewing the results of their survey, the Communists acknowledged the power of the schools as institutions—and vowed to undermine the community the institutions defined. Henceforth, the party decreed, all student associations were to be under the supervision of youth organizers from outside the schools. Administrative committees within the schools were to have no political autonomy. 138 In short, students and teachers were to answer to distinct political authorities. Base area journals now openly called education a form of struggle and criticized elements within base-area educational circles divorced from that struggle—some because they did not know better, some because they were fundamentally opposed to China's transformation. 139 The stark class associations which would become so familiar to the postwar period now began to appear in commentary on local education. There was, for example, the telling account of Meng Zhenghong, a middle peasant from Jiedun village in Dongtai, who was recruited by the party itself to set up a new school because he was the only person in the village with sufficient education to manage it. It took three days to persuade Meng to accept this task, for which he received no remuneration; Meng supported himself by working his own land. For all of this, an article

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praising the new school dwelt at length on the weaknesses caused by Meng's class background. Assuming that he might easily waver from the mass line, the article cautioned the masses to support Meng but to be ceaselessly vigilant at the same time. 1 4 0 Commentary of this nature would have been unheard of even a year previous. It is not clear how widely any of these late-war policies were put into effect. For our purposes, their presence in base area journals is more revealing for party intent than actual practice. By the summer of 1945, intent and practice alike began a series of wild fluctuations. Initially, with the Japanese surrender and with civil war temporarily held in check by negotiations between the GMD and CCP, the schools assumed a more professional and academic air. While the politics of land reform moved to the left, the politics of local schooling moved in the opposite direction. Without reconciling this approach with increasingly radical land policies, the party instructed westernized schools to keep the heavy hand of politics out of the classroom. 141 Grades and class divisions were to be strictly implemented. Their absence, complained party policy statements, made it impossible to develop advanced training. Overdoses of politics came under public attack. The Yanfu Middle School, a model among Communist schools in Subei, was criticized, for example, for confining its math classes to figuring out land acreage (presumably in the interests of land reform) and amounts of public grains available for distribution, rather than developing more wide-ranging basic skills. The politicization of science was also condemned. "One should not assume," noted one commentator, "that water could be composed of two atoms of hydrogen per atom of oxygen ( H 2 0 ) in a Communist school while consisting of three atoms of hydrogen per atom of oxygen ( H 3 0 ) in a Nationalist school." 142 Finally, while Communist authorities officially acknowledged the value of party control over the schools, during this period they openly encouraged private schools, including private middle schools. At the lower levels of the school system, officials were ordered to relax their authority and let mass organizations provide guidance—which in the field of education, the Communists, by their own acknowledgment, could not do. The middle schools were singularly favored beneficiaries in these policies. They were absolved entirely of the responsibility to provide education for those who could not afford it. Poor students, commented the veteran Communist educator Liu Jipin, would have to rely on local mass organizations and their own resources. 143 The Com-

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munists were not unaware of the relative power which might accrue to the middle schools as a result of such policies. One indication of this concern was an interdiction against middle school principals "coming from the masses" without government approval. As there are no records available on the appointment of middle school principals during this period, the interpretation of this policy is a matter of conjecture. But it would appear to indicate that the party was acutely aware of the possibility that still independent and prestigious educational institutions might forge their own local bonds in villages and townships where party authority itself was uncertain.144 Base area journals established an ongoing discussion about these issues—even publishing letters purported to be from disgruntled students in cadre training sessions distressed about overdoses of politics in their coursework, which lost them precious time to abstract and inapplicable theory. Marx's theory of surplus value and commodity production, noted one such letter writer, was boring and did not provide much help in trying to explain government policy to base area peasants. In the clearest switch of line, even cadre schools were called on the carpet for overemphasizing service to society and economic production. Time needed for training was lost, authorities lamented, as students went out for half-day sessions in the fields.145 For students in Communist-controlled schools, politics and production were not to squeeze out basic intellectual training. This period of leniency in the field of education witnessed a proliferation of new cultural journals edited by such leading Communist educators in Central China as Bai Tiao and Liu Jipin. These journals included Shenghuo (Life), Wenzong (Cultural Collections), and Xin wenzhai (New Cultural Selections). Xinhua wenzhai (New China Cultural Selections) began publication in January 1946; Jianghuai wenhua (Jianghuai Culture) began publication in June 1946; Huazhong shaonian (Central China Youth) also began publication in June 1946. 1 4 6 The publication of these new journals indicated that their editors expected the new policies to hold and intended to develop the cultural infrastructure to sustain them. The loss of Central China to the Guomindang in 1947 disrupted these publications. When the territory was recovered late in the year, policy had abandoned its moderate character. As before, the party's lenient attitude toward local intellectuals was not without its opponents, especially among peasant recruits. Some had attended formal schools during the war years; they had met and studied with intellectual youth when the municipal schools had been dispersed

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into the countryside to avoid the Japanese. With the Japanese surrender, the Communists, wherever possible, moved the dispersed schools back into towns, where the facilities were better, to keep company with the formal schools that had survived the war there. Communist journals acknowledged that those peasant cadres who were sent to the schools for advanced training complained of their urban counterparts, who had not gone into the base areas during the war, ridiculing the peasant students and making fun of their "red politics" and shabby clothing. 147 These policies amounted to a public endorsement of the local western-style schools and their coursework. Expediency was certainly an issue here: the Communists were preparing for expansion into areas abandoned by the Japanese and were in need of able administrators. With the defeat of the Japanese, the CCP was also now actively competing with the Guomindang for the allegiance of the nation's young intellectuals. All of this would have argued for supporting moderate policies toward local intellectual circles in areas of strategic importance such as Jiangsu. There is also an argument to be made for the fact that party educators were sincerely attracted to the skills and training offered by the local schools, although the argument did not go unchallenged. The author who spoke against the presence of tri-hydrogen water molecules advocated increases in basic mathematics and science courses, such as algebra, chemistry, and geometry, all of which, he argued, were without class identification. 148 The same journal, however, also contained objections to the teaching of advanced sciences. The well-dressed city people who ridiculed the peasant students were political conservatives who taught physics and chemistry and promoted the study of English, complained one such writer. 149 The politics of the curriculum debate were clearly not yet settled. Initially, the party did little more than counsel patience with these differences of opinion. Within a year, with no secure political justification for its educational policy, however, it would find its patience running out, along with its control over a coherent educational system. Subsequent policy toward the local schools would change again at least twice before the Communist victory in 1949. Communist attitudes toward the local school community the party had so carefully protected during the war were set against a background of the agrarian policies which dominated CCP politics during the civil war. After cautious united front policies during the war years, the party went into the civil war ready for more aggressive action to undermine the residual power of the rural elites with which it had cooperated dur-

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ing the Japanese occupation. By spring 1946, as Nationalist attacks on Communist-held territory increased, the CCP authorized the tentative beginnings of land reform. Land reform began in earnest in the fall of 1947 and almost immediately the party encountered political problems within its own ranks. Many of the party's most local wartime recruits were children of landlords or rich peasants who had joined with the Communists on patriotic grounds and were not prepared to launch a full-scale assault on their own social origins. "Rightist" tendencies emerged—especially among lower-ranking party cadres, who dragged their heels on land reform, reluctant to attack the rural elite. The party responded with a year-long rectification campaign reminiscent of the zhengfeng campaign of 1942-1944. 1 5 0 By 1947, as the rectification campaign gained momentum, there was a mounting torrent of abuse toward local civilian educators. With the outbreak of serious hostilities between the Communists and Nationalists, when one might expect moderate CCP policies toward local elites, radicalization had taken on a dynamic of its own. Having abandoned more moderate policies of rent and interest reduction after the Japanese surrender, the Communists had delineated stark lines of allegiance from which they could not retreat. Having antagonized rural elites, the party could not now reabsorb them into a united front against the Nationalists.151 With the advent of land reform and the 1947-1948 rectification campaign, the local school community came in for a frontal political assault from party hard-liners. Schools were attacked as reactionary institutions designed to protect and promote the interests of the landlords, rich peasants, and capitalists. In their stead, peasant culture was glorified as setting standards to which intellectual youth should aspire.152 Primary and middle school teachers were specifically singled out as targets for investigation. Beginning in February, all primary school teachers were to be investigated for class background, political thought, and work style. Middle school teachers were to follow suit.153 By late 1947, in a notable change of policy over wartime practices, peasant associations in Yanfu were mobilized to investigate the formal schools, which were ordered to submit regular reports to peasant associations and local governments. The class background of administrative committees was to be investigated. If committees were found to be controlled by landlords and rich peasants, they were to be abolished.154 Where we have reports of these investigations, however, it would appear they were carried out somewhat selectively. Village primary

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schools seem to have been rather hard hit. In the Communists' Binhai county, an investigation of some 126 lower primary school teachers found that half were of landlord or rich peasant class background. All appear to have been native to the area; all of those with questionable class backgrounds were fired. 155 In contrast, there is evidence that the municipal primary schools were relatively unaffected. When harvest failures in the spring of 1948 threatened Yanfu, students from Hudou primary schools were praised for going out into the countryside, for example, where for the first time, reported the base area press, they witnessed hungry peasants attempting to sell their children for much-needed cash. 1 5 6 Whether or not such incidents were real, the reporting was remarkably conciliatory. Middle schools appear to have been treated even more gingerly. In one instance, some 3 0 0 middle school teachers were gathered for investigation. The fact that they were drawn from eight different counties, however, indicated that their presence was selective to begin with, and none were reported to lose their jobs. Rather, after twenty days of political criticism, they were informed that Chinese intellectuals too were the victims of landlord and capitalist oppression in China. 1 5 7 Toward the end of 1948 with the prospects for a Nationalist defeat improving, policy again took a more moderate turn. Party extremists who had attacked western-style education were now themselves under attack, and formal schooling was again on a moderate course. Radical cadres were criticized for what was called "one ingredient-ism," meaning that they incorrectly assumed that if the landlords were enemies, any and all institutions associated with local elites were also to be attacked. 1 5 8 Thus, by the end of 1948, policy toward pedagogy in the schools had come full circle. The radicals' activities were said to be inefficient, interfering with advanced training, and making a mockery of much-needed technical knowledge. Insistence on collective learning methods for all classes was discouraged. Limits were placed on the amount of time that production activity could detract from solid classroom learning. Science classes were criticized for going so far as to try to determine the class nature of the sun. 1 5 9 The only educational institutions which could meet the demands of the new standards—stipulating that politics at the primary and middle school levels were to consume no more than 10 percent of the curriculum (90 percent was to be devoted to science and culture)—were the local western-style schools. Thus, in five short years, following the defeat of the Japanese, policy toward the schools, their people and their pedagogy, had changed no

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less than four times. The Communists now knew what their prewar predecessors had also come to know: the postimperial local schools were a pedagogical necessity which also provided an institutional base for claims to political authority. The social circles they supported were simultaneously invaluable and political competitors. The unresolved tension in that calculus would haunt the People's Republic in the decades which followed.

8.

Conclusion

T H E CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY was the unintended beneficiary of prewar developments. After 1937 it found available to it, in the local western-style schools, extensive postimperial institutions sustaining articulate, politically experienced local interests. The CCP's wartime support for school circles was motivated by direct pragmatism: the party needed educated activists and administrators to provide it skills it could not easily extract from a peasant population. It inherited resources—people and institutions alike—from the prewar republic and through much of the war proved capable of adjusting its policy to claim them. That the Communists had access to these resources was a matter of historical fortune, not party foresight. Within the world of local school circles in Jiangsu, what the Communists were able to do was a direct measure of how far local society had traveled from the first years of the century.

This journey was undertaken in a local urban order often overlooked by prominent political actors in more elite arenas. Located outside the physical and cultural parameters of Jiangsu's southern provincial elite, this was also an administratively local order—much of the political experimentation that school circles sustained occurred in subcounty municipalities. Despite these unassuming settings, local school activists reached beyond traditional institutions and self-contained political habits. They acquisitively established western-style schools in a fashion which confirmed their acceptance of extralocal political authority in the form of state-sanctioned school administration reaching into elite urban communities and provincial and national government offices. In evaluating this matter, one is well advised not to overstate association between local elites and idealistic reformers, more familiar to us from provincial and national arenas. For most of the local activists in the

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educational order, reform institutions were viable to the degree to which they provided means to political ends; they were seldom the end in themselves. At the same time, across the board, despite regional differences, cultural points of reference changed as did the organizational representation of local politics. The activities of local educational entrepreneurs are best evaluated in this light. Such activities call into question enduring imagery of republican-period local elites in political retreat, withdrawn defensively into a locally defined political arena. Schools and their social circles alike may have been viewed negatively by the local community at large—especially the peasantry. As we have seen, evidence indicates that the modern schools did little to increase access to basic education; their cultural standards were alien to the local populace, and they were viewed as responsible parties in the republic's rising tax burden. At the same time, however, in the exercise of their own political aspirations, school managers contended not only with disgruntled peasants. After the 1911 Revolution, although they worked with determination to keep the state from their schools and associated organizations, they actively promoted these postimperial institutions on their own initiative and simultaneously looked to the state to confirm their right to do so. They accepted the idea of the state. A wide range of their activities— from school reports to court cases—acknowledged, if not promoted, its authority. Local managers embraced and appropriated that authority, but they sought to manage it with local not central power, avoiding the obligation of direct state jurisdiction. Images of local elites in sullen retreat can mistakenly result from conflating the two. In out-of-the-way places, then, local municipal society experimented with its postimperial future—in institutional form, cultural representation, and political practice. The management of the schools—from recalcitrant local management committees to the structure of county offices to successive provincial governments' nervous, repeated tinkering with local districting—laid bare republican efforts, by state and locality alike, to institutionalize political power. The enormous contention in this process acknowledged the high stakes associated with the organizational embodiment of power, even at the most local levels. The schools themselves—their glass-windowed buildings, public playgrounds, and display-case science equipment—struggled to define cultural symbols appropriate for this new distribution of power. Cultural symbols were acquired and displayed; they also were active strategies that reinforced evolving institutions and social identities. This was particularly true with regard to school publications. A rich crop of jour-

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nals became a telling measure of local vitality in the 1910s and early 1920s. These local publications coexisted with more elite journals in form, but there was a significant difference in content. Local journals explored their own conditions, their provincial counterparts, and the western experience which informed institutions and practices for both. Provincial journals in the 1910s and 1920s concentrated on the latter two items. While they politically recognized their local counterparts— acknowledging reports and conducting investigations, for example— culturally they looked up and out, not down. They saw themselves as partners with ideal western prototypes, not their local counterparts. This disparity came to a head after 1927, when the provincial government became a particularly predatory body and uniform ideological orthodoxy came to dominate the voice of provincial educational journals, now devoted largely to promoting top-heavy educational campaigns, while local school journals often ceased publication altogether. If the chemistry equipment and English classes were cultural anomalies in local municipalities well removed from centers of provincial power, the political dynamics with which local school circles experimented were less novel but carried important implications for the fate of the republican state. The battles over school committees, county offices, taxes, and the like were informed by an appreciation for the power embedded in physical management of public resources. But beyond power, school managers also sought to ensure legitimacy—public approval of their exercise of that power. A remarkable variety of people, organizations, and institutions participated in this effort—from management committees, schools, and government-sanctioned associations to local officials, social clubs of varying degrees of longevity, and individual activists. The resulting cacophony of voices created the impression of chaos and uncertainty. There was a logic to this profusion of participants, however. The passing of the empire took with it long-established political expectations. The litigants, petitioners, and essayists who spoke for local school circles were testing and defining republican political dynamics, attempting to determine who had the right to be heard politically, who had the right to manage society and dispense justice, and what such management actually entailed. That these were not mere contests for power, uninformed by larger political awareness, can be measured by the efforts made by local school entrepreneurs to ensure that their activities were publicly conducted in the context of political associations which extended beyond local soci-

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ety. School circles approached this issue by projecting working relationships onto organizations and associations in geographically and politically larger arenas than those in local society alone. Most notably, local school circles carried on a voluntary dialogue with government offices and state-approved provincial associations as if these bodies held political authority—the legal exercise of power—even though such legality during republican times was tenuous at best. School managers sent reports, petitions, and surveys to paragovernmental bodies, provincial offices, and directly to the governor's office. To the degree to which state offices and associations also participated in this dialogue—publicly responding to local complaints and reports—local correspondents acquired an implicit stamp of state approval. Even from a distance, the state gained from this arrangement as well. Because it was association with the state which ensured local legitimacy, the weak, floundering republican state, represented in Jiangsu by provincial offices, was given the appearance of commanding and dispensing authority. By acknowledging local correspondents, it too was legitimized. This was an intensely political arrangement, and it recognized that political authority is greater than coercive power. Given the republic's enormous political uncertainty, the process was mutually beneficial. Local managers proposed, effectively, the kind of symbiosis familiar to their gentry predecessors, whose local authority derived from submission to state-managed institutions, notably the civil service examination. Local school activists, in other words, sought to reconfirm for the republic practices of extralocal legitimization for local management. This arrangement was attractive locally as long as the central state was not inclined to turn its symbolic authority into predatory power. Early provincial governments in Jiangsu were largely incapable of such a move, but beyond the limits of their capabilities they showed little awareness of the political potential that cooperation with local aspirations offered. After 1911, Jiangsu's provincial governments operated much as they were constituted—invasive and predatory—with little appreciation for the value of reestablishing the partnership which had sustained the late-imperial system and a postimperial rendition of which local school managers offered up in the early years of the republic. Awkwardly at first, then with much more determination after 1927, provincial powerholders turned instead to coercive management techniques. As a result, the Communists were the beneficiaries of provincial policies which antagonized a sizable segment of the school community and undermined its efforts to balance central political authority with local

Conclusion

213

management. The Guomindang in particular attacked local schools while lavishing resources and public recognition on centrally managed institutions and campaigns. While not actively closing down the local school system, the Guomindang attacked its political aspirations. It devalued the status of the formal schools, publicly promoting as an alternative an association between mass education and governmentapproved political elites. The alienation of local school communities from Guomindang political management worked to the benefit of the Communists. Compared to the hostility of the Guomindang period, the Communists' conscious political use of the local schools appears to have come as a welcome alternative, restoring political intent to densely organized local school circles. The degree to which Guomindang policies had antagonized this community by 1937 was a function not only of the political self-awareness of these local circles but also of the fact that they had become socially distinct, set apart from the dynamics of traditional elite society. Slowly but discernibly through the early years of the republic, school politics produced new social circles with their own internal conflicts and social hierarchy. Beyond aggressive local gentry, new professionals—young, educated in western-style schools—began to assume a presence in local management bodies as well as municipal and county offices and beyond to the province level. Within the schools themselves, principals, teachers, and ever-growing numbers of students filled in the contentious ranks of this social order. Guomindang mass education policies favored specific segments of these local circles, playing on social antagonisms as well as political aspirations. In its wartime base areas, well removed from conventional sources of prestige and power, the party also recognized the social self-awareness of local school circles. It appreciated the degree to which school circles represented fissures in local elite society. The party responded to this situation with distinct organizing tactics which allowed the Communists to separate general "enlightened gentry"—established elites willing to cooperate with the party—from the formal school community. The party wanted the cooperation of the former; it needed the latter virtually in its entirety. The success of Communist policies depended on the degree to which local school circles were coming to see themselves as distinct social entities well before the New Fourth Army reached Jiangsu. Local educators alienated by the Guomindang responded favorably to CCP initiatives, which restored a measure of the political influence that prewar school circles had sought to acquire. When the party moved on

214

SCHOOLHOUSE POLITICIANS

to more intrusive measures, it threatened to transform school circles from legitimate partners to objects of predatory management. Predictably, they resisted, as they had resisted the CCP's predecessors. But, whereas previous central political figures had not succeeded in asserting authority over the schools, the party clearly had the power to do so. Its approach in this regard echoed strategies that local schools themselves had employed during the prewar years—notably the dense use of schoolrelated associations loaded with political intent. In the process, however, the party's dominance ended the school circles' relative autonomy in their dialogue with central politics and brought to a close their efforts to maintain that autonomy while simultaneously appropriating legitimacy and authority conferred by association with the state. At the same time, local educators had accumulated sufficient resources to impose limits of their own on CCP wartime policies. If the party wanted what school circles had to offer, it found it did not have a free hand in how it approached them. Thus, although the party had the power to intrude coercively if it chose to, it found that as much as its policies pushed local school circles, they were also pulled by them. The attractions of local school circles, as the Communists inherited them from the prewar period, limited the party's ability to enact a crisp, consistent policy. This limitation would eventually prove to be costly, playing itself out in destructive uncertainty toward western-style training—the symbolic representation of local school circles and their politics—for decades to come. Such an equation should inform our evaluation of the Chinese republic. The republic has been approached as a period of transition, often explored in sweeping political terms. Much of the inquiry has looked backward—to determine the degree of continuity or discontinuity with the imperial period. From the vantage point of local society during the republic, it may be fruitful to look forward—to understand the degree to which local political aspirations conditioned the failure of the non-Communist republic as well as support for and limitations imposed on the revolutionary organizers who replaced it. Contemporary China itself has only gingerly begun to engage in such inquiry. In January 1981, Yancheng city was host to considerable activity as it prepared for the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of Liu Shaoqi's Central China Bureau in Yancheng in 1941. Liu himself had only recently been posthumously rehabilitated after his disgrace and death during the Cultural Revolution. While the Yancheng City Museum prepared a display of photographs and documents from the New

Conclusion

215

Fourth Army period, statues and other memorabilia of Liu were unearthed and dried in the reluctant winter sun, material entombed for a decade and a half to protect it from the ravages of local Red Guards. 1 The Yancheng Middle School, which in 1981 sat on the same spartan, open grounds it had occupied since the early 1930s, was an honored institutional guest at the festivities. Liu Shaoqi had used the school as his personal headquarters during his tenure in Jiangsu; a visit to the school was de rigueur for visiting dignitaries. The figurative centrality of a school in the celebration of Liu's revival and the exploration of reform politics after the period of Maoist extremism was entirely appropriate. Yet if the legacy of so prominent a figure as Liu could be retrieved from history's tombs, the challenging record of local schools and their social communities, taken as one indicator of the aspirations and changing fortunes of local society during the republic, has yet to be welcomed so warmly. A full accounting of their experiences may continue to linger in some measure in recesses of past, awaiting a time when intellectual evaluation of their ambivalent legacy will be unhindered by any predetermined ideological agenda. Stubbornly unyielding historical records still may leave us to read into impersonal markers—institutions, policies, administrative boundaries, and the like—the personal intentions of the republic's local school circles. But as the mosaic of subcultures is pieced together, we may come to understand how the politically ephemeral republic was, in its own right, a unique historical experience, one which rendered the past irrevocably past and simultaneously conditioned the future.

Appendix A Yanfu and Suzhong Counties: Size, Population, and Population Density, 1930s

Population County

Area

Population

density

Dongtai Funing Yancheng Xinghua Suzhong counties:

5,744.00 5,766.75 4,844.75 2,052.50

1,193,536 1,001,909 1,038,853 560,187

207.79 173.74 214.43 282.93

Haimen Nantong Qidong Rugao Tai Taixing

1,271.25 2,456.75 1,176.00 3,549.50 2,116.25 1,392.25

608,167 1,358,461 335,590 1,428,304 1,053,161 901,208

478.40 551.95 285.37 402.40 497.65 647.30

Yanfu counties:

(Area measured in square kilometers; population density in people per square kilometer.) The average county size for the province as a whole was 1,768.55 square kilometers; the average population per county 527,082 people; the average population density 282.93 people per square kilometer. Source: "Jiangsu gexian mianji renkou ji midu bijiao biao," in Guan Weilan, Zhonghua minguo xingzbeng quhua ji tudi renkou tongji biao [Statistical tables of China's population by administrative district and land area] (Taipei, 1956), pp. 7 - 1 0 .

217

Appendix B Jiangsu Provincial and Local School Journals, 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 3 7

Study of periodical literature in the early decades of the republic has concentrated on journals whose authors and publishers sought to shape new political and cultural agendas for China and assumed that they spoke to a national audience in their efforts to do so. School journals form a distinct body of literature that has been less thoroughly examined. Instead of setting national policy, these publications generally circulated within the confines of school communities. They were political weathervanes, nonetheless. In Jiangsu before 1927, most school bulletins were the products of local associations and individual schools. With few exceptions, these journals ceased publication with the coming of the Guomindang: when individual schools produced bulletins after 1927, they were usually new publications, not continuations from the preNationalist period. Among bulletins issued by associations and local offices, the number produced by independent associations declined in comparison with the pre1927 period, while those put out by county offices increased. The provincial government, which since 1911 had published only two regular journals, after 1927 attempted to produce several dozen. Indicative of the uncertain fortunes of the early Guomindang decade was the rapid changeover in these publications. Governmentsponsored periodicals eventually settled into a pattern sustained until the Japanese invasion in 1937: by the early 1930s, provincial literature was dominated by mass education journals, produced by offices and institutes largely divorced from the formal schools whose vitality had sustained local educational circles before 1927. The journals listed below illustrated these trends.

1911-1927 Associations and local offices Jiaoyu yartjiu [Educational Research], Shanghai: Jiangsu Provincial Education Association, May 1913-April 1916. Suzhou guomin jiaoyu jiangjin hui dazhi [Magazine of the Suzhou Society to Promote National Education]. Suzhou, 1914. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao [Monthly bulletin of the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association], Shanghai, July 1916-February 1927.

218

Appendix

B

219

Jiaoyu yuekan [Education monthly]. Wujiang: Wujiang county government office, 1915-1917. Wuxian diliu xuequ jiaoyu hui yanjiu lu [Annual research report of the Wu county sixth district education association], Suzhou, 1919-1920. Wuxian quanxue suo xueshi nianbao [Yearbook of the Wu county exhortation bureau], Suzhou, 1920-1922. Kunshan xian xueshi nianbao [Yearbook of the Kunshan county exhortation bureau], Kunshan, 1920-1926. Kunshan jiaoyu yanjiu hui baogao shu [Report of the Kunshan county education research association], Kunshan, 1922. Wuxian jiaoyu yuekan [Wu county education monthly], Suzhou: Society for the Wu County Education Monthly, 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 3 , 1 9 2 6 . Suzhou xuesheng [Students of Suzhou]. Suzhou: Suzhou Students Alliance, 1925. Rugao jiaoyu gongbao [Rugao county education gazette]. Rugao, 1926. Kunshan jiaoyu yanjiu hui [Kunshan county education research society]. Kunshan, 1926. Changshu xianjioayu yanjiu hui yuekan [Monthly bulletin of the Changshu county education research society], Changshu, 1926.

Provincial government publications Jiangsu jioayu xingzheng Nanjing: provincial Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao Education, January

yuebao [Administrative bulletin for education in Jiangsu], Office of Education, 1913-1917. [Jiangsu provincial education gazette], Nanjing: Bureau of 1918-December 1926.

Individual school publications Jiaoyu jie [Educational world]. Shanghai: Jiangsu Normal School Number 2 , 1 9 1 2 1913. Jiangsu shengli di'er nuzi shifan xuexiao xiaoyou hui kan [Jiangsu Women's Normal School Number 2 alumni bulletin], November 1915-May 1919. Jiangsu shengli diwu zhong xuexiao zazhi [Magazine of Jiangsu Middle School Number 5], Wujin, 1916-1917. Jiangsu shengli di'er zhong xuexiao zazhi [Magazine of Jiangsu Middle School Number 2], Suzhou, 1917. Jiangsu shengli diyi nongmin xuexiao xiaoyou hui zazhi [Magazine of the alumni association of Jiangsu Agricultural School Number 1], 1920. Jiangsu shengli di'er gongye xuexiao youhui zazhi [Jiangsu Industrial School Number 2 alumni magazine]. 1921. Jiangsu shengli di'er nongye xuexiao yuekan [Jiangsu Agricultural School Number 2 monthly bulletin]. 1921. Jiaoshi zhi you [Teacher's helper], Nanjing: Jiangsu Normal School Number 1, Attached Primary School, February 1921-September 1924. Wujiang zhong xuexiao xiaoyou hui [Wujiang Middle School alumni association]. Wujiang, 1923. Jiangsu shengli di'er shi banyue kan [Semimonthly bulletin of the Jiangsu Normal School Number 2], Shanghai, 1925.

220 Baoshan xiatili shifan xiaokan Baoshan, 1926.

Appendix

B

[Bulletin of the B a o s h a n County N o r m a l School],

1927-1937 Associations and local offices Taixing xiaoxue jiaoyu yanjiu hui yuekan [Monthly bulletin of the Taixing research society for formal schooling], Taixing, 1 9 2 7 . Jinshan xian jiaoyu yuekan [Jinshan county education monthly], Jinshan county Office of E d u c a t i o n , 1 9 2 5 - 1 9 3 3 . Jiangdu xian jiaoyu gongbao [Jiangdu county education gazette], J i a n g d u county Office of Education, 1 9 2 9 . Chuansha xian jiaoyu yuekan [Chuansha county education monthly], Chuansha county Office of E d u c a t i o n , 1 9 2 8 - 1 9 2 9 . Jiangsu zhongdeng jiaoyu [Middle school education in Jiangsu], N a n j i n g : Jiangsu provincial M i d d l e School Alliance, F e b r u a r y - N o v e m b e r 1 9 3 2 . Kunshan xian jiaoyu xingzheng huikan [Kunshan county education administrative report]. Kunshan: Kunshan county office, 1 9 3 3 - 1 9 3 7 . jiangdu jiaoyu [Education in J i a n g d u county], J i a n g d u : county Office of E d u c a t i o n , October 1 9 3 4 - S e p t e m b e r 1 9 3 5 .

Provincial government publications Jiangsu daxue jiaoyu xingzheng zhoukan [Jiangsu University administrative weekly], N a n j i n g , July 1 9 2 7 - M a y 1 9 2 8 . Zhongyang daxue banyue kan [The national Central University semimonthly], Nanjing, 1929-1931. A m o n g 4 4 periodicals published by the Central University were: Zhongyang daxue nongxue yuan xunkan [The Agricultural Institute of the Central University trimonthly], N a n j i n g , 1 9 2 8 - 1 9 3 1 . Zhongyang daxue shiyan xiao xiaokan [The school bulletin of the Central University's experimental school]. N a n j i n g , 1 9 2 9 - 1 9 3 0 . Zhongyang daxue jiaoyu xueyuan jiaoyu jikan [The education quarterly of the Education Institute of the Central University]. N a n j i n g , 1 9 3 0 . Zhongyang daxue jiaoyu xueyuan yuanwen [School news from the Education Institute of the Central University], 1 9 3 1 . Zhongyang daxue jiaoyu congkan [Central University compilations on education], N a n j i n g , 1 9 3 3 - 1 9 3 6 . jiangsu sheng jiaoyu ting gongbao [Gazette of the J i a n g s u Bureau of Education]. Zhenjiang, 1 9 3 0 . jiangsu jiaoyu jikan [Jiangsu education quarterly], Zhenjiang: J i a n g s u Bureau of Education, 1930. Jiangsu jiaoyu [Education in Jiangsu]. Zhenjiang: Jiangsu Bureau of Education, October 1 9 3 0 - J u n e 1 9 3 7 . Jiangsu xuesheng [Jiangsu students]. Zhenjiang: Provincial Bureau of Education, October 1 9 3 2 - J u n e 1 9 3 7 . Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun [Jiangsu educational dispatches]. Zhenjiang: J i a n g s u party committee on education and vocational training, October 1 9 3 3 - M a r c h 1 9 3 4 .

Appendix

B

221

Jiangsu sheng xiaoxue jiaoshi banyue kan [Jiangsu primary school teachers' semimonthly], Zhenjiang: Jiangsu Bureau of Education, 1933-1936. Chudeng jiaoyu tongxun [Bulletin of primary-level education]. Zhenjiang, 1934. Individual school publications Jiangsu shengli wuxi zhongxue tekan [Wuxi Provincial Middle School special bulletin], Wuxi, 1927-1932. Xuzhong zhoukan [Xuzhou Middle School weekly], Xuzhou, 1928. Suzhong xiaokan [Suzhou Provincial Middle School news]. Suzhou, 1928-1937. Suyang zhongxiao xiaokan [Yangzhou Provincial Middle School news]. Yangzhou, 1929-1934. Jiangsu yixing zhiye xuexiao xiaokan [Yixing County Vocational School bulletin]. Yixing, February 1931. Sunii zhongxiao xiaokan [Bulletin of the Suzhou Provincial Experimental Middle School for Women]. Suzhou, May 1931-1933. Jiangsu shengli zhenjiang zhongxue jiaoyu yanjiu hui [Zhenjiang Provincial Middle School education research society], Zhenjiang, 1931. Jiangsu shengli nanjing zhongxue xiaokan [Nanjing Provincial Middle School bulletin], Nanjing, 1932. Jiangsu shengli nanjing niizhong xuexiao kan [Nanjing Provincial Women's Middle School bulletin], Nanjing, 1932-1933. Jiangsu shengli taicang shifan xiaokan [Taicang Provincial Normal School bulletin], Taicang, 1932-1934. Jiangsu shengli nantong zhongxue xiaokan [Nantong Provincial Middle School bulletin], Nantong, 1932-1934. Jiangsu shengli suzhou nongye xuexiao xuesheng zazhi [Suzhou Provincial Agricultural School students' magazine]. Suzhou, 1933. Rushixiaokan [Rugao Provincial Normal School bulletin]. Rugao, 1933. Jiangsu shengli suqian zhongxue xiaokan [Suqian Provincial Middle School bulletin]. Suqian, -1936. Mass education publications Rugao tongsu bao [Rugao popular education news]. Rugao, 1927. Taixing tongsu bao [Taixing popular education news], Taixing, 1927. Xiangxiao yuekan [Rural school monthly]. Suzhou: Suzhou provincial middle school's experimental rural school, October 1928. Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan [Mass education monthly]. Nanjing, 1928-1931. Difang jiaoyu [Local education]. Zhenjiang: Jiangsu county-level compulsory education preparatory committee, February 1929-November 1933. Jiaoyu yu minzhong [Education and the masses]. Wuxi: Jiangsu provincial Institute of Education, 1929-1937. Xinmin [The new people], Huai'an: Huai'an county Mass Education Institute, November-July 1930. Jiaoyu yu shehui [Education and society]. Wuxi: Jiangsu provincial Education Institute, January-November 1931. Susheng xiangshi yuekan [Jiangsu provincial Rural Normal School Research Society], 1931-1932.

222

Appendix B

Minzhong jiaoyu tongsu yuekan [Popular mass education monthly]. Zhenjiang: Nanjing Mass Education Institute, 1931-1937. Xinmin zhilu [The new people's way]. Xuzhou: provincial Mass Education Institute's research society, April-July 1933. Jiaoyu yu nongcun [Village education], Zhenjiang: Jiangsu compulsory county education preparatory committee, 1931-1933. Xiaowen [School news]. Wuxi: Jiangsu provincial Institute of Education, 19331936. Jiangsu shengli jiaoyu xueyuan xiaowen [The Jiangsu provincial Institute of Education school bulletin], Wuxi, 1933-1936. Jiaoyu xinlu [Education's new road]. Xuzhou: Xuzhou provincial Mass Education Institute, 1933-1937. Jiaoyu fudao [Educational advice]. Nanjing: Nanjing provincial Mass Education Institute, 1934-1935. Jiangsu sheng xiaoxue jiaoshi banyue kan [Jiangsu primary school teachers' semimonthly], Zhenjiang: Jiangsu provincial Bureau of Education, 1933-1936. Xiangxun jiaoyu [Rural education]. Dagang: Jiangsu provincial Dagang village experimental education district, January 1936-November 1937. Jiangsu shengli yixing nongcun ke zhiye xuexiao zizhi hui huikan [Yixing county provincial peasant department vocational education self-government committee bulletin]. Yixing, May 1936.

Sources: Jiangsu jiaoyu (1932-1936); Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao (1918-1926); Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao (1913-1914, 1916); Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao (baogao) (1916, 1920, 1925, 1926-1927); Jiangsu sheng xiaoxue jiaoshi banyue kan (19331936); Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan (1928-1931); Nanjing daxue tushu guan [Nanjing University Library index] (Nanjing: Nanjing University Library, 1960); Quanguo zhongwen qikan lianhe mulu, 1833-1949 [Comprehensive national index of Chinese-language periodicals, 1833-1949] (Beijing: Beijing Library, 1961); Zhenjiang shi tushu guan zhongwen baokan mulu, 1910-1959 [Index of the Zhenjiang Municipal Library's Chinese-language newspapers, 1910-1959] (Zhenjiang: Zhenjiang Municipal Library, 1960).

Appendix C Central China Communist Base Area Educational and Cultural Periodicals, 1 9 4 1 - 1 9 4 9

Jianghuaijiaoyu [Jianghuai education], Subei, 1941. Dazhong zhishi [Knowledge of the masses]. Yanfu district, 1942-1943. Xin zhishi [New knowledge]. Yanfu district, 1943-1944. Ertongshenghuo [Children's life]. Subei, n.d. Ertong wenyi [Children's literature and art]. Subei, n.d. Yanfu jiaoyu [Education in Yanfu], Yanfu, n.d. Jianghai qingnian [Jianghai youth], Jiangsu, 1944. Suzhong jiaoyu [Central Jiangsu education]. Central China, 1944-1945. Jiangsu jiaoyu [Central Jiangsu education]. 1944-1945. Shishi wenxuan [Essays on current events]. Central China: Cultural Publishers, 1945. jianghuai wenhua [Jianghuai culture]. Central China, 1946. Shenghuo [Life]. Huaiyin, 1946. Wenzong [Cultural collections]. Jiangsu, 1946. Xin wenzhai [New cultural selections]. Jiangsu, 1946. Xinhua wenzhai [New China cultural selections]. Jiangsu, 1946. Huazhongshaonian [Central China youth]. Central China, 1946. Suzhong wenyi [Central Jiangsu literature and art]. 1947. Huaihaizazhi [Huaihai magazine]. Central China, 1947-1948. Dazhong wenhua [Culture of the masses]. Central China, 1948-1949. Xin wenyi congkan [New literature and art]. Central China, 1948-1949.

Sources: Yanfu dazhong bao she baocun yanfu genju di baokan mulu [Index of (CCP) base area newspapers held in the Yanfu office of The Masses] (Yancheng, n.d.); Yancheng diwei dang'an baocun de genju di qikan mulu [Index of (CCP) base area periodicals held in the Yancheng local party archives] (Yancheng, n.d.); Zhenjiang shi tushu guan zhongwen baokan mulu, 1910-1959; publication announcements in Fuxiao bao (1943-1944), Huaihai ribao (1940-1941), and Yanfu bao (1942-1944); Nanjing Municipal Library card catalog, as of 1981.

223

Appendix D

Yellow Sea

Legend: Jiangsu provincial boundaries Rail lines Grand Canal

•

1. Shanghai 2. Chuansha 3. Nanhui 4. Fengxian 5. Jinshan 6. Songjiang 7. Jingpu 8. Kunshan 9. Taicang 10. Jiading 11. Baoshan 12. Changshu 13. Jiangyin 14. Wujiang 15. Wu(Suzhou) 16. Wuxi 17. Wujin (Changzhou) 18. Danyang

w ! 19. Dantu (Zhenjiang) ZHEJIANG PROVINCE' 20. Jintan 21. Liyang 22. Yixing 23. Gaoqun 37. Suqian 24. Lishui 38. Suinlng 25. Jurong 39. Tongshan (Xuzhou) 26. Jiangning 40. Xiao 27. NANJING (provincial capital) 41. Dangshan 28. Jiangpu 42. Feng 29. Liuhe 43. Pei 30. Yizheng 44. Pei 31. Yangzhong 45. Ganyu 32. Jiangdu (Yangzhou) 46. Llanyun 33. Gaoyou 47. Donghai (Haizhou) 34. Baoylng 48. Guanyun 35. Hualyin 49. Shuyang 36. Siyang 50. Lianshul

51. Huai'an 52. Funing 53. Yancheng 54. Xinghua 55. Dongtai 56. Tai 57. Rugao 58. Taixing 59. Jingjiang 60. Nantong 61. Haimen 62. Qidong 63. Qiongming

Map 1 Political map of Jiangsu by county, 1937 (adapted from Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu shengjian)

Lake

\

SHANDONG PROVINCE

/

\

Weishan\

/

ANHUI PROVINCE

\

\ \

Lake

\

Hongze

\ \

N

\

w -

• Dongtai

\

\

I N

Legend:

Yancheng

Lake Gaoyou ]

\

Yellow Sea

Funing

J' — f S ^ " IvS-C

t

> Tai — /

* Rugao

^—^.C 1 YvVAT \a i »x i n^ q V s / Nantong v\ x C ^ u c i s i , 4 ^ v o X J . Haimen^ .V T ^ V o t ì o ,

Jiangsu provincial boundaries Rail lines —

—

Grand Canal

Lake Tai i

/ ZHEJIANG PROVINCE

I

s

M a p 2 Jiangsu's Yanfu and Suzhong counties (adapted from Z h a o Ruheng, Jiangsu

sbengjian)

(Broken lines associate municipalities with their county seats)

N

Yellow Sea

51

Legend: 1. Binhai 2. Batan 3. Beiyang (Funing) 4. Dongyi 5. Donggou 6. Yilin 7. Beiyang (Yancheng) 8. Shanggang 9. Xinxing 10. Jianyang 11. Huduo 12.Longgong 13. Qinnan 14. Shagou 15. Dagang 16. Anfeng (Yancheng)

17. Wuyou 18. Situan 19. Xiaohai 20. Shenlun 21. Caotong 22. Shiyan 23. Liangduo 24. Anfeng (Dongtai) 25. Bencha 26. Jiangyan 27. Baimi 28. Hai'an 29. Qutan 30. Jiangduo 31.Tangwan 32. Sigangkuo

Haimen

U

52

53 55 • 54

River 33.Fanquan 34. Xiaoji 35. Gangkou 36. Libao 37. Dingyan 38. Shizhuang 39. Baipu 40. Shuangdian 41. Chahe 42. Fengli 43. Matang 44.Juegang

^ Qidong 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Kou'an Xuanjiabao Huangqiao Jijia Diaojiapu Guangling Zhangle Qilin Sanyang Lingdian Jiulong

M a p 3 Select local municipalities in Yanfu and Suzhong counties (broken lines indicate municipalities with their county seats) (adapted from Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu sheng jian; P. J. M . Geelan and D. C. Twitchett, Times Atlas of China, vol. IV: South China; and Toa dokunkan, comp., Shina shobetsu zenshi, vol. 15)

SHANDONG PROVINCE

Yellow Sea Yanfu

PROVINCE

Suzhong \ Henan/Anhui/ \Jiangsu Border_ Region;

w-

South Jiangsu

\

Special

Legend: Jiangsu provincial boundaries

- J /

Rail lines Grand Canal

•

ZHEJIANG PROVINCE

Map 4 The Communist command in Jiangsu during the Anti-Japanese War (adapted from Yanfu dazhongll [1943.8.21] 3)

Notes

Chapter 1 1. Jin Songhua et al., "Rugao jiaoyu" [Education in Rugao county], Jiangsu jiaoyu [Education in Jiangsu] 2(6) (June 1933):39. 2. See, for example, David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Phil Billingsley, Bandits in Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); and Yeh Wenhsin, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). 3. Bradley Geisert, "Power and Society: The Kuomintang and Local Elites in Kiangsu Province, China" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1979), p. 9. 4. Lenore Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1983), pp. 369-370. 5. Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders," p. 370. Such recognition could be episodic rather than consistent. Local religious figures, for example, could have dormant authority and be activated in times of crisis. See, for instance, Roxann Prazniak, "Tax Protest at Laiyang, Shandong, 1910: Commoner Organization versus the County Political Elite," Modern China 6(1) (January 1980). Guomindang political activists encountered a similar phenomenon when religious leaders counterattacked the Guomindang's antisuperstition campaign. See Bradley Geisert, " 'Superstition,' the Kuomintang, and Local Elites in Kiangsu Province, 1927-1937," paper presented at the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, October 1977, pp. 3 - 4 . 6. Marc J. Swartz, "Introduction," in Marc J. Swartz, ed., Local-Level Politics: Social and Cultural Perspectives (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), p. 1. 7. G. William Skinner, "Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-Century China," in G. William Skinner, ed., The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), esp. pp. 211-220. 8. Charles Tilly, "Reflections on the History of European State-Making," in Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 15. 9. Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum, The Sociology of the State (Chicago: Uni-

229

230

Notes to Pages

9-13

versity of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 20; Tilly, "Reflections on the History of European State-Making," p. 6. 10. Particularly exemplary writings in this context include Maurice Agulhon, The Republic in the Village: The People of the Var from the French Revolution to the Second Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), and Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976). See also Eugene N. Anderson and Pauline R. Anderson, Institutions and Social Change in Continental Europe in the 19th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). 11. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, pp. 268-269; Charles Tilly, Louise Tilly, and Richard Tilly, The Rebellious Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 277; Raymond Grew, "The Nineteenth Century European State," in StateMaking and Social Movements, ed. Charles Bright and Susan Harding (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), p. 107. The circumstances under which these organizations became overtly political, of course, varied from country to country. 12. Grew, "The Nineteenth Century European State," p. 85. 13. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, pp. 5, 73, 303, 309. 14. For studies of peasant unrest during the late Qing, see Roxann Prazniak, "Community and Protest in Rural China: Tax Resistance and County-Village Politics on the Eve of the 1911 Revolution" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Davis, 1981), and David Faure, "Local Political Disturbances in Kiangsu Province, China, 1870-1911" (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1976). 15. The Tillys, in their study of nineteenth-century European political and social change, use the term "proactive" to distinguish this kind of aggressive initiative from the more reactive or defensive responses especially characteristic of peasant resistance to national authority. The Tillys further note that this kind of initiative is seldom taken by individuals; offensive action to appropriate central political power inspires new forms of collective organization. See Tilly, Tilly, and Tilly, The Rebellious Century, esp. chap. 5. 16. Elizabeth J. Perry, "Collective Violence in China, 1880-1980," Theory and Society 13 (1984):427-454. 17. Prazniak, "Tax Protest at Laiyang, Shandong, 1910"; Faure, "Local Political Disturbances," pp. 379-392. 18. See, for example, James Polachek, "Gentry Hegemony: Soochow in the T'ung-chih Restoration," in Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China, ed. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Carolyn Grant (Berkeley: University of California, 1975); William Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984) and Hankow: Conflict and Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Mary B. Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986). 19. Rankin, Elite Activism, passim. 20. Ibid., pp. 241-246. 21. Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796-1864 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 216-220; Philip A. Kuhn, "Local Self-Government Under the Republic: Problems of Control, Autonomy, and Mobilization," in Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China, ed. Wakeman and Grant.

Notes to Pages 13-23

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22. Stephen R. MacKinnon, Power and Politics in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 137-179. 23. Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 19001942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 159, 217-218, 223. 24. R. Keith Schoppa, Chinese Elites and Political Change: Zhejiang Province in the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 7, 35. Schoppa argues that local government authority was particularly dominant in peripheral counties, a pattern strikingly at odds with that in Jiangsu (ibid., pp. 121,134). 25. Kuhn, "Local Self-Government Under the Republic," p. 298. 26. Ichiko Chüzö, "The Role of the Gentry: An Hypothesis," in China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913, ed. Mary Clabaugh Wright (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 297-313. 27. Joseph W. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 68-69. 28. Marie-Claire Bergère, "The Role of the Bourgeoisie," in China in Revolution, pp. 229-295. Similarly, Marianne Bastid refers to the elite activists of the late nineteenth century as a "modern gentry," a term she uses interchangeably with "commercial gentry." See Marianne Bastid, Educational Reform in Early 20th-century China, trans. Paul J. Bailey (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, 1988), p. 16. 29. Schoppa, Chinese Elites, pp. 59-66. 30. See the discussion of salaries in Chapters 3 and 6. 31. Schoppa notes, for example, growing occupational specialization in the fields of education, commerce, and defense (Chinese Elites, p. 66). He argues for a rational political progression from private gentry (and gentry-merchant) management to self-government organs, to specific professional committees, to direct management by the state (pp. 91-92). See also Bradley Geisert, "Toward a Pluralist Model of KMT Rule," Chinese Republican Studies Newsletter 7(2) (February 1982). 32. Schoppa, Chinese Elites, p. 7. 33. Marie-Claire Bergère postulates that western ideology, although associated with the evolution of a Chinese bourgeoisie, was used to articulate traditional conflicts and aspirations (Bergère, "The Role of the Bourgeoisie," p. 244). 34. Sherry Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties," Contemporary Studies in History and Society 26(1) (January 1984):147. 35. For a discussion of the deference mentality which underwrote patron/client relations in China, see David Strand, "Mediation, Representation, and Repression: Local Elites in 1920s Beijing," in Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, ed. Joseph W. Esherick and Mary B. Rankin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 223. 36. Ted C. Lewellen, Political Anthropology: An Introduction (South Hadley: Bergin & Garvey, 1983), p. 86. 37. Ibid., pp. 9, 101; Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties," esp. pp. 144-148. 38. The use of personal memoirs, and the accompanying condescension toward primary schools, for example, are well illustrated in Sally Borthwick's Education and Social Change in China (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983). 39. Educational gazettes include Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao [Monthly bulle-

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tin of the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association] (1916-1927) and Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao [Jiangsu provincial education gazette] (1918-1927). For commercial surveys, see, for example, Jiangsu shengzhang gongshu, di si ke [Fourth department of the governor's office, Jiangsu province], Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu [Report on investigations into Jiangsu commerce and industry] (Shanghai, 1919). 40. Schoppa, Chinese Elites, app. C, pp. 199-202. In the context of post-traditional institutions, Schoppa found gazetteers of use with regard to self-government bodies, for example, but less so for other professional associations. 41. For a more detailed discussion, see Chapter 3 and Appendix B. 42. Guofang bu xinwen ju [Ministry of Defense, Bureau of Information], ed., Gongfei fandong wenjian hui, vol. 5: Jiaoyu [Collected reactionary Communist bandit materials, vol. 5: Education] (n.p., 1943), pp. 1 - 2 . 43. Suzhongjiaoyu [Central Jiangsu education] 7 (15 June 1945):28. 44. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, June 1926 (yanjiu), pp. 4 - 5 ; July 1926 (yanjiu), pp. 1 - 1 4 . 45. Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Denigrating the Rule of Reason," Harper's, April 1983, p. 86, paraphrasing Herbert Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History.

Chapter 2 1. For Japanese policy debates see John Hunter Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937-1945: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), chap. 3. On p. 110 Boyle notes that the Japanese encountered greater military resistance in Central China than in the north, a situation which favored a strategy of encouraging collaboration with local authorities. 2. Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 30-62. 3. The center of Communist political activity in Suzhong was in an area designated as the Suzhong fourth subdistrict. Most of Suzhong was in this subdistrict, including Nantong, Rugao, Haimen, and Qidong. See Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu [Recollections of educational work in the old liberated areas] (Shanghai: Jiaoyu chuban she, 1979), p. 4. The Communists further divided Rugao in two, creating Rugao and Ruxi (western Rugao), an administrative division which was maintained after 1949. For a county seat, Ruxi was assigned Juegang, which had figured prominently in the county's prewar commercial activities. For wartime counties in Communist Yanfu, see Map 4. 4. The eastern reaches of Lianshui and Huai'an were considered under Yanfu authority by 1942. The wartime counties of Liandong and Jianyang were created out of this area in an effort to delineate Communist control. See Yanfu bao [Yanfu news] 3 (6 January 1942): 1. 5. Kangri zhanzheng shiqi jiefang qu gaikuang [The situation in the liberated areas during the anti-Japanese wars] (Beijing: Renmin chuban she, 1953), pp. 110111; Nanjing daxue lishi xi, ed., Zhongguo xiandai shijiangyi [Lectures on contemporary Chinese history], vol. 3 (Nanjing, 1979), pp. 82-85; Zhongyang diaocha tongji ju, ed., Zhonggong zai jiangsu zhi zuzhi yu huodong [Organization and activities of the Chinese Communists in Jiangsu] (n.p., 1941?), pp. 1 - 3 , 26-27.

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6. These impressions are drawn from travel reports in provincial journals such as Jiangsu jiaoyu and Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan (Mass Education Monthly) and school journals such as Suzhong xiaokan (Suzhou Middle School Bulletin). 7. Julean Arnold, China: A Commercial and Industrial Handbook (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1926), p. 8. One indication of the statistical difficulties facing the republican-period historian is that even the land area of a province such as Jiangsu was not accurately known by contemporary authorities. In 1933, for example, the Nationalist Ministry of Industry estimated that Jiangsu's land area could range from 95,571 to 115,255 square kilometers; see Bureau of Foreign Trade, comp., China Industrial Handbooks: Jiangsu (Shanghai: Ministry of Trade, 1933), p. 5. The figure of 101,010 seems to be most commonly accepted. 8. Until the Yellow River usurped its access to the sea at the end of the twelfth century, the Huai flowed northeast from Lake Hongze, entering the sea at the mouth of what today is the New Huai River. For a description of the resulting drainage problems, see Robert Hackmann, "The Politics of Regional Development: Water Conservancy in Central Kiangsu Province, China" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1979), pp. 8-11. 9. P. J. M. Geelan and D. C. Twitchett, The Times Atlas of China (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1974), p. 41. 10. The Huaibei environment was unquestionably the province's most harsh and inhospitable, despite the formal inclusion of Jiangsu's northwestern counties in the core of the North China macroregion. For a description, see Elizabeth J. Perry, Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), chap. 2. 11. Perry, Rebels and Revolutionaries, pp. 88,122. 12. Miao Bin, "Xunshi jiangbei jingguo ji qi ganxiang" [The process of inspecting areas north of the Yangzi and reflections thereon], Mingri zhi jiangsu [Tomorrow's Jiangsu] 9 (September 1929):4. 13. George Babcock Cressey, Land of the 500 Million (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), p. 191; Fei Xiaotong, "Small Towns in Northern Jiangsu," in Small Towns in China, ed. Fei et al. (Beijing: New World Press, 1986), p. 90. 14. Schoppa, Chinese Elites, pp. 13-26. 15. The dike was built during the Tang as a sea wall. By the twentieth century, silt deposits had pushed the eastern coastline another 50 to 60 kilometers to the east of the dike. See Hackmann, "The Politics of Regional Development," pp. 11-12. 16. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu shiye xingzheng lianhehui [Joint educational and industrial administrative committee, Jiangsu province], Jiangsu sheng nongye diaocha lu [Records of agricultural surveys in Jiangsu province] (Nanjing: Dongnan daxue, 1923-1925), pp. 1 0 4 , 1 1 1 - 1 1 4 , 1 5 0 - 1 5 6 . 17. "Haimen," "Nantong," "Rugao," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, pp. 17, 157, 161; "Qidong," Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan [The situation in Jiangsu's counties] (n.p., 1931), p. 179. 18. Of the north-bank counties, Rugao was the principal producer of wheat and rice, which placed second and third in their value to the Rugao economy. By the late 1910s, Rugao was producing 1,721,800 piculs of wheat annually, valued at 8 million yuan, and 1,220,700 piculs of rice, valued at over 7 million yuan. See "Rugao," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 161.

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19. "Funing," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 183; "Zuijin yancheng minzhong zhi shenghuo gaikuang" [The recent situation of the masses in Yancheng], Sumin [The people of Jiangsu] 4 (13 May 1929):10. 20. "Funing xian, Nantong xian, Tai xian "Jiangsu sheng nongye diaocha lu, pp. 26,38,60. 21. Jian Bi, "Jiangsu gexian mianji renkou ji renkou midu bijiao biao" [Charts comparing Jiangsu counties' population and population density], Jiangsu sheng xiaoxue jiaoshi banyue kan [Jiangsu primary school teachers' semimonthly] 1(18) (June 1934):47. 22. Jiao Zhongzu, "Funing xian xianzheng gaikuang" [The political situation in Funing county], Jiangsu xunkan [Jiangsu trimonthly] 9 (1929):39; Wang Haoran, "Rugao xianzheng gaikuang" [The political situation in Rugao county], Jiangsu xunkan 5 (1928):64. 23. "Dongtai "Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 378. 24. "Yancheng shehui diaocha" [Social investigation in Yancheng], Jiangsu dangwu zhoukan [Jiangsu party affairs weekly] 18 (18 May 1930):49. 25. "Yancheng," Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 345. 26. "Tai xian," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 206. In the north, the spring crop was 80 percent rice. In the south, the spring crop was 44 percent soybeans and 30 percent gaoliang, with lichees, peanuts, and sweet potatoes rounding out the list. In the winter, it was entirely dry grains and legumes. See "Tai xian," Jiangsu sheng nongye diaocha lu, p. 61. 27. "Yancheng shehui diaocha," Jiangsu dangwu zhoukan 17 (11 May 1930):49. 28. Jiao Zhongzu, "Funing xian xianzheng gaikuang," pp. 39-40. 29. Walter Mallory, China: Land of Famine (New York: American Geographical Society, 1926), p. 49. 30. Randall Stross, "A Hard Row to Hoe" (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1982), chap. 5, "Human Agency in Natural Disasters," p. 3. Stross calls attention to the role of human mismanagement in arguing that natural disasters increased in frequency during the republic. 31. Mallory, China: Land of Famine, pp. 7 , 1 0 . 32. Cressey, Land of the 500 Million. 33. Wang Jingtao, "Tai xian xianzheng gaikuang" [The political situation in Tai county], Jiangsu xunkan 61 (1929?):23. 34. Stross, "Human Agency," pp. 7 - 8 . 35. Jiangsu gexian gaikuang yilan, pp. 30, 211; Zhou Shuli, "Lishui xian xianzheng gaikuang" [The political situation in Lishui county], Jiangsu xunkan 31 (1929):28. 36. Zhou Shuli, "Lishui xian xianzheng gaikuang," p. 28. By the late 1920s, the rivalries had become so severe that an intercounty committee was formed to draft regulations governing communal disputes. 37. Huang Changding, "Subei kenqu zhengzhi chuyi" [Humble opinions on straightening out reclamation land in northern Jiangsu], Jiangsu yanjiu [Research on Jiangsu] 2(7-8) (August 1936):2. 38. Wang Jingtao, "Tai xian xianzheng gaikuang," p. 21. 39. H. S. Brunnert and V. V. Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization of China (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1912), pp. 405-406, 417-418. In addition to the

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provincial governor, with his office in Suzhou, Nanjing hosted the Liang-Jiang governor-general. Jiangsu was assigned two lieutenant-governors, concurrently responsible for the provincial civil service and treasury, two educational commissioners, two grain intendants, responsible for provincial revenue from the grain tax, and a judicial commissioner. With the exception of the judicial commissioner, of which the province had only one, Jiangsu was the only province to have two of each of these posts, in each case officially accredited to either Jiangning or Jiangsu. Their offices were located in Nanjing or Suzhou, respectively. 40. Lesser posts, such as those for judicial attendants and canal managers, lingered on until 1911 in the canal cities of Gaoyou, Baoying, and Huai'an, together with the remote northeastern city of Haizhou, but they declined steadily in importance in the waning decades of the Qing. See Brunnert and Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization pp. 413-414; Hackmann, "The Politics of Regional Development," p. 13. 41. Reconstituted in 1914, both "circuits" and "prefectures" continued in use under the republic as administrative terms, despite the abolition of the government offices associated with them. (See Wang Peitang, Jiangsu sheng xiangtu zhi [A local gazetteer of Jiangsu province], Changsha, 1937, pp. 12, 225.) In the pre-Guomindang period, republican Jiangsu was divided into five circuits: Jinling, Huaiyang, Xuhai, Suhai, and Suchang. Circuit boundaries north of the river were largely unchanged from prerepublican times. The number of counties in the Shanghai circuit was reduced, shifting counties to the Suchang circuit to Shanghai's west. Farther west, the Jinling circuit, which included Nanjing, was increased substantially. The Yanfu and Suzhong counties generally remained in two circuits, Suchang and Huaiyang. Suchang included the rich textile belt from Lake Tai north to the Yangzi and west to Changzhou, as well as most of the north-bank counties. Huaiyang extended from there north to the Huai basin. 42. Donghai and Guanyun counties, in the north, were created in 1913. Qidong county, on the north bank of the Yangzi, was established in 1917, bringing the republican period total to sixty-one. See Wang Peitang, Jiangsu sheng xiangtu zhi, pp. 11-12. 43. Brunnert and Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization, pp. 178-180. 44. John H. Fincher, Chinese Democracy: The Self-Government Movement in Local, Provincial and National Politics, 1905-1914 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 126. For a discussion of indirect voting procedures, see Fincher, pp. 114,236. 45. The administrative xiang had its origins in early imperial times. By the Qing, it had devolved from a formal administrative unit to extrabureaucratic status, where its use lay in particular in local security arrangements. See Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), p. 12. 46. "Rugao "Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 282. 47. "Yancheng "Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, pp. 346-347. 48. Zhu Kebao, Jiangsu sheng quansheng yubao [Atlas of Jiangsu province] (n.p., 1895; reprint Taipei: Zhengwen, 1974), pp. 138-139. 49. Zhu Kebao, Jiangsu sheng quansheng yubao, pp. 138-139; Funing xian xinzhi [New gazetteer of Funing county], vol. 1, pp. 238-240.

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50. "Funing," jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 184. 51. Funing xian xinzhi, vol. 1, pp. 240-241. 52. China Industrial Handbooks: Jiangsu, pp. 51, 54-56. 53. Cressey, Land of the 500 Million, pp. 196-197, 278; Cressey, China's Geographic Foundations, p. 300. Cressey generally relied on the official 1932 national census (supplemented by undated Shen bao statistics) and Julean Arnold. Arnold lists a population of 250,000 for Yangzhou (China: A Commercial and Industrial Handbook, p. 706.) Republican-period provincial estimates placed the population of Taizhou at 150,000 people as of the 1930s ("Tai," Jiangsu gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 392). 54. Toa dokunkai, comp., Shina shobetsu zenshi [Provincial gazetteer of China], vol. 15: Jiangsu (Tokyo, 1918) (hereafter cited as Shina), pp. 192, 212, 217. In this volume in particular, the investigators described only the largest of Jiangsu's cities, making the survey less comprehensive, and thus less useful, for Jiangsu than it is for other provinces. 55. Shina, pp. 1 7 5 , 1 8 3 , 1 8 6 , 1 9 8 , 206-207. 56. Higher estimates are to be found in Cressey, Land of the 500 Million, pp. 196-197 (133,326 people) and Arnold, Commercial and Industrial Handbook, p. 707 (150,000 people). Marianne Bastid gives an even more impressive figure of 250,000 people by the early twentieth century; see Educational Reform in Early 20th-century China, p. 29. 57. Milton T. Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China (Shanghai: China Continuation Committee, 1922), p. 134. By Stauffer's account, nearly two dozen cities in republican Jiangsu had a population of 50,000 or more. Stauffer's estimates are among the highest available, which undoubtedly suggests one should use them with caution. 58. Cressey estimates that Rugao's population reached 183,268 by 1936 (Land of the 500 Million, p. 197). 59. "Tai," Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 392. 60. See Skinner, "Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-Century China," p. 227. 61. Shina, pp. 180-181. 62. "Yancheng "Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, pp. 346-347. The population figures were estimated in terms of families (hu). The figures 5,000-15,000 assume an average family size of five people. 63. Using a range of criteria, including size, specialization of economic functions, and certain diagnostic goods and services, Skinner found that late-Qing county seats throughout the Lower Yangzi as a whole had an average population of 12,000. (See Skinner, "Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-Century China," pp. 223, 225, 246.) Japanese surveyors concluded that county seats along the Grand Canal, from the Yangzi north to the Huai, ranged in population from 10,000 to 15,000; their reports noted that Chinese estimates averaged three times as high (Shina, pp. 176, 206-207). 64. G. William Skinner, "Cities and the Hierarchy of Local Systems," in The City in Late Imperial China, ed. G. William Skinner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), pp. 347, 350-351. 65. Faure, "Local Political Disturbances in Kiangsu Province," p. 575.

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66. Compiled from Zhu, Jiangsu sheng quansheng yutu. Major and minor markets are distinguished by those zhert listed by name versus those listed generically by number, simply designated as markets. 67. Jian Bi, "Jiangsu qexian mianji renkou ji renkou midu biji biao," p. 47. This study excluded Shanghai. , 68. "Taicang," "Jintan," Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, pp. 148, 168. Jintan was in the southwest but of no particular commercial or educational significance. It had an overall population of 245,820 people at the time of this survey. 69. John Lossing Buck, Land Utilization in China: Statistics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937), p. 304. 70. Wang Jingtao, "Tai xian xianzheng gaikuang" [The political situation in Tai county], Suzheng [Jiangsu government semimonthly] 4 (16 June 1930): 31. 71. Funing xian xinzhi, pp. 9b-12a. According to the same source, Funing city's urban population by the late 1920s included 107 Guomindang party members, 506 teachers, 2,117 students, 16 lawyers, 4 engineers, and 9 telephone workers, among others. 72. "Yancheng "Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, pp. 346-347. 73. China Industrial Handbooks, p. 118. 74. Shi bao [Eastern times], 14 March 1929, p. 3, cited in Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders," p. 27. 75. Jian Bi, "Jiangsu gexian mianji renkou," p. 47. 76. For a discussion of central-place diagnostic indicators, see Skinner, "Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-Century China," p. 221. 77. Skinner, "Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-century China" n. 10, pp. 708-709; and "Cities and the Hierarchy of Local Systems," p. 347. 78. Wuxi city had a second-class branch office, but its services were similar to those provided by the postal facility in Zhenjiang. See Shina, pp. 382-383. 79. Shina, pp. 391-400. 80. Such lacunae in the correlation between postal ratings, population density, and levels of commercialization were not unique to the north-banks counties. The county seat of wealthy and densely populated Changshu, for example, in the core of the southeastern textile heartland, had a full-service second-class postal rating. But Taicang, Changshu's neighbor to the east, also rich from commercial agriculture, had no postal agency at all. See Shina, pp. 392-400. 81. In the nine-tiered ranking produced by G. William Skinner, Rugao city had second-level service, while Juegang had fourth. See Skinner, "Cities and the Hierarchy of Local Systems," pp. 347-348. 82. At least two additional Rugao municipalities, Dingyan and Shizhuang, which were mentioned less frequently in county commercial reports, had sufficient commercial or political importance to merit postal agencies. 83. See Appendix B. 84. These observations are drawn from the characterization of commercially active local municipalities in Shina, pp. 392-400. 85. Skinner notes this phenomenon as well, pointing, for example, to the Shandong county of Changshan, whose county seat was an intermediate market dependent on the nonadministrative market of Zhoucun. The county seat of the neighbor-

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ing county of Zouping was similarly commercially dependent on Zhoucun. See William G. Skinner, "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China "Journal of Asian Studies 24(1) (November 1964):8. 86. "Qidong," Jiangsu shenggexian gaikuang yilan, p. 179. 87. "Taixing," Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 296; "Tai xian shicha baogao shu," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, pp. 206-207. 88. "Tai," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 209. 89. "Rugao "Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 290. 90. "Yancheng," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 189. 91. "Yancheng," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, pp. 189-190. 92. "Tai xian shicha baogao shu," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, pp. 206-207. For a general description of the Lixiahe area, see Hackmann, "The Politics of Regional Development," passim. 93. "Tai "Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 207. This report notes that Xu Yu'er, a gentry activist living in the county seat, attempted to set up a modern bank, but by 1918 it had failed for lack of capital. 94. "Funing," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 184. 95. Jiangsu shenggongbao [Jiangsu provincial gazette], 5 October 1916, p. 7. 96. "Funing," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 184. 97. The Rugao-Nantong branch of the Yanyan was the principal communication artery for goods and services from Rugao to Nantong and points south of the Yangzi. See Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders," p. 25. 98. Zhu Kebao, Jiangsu sheng quansheng yubao, p. 263. 99. China Industrial Handbooks: Jiangsu, pp. 6 - 8 . Rugao was just under twice as large as Tai and had approximately a third as many people. According to the China Industrial Handbook survey, Qidong also had an abnormally large percentage of urban land, just under four times the provincial average. 100. Shina, p. 181. 101. This profile is summarized from the Shina descriptions. 102. Jiaoyu yanjiu [Educational research], August 1913, huibao, p. 1. The regulations called parks part of an effort to promote public health. 103. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919; Jiangsu shiye yuezhi, April-November 1919; Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, 1919-1920, passim. 104. Jiangsu shiye yuezhi [Jiangsu commercial monthly bulletin] 7 (October 1919) (diaocha), p. 25. 105. Ibid., pp. 26-27. 106. "Haimen," "Funing," "Yancheng," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, pp. 1 1 7 , 1 8 3 , 1 8 6 . 107. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, pp. 51-52. 108. "Lianshui," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 179. 109. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, p. 23. 110. Ibid., p. 76. 111. "Rugao," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 161. 112. Xuesheng zazhi [The students' magazine] 6(6) (July 1919):7-8. 113. Shina, pp. 392-404. 114. China Industrial Handbook, pp. 1027-1028. While the Japanese study provided locations for the branch stations, the Industrial Handbook does not, making it

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impossible to determine to what degree postal services were expanding outside the county seat. 115. Ibid., p. 862. 116. Ibid., pp. 974-975, 984, 991-992. As is often the case in this period, the records are not available to determine the political forces at work in securing county funds for these particular subcounty roads. 117. Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu shettg jian [Handbook on Jiangsu province] (Shanghai: Xin zhongguo jianshe xuehui, 1935), pp. 99-107. 118. Jiangsu dangwu zhoukan 18 (18 May 1930):55; "Jiangsu sheng gexian baozhi gaikuang biao" [A chart of newspapers in various Jiangsu counties], Jiangsu yuebao [Jiangsu monthly] 1(3) (12 January 1934):19. 119. Zhao, Jiangsu sheng jian (jiaoyu), pp. 18-23. 120. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, p. 110. Chapter 3 1. Gu Kebin, "Shicha yancheng xian jiaoyu baogao" [Report on investigations of education in Yancheng], Jiangsu jiaoyu 2(1) (February 1933):24. 2. The provincial Office of Education listed a provincial middle school in Yancheng as of 1932, but none of the provincial school inspection reports, nor any other county report, local journal, or newspaper, mention it. See "Zuijin Jiangsu sheng quansheng zhongdeng xiaoxue yilan" [A look at the middle schools of Jiangsu province], Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(10) (October 1932): 1. This same report claimed the county had forty full-primary schools, a dozen more than indicated by other reports for the same year. 3. Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu sheng jian (jiaoyu), pp. 18-23. 4. For the role of state-sponsored education in overcoming cultural diversity in France, see Weber, Feasants into Frenchmen, chaps. 6 and 18. For similar concerns with regard to public education in the United States, see, for example, David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of Urban Education in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), pt. Ill—4, and Daniel Calhoun, ed., The Educating of Americans: A Documentary History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), sec. 13. 5. Borthwick, Education and Social Change, pp. 14-16. 6. Predictably, loyalty to the emperor was removed from the educational altar when the emperor abdicated in 1911. See Djung Ludzai, A History of Democratic Education in China (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934), p. 6. 7. Borthwick, Education and Social Change, p. 64. Zhang Zhidong's Quanxue pian [Exhortation to learning], for example, explored the linkage between knowledge and power; his 1901 joint memorial with Liu Kunyi, stressing the importance of state control over pedagogy, praised Germany and Japan, states attractive to subsequent Chinese educators for the decisive success of their authoritarian reforms. See William Ayers, Chang Chih-tung and Educational Reform in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 152-160, 205-207. 8. Jonathan K. Ocko, Bureaucratic Reform in Provincial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), passim. 9. William T. Rowe, "Hu Lin-i's Reform of the Grain Tribute System in Hubei, 1855-1858," Ch'ing-shiwen-t'i 4(10) (December 1983):33-86.

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10. Rankin, Elite Activism, chaps. 4 - 5 . 11. Anderson and Anderson, Political Institutions and Social Change in Continental Europe, chap. 2. 12. Kuhn, "Local Self-Government Under the Republic," pp. 261-280. 13. Borthwick, Education and Social Change, pp. 87-103. 14. Bastid, Educational Reform, pp. 3 4 - 3 5 . 15. Borthwick, Education and Social Change, pp. 7 3 - 7 9 . 16. Ayers, Chang Chih-tung and Educational Reform, pp. 216-228. 17. Jiang Weijiao, Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng gaikuang [The situation regarding the administration of education in Jiangsu] (Shanghai, 1923), pp. 1 - 3 . 18. Chen Yilin, Zuijin sanshi nian zhongguo jiaoyu shi [A history of the last 30 years of Chinese education] (Shanghai: Taipingyang Press, n.d.), pp. 7 7 - 7 8 . 19. Xuebu zongwu si, ed., Diyici jiaoyu tongji tubiao [First annual survey of educational statistics] (Beijing, 1908), pp. 4 4 5 , 4 5 4 , 4 7 5 - 4 7 6 , 4 8 4 . 20. Diyici jiaoyu tongji tubiao, pp. 447-452. In total, only three of the elite western-style xuetang were located anywhere north of the river. In addition to Taizhou, Huai'an county had two. 21. David Buck, "Educational Modernization in Tsinan, 1899-1937," in The Chinese City Between Two Worlds, ed. Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), p. 176. 22. Diyici jiaoyu tongji tubiao, pp. 449-452. Taizhou was reported to have ten lower-primary schools. 23. Ibid., pp. 454, 484. 24. Bastid, Educational Reform, pp. 72, 83. 25. Buck, "Educational Modernization in Tsinan," p. 182. 26. Diyici jiaoyu tongji tubiao, pp. 445, 4 7 5 - 4 7 6 ; Jiangsu jiaoyu ci, ed., Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu [Report on the administration of education in Jiangsu] (Shanghai, 1913), vol. l , p p . 4 7 - 4 8 . 27. Diyici zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian [The first Chinese educational yearbook] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934; reprinted 5 vols. Taipei: Commercial Press, 1961) (xuexiao jiaoyu gaikuang), pp. 519-521. 28. Jiaoyu yanjiu, February 1913, diaocha, pp. 1 - 6 . Provincial schools south of the river included agricultural schools in Nanjing, Suzhou, and Qingjiang, a hydraulics school in Baoshan, a women's sericulture school in Wuxi, schools for industrial crafts in Nanjing and Suzhou, a law school in Nanjing, and a medical school in Suzhou. 29. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao [Administrative bulletin for education in Jiangsu], January 1914, huibao, pp. 1 - 4 . 30. Nantong, not surprisingly, was something of an exception which proved the rule. As one might expect, the growth of local schools in Nantong was not noticeably affected by the abolition of self-government. The greatest growth in new lowerprimary schools in Nantong came from 1912 through 1915, with an average of thirty-eight new schools per year. Over the next five years, the number of new schools dropped to an average of fourteen a year. See Shaonian shijie [Youthful scholars'world] 1(1) (1920):58. 31. Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun [Jiangsu educational dispatches], 20 October 1933, p. 33. Lower-primary schools in this study were measured in terms of ji, years of study

Notes

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within a given school. Lower-primary schools generally had between three and four ji; higher-primary schools between two and three. 32. In 1914, for example, Dongtai had fifty-two lower-primary schools and one higher-primary school. Rugao had eighty-five lower-primary schools and no higherprimary schools. See Jiangsu shetig jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 259-261. 33. Diyici jiaoyu tongji tubiao (1909), pp. 4 4 9 - 4 5 2 ; Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu (1914), pp. 259-261; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919-February 1922; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1926, p. 4; Jiangsu xunkan no. 5, p. 66; Jiangsu xunkan, no. 29, p. 40; Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(1) (1933). 34. Ibid. 35. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, p. 66; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao 7 (July 1926), xunling, pp. 6 - 8 . 36. Diyici jiaoyu tongji tubiao, pp. 4 4 9 - 4 5 2 ; Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu; Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao 13 (May 1914):31; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1922, pp. 12-20; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1926, xunling, p. 11. 37. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1926, xunling, p. 4; Wang Jingtao, "Tai xian xianzheng gaikuang," Jiangsu xunkan, no. 61, p. 28. 38. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1922, pp. 1 2 - 2 0 ; "Yancheng shehui diaocha" [Investigation of Yancheng society], Jiangsu dangwu zhoukan 18 (18 May 1930):49-58; "Zuijin yancheng minzhong de shenghuo gaikuang" [The recent situation of the masses in Yancheng] Sumin 4 (13 May 1929):12; Li Chunren, "Yancheng xian zhengge difang jiaoyu niaokan" [A bird's-eye view of the entirety of Yancheng local education], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(4) (November 1933):17. 39. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, December 1926, xunling, pp. 2 2 - 2 4 ; Wang Haoran, "Rugao xianzheng gaikuang," Jiangsu xunkan 5 (1929):66; Jin Songhua, "Rugao jiaoyu," Jiangsu jiaoyu 2(6) (June 1933):20. 40. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1913, pp. 2 8 - 2 9 . As of 1913, only twenty-nine of Tai county's officially designated local municipalities and townships had reported to the county seat the names of their educational officers (xuewu weiyuan). 41. Li Chunren, "Yancheng xian zhengge difang jiaoyu niaokan," p. 17. 42. Jin Songhua, "Rugao jiaoyu," p. 20. 43. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1926, xunling, p. 4. 44. Ibid., January 1919, p. 76. 45. Ibid., April 1926, zhiling, pp. 3 0 - 3 1 . 46. Bastid, Educational Reform, p. 82. 47. Jiao Chongzu, "Funing xian xianzheng gaikuang," p. 40. 48. "Tai xian xianzheng gaikuang," Suzheng, 16 May 1930, p. 33. 49. Zhou Fuhai, "Zuijin zhi jiangsu yiwu jiaoyu" [Recent compulsory education in Jiangsu], Jiangsu sheng xiaoxue jiaoshi banyue kan [Jiangsu primary school teachers' semimonthly] 3(9) (16 January 1 9 3 6 ) : l - 5 . Like all other figures, Zhou's were rough estimates. These statistics must be distinguished from those for general literacy. Although literacy rates are also difficult to calculate, they were considerably higher than the statistics for students enrolled in western-style schools because of the relatively large number of individuals, both urban and rural, who received some

242

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measure of education through private tutorials (sishu). Evelyn Rawski estimates that between 30 and 45 percent of China's male population was functionally literate by the late Qing, for example; see Rawski, Education and Popular Literacy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979), pp. 187-193. John Lossing Buck's surveys produced an estimated male literacy rate of 30.3 percent for the mid-1930s; see Buck, Land Utilization in China (Nanjing, 1937), p. 373. In Buck's study, the male literacy for South China, which included Jiangsu, was calculated to be 34.6 percent. 50. Jiaoyu yanjiu, May 1913, diaocha, pp. 1 - 2 . 51. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, p. 76. Few republican-period statistics, particularly from local surveys, are solidly reliable. The figures offered here are drawn from the reports of provincial school inspectors, who were inclined to be skeptical about exaggerated claims from local educators. 52. Ibid., April 1922, p. 24; November 1926, xunling, p. 4. 53. Ibid., February 1919, p. 60; April 1922; September 1926, xunling, p. 11. 54. Ibid., December 1926, xunling, pp. 2 2 - 2 4 . 55. Jiao Chongzu, "Funing xian xianzheng gaikuang," p. 40. 56. Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu shengjian, pp. 18-23. 57. Bastid, Educational Reform, p. 75. 58. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzbeng yuebao, April 1913, diaocha, p. 1. This report indicates that normal schools were costing an annual average of 30,000 to 50,000 yuan a year, which would mean they were absorbing more provincial income per school than the regular middle schools (diaocha, pp. 1 - 5 ) . 59. Jiaoyu yanjiu, May 1913, diaocha, pp. 1 - 2 ; Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1914, huiji, pp. 1 - 4 . 60. Diyici jiaoyu tongji tubiao, pp. 4 4 9 - 4 5 2 ; Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 259-261; Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng gaikuang, pp. 2 3 - 2 4 . 61. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 235-241. 62. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, pp. 6 6 - 6 7 . 63. Ibid., December 1926, xunling, pp. 2 2 - 2 4 . 64. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 259-261; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1922; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1926; Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(1) (November 1933): 15. 65. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 259-261; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1922; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1926; Jiangsu xunkan 29 (1929); Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu sheng jian, jiaoyu, p. 165. 66. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 259-261; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, December 1926; Jiangsu xunkan 5 (1929); Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu sheng jian, jiaoyu, p. 164. 67. Fei Hsiao-tung, Peasant Life in China (London: Keagan Paul, 1934; reprint 1980), pp. 3 8 - 4 0 . 68. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, pp. 5 1 - 5 2 ; February 1919, p. 1. 69. Ibid., January 1919, pp. 2 2 - 2 3 . Four of the five lower-primary schools the inspector discussed in this report were situated in local temples. The largest school had sixty-two registered students; the inspector believed that some forty attended at any one time, although at the time of the inspection the school was closed. 70. Ibid., p. 76.

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71. Ibid., January 1919, pp. 51-52; February 1919, p. 1. The 139 students were in school on the day of the inspection. Because school inspectors harped constantly on underenrolled schools with inflated official student tallies, reports of the number of students actually in attendance when the inspector visited the school can be taken to be as credible as any statistics issuing from this period. 72. Gu Kebin, "Shicha yancheng xian jiaoyu baogao," p. 24. 73. Wang Xiunan, "Jinian lai shixiang jiaoyu de fenjia" [A look at the past several years of local education], Guoli zhongyang daxue banyue kan [The national Central University semimonthly bulletin] 2(4) (1930):97. 74. Chen Yilin, Zuijin sanshinian zhongguo jiaoyu shi, p. 95. 75. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, p. 75. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., p. 106. 79. Ibid., pp. 107-121. 80. For information on the Sha clan, see Lenore Barkan, "Patterns of Power: Forty Years of Elite Politics in a Chinese County," in Esherick and Rankin (eds.), Chinese Local Elites, pp. 191-215. 81. jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 107-121. A total of seventeen counties province-wide had subcounty education officers by 1914; eleven of these were south of the Yangzi. 82. Djung, History of Democratic Education, pp. 34-35. 83. Jiangsu shenggongbao 678 (14 July 1918), xunling, p. 5. 84. jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, September 1925, p. 1. 85. jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, pp. 74-75. 86. Ibid., April 1922, p. 13. 87. Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu difang jiaoyu pibi ji qi zhengdun fangfa" [The inadequacies of local education in Jiangsu and methods for rectification], Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(3-4) (May 1932):2. 88. While we have no definitive background information on the individuals discussed below, it is safe to assume, since these were positions acquired early in the decade, that these people were degree-holders. 89. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 77-83. 90. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1922, mingling, p. 31. 91. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1913, fulu, pp. 1 - 4 . 92. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, mingling, p. 67. 93. Ibid., p. 76. 94. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 77-83. 95. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, mingling, p. 80; April 1922, baogao, p. 13. 96. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, mingling, p. 80; September 1926, xunling, p. 11. 97. Jiangsu sheng gongbao (27 October 1916), xunling, p. 5. 98. Jiaoyu yanjiu, March 1915, huibao, pp. 7 - 9 . 99. Ibid., p. 5. 100. Ibid., p. 9. 101. Ibid., 7 - 9 .

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102. Ibid., May 1913, huibao, p. 104. 103. Ibid., March 1915, huibao, p. 7. 104. Ibid., October 1914, huibao, p. 11. 105. Ibid., March 1915, huibao, p. 8. 106. Ibid., p. 8. 107. "JintanJiartgsu shenggexian gaikuang yilan, p. 70. 108. Wen Rongsheng, "Shicha yancheng xian jiaoyu zhuangkuang baogao shu" [Report on an investigation into educational conditions in Yancheng], Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao (baogao), April 1922, pp. 12-20. 109. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1922, zhiling 62. 110. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 99-101. 111. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Press, 1983), chap. 1. 112. Li Jinfang, "Funing xian zhengli quanxian xuechan jihua fangan" [Proposal for straightening out school properties in Funing county], Xin suzheng [The new Jiangsu government] 1(2) (1 February 1934):22-29. 113. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 259-261; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, January 1919, mingling, pp. 66-67, 80-81. 114. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, February 1919, p. 5; April 1922, p. 26; May 1922, pp. 14-15. 115. Ibid., April 1922, pp. 17-20. 116. Ibid., p. 18. 117. Li Chunren, "Yancheng xian zhengge difang jiaoyu niaokan," pp. 15-16. Li's report was written in late 1933. Indicative of the high level of turnover in county staffing under the Guomindang, every one of the twenty reported staff members in the county Office of Education had been hired that year. 118. Lin Zheyong, "Xiaoxue jiaoyu yuan zhi shengji" [The livelihood of lowerschool teachers], Shishi yuebao [Current events monthly] 2(2) (February 1930), diaocha, p. 35. 119. See, for example, Guan Han, "Baoshan jiaoyu jie zhi zhutou muxie" [Seemingly unimportant but useful things relating to educational circles in Baoshan], Jiangsu tongxun 2(3) (31 February 1934):19-23. 120. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, 9 October 1912, p. 9. 121. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, March 1913, mingling, p. 19. 122. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1927, p. 14. 123. Fan Huangbei, "Xiaoxue jiaoshi daiyu wenti" [The problem of the treatment of primary school teachers], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(3) (November 1933):7-9. 124. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, October 1926, xunling, pp. 46-48. 125. Ibid., April 1922, pp. 17-19. 126. "Benting yiyue zhi zhongyao gongzuo" [This office's important work over the last month], Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(10) (November 1932):12. 127 Jin Songhua, "Rugao jiaoyu," p. 39. 128. Gu Mei, Zhongguo jiaoyu jingji guan [An economic assessment of Chinese education] (Shanghai: Minzhi shuju, 1934), p. 41. 129. Wei Zumo, "Wuxian zhixiang kaochatuan diaocha baogao" [Investigation report of the inspection team to the Wu county countryside], Mingri zhi jiangsu [Tomorrow's Jiangsu] 4 (1 April 1929):15-21. It is difficult to tell what kinds of

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92-99

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peasants were surveyed here, although the very poor were probably not approached by urban surveyors. 130. "Jiangsu shengli nantong zhongxue niaokan" [A bird's-eye view of Nantong middle school], Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(3-4) (May 1932). 131. Geisert, "Power and Society," p. 21. As local records become available, it is likely that we will be able to refine considerably our understanding of the social background for students in the middle schools, particularly provincial middle schools. The background of students in the primary schools, especially the municipal lower-primary schools, may remain more elusive. 132. Bastid, Educational Reform, pp. 76-77. In the 1930 survey of the Nantong middle school, 25 percent of the students identified themselves as poor, although the exact meaning of that category was not specified. See Geisert, "Power and Society," p. 21. 133 .Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1926, xunling, p. 4. 134. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, December 1913, pp. 41-43. 135. "Zhendun xiangjian jiaoyu chuyan" [Simple talk about straightening out education in the townships], Jiaoyu jie [Education's world] 4(2) (1 April 1913):5. 136. Jiaoyu jie, 1 November 1912, p. 3. 137. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1920, pp. 8-10. 138. Ibid., June 1920, p. 4. 139. Ibid., November 1920, pp. 5-10; Ding Zhou, "Yancheng xian jiaoyu zhuangkuang zhi toushi" [Perspectives on education in Yancheng], Jiangsu tongxun 2(6) (31 March 1934):15. Normal School No. 6, located in Jingjiang, was particularly fractious. By the early 1930s, for example, it was harboring a feud with Middle School No. 9 in Huai'an sufficiently bitter to attract provincial attention. See "Huai'an jiaoyu zhuangkuang de toushi" [Perspectives on the educational situation in Huai'an], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(6) (November 1933):15. 140. Borthwick, Education and Social Change in China, pp. 17-30. 141. Ibid., pp. 15-16. 142. Wang Zhaoyang, "Xianjin qingnian xingli shang zhi quexian ji buqui ce" [The defects of contemporary youth and methods for correction], Jiaoyu yanjiu 1 (1913):5. Chapter 4 1. Young-tsu Wong, "Popular Unrest and the 1911 Revolution in Jiangsu," Modern China 3(3) (July 1977):325. 2. Ibid., pp. 325-326; Wang Shu-hwai, Zhongguo xiandai hua: jiangsu sheng [Modernization in China, 1860-1916: a regional study of social, political, and economic change in Kiangsu province] (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, 1984), pp. 154. 3. Wang Shu-hwai, Zhongguo xiandai hua, pp. 156-157. 4. Ibid., pp. 163,168. 5. "Suzheng cutan" [A jumbled talk on Jiangsu politics], Taiping daobao [The Taiping guide] 1(4) (23 January 1926):21. 6. Howard L. Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), vol. 1, p. 70. 7. Ibid., pp. 70-71.

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8. "Suzheng cutan," p. 22. 9. Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-1928 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 24-25. 10. "Suzheng cutan," p. 22. 11. By 1941, Han would figure in Communist strategies to mobilize local gentry against Guomindang harassment of New Fourth Army forces in Jiangsu province. See Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution, pp. 411-412. 12. Ch'i, Warlord Politics in China, pp. 223-224. 13. Wang, Zhongguo xiandai hua, p. 220. 14. Ibid., p. 231, 233. 15. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 1 - 2 . 16. Jiang Weijiao, Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng gaikuang, p. 2. 17. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng gaikuang, p. 3. 18. Wang, Zhongguo xiandai hua, pp. 177, 189-190; Fincher, Chinese Democracy, p. 112. 19. Wang, Zhongguo xiandai hua, pp. 195-196. 20. This statement is based in particular on a reading of Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao for available issues from the years 1919, 1920, 1922, 1923, and 1926. In none of the reports, petitions, and litigious complaints which fill these volumes was the provincial assembly ever an active participant. 21. The association had its origins in the Jiangsu Study Society (Jiangsu xuehui), a moderate voice for reform first convened in 1905. The society was founded by thirty Jiangsu gentrymen and transformed into the Provincial Education Association within a year. See Bastid, Educational Reform, pp. 126-128. 22. Philip Kuhn, "Local Self-Government Under the Republic," p. 276. As Schoppa points out, the court's approval of these organizations also had the effect of legitimizing politicization of local elite activists. See Schoppa, Chinese Elites, p. 7. 23. See the discussion of new members in the following section. 24. Jiaoyu yanjiu, October 1913, huibao, p. 6; Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 30 July 1918, pp. 2 - 1 2 ; Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu sheng jian, chap. 8, p. 198. 25. Jiaoyu yanjiu, September 1914, p. 20. Zhang's chairmanship of the PEA continued even though he held posts with the national government in Beijing from October 1913 through December 1915. 26. After 1911, the provincial Office of Education shrank considerably in size; Huang presided over four section chiefs and an additional eight staff members; see Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 1 - 2 . A founding member of the PEA, Huang was elected its vice-chairman in 1916; see Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, vol. 2, p. 211. 27. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, vol. 2, p. 211. 28. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, October 1916, wendu, p. 1. 29. Jiangsu sheng gongbao 1108 (10 January 1917), xunling, p. 8; 1411 (15 November 1917), xunling, p. 4. 30. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1920, pp. 14-17. 31. Jiaoyu yanjiu, April 1913, huibao, p. 1. 32. Jiangsu sheng gongbao 934 (13 July 1916), pp. 3 - 4 . 33. Designed by American-educated returned students, the American Plan was aimed at liberalizing education and introducing self-proclaimed scientific manage-

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ment into the classroom—including, for example, the use of electives and graduation based on accumulated grade points. The plan's impact was not particularly noticeable. Within two years of the introduction of the American Plan, nationalist sentiment had fueled calls for nationalist education (guomin jiaoyu) and military training in the public schools. The liberalism and foreign origins of the American Plan quickly undercut its popularity. See Djung, History of Democratic Education, pp. 31-43. 34. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, February 1926, diaocha, pp. 30-31. 35. Ibid., June 1926, p. 12. 36. Ibid., 2 June 1926, diaocha, p. 8; James Y. C. Yen (Yan Yangchu), The Mass Education Movement in China (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1925), p. 14. This close cooperation did not preclude specific individuals from refusing their services to Jiangsu's warlord governments. Huang Yanpei, for example, refused appointments offered to him by Li Chun, as well as subsequent offers from Beijing in 1921 and 1922. (See Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, vol. 2, pp. 211-212.) Qi was something of a patron to a variety of prominent PEA members, including Guo Bingwen, who went on to the presidency of Dongnan University over the objections of antiwarlord partisans, and Tao Zhixing, whose 1930s activism brought him the occasional opprobrium of the Guomindang. (See Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, vol. 2, p. 277.) 37. The Provincial Education Association published Jiaoyu yanjiu from May 1913 through February 1931, with a hiatus after 1916 which was filled by another PEA publication, Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, issued from July 1916 through February 1927. Both journals were published in Shanghai. 38. Jiaoyu yanjiu, September 1914, pp. 20-21. Each of these people was chair or acting chair of weekly working sessions from 1913 through 1916. Each also authored one or more of the lead theoretical articles in the association's magazines, from 1913 to 1926. In addition, Huang Yanpei, Shen Enfu, and Yuan Xitao were members of the 1913 and 1921 advisory committees set up to assist the provincial Office of Education and the 1922 committee to implement the American Plan. See Jiaoyu yanjiu, 1913-1914; Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, 1916, passim; Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1920, pp. 29-30; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, June 1926, diaocha, p. 12. 39. Hou Hongjian, "Si nian lai jiangsu jiaoyu zhi huigu" [A look back over the last four years of education in Jiangsu], Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(9) (October 1932):12-13. Single-grade teaching methods, commonplace in western schools, were highly novel to Chinese schooling in the early twentieth century. 40. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, 2 June 1926, diaocha, p. 2. 41. Jiaoyu yanjiu, May 1913, p. 108; July 1913, huibao, pp. 18-19. 42. Ibid., August 1914, fulu, p. 20; September 1914, huibao, pp. 24-26. 43. Ibid., January 1915, huibao, pp. 36-37. 44. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1920. 45. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1913, fulu, pp. 1-4. 46. From 1919 through 1937, the provincial Office of Education published Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, its title and format undergoing several short-lived alterations in the uncertain years from 1927 to 1930. After 1927, this was the only periodical which carried government communications relating to education. Jiangsu

248

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jiaoyu, the Guomindang-era successor of the PEA's Jiaoyu yanjiu and Jiartgsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, concentrated instead on prescriptive essays. 47. Jiaoyu yanjiu, May 1913, baogao, p. 104; August 1913, huibao, p. 4; November 1913, huibao, p. 11. In the August 1913 report, Maqiao township was not specifically identified by county. The assumed familiarity with its location would indicate that it was a prominent southern township. 48. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, June 1920, p. 35. 49. These examples are drawn from Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1916, January 1920, June 1920, November 1920. Cases drawn from Yanfu and Suzhong counties are discussed in more detail in the next chapter. 50. This impression is drawn from material in Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1925 through December 1926. 51. Jiaoyu yanjiu, May 1913, huibao, p. 102; Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1916, pp. 21-22. 52. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1920, pp. 8 - 9 , 37. 53. Jiaoyu yanjiu, May 1913, baogao, p. 106. 54. Ibid., May 1913, June 1913, August 1913, October 1913, November 1913. 55. Ibid., May 1913, huibao, p. 105. 56. Ibid., p. 102. 57. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, October 1916, p. 2; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, February 1926, diaocha, p. 10. 58. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1920, pp. 29-30. 59. A handful of these activities were nationwide in scope, such as the national exhibition for the work of middle schools, jointly sponsored with the Hunan education association in 1913 or the 1914 educational exhibition sponsored by the Heilongjiang governor's office. See Jiaoyu yanjiu, July 1913, huibao, p. 8; August 1914, huibao, p. 11. 60. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, October 1916, p. 2. 61. Jiaoyu jie 2 (1 June 1912):3; 4 (1 October 1912):3. 62. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao 13 (May 1914):47-48. This same report complained that education had to compete with superstition and Buddhism and the belief in the divine right of kings, complaints which would be made by the Communists twenty years later. 63. Ibid., pp. 49-50. 64. Ibid., baogao, p. 31. 65. Province-wide by 1913, primary schools designated as public schools outnumbered private schools by 3 to 1, for example. See Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, pp. 246-247. 66. These examples are taken from Jiaoyu yanjiu (Shanghai: Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui), no. 1 (June 1913) and no. 2 (July 1913). 67. Zhongguo xuesheng jie [The Chinese student's world] (Shanghai, 19151916). 68. These examples are taken from Jiaoyu yanjiu, nos. 2 - 7 , June-November 1913. 69. Difang jiaoyu [Local education] 29 (15 October 1931):passim. 70. Ayers, Chang Chih-tung and Educational Reform in China, pp. 152-158; Shen Enfu, "Xuesheng zhi xiuyang" [Cultivating students], Zhonghua xuesheng jie, 25 January 1915, pp. 1 - 4 .

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Chapter 5 1. The classic study in this regard is Lloyd Eastman, The Abortive Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974). Studies of the Guomindang period in Jiangsu include Geisert, "Power and Society," and Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders." 2. For Jiangsu, see, for example, Faure, "Local Political Disturbances in Kiangsu Province," and Wang Shu-hwai, "Qingmo jiangsu difang zhengzhi fengchao" [Riots against local self-governments in Kiangsu during the late Qing period], Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 6 (June 1977):313-327. 3. Faure, "Local Political Disturbances in Kiangsu Province," chap. 4 and app. C. 4. Billingsley, Bandits in Republican China, p. 39. 5. Geisert, " 'Superstition,' "pp. 5-6. 6. John Lust, "Secret Societies, Popular Movements, and the 1911 Revolution," in Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China, 1840-1950, ed. Jean Chesneaux (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 167. 7. Wong, "Popular Unrest and the 1911 Revolution in Jiangsu," p. 323. 8. Faure, "Local Political Disturbances in Kiangsu Province," pp. 396-397. Faure's research does not include a systematic evaluation of rent and tax burdens outside of two highly urbanized areas in the south, which leaves his provocative conclusion open to further investigation. Moreover, his assertion (pp. 331-332) that Jiangsu's peasant communities were sufficiently independent to resist a significant increase in taxation would appear to need further scrutiny. 9. Ibid., pp. 385, 391. In the former case, Faure argues that the rice was destroyed to avoid escalating criminal charges to the level of a capital offense. That may well be true, but had the motive for the attacks been outright starvation, death would have haunted the rioters whatever option they chose. 10. Geisert, " 'Superstition' "; Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders," pp. 1 3 5 , 1 4 6 - 1 4 7 . 11. Roxann Prazniak, "Class and Gender in the Formation of Opposition to Modernizing Local Elites, China 1900-1911," paper presented to the American Historical Association, Chicago, 1986. 12. Prazniak, "Tax Protest at Laiyang, Shandong, 1910," pp. 41-71. 13. Jiangsu shenggongbao, 15 October 1912, jilu, p. 9. Magistrates were notorious, of course, for their belief that no people were so litigious as those in their own district. Some measure of hyperbole is clearly at work in these observations. 14. Ibid. As in many such cases, we do not know the outcome of this suit. Since there are no recorded cases of magistrates successfully closing down early modern schools, it is likely that the Qixin school continued in operation. 15. Ibid., 31 October 1912, jilu, pp. 9 - 1 0 . The social backgrounds of Gu and his colleague, Xu Gancheng, are not available. 16. For information on Funing school lands, see Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, July 1926, xunling, pp. 6 - 8 . None of the names mentioned in the provincial report are listed as leaseholders by the time of a 1934 report, which includes information on leases going back to 1912 (Li Jinfang, "Funing xian zhengli quanxian xuechan jihua fangan"). 17. Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 31 October 1912, jilu, p. 9. 18. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1913, mingling, p. 26; March 1913,baogao, p. 23.

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19. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu xingzheng baogao shu, vol. 2 , p . 82; Li Jinfang, "Funing xian zhengli quanxian xuechan jihua fangan," pp. 23-24. 20. Jiangsu shenggongbao, 25 February 1917, xunling, pp. 4 - 8 . 21. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, June 1926, zhiling, p. 19. The Rugao magistrate's petition was later referred to when the province responded to a similar complaint by a private citizen from the southern county of Changshu. The Changshu petition complained about a specific primary school principal who was simultaneously a member of a township assembly which met some 9.5 kilometers from the school. The petitioner, a local citizen, noted that since the assembly was occasionally in session for ten days at a time, school affairs could not be attended to properly. The province noted the similarity to the Rugao case and urged that the situation be stopped, but it did not claim the legal power to actively intervene. See Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1926, xunling, p. 9. 22. Ibid., July 1926, 2 June 1926, zhiling, p. 20. 23. Ibid., December 1926, xunling, pp. 18-19. 24. Ibid. 25. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, October 1916, p. 21. 26. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1923, xunling, pp. 36-37. 27. Most counties maintained a peasant association office at the county seat, since the associations were eligible for a small monthly stipend from the county budget. A county peasant association was established in the Funing county seat in 1913. In 1919, a municipal association was also established in the county seat, along with a flurry of associations in local townships and municipalities. This second generation of associations gave no indication of being coordinated with the older county association, reflecting the growing political confidence of subcounty elites in the late 1910s. See "Funing," Jiangsu sheng nongye diaocha lu, August 1925, p. 27. 28. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1923, xunling, pp. 36-37. 29. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, January 1920, pp. 23-24. 30. Ibid. Information on membership in this collection of associations is not available. 31 .Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1922, p. 14. 32. Ibid., December 1926, xunling, pp. 18-19. 33. Ibid., May 1926, xunling, pp. 29-30. The magistrate, Long Zonggu, did order the troops off the Zhongshan school's property, but had no success in effecting the move. 34. Brunnert and Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization of China, p. 362. While the court may have hoped the chambers of commerce would provide a uniform court-regulated commercial authority, reformers were known to view the newly proposed chambers as an institutional effort to circumvent direct bureaucratic interference in commercial activities. See Joseph Fewsmith, Party, State, and Local Elites in Republican China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), p. 30. 35. Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society, chap. 8, esp. pp. 281-284; Fewsmith, Party, State, and Local Elites in Republican China, p. 25. 36. Lillian M. Li, China's Silk Trade: Traditional Industry in the Modern World, 1842-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 127. For a discussion of the nomenclature enveloping late-imperial commercial associations, see Rowe,

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Hankow: Commerce and Society, pp. 251-253. Gongsuo represented a structural realignment of traditional guilds, as native place affiliation ceded preeminence first to association within given fields of trade, then to multiplex trade associations (Rowe,p. 277). 37. Lynda S. Bell, "Merchants, Peasants, and the State: The Organization and Politics of Chinese Silk Production, Wuxi County, 1870-1937" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1985), esp. pt. II. The lumber gongsuo founded in Rugao county in 1918 mirrored determined, if less than successful, investment efforts by local gentry which persisted until warlord violence drove significant amounts of local capital out of central Jiangsu. See "Rugao xian shiye shicha baogao," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, pp. 160-161. 38. See, for example, "Yancheng" and "Dongtai" in Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan. Figures for yegonghui are from Z h a o Ruheng, jiangsu sheng jian, chap. 2, p. 45. Since provincial accounts underreported local activities, Zhao's figure of over a thousand gonghui is undoubtedly an understatement. 39. Duara, Culture, Power, and the State, esp. pp. 7 3 - 7 7 ; Geisert, "Power and Society." 40. Philip Kuhn refers to this as "clerkly capitalism," in which tax collectors, who often secured their positions through bribery, compensated themselves from the money collected. See Philip A. Kuhn, "Local Taxation and Finance in Republican China," Selected Papers from the Center for Far Eastern Studies 3 (1978-1979):108. Despite imperial resistance, late-Qing gentry became increasingly active in the collection of surtaxes and miscellaneous charges. See Wang Yeh-chien, Land Taxation in Imperial China, 1750-1911 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 42; Kuhn, "Local Taxation," pp. 1 1 0 - 1 1 3 , 1 1 6 . 41. Prasenjit Duara, "State-Involution: A Study of Local Finances in North China, 1911-1935," Comparative Study in Society and History 29(1) (1987):132161. Duara's emphasis here is on the extension of tax brokerage into the village level. His political entrepreneurs were motivated by immediate financial self-interest, exploiting their putative relationship with the state for personal gain. 42. Wen Yu, "Jiangsu quansheng tianfu zhi yanjiu" [Research on land taxes in Jiangsu], Renwen [Humanities monthly] 3(4) (15 May 1932): 1 - 1 1 ; Liu Zhifan, "Jiangsu tianfu wenti" [Land tax problems in Jiangsu], Jiangsu yanjiu 1(4) (August 1935):1-51. 43. According to one set of figures, the national claim on Jiangsu's land tax remained roughly steady at 88 percent from 1913 through 1916. See Zhang Lin, "Jiangsu tianfu gaikuang" [Land taxes in Jiangsu], Dizheng yuekan [Land administration monthly] 1(7) (July 1933):962. 44. Wen Yu, "Jiangsu quansheng tianfu zhi yanjiu," p. 7. 45. Sun Zuoji, Zhongguo tianfu wenti [Problems of land taxes in China] (Shanghai, 1935), pp. 2 9 2 - 2 9 5 , cited in Duara, Culture, Power, and the State, p. 70. Adding to the problem of evaluating local tax burdens was the manner in which tax budgets were recorded. While provincial budgets, the basis for statistics in the debate on the republican-period tax burden, tended to standardize units of collection, county records did not. In the late 1910s, for example, county budgets, from which the provincial records were compiled, might simultaneously record revenues in copper cash, silver, and various Chinese dollars (yuan), as well as piculs of grain.

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(See, for example, the 1917 tax records for Jiangsu's Liyang county, in which all of these measures are used; Jiangsu gongbao, [6 February 1917].) There is no way to know which standards the province used in amalgamating county statistics into provincial records. To assess real monetary value, one would need to know grain market prices for each county at the time of year in question. In addition, until the mid19208, both Sun Yatsen and Yuan Shikai dollars were in circulation in Jiangsu, along with "dragon dollars" (longyang). Nearly a dozen different real values were assigned to the dragon dollar, listed indiscriminately in county tax records. Further, Shanghai, Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Nanjing, and Yangzhou each had different measures for the silver tael as late as 1933. (See Gongshang banyue kan [Industry and commerce, semimonthly] 5(9) (1 May 1933):39-40.) In 1926, by way of example, the Yangzhou tael was worth 93 percent of the value in silver of the Shanghai tael. (See Chinese Economic Monthly 8(10) (1926):412.) Local tax records seldom, if ever, stipulated which form of currency was being used. Discrepancies resulting from the nature of fiscal reporting were compounded by the fact that it was not always clear what official figures included. In 1925, for example, before the land tax had officially reverted to the province, Jiangsu began transferring the surtax on the grain quota away from the provincial treasury into the treasury of a newly created provincial bureau for the management of educational expenses (jiaoyu jingfei guanli chu), removing the figure from statistics on annual provincial income. This was not an insignificant sum, however, and removing it from the provincial figures artificially deflated the stated value of annual provincial income. By way of example, in 1916, a year for which a breakdown of provincial revenues from the land tax is available, the provincial surcharge on the grain quota alone equaled 12 percent of annual provincial revenue from the land tax. See Liu Zhifan, "Jiangsu tianfu wenti," p. 14. 46. Ke Jong, "Jiangsu sheng gexian zhengfushui bijiao" [A comparison of the base land tax in various Jiangsu counties], Jiangsu yuebao 1(1) (20 November 1933): 70-72. 47. Wen Yu, "Jiangsu quansheng tianfu zhi yanjiu," pp. 2 - 6 . 48. "Rugao xian tianmu keze xishu biao" [A detailed chart of agricultural land classifications in Rugao county], Suzheng 8 (16 January 1931):27-29. 49. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, April 1913, zhiling, p. 33; Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 30 October 1916, xunling, pp. 6 - 7 . 50. Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 20-24 January 1917, passim. 51. Ibid., 15 January 1917. 52. Ibid., 26 November 1919, zhiling, p. 6. 53. For tax schedules for 1931 for Rugao and Taixing see Suzheng 8 ( 1 6 January 1931 ):27-30. These tax schedules give tax quotas, not final revenue figures. 54. Zhang Lin, "Jiangsu tianfu gaikuang," p. 953. 55. This figure does not include subcounty revenues, which the county did not control. See "Jurong," Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, vol. l , p p . 17-24. 56. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao, September 1925, pp. 17-18. 57. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1926, diaocha, pp. 3 - 7 . The reliance on county exhortation bureaus here is instructive, given earlier provincial efforts to subordinate them to county magistrate control. 58. Susan Mann (Jones), "The Organization of Trade at the County Level: Brok-

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erage and Tax Farming in the Republican Period," in Select Papers from the Center for Far Eastern Studies, no. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 8 3 86. Mann calls attention in particular to the ya-shui, provincial brokerage taxes on commercial transactions, collected by licensed brokers at the county level, and informal customary fees, which were officially converted into county taxes in 1911. She does not discuss the proliferation of merchant-managed lijin collected and consumed at the subcounty level after 1911. 59. Susan Mann, Local Merchants and the Chinese Bureaucracy, 1750-1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 155-156. 60. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1913, mingling, p. 37; Jiangsu shenggongbao, 9 January 1913, xunling, p. 29. 61. Jiangsu shenggongbao, 17 March-5 April 1917. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 12-15 January 1917; Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, October 1926, mingling, pp. 39-42. Education was not the only arena of activity which experienced this splintering of fiscal resources, nor did the practice cease after 1927. When Lishui county projected a cost of 33,397 yuan in 1929 for security forces, for example, it budgeted to draw the funds from the second installment of the grain quota, a surcharge against the land tax for business contracts, a surcharge against an additional contract levy, a general police levy, and levies on local commercial imports, hostels, and restaurants. See Zhou Shuli, "Lishui xian xianzheng gaikuang," pp. 30-32. 64. The land tax surcharge, which amounted to 38,000 yuan in 1915, was divided between the education property management office, the charity bureau, and a "self-government" office. See Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 6 February 1917. 65. The province had few modern banks to speak of, and few were truly comprehensive financial institutions. Most specialized in some fashion: the National Bank of China (Zhongguo yinhang) specialized in handling foreign currency and trade; the Communications Bank (Jiaotong yinhang) sought to develop domestic industry; the Commercial Bank (Zhongguo tongshang yinhang) handled deposits from commercial ventures. Provinces and counties established their own banks as well, each issuing its own banknotes and honoring its own rates of exchange. With the exception of county banks—over two-thirds of Jiangsu's counties had established these by the early 1930s—the province's western-style banks were concentrated south of the Yangzi. See Wang Peitang, Jiangsu sheng xiangtu zhi, pp. 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 - 1 1 6 , 1 2 0 . 66. "Yancheng," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, pp. 189-190; "Haimen," Jiangsu shenggexian gaikuang yilan, pp. 185-186. 67. Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 19 February 1917. It was common for lijin levies not to reach the magistrate's office, being transferred directly from lijin collection stations to local school managers. As if to underscore their relative independence, there were instances of county-level lijin levies, earmarked for county schools, which were dispensed monthly or annually, directly to the schools from the lijin offices. See Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 6 February 1917. 68. Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 8 January 1917. 69. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1913, xuanyan, pp. 3 - 1 0 . 70. Ibid., December 1913, mingling, pp. 40-41. 71. Ibid., March 1913, mingling, p. 23. 72. Ibid., December 1913, mingling, pp. 47, 51.

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73. Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing" [Educational expenses in Jiangsu and plans for their rectification], Jiangsu jiaoyu 2( 1) (February 1932):154. 74. Jiangsu jiaoyu xingzheng yuebao, January 1913, mingling, pp. 21-22. 75. Ibid., pp. 22-24. The investigation of Yuren primary school indicates the standards used by provincial school inspectors. The inspectors were troubled by the lack of people but were equally bothered by the fact that the decrepit building which allegedly housed the school did not have a blackboard, a sine qua non of the modern school (p. 24). 76. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1926, zhiling, p. 4. 77. Ibid., December 1926, pp. 1 - 5 . 78. I draw this conclusion from the close cooperation between the PEA and the provincial Bureau of Education in such matters as the development of official policy, inspection of local schools, and resolution of disputes. 79. The Vocational Education Association was perhaps the most interesting of the elite educational reform movements. Founded in 1917, it was the first conscious step, for elite educational theorists, away from the intense moralism of post-Confucian education. Firsthand information on the Vocational Educational Association is best drawn from its own publication Jiaoyu yu zhiye (Education and Vocation), published in Shanghai from 1917 to 1937. See also Margo Gewurtz, "Social Reality and Educational Reform: The Case of the Chinese Vocational Educational Association, 1917-1927," Modern China 4(2) (April 1978):157-177. Some of these organizations were more ephemeral than others. The Society for the Promotion of New Education, for example, was founded in 1919, driven by the near-fanatic craze for the ideas of John Dewey, who arrived in China in 1919 and lectured at leading educational institutes for the next two years. Dewey's educational philosophies were enormously popular among western-style educators. His brand of pragmatism appealed to those seeking a fusion of science and social critique. (See Reginald D. Archamfault, ed., John Dewey on Education: Selected "Writings [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964], esp. pp. 169-192.) For Dewey, schools were seminal units of social reform, an idea which for Chinese educators extended the importance of schools beyond pedagogy into the politics of republican reform. (See Barry Keenan, The Dewey Experiment in China [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977], pp. 37-38, 43, 45.) The Society for the Promotion of New Education was effectively dormant by the early 1920s. 80. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, June 1926, diaocha, pp. 4 - 1 3 . 81. Gewurtz, "Social Reality and Educational Reform," p. 169. 82. Tao Xingzhi, "Changjiang liuyu pinmin jiaoyu yundong zhi xingzhi zuzhi ji fangfa" [The character, organization, and methods of the commoners' education movement in the Yangzi valley], Pinmin jiaoyu [Education and democracy] 71 (1 December 1923):4. 83. Yen, The Mass Education Movement in China, p. 14. For Yen, painfully aware of a growing "open hostility between capital and labor," mass education was consciously designed to ward off radical political change. Yen hoped to ameliorate lower-class hostility, by "enlightening labor peacefully." See Shirley Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese YMCA, 1895-1926 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 158.

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84. Lee Byung Joo, "The Rural Reconstruction Movement in Kiangsu Province: Educators turn to Rural Reform" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1978), pp. 74-78. 85. This conclusion is based on a review of articles for the years 1919-1926 in Pinmin jiaoyu (Beijing, 1919-1924), Jiaoyu yu zhtye (Shanghai, 1917-1937), and Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao (Shanghai, 1916-1927). Of these journals, only Jiaoyu yu zhiye is currently available in a complete run. 86. Jiangsu shenggongbao, 27 October 1916, xunling, p. 5. 87. Ibid., 30 October 1916, pp. 6 - 7 . 88. Ibid., 4 January 1917, xunling, pp. 6 - 8 . 89. "Funing," Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, p. 183. The records are maddeningly silent as to the details of this particular standoff: we do not know what kind of appointments were made or who labored to withstand them. 90. Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 23 October 1916, zhiling, pp. 4 - 1 0 . The use of artificial administrative districts to control local society was not new to the republic. Subcounty qu had initially been legitimized by the late-Qing New Policy edicts. As conceived of by the court, they were effectively service-oriented. Each county was to be divided into qu to facilitate state control over local police and monitor industrial and educational development. Nothing required that the subdistricts for each of these functions be coterminous. (See Brunnert and Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization, pp. 409, 435-436.) Similar administrative strategies continued after 1911, when in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the republican government ordered a new layer of electoral districts immediately below the county level. (See Fincher, Chinese Democracy, p. 223.) In Jiangsu, these "electoral" qu were a dead letter from the outset. 91. There is circumstantial evidence that even these arrangements represented a contraction of more grandiose provincial plans. When Qi Yaolin issued the order for the lecture circuits, in the summer of 1916, he wanted the province divided into ten circuits, with lecture teams of twenty-two each (Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 13 July 1916, pp. 2-3). By October, the intended circuits had been reduced to six, with lecture teams of three members each. It was the initial intention of the province that the lecture teams include representatives from local educational institutions. It is impossible to tell from the proposed eighteen lecturers whether or not this happened: none of the individuals mentioned in the October report were prominent either provincially or in local school circles, at least as far as can be determined for the Suzhong and Yanfu counties. (See Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 23 October 1916, zhiling, pp. 4-10.) 92. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, 13 October 1916, pp. 4 - 1 0 ; 13 July 1916, pp. 2 - 3 . The topics on which the lecturers were to speak included public morals, hygiene, physical exercise, and proscriptions against smoking, superstition, and the like. 93. Jiangsu sheng shiye shicha baogao shu, February 1919, p. 184. 94. Ibid., passim. 95. Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 14 July 1918, xunling, p. 5. 96. Ibid., 30 October 1917, zhiling, p. 7; 31 October 1917, zhiling, p. 12; 1 November 1917. 97. Jiangsu gongbao, 4 January 1917, xunling, pp. 6 - 8 ; Jiangsu sheng gongbao, 14-29 July 1918.

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98. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1922, pp. 12-20. 99. " H a i m e n J i a n g s u sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 188. 100. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1926, xunling, p. 12. It is just such demobilized troops, for example, which caused the crisis for the Zhongshan Middle School in Yancheng in 1926. 101. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, July 1926, xunling, pp. 1 - 2 ; September 1926, xunling, p. 54. 102. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1922, zhiling, p. 41. 103. Ibid., April 1926, zhiling, pp. 30-31. For Tai county, see Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, November 1926, xunling, pp. 4 - 7 . On rare occasions, the province chose not to side with magistrates in disputes with local school circles. In 1926, a provincial inspection report found that Funing county, beset by crop failure, had usurped some 4,000 yuan of municipal funds, which county officials had justified on the grounds that municipal schools had revenue in excess of budgeted expenditures. The province reproached the county magistrate and called him to increase his own expenses rather than weaken local morale. (See Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, July 1926, xunling, pp. 6-8.) This happened despite provincial arguments that Funing local schools were underenrolled by as much as a third—an indication that zealous school entrepreneurs had overextended their institutional base. Rather than calling for the schools to be closed, the province called on the magistrate to facilitate increased enrollment in the local schools. (See Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1926, zhiling, pp. 30-31.) 104. Wang Peitang, Jiangsu sheng xiangtu zhi, pp. 199-200. 105. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, June 1926, xunling, p. 1. 106. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1926, xunling, pp. 48-49. 107. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1926, xunling, pp. 39-41. To finance new schools, the province called for the collection of a new compulsory education tax. The resistance the provincial governor's office encountered to such a provincially mandated tax underscored the degree to which it did not have anything close to consistent governing mechanisms at the local level. A hodgepodge of county assemblies, local "administrative committees" (xingzheng huiyi), and magistrate's offices were called on to impose the new levies, as the province, largely unsuccessfully, sought local compliance (ibid., p. 41). 108. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, September 1926, xunling, p. 37. These committees were specifically for the purpose of managing finances, not for general school management. See Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing" [A general survey of Jiangsu educational expenses and proposals for rectifying them], Jiangsu jiaoyu 2( 1) (February 1933):143-145. 109. Although the records are incomplete on these committees, there are indications that in some instances this effort at local cooptation was successful. The new committees were designed to integrate subcounty and county politics, but their location in the county seat turned some of them into instruments of "county" interests. Almost immediately after the creation of the qingli jiaoyu kuanchan hui in Yancheng, for example, complaints surfaced that the surtaxes gathered by the committee were not being distributed to subcounty schools as prescribed. See Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, December 1926, xunling, pp. 24-25.

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Chapter 6 1. The seminal work on the Guomindang itself remains Eastman, The Abortive Revolution. For differing analysis on the relationship between merchant interests and the Guomindang see Parks M. Coble, The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), and Richard Bush, "Industry and Politics in Kuomintang China: The Nationalist Regime and Lower Yangtze Chinese Cotton Mill Owners, 1927-1937" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1978). 2. Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders"; Geisert, "Power and Society"; and Noel Ray Miner, "Chekiang: The Nationalists' Effort in Agrarian Reform and Reconstruction, 1927-1937" (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1973). Barkan, Geisert, and Miner all convincingly distinguish party and government during the Guomindang decade. For debate on the nature of the Guomindang state, see "Point-Counterpoint" in Republican China 9(2) (February 1984):8-40. 3. Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders," esp. chap. 7. 4. Geisert, "Power and Society," p. 260. Barkan does not discount the "new type of government servant" (p. 226) associated with short-lived Guomindang reform efforts, but she generally argues that such people, who were young and educated in formal schools, were displaced with regard to the real exercise of power after 1930. 5. Barkan, "Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders," p. 438, chap. 7, passim. 6. See Bradley Geisert, "Toward a Pluralist Model of KMT Rule," Chinese Republican Studies Newsletter 7(2) (February 1982). 7. Gewurtz, "Social Reality and Educational Reform," p. 169. 8. The journal was published in Shanghai and the most complete extant run is available at the Shanghai Municipal library. The provincial Bureau of Education issued its own gazette, which ceased publication in December 1926, to be replaced briefly, from June 1927 to May 1928, by the central university system administrative bulletin: Jiangsu daxue jiaoyu xingzheng zhoukan (Jiangsu University Administrative Weekly). Subsequently, the Bureau of Education concentrated its energies on a series of professional-style educational journals, such as Jiangsu xuesheng (Jiangsu Students) and jiangsu jiaoyu, not prominently concerned with governmental mandates or communications. While a study of the Bureau of Education during the Guomindang decade remains to be done, the attenuation of the government's voice in the Bureau's publications indicates a weakening of its authority in the direct management of the schools. 9. Geisert, " 'Superstition,' " p . 1; see also Geisert, "Power and Society," pp. 1922, 24. Even after the 1927-1929 purges, over half the provincial party members were at least middle school graduates (ibid., p. 108). 10. Zhang Naiyan, "Jiangsu sheng di jiaoyu" [Education in Jiangsu], jiangsu xunkan, no. 112/113, p. 47; Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing" [Educational expenses in Jiangsu and plans for their rectification], jiangsu jiaoyu 2(1) (February 1932):151. 11. Chen Hexian, "Jiangsu zhi jiaoyu quoqu yu jianglai" [The Past and future of Jiangsu education], jiangsu xunkan, nos. 4 6 - 4 8 , pp. 160-161.

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12. Guoli zhongyang daxue banyue kan [The national Central University semimonthly bulletin] 1(5) (1929); 1(15) (1930). 13. Kong Chong, "Xian gongkuan gongchan guanli chu pingju yi" [A proposal for consolidating the county public properties management bureaus], Suzheng 3 (1 June 1930):21. 14. Fan Huangbei, "Xiaoxue jiaoshi daiyu wenti," pp. 7 - 9 . 15. Ding Zhou, "Yancheng xian jiaoyu gaikuang shi toushi," p. 13. Ding's association with the party is indicated by his willingness to write for a provincial party journal at a time when the party was not held in high repute. Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun was published by the provincial party's educational affairs committee. Like many journals the party and government produced, in an apparent effort to affirm their cultural legitimacy, this one was short-lived: it was published in Zhenjiang from the fall of 1933 through the spring of 1934. The most complete extant run appears to be at the Nanjing University Library. 16. The best single discussion of Guomindang party politics in Jiangsu is found in Geisert, "Power and Society," esp. pp. 59, 61-66, 75, 86. 17. Geisert, "Power and Society," p. 43. 18. Jiao Zhongzu, "Funing xian xianzheng gaikuang," p. 39. 19. Wang Peitang, Jiangsu sheng xiangtu zbi, p. 12. Among the Yanfu and Suzhong counties, the north-bank counties generally fell under the Nantong inspection region; Yancheng, Funing, Dongtai, and Xinghua were within the Yancheng inspection district. See Wang, Jiangsu sheng xiangtu zhi, pp. 12-13. 20. Wang Jiwu, "Jingxian xianzheng gaikuang" [The political situation in Jingjiang county], Jiangsu xunkan 43 (1929):21-22. 21. Jiangsu dangwu zhoukan 18 (18 May 1930):53. For a discussion of Guomindang policy toward commercial xiehui, see Fewsmith, Party, State, and Local Elites in Republican China. 22. Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu sheng jian (dangwu), p. 39. 23. Ibid., pp. 37-40, 45-49. 24. Chen Yilin, Zuijin sanshinian zhongguo jiaoyu shi, pp. 211-212. 25. Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu difang jiaoyu zhi pibi ji qi zhengdun fangfa," p. 2. 26. The provincial administration's ambivalence toward these local offices persisted into the 1930s. In some counties, an office of education had never materialized as an entity separate from the magistrate's office, for example. Not content to let the University System operate on its own dynamics, the Guomindang hastily convened new administrative committees, which subsequently proved difficult to control. (See, for example, "Guanyu jiangsu jiaoyu" [On Jiangsu education], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(2) (1933):20-21.) Then, in 1932, the provincial Bureau of Education called for all counties which had an educational budget of less than 120,000 yuan to abolish their county education offices, which were to be absorbed into the direct functioning of the magistrate's office. (See Wang Peitang, Jiangsu sheng xiangtu zhi, p. 201.) Some seventeen counties were said to fall in this category, mostly north of the Yangzi. As of 1933, just under a third of the province's counties still had no office of education. (See "Shejiao fenqu yanjiu guicheng" [A research proposal for local redistricting], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(2) (15 October 1933): 21-22.) 27. Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu ting, ed., Jiangsu sheng zuijin jiaoyu gaikuang (n.p.,

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April 1930), pp. 2 - 3 , 10-11. As this is a provincial publication, it is unlikely the authors would include anti-Guomindang sentiment. The conservative Shenbao, also a source of information about these events, similarly did not report specific reasons for those who resigned their posts. 28. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April-December 1926, passim. 29. Shenbao [The Shun Pao], 20 September 1928, p. 4. 30. Ibid., 23 September 1928, p. 3. 31. Gu Kebin, "Shicha yancheng xian jiaoyu baogao," p. 19; Li Chunren, "Yancheng xian zhengge difang jiaoyu niaokan," p. 23. 32. Ding Zhou, "Yancheng xian jiaoyu gaikuang zhi toushi," p. 15. 33. Li Chunren, "Yancheng xian zhengge difang jiaoyu niaokan," pp. 15-16. 34. Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu difang jiaoyu zhi pibi ji qi zhengdun fangfa," p. 8. 35. Li Chunren, "Yancheng xian zhengge difang jiaoyu," p. 23. Provincial inspector Gu Kebin estimated that local collectors, contracted through the Office of Finance, were skimming some 8 percent of the educational taxes sent to the county office. Gu figured this brought the average local collector an annual salary of some 500 yuan a year, surpassing the income of most primary school principals. See Gu Kebin, "Shicha yancheng xian jiaoyu baogao," p. 10. 36. See, for example, Jiangsu xuesheng 1(6) (March 1933), in which articles on each of these concerns appeared. This journal was published directly by the provincial Bureau of Education and remained in circulation until June 1937. 37. Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu sheng zhongdeng jiaoyu zhi xianzhuang ji sheshi," [The situation of, and proposals for, middle-level education in Jiangsu], Jiangsu yuebao 2(4) (1 September 1 9 3 4 ) : l - 4 . 38. Zhou's colorful and fateful career took him from membership in the Communist Party to high-ranking status in the Guomindang, then on to collaboration with the Japanese. Because of his background, Zhou was himself inconvenienced by the political purges of the late 1920s, but he was protected by his close association with Chiang Kai-shek. See Howard Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, vol. 1, pp. 4 0 5 - 4 0 7 . 39. Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu zhongdeng jiaoyu shishi zhi quxiang," pp. 1 - 7 . 40. Shibao [The Eastern Times], 12 January 1928, p. 2. 41. Ibid., 2 October 1928, p. 1. 42. Ji Kang, "Du jiaoting panbu di qiuguo jiaoyu shishi gangling" [Reading the plans for salvation education issued by the provincial Office of Education], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(2) (15 October 1933): 1—3. 43. Ibid., p. 3; Zhu Ganye, "Shishi nongcun jiaoyu de shangque" [Deliberations on the implementation of rural education], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(2) (15 October 1933):4. 44. Zhang Naiyan, "Jiangsu sheng de jiaoyu," pp. 4 5 - 4 6 . 45. "Zhaokai difang jiaoyu shidao huiyi" [Open the meeting for local education supervision], Jiangsu yuebao 1(5) (20 March 1934):16-17. This plan followed closely on the heels of an earlier, equally ill-fated, plan to divide the province into six educational districts, each of which would answer to a provincially appointed mass education association. See "Shehui fenqu yanjiu guicheng" [A research proposal for local districting], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun 1(3) (November 1933):20-21. 46. Geisert, " 'Superstition,' " n. 4, pp. 11-12.

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47. Shibao, 7 February 1928, p. 1. The association's defense of its colleague is particularly interesting, as Suzhou was one of the few cities which succumbed to Guomindang pressure to reorganize its education association after 1927 (Shibao, 17 January 1928, p. 2). 48. Shenbao, 6 October 1928. The newly established Central University sent officials to investigate this case, keeping the protest out of the hands of local government officials. 49. Shen was out of office by 1928, although whether he quit or was fired is not clear from the records. See Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu ting, Jiangsu sheng zuijin jiaoyu gaikuang (April 1930). 50. Shenbao, 9 November 1928, p. 3; 16 November 1928, p. 3; 18 November 1928, p. 3; 24 November 1928, p. 3. Baoying had been hit by difficult harvest conditions which cut into local revenues. Unpaid salaries were not always the product of net deficits, however. As of November 1928, in the northern county of Gaoyou, salaries for county teachers had not been paid since August. The county itself had a surplus of 100,000 yuan, but the money was in the county treasury, which would not release it to the Office of Education. See Shenbao, 13 November 1928, p. 3. 51. John Israel, Student Nationalism in China, 1927-1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), passim. 52. Shibao, 2 July 1928, p. 2; Shenbao, 15 September 1928, p. 3. Suzhou's problems underscore the burden of growing taxes and administrative complexity after the Guomindang came to office. Before that time, Suzhou's municipal schools relied on a budget of some 70,000 yuan, largely from school properties. After 1927, the city attempted to increase teachers' salaries and increase the number of grades in its schools, as a result of which the budget grew to some 200,000 yuan. To try to match this, the city levied new taxes. See Shenbao, 17 October 1928, p. 3. 53. Shibao, 13 October 1928, p. 1. 54. Shenbao, 2 November 1928, p. 3. In this case, municipal school principals, when faced with a strike by their employees, appealed to the county Office of Education, which agreed to help pay back salaries, although these were specifically not county employees. 55 .Shibao, 10 November 1928, p. 1. 56. Shibao, 14 March 1928, p. 2; 23 March 1928, p. 2; 18 December 1928, p. 1; 21 December 1928, p. 1. 57. Shenbao, 5 November 1928, p. 3. 58. Shenbao, 22 November 1928, p. 3. 59. "Rugao xian zhengfu shiqi nian shiyi yue fen zhengzhi gongzuo baogao" [Political work report of the Rugao county government for November 1928], Mi«gri zhi jiangsu, 1 February 1929, p. 4. 60. "Xianzheng shuping" [An explication of county government], Suzheng 5 (1 July 1930):39. 61. Xie Qun, "Taixian 1932 niandu zhi jiaoyu jihua" [Educational plans for Tai county in 1932], Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(9) (October 1932):150. 62. Shenbao, 27 October 1928. 63. Ibid., 29 October 1928, p. 3. As with the strike in Jiading, we do not have details, which means we do not know if these are county or local teachers. Nor do we know the specifics of the case against the county official. This strike lasted for

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just under a month, ending in the first week of November. See Shenbao, 7 November 1928, p. 3. 64. "Jiangsu xuechao diaocha tongji" [Statistical investigation into student unrest in]'iangs\x\, Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(5) (June 1932):243-244. 65. Shibao, 18 February 1928, p. 2; 5 March 1928, p. 2. 66. "Jiangsu xuechao diaocha tongji," p. 243. 67. Shibao, 4 January 1929, p. 1. 68. Wang Gongxian, "Funing xian zhengfu shizheng fangzhen ji zuijin zhengji" [Administrative direction and recent accomplishments in Funing county], Suzheng 4 (12 June 1930):44. 69. China Critic 5(27) (7 July 1932):677-678. 70. China Critic 7(24) (15 June 1933):602. 71. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, April 1930, pp. 46-47. There was undoubtedly some measure of contact between local secret and religious societies and the school community, although for counties south of the Huai these circumstances are poorly documented. Documentation is more common in the Huaibei counties, where various quasi-secret and religious societies had a more public presence. See Chen Yungfa, "The Chinese Communists and Huaibei Town Elite," paper presented at the Conference on Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, Banff, Alberta, August 1987. 72. Shibao, 18 December 1928; 27 October 1928, p. 1. 73. Jiangsu jiaoyu ting gongbao [Gazette of the Jiangsu bureau of education], January 1930, p. 7. 74. Kuhn, "Local Taxation and Finance in Republican China," p. 124. The Guomindang government replaced the short-lived bureaus with financial affairs committees, which were to include local elite representatives, a move reminiscent of similar efforts in 1925. By 1935, when it became clear that this policy also had failed to secure provincial financial control, the government limited the authority of the committees and ordered local gentry off them. See Kuhn, pp. 125-126. 75. Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qu zhengli tujing" (pt. 2), Jiangsu jiaoyu 2(3) (March 1933):24. 76. These figures are exclusive of payments to national schools, such as Central University. (See Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing," pp. 146, 151.) In 1930, total provincial revenues for education were 4,896,552 yuan; the land tax was the largest single source of revenue. Expenses totaled 4,150,472 yuan; the largest single expense (1,320,000 yuan) was Central University. See Zhou Wang, "Susheng 1930 jiaoyu fei yusuan zhi fenxi" [An analysis of the Jiangsu provincial education budget for 1930], Suzheng 7 (1 August 1930):3-5. 77. Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing," pp. 145146; Zhou Wang, "Jiangsu sheng 1930 jiaoyu fei yusuan zhi fenxi," p. 3. 78. "Benting yiyue zhi zhongyao gongzuo" [The (Education) Ministry's work for the past month], Jiangsu jiaoyu 1(9) (October 1932):99. 79. "Jiangsu sheng gexian tianfu zhengfushui ji daizheng mujuan fangfa ji biaojuan jiage yilan biao" [A chart of the base land tax and methods for the standards and values for land tax surcharges in various counties in Jiangsu], Suzheng 8 (1931 ):27—32. It should be noted that budgets and actual income could vary widely. In Rugao, for example, only 151,443 yuan of the 240,667 was collected in 1928. In

262

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1929, that figure dropped to 101,706 yuan. In Tai county, only 25,673 yuan was collected of the target 41,951 yuan in 1928. That rose to 31,870 yuan in 1929, still 10,000 yuan below the target figure. (Ibid.) 80. "Benting yiyue zhi zhongyao gongzuo," p. 99. 81. Xie Qun, "Taixian 1932 niandu zhi jiaoyu jihua,"p. 152. 82. "Jiangsu sheng gexian tianfu zhengfu shui ji daizheng mujuan fangfa ji biaojuan jiage yilan biao," pp. 2 7 - 3 2 . Predictably, this pattern varied from county to county. In the southeastern county of Jurong, the county construction and education offices received revenues directly; other tax money was funneled through the county Office of Finance. The education and construction offices, in turn, distributed funds on a monthly basis, depositing the rest in local financial establishments of their choosing. See Jiangsu sheng gexian gaikuang yilan, p. 19. 83. Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu difang jiaoyu zhi pibi ji qi zhengdun fangfa," p. 7. Zhou notes, for example, that Yancheng authorities were having difficulty collecting levies on the sale of eggs. Local merchants, recognizing this as a reconstituted lijin levy, refused to pay it on the grounds that the lijin had been abolished. 84. Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing," p. 28; Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu difang jiaoyu zhi pibi ji qi zhengdun fangfa," pp. 6 - 7 . 85. Provincial pressure to limit local expenses has been suggested as a culprit in the underreporting of county revenues. (See Duara, "State-Involution," p. 152.) As we have seen from earlier investigations of local taxes, however, underreported tax revenues predated explicit efforts to restrict local spending. 86. Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing," p. 30. 87. Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu sheng jian (jiaoyu), pp. 163-166. 88. Zhou Wang, "Susheng 1930 jiaoyu fei yusuan zhi fenxi," pp. 3 - 5 . 89. Geisert, "Power and Society," p. 145. 90. Lee, "The Rural Reconstruction Movement in Kiangsu Province," pp. 81-82. 91. Ibid., pp. 9 2 - 1 0 0 . 92. Zhao Guangtao, "Women de luxian" [Our itinerary], Jiangsu jiaoyu tongxun, 1(1) (1933):8. 93. Institute of Pacific Relations, Agrarian China: Selected Source Materials from Chinese Authors (London, 1939), pp. 11-12, cited in Robert Ash, Land Tenure in Pre-revolutionary China: Kiangsu Province in the 1920s and 1930s (London: Contemporary China Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976), p. 10. 94. Zhu Ganye, "Shishi nongcun jiaoyu de shangque,"pp. 5 - 1 1 . 95. Ibid., pp. 3 - 5 . No particular insights were offered on how to enter into the world of the peasantry. Rather, special attention was paid to encouraging revival of the baojia or civilian surveillance system as part of the government's effort to expand authority into the countryside. 96. Xu Fangtian, "Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu guan lianhehui di san qu nianhui jishi" [Record of the third annual convention of Jiangsu provincial educational institutes], Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan 2(7) (May 1930):137. 97. In financially strapped counties, it was not uncommon for the county Mass Education Office to be located directly in the magistrate's office. See "Huaiyin xian minzhong jiaoyu guan jinxing jihua" [The Huaiyin county mass education institute's plans in progress], Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan 2(10) (August 1930):90.

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98. Kong Xuexiung, Zhongguo jinri nongcun yundong [The peasant movement in today's China] (n.p., May 1934), p. 158. 99. "Benguan shiyan qu minzhong xiaofei hezuoshe chengli yiqian choubei xinghua gongyuan jihua shu" [Preparatory plans for the Xinghua Public Garden before the establishment of the experimental zone's mass consumer co-op society], Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan 1(12) (September 1929):31. 100. Xue Zhongtai, "Jiangsu jiaoyu jingfei gaiguan ji qi zhengli tujing," pp. 151-152. 101. Lee, "The Rural Reconstruction Movement in Kiangsu Province," p. 110. 102. Hou Hongjian, "Si nian lai jiangsu jiaoyu zhi huigu," p. 14. 103. Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu shengjian, pp. 163-166. 104. Wang Jingtao, "Tai xian xianzheng gaikuang," p. 31. This report does not give the mass education budget for Tai county. The county budget as a whole was 495,382 yuan, some 37,000 yuan more than the county expected to take in. The county's three middle schools and twenty-eight county-managed primary schools had budgeted expenses of 120,000 yuan. The majority of its estimated 9,000 primary school students were enrolled in the 109 lower-primary schools under local management. 105. Gu Kebin, "Shicha yancheng xian jiaoyu baogao," p. 25. 106. Ibid., pp. 25-26. 107. Ding Zhou, "Yancheng xian jiaoyu zhuangkuang zhi toushi," p. 14. 108. Yi Zuolin and Shen Fu, "Jiangsu shengli xiangcun shifan fushu xiaoxue shicha" [Investigation into Jiangsu provincial rural normal schools' attached primary schools], Jiangsu jiaoyu 4(4) (April 1935):103,107. 109. Wang Haoran, "Rugao xianzheng gaikuang," p. 63. 110. Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsu shengjian (dangwu), pp. 56-63. 111. See, for example, photographs in Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan (Nanjing, 19281931); Jiaoyu yu minzhong (Wuxi, 1929-1937); and Difang jiaoyu (Zhenjiang, 1929-1933). 112. Xu Fangtian, "Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu lianhehui di san qu nianhui jishi," pp. 133-144. In the wake of the formal activities, an executive meeting passed a series of resolutions, including a call to shift funds from formal schooling to mass education, which it forwarded to the provincial Office of Education for approval. Thus an association of this sort acted in a quasi-official capacity, which must have increased its stature in the eyes of its supporters. 113. Chuzhong bu, Suzhong xiaokan 7 (1 June 1928):13; Shenbao, 8 September 1928, p. 3; Fan Shuixiang, "Zhongyang daxue qu tongsu jiaoyu guan lianhe hui jishi" [Report on the convention of popular education halls in the Central University district], Minzhong jiaoyu yuekan 1(3) (1 January 1929):32. 114. Shenbao, 22 October 1928, 23 October 1928. 115. Ibid., 31 October 1928, p. 3. 116. The Yixing Middle School was also a provincial school. Yixing is a southern county to the west of Lake Tai. See Suzhong xiaokan 3 (15 April 1928), xiaowen, p. 15; 6 (15 May 1928), xiaowen, p. 13. 117. Zhou Fuhai, "Jiangsu difang jiaoyu zhi pibi ji qi zhengdun fangfa," p. 2. 118. A relatively complete run of this journal is available at the Nanjing University library.

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172-177

119. Jiangsu zhongdeng jiaoyu 1 (16 February 1932):42-46. 120. Shenbao, 22 October 1928, p. 3. Chapter 7 1. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence, Directory of Chinese Communist Officials (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1966), pp. 274-275. 2. Interviews, Nanjing Jiangsu, Yancheng Jiangsu, March-June 1980, January 1981. 3. Fuxiao bao [New dawn] 447 (7 July 1943):4; Yanfu bao 28 (1 June 1942):8. 4. Jiang Zhiliang, Sunan kangri genjudi jianshi [Draft history of the southern Jiangsu anti-Japanese base areas] (n.p., 1960), p. 1. 5. Ibid., p. 3; Nanjing daxue lishi xi, Maoshan renmin kangri douzheng jiangshi [A brief history of the people's anti-Japanese struggle in Maoshan] (Nanjing, 1962), p. 7. There is very little background information on the local elite figures involved here, with the exception of Ji Zhengang. In a region generally poorly connected with the provincial political economy at large, Ji was something of an exception. Born into what was described as a bureaucratic capitalist family, Ji spent considerable time in Shanghai and maintained business ties there until the Japanese invasion. See Nanjing daxue lishi xi, Maoshan kangri douzheng, pp. 4 - 5 . 6. Chen, Making Revolution, pp. 59-61. 7. Ibid., pp. 423-424. Chen argues that party policy showed little interest in local intellectuals, who were generally written off as Guomindang lackeys, until the midwar years. The evidence presented here contradicts that assertion. Chen correctly notes new policies toward intellectuals, beginning in 1943; we now see that this trend represented the evolution of policy interests firmly established from the beginning of the war. 8. Fuxiao bao (new ed.) 17 (1949):1. 9. The pattern of using intellectual youth as mass activists was already well established in North China, where Communist forces benefited from the articulate patriotism of the December Ninth movement. In the Communists' Shandong Base Area, magistrates appointed during the early consolidation period almost without exception had western educations; most were professional educators in western-style schools. One study in the Communist-controlled Donghai district, on the Shandong peninsula, indicated that over 90 percent of the district's political cadres, at the county level or above, were either western-school students or teachers before joining the Communist government. See David Paulson, "War and Revolution in North China: The Shandong Base Area, 1937-1945" (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1982), pp. 128-129; p. 384, n. 6. 10. Zhongyang diaocha tongji ju, Zhonggong zai jiangsu zhi zuzhi yu huodong, p. 6. Although a provisional government was established in these counties in July 1940, it proved hard to hold against Japanese counterinsurgency campaigns, begun in earnest in the summer of 1941. 11. Minzu geming tongzhi hui pian, Zuzhi shenghuo [Organizational life] (n.p., 1941). 12. Huaihai ribao [Huaihai daily news] 156 (1 June 1941):4. Communist administration divided the wealthy north-bank county of Rugao in two, creating Ruxi in the west, Rugao (Rudong) in the east. 13. Meng Dongbo, Kangri minzhu zhengguan ji gezhong zhengce [Anti-Japanese

Notes to Pages

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265

democratic political rights and various political policies] (n.p., Huaibei Suwan bianqu xingzheng xueyuan yin, 1942). 14. The Bingcha episode also underscores the distinction the Communists drew between the more elderly "gentlemen with a fondness for culture" and qingnian, their youthful counterparts. In the wake of the Bingcha meeting, for example, the party organized Bingcha youth into a patriotic youth team, whose opening meeting some sixty people attended. In a move reminiscent of the activities which defined local school community before the war, the team announced that it would publish a cultural journal. (See Huaihai ribao 159 [4 June 1941]:3.) Subsequently, the Communists encouraged the opening of a civilian lower-middle school in Bingcha, with attendance determined by an academic examination. The middle school's clientele was reasonably well endowed: in 1944, at the height of the Japanese counterinsurgency campaign, the school donated some 500 yuan in base area currency and 10,000 yuan worth of grain to support the anti-Japanese effort. See Suzhong bao [Central Jiangsu news] 24 (15 February 1944):1. 15. Huaihai ribao 156 (1 June 1941):3-4. Representatives of peasant organizations were allocated 22 percent of the seats in this particular assembly. 16. Yanfu bao 27 (26 May 1942):2. 17. Huaihai ribao 162 (7 June 1941):3. 18. Suzhong bao 44 (17 April 1944):1. As if to make up for lost time, in this particular case the Communists arranged something of a surprise for their gentryguests. As the meeting began, attended by 119 representatives, some 13,000 or so 14,000 local peasants stormed the session, a move allegedly unexpected by the Communists, to demand that the agenda include discussion of anti-Japanese traitors in the area. Predictably, the newcomers were allowed to join the session. 19. Huaihai ribao 159 (4 June 1941):3. This report does not give the number of participants who were teachers in the formal schools, although the location of the meeting indicates such individuals were present. The use of the "X" in identifying local schools was common in base area newspapers and may have been designed to protect schools operating under threat of Japanese takeover. 20. Yanfu bao 13 (16 March 1942):1. Thus the work team had access to the status of the teachers and gentry while they were outnumbered by the combination of peasants and government representatives. 21 .Huaihai ribao 169 (14 June 1941):3. 22. Huaihai ribao 190 (5 July 1941):3. 23. Huaihai ribao 162 (7 June 1941):3. 24. Huaihai ribao 183 (28 June 1941):3; 188 (3 July 1941):3. 25. Huaihai ribao 166 (11 June 1941):3. 26. Yanfu bao 19 (18 April 1942):3. 27. Huaihai ribao 167 (13 June 1941):3. The report does not locate the Subei Middle School, which in all likelihood was a Communist-organized school. There is no reference to a school by this name in the prewar records. 28. Huaihai ribao 157 (2 June 1941):1. 29. Huaihai ribao 162-163 (7-8 June 1941):3. Predictably, meetings of student and teachers' associations such as this one also took place at local schools. This meeting was to have taken place in Yancheng city itself, but fear of Japanese attacks caused it to be moved to an unidentified school outside the city limits. 30. Huaihai ribao 164 (9 June 1941):3; 169 (19 June 1941):3; 189 (4 July 1941):3.

266

Notes to Pages

180-182

31. Huaihairibao 189 (4 July 1941):3. 32. Huaihai ribao 191 (5 July 1941):3. 33. Huaihai ribao 157 (2 June 1941):3. Some 115 people were said to have attended a meeting to reorganize the existing association, representing twenty-one occupations (ye). 34. Zhonggong jiaoyu [Chinese Communist education] (n.p.: Tongyi chuban she, 1943), pp. 5 - 7 , 1 8 - 2 0 . 35. Ibid., p. 5. 36. Ibid., pp. 4 - 9 . For educational policy in Jiangxi, see Wang Xuewen, "Zhonggong jiangxi shiqi jiaoyu zho yanjiu" [Research on education during the Chinese Communist Jiangxi period], Feiqing yuebao [Intelligence on Communist bandits] 15(12):58-65; 16(1):85-91; 17(2):69-75. The Jiangxi schools contrasted sharply with their wartime successors, a contrast which would fuel political debate on the nature of socialist education in China. For the Communists, the Jiangxi soviet represented a highpoint in radical policies of social reform. The soviet schools, designed to attract poor peasants and soldiers, were informally structured; sessions lasted four to six months and were not organized in sequence. The schools stressed practical skills; agricultural production took priority over more literary endeavors. At the same time, the Jiangxi schools openly valued politics over expertise, their goal being to cultivate "worker-peasant intellectuals" from China's masses. See John Hawkins, Mao Tse-tung and Education (Hamden, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1974), p. 119. 37. In Yan'an itself, there was little cause for conflict between cadre training and the formal schools anyway. The border region had an estimated literacy rate of 1 percent. It was said that the number of middle school students in the entire region could be counted on one hand; there were approximately 100 lower-primary schools while an equivalent area in Jiangsu would have had many hundreds. See Guofang bu xinwenju, ed., Gongfeifandong wenjian hui, vol. 5: Jiaoyu, pp. 1 - 2 . 38. Zhongyang diaocha tongji ju, ed., Zhonggong zai jiangsu zhi zuzhi yu huodong, pp. 2 8 - 2 9 . 39. Nanjing daxue lishi xi, Maoshan, p. 41. 40. Hang Wei, "Suzhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi pianduan" [Scattered recollections of educational work in the central Jiangsu liberated area], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu [Recollections of educational work in the old liberated areas] (Shanghai: Jiaoyu chuban she, 1979), p. 13. 41. Interview, Zhu Shaoxiang, vice-president, Jiangsu Television College, January 1980. 42. Interview with Ji Ting, Jiangsu Party Committee, Organizational Committee vice-secretary, Nanjing, 10 June 1980. 43. Huaihai ribao 161 (6 June 1941):3. 44. Huaihai ribao 167 (13 June 1941):3. The five additional middle schools were the Qixiu Middle School, the "Qiu" Middle School, the Zhong Middle School No. 3, and an anti-Japanese middle school which was clearly of CCP vintage. 45. Yanfu bao 128 (21 August 1943):3. 46. Liu Jipin, "Muqian huazhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo" [On the future tasks of education in the Central China liberated area], Jianghuai wenhua [Jianghuai culture], 10 July 1946, p. 8. 47. Sun Dawu, "Yancheng jiaoyu gongzuo de pianduan huiyi" [Fragmented recol-

Notes to Pages

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267

lections of educational work in Yancheng], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu, p. 26. 48. Yanfu bao 23 (6 May 1942):3; 143 (21 September 1943):3. The discussion which follows is heavily indebted to base area newspapers, a source with obvious but unavoidable limitations: not only did the base area press report policy as the party wished it to be reported, but, as a result, the press was the voice of the organizers, not the organized, who did not have a voice of their own in print during the war. Although the quality varied markedly, in sheer quantity Central China's base area newspaper industry was impressive. In 1946, a report on Communist cultural work claimed that thirty newspapers circulated in the Communist parts of Central China. (See Jiattghuai wetihua, 10 July 1946, p. 11.) A postwar survey by the Yancheng party archives reported thirty-one, including several short-lived papers, such as the Maoshan tongxun [Maoshan dispatches]. A private survey of wartime papers, conducted in 1980, found an additional nine including such county papers as Rugao dazhortg [The Rugao masses], Nantong dazhong [The Nantong masses], and Buoying dazhong [The Baoying masses], although no dates are available for these papers. It is not clear how many of these papers are still in existence; most have not been cited in research on the wartime experience, even by Chinese scholars. 49. Huaihai ribao 176 (22 November 1943). 50. Yanfu bao 176 (27 November 1943):1. By the end of 1944, the Jiangsu command as a whole claimed to have over 100 civilian middle schools and 4,500 lower schools. See Suzhong jiaoyu 7 (15 June 1945):21. 51. Suzhong jiaoyu 7 (15 June 1945):21. 52. Jianghuai wenhua, 10 July 1946, p. 11. The Communists also claimed that as of 1946, they had approximately 25 percent of the base area's children in formal schools. See Liu Jipin, "Lun muqian huazhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo," p. 3. 53. Compare with Zhao Ruheng, jiangsu sheng jian, pp. 99-107. 54. jiangsu xunkan 5 (1929):66; jianghuai wenhua, 10 July 1946, p. 11. 55. Huaihai ribao 166 (11 June 1941):3. 56. Huaihai ribao 157 (2 June 1941):1. 57. Huaihai ribao 164 (9 June 1941):3; 165 (10 June 1941):3. 58. This conclusion is based on a reading of the following Central China base area papers: Huaihai ribao (December 1940-July 1941); Yanfu bao (January 1942January 1944); Yanfu dazhong (1943); Suzhong jiaoyu (1944); Fuxiao bao (MarchDecember 1943, February 1944,1949). 59. The sequence of this mobilization strategy was problematic in areas where the Communists secured power only late in the war. In these areas, wenjiao hui seem to have fulfilled both their own purposes and those of the wenxie hui, which do not appear to have been organized there. In 1943, for example, eastern Lianshui and Funing were still in preliminary stages of mobilization. When the Communists organized local literati in these areas to telegram Chongqing in protest against hostilities between the Guomindang and the Communists, they did so through locally organized wenjiao hui. See Yanfu bao 125 (15 August 1943):3; 128 (21 August 1943):3. 60. Huaihai ribao 203 (18 July 1941):3; Yanfu bao 111 (17 July 1943):3; Sun Dawu, "Yancheng jiaoyu gongzuo de pianduan huiyi." The Northern Jiangsu wenjiao hui was apparently the prototype for similar organizations throughout Communist Central China. The less secure Huaibei Base Area had a wenjiao hui of its

268

Notes to Pages

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own, engaged in similar activities, by spring 1943. See Fuxiao bao 442 (23 June 1943):2. 61. Huaihai ribao 176 (13 June 1941):3. 62. Suzhongbao 43 (10 April 1944):1. 63. Huaihai ribao 167 (13 June 1941):3. Although local education was not as developed in Funing as in Nantong, base area authorities nonetheless treated the inauguration of the assembly with some importance. Both military and government officials were present, including Huang Kecheng, the New Fourth Army's Third Division commander. 64. Huaihai ribao 169 (19 June 1941):4. 65. Huaihai ribao 162 (7 June 1941):3. This particular meeting brought together twenty representatives of school clubs from the Yancheng third school district, joined by thirty people from a county-level cadre training session, for the purpose of discussing rent and interest reduction. 66. Huaihai ribao 180 (25 June 1941):3. 67. Yanfu bao 17 (6 April 1942):1; 20 (21 April 1942):3; 21 (26 April 1942):1. 68. Yanfu bao 32 (21 June 1942):2. 69. Yanfu bao 50 (6 October 1942): 1. 70. Yanfu bao 37 (16 July 1942):3; 38 (26 July 1942):3. 71. Huaihai ribao 156 (June 1941):passim. 72. Huaihai ribao 179 (24 June 1941):3. 73. Yanfu bao 26 (21 May 1942):2. In this case, three primary schools in Funing, which appear by their names to be revived prewar schools, were assigned monitoring responsibilities for six townships. The number of tutors involved was not reported. 74. Huaihai ribao 166 (11 June 1941) :4; 174 (19 June 1941): •4. 75. Interview with Zhang Yanguo, department secretary, Jiangsu Institute of Education, Department of Education, Nanjing, 16 April 1980. 76. Yanfu bao 166 (9 November 1943):3; 167 (11 November 1943):3. 77. Jiangsu jiaoyu gongbao, June 1926, yanjiu, pp. 4 - 5 ; July 1926, yanjiu, pp. 1-14. 78. Suzhongjiaoyu 7 (15 June 1945):28. 79. Yanfu bao 170 (15 November 1943):3. Huang Kecheng, commander of the New Fourth Army's Third Division, attended the opening ceremonies and presented the school with reference books, a basketball, fountain pens, and a map of the Soviet Union for each grade in the school. Some 100 teachers were recruited for the school, a sizable number in a municipality which supposedly had no formal schooling. 80. Yanfu bao 16 (1 April 1942):2. 81. Nanjing daxue lishi xi, Maoshan renmin kangri douzheng jianshi, pp. 4 0 - 4 1 . 82. Yanfu bao 16(1 April 1942):2. 83. Yanfu bao 26 (21 May 1942):2. The landlords in this case were specifically referred to as gentry (shishen) although it is difficult to say how many degree-holders may have been active in such local circumstances. 84. Hang Wei, "Suzhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo," p. 14. 85. Some of these small affinity groups, called shu san, were attached to Communist military forces. Gray-area schools were also sometimes referred to as "dispersed" schools although they were actually not geographically dispersed. Located

Notes to Pages 190-193

269

in politically contested areas, the schools were set up in the style of private tutorials and copies of traditional schoolbooks were prominently on display. These schools were expected to be using base area books, which they were to hide when Japanese troops moved through the area. The Communists attempted to ensure control over these schools by establishing children's organizations in them which would be called upon to engage in spying or sabotage. (See Gan Zhongxu, "Fan qingxiang douzheng zhong de jiaoyu gongzuo" [Recollections of educational work during the struggle against the Japanese village sweeps], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu, pp. 3 1 40.) Obviously, however, the double identity of these schools could just as easily work against the Communists as for them. 86. Zhang Yunyu, "Zai fan qingxiang douzheng zhong jianchi jiaoxue" [Consolidating schooling during the struggle against the Japanese village sweeps], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu, p. 46. 87. Yanfu bao 19 (18 April 1942):2. 88. Fuxiao bao 419 (22 April 1943):1. 89. Fuxiao bao 509 (20 December 1943):4. 90. Huaihai ribao 174 (19 June 1942):4. 91. Yanfu bao 166 (7 November 1943):3. 92. Zhang Zhenyu, "Suzhong kangri genjudi dongxue huiyi" [Recollections of winter study in the central Jiangsu anti-Japanese base area], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu, p. 97. 93. Sun Weimin, "Suwan erfanqu de dongxue gongzuo" [Winter study work in the Suwan second district], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu, pp. 104-105. 94. Yanfu bao 186 (17 December 1943):1. This policy coincided with an expansion of base territory and concomitant need for more local administrators, but it had the effect of distancing the peasants even further from access to basic education. 95. Interview with Zhu Shaoxing, vice-chairman, Jiangsu Television College, Nanjing, 9 January 1980. 96. Interview with Zhang De, senior vice-president, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 20 March 1980; Hang Wei, "Suzhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo," p. 12. None of the available material clarifies for us what percentage of the local teachers supported the base government. 97. Huaihai ribao 193 (8 July 1941):3. 98. See, for example, Fuxiao bao 442 (23 June 1943):2. 99. Kangri minzhu zhengquan ji qi zhengce, pp. 1 - 2 . 100. Interview with Zhang Yanzuo, department secretary, Jiangsu Institute of Education, Department of Education, Nanjing, 16 April 1980. What specifically prompted this decision is not clear from the records. It is reported to have resulted in detailed investigations of local school administration and prewar school activities. The investigations did not survive the war. 101. Chen, Making Revolution, pp. 231-232. 102. Yanfu bao 37 (16 July 1942):2. 103. Yanfu bao 38 (26 June 1942):2. When the base area government was responsible for teachers' salaries, payment was made in kind and in cash and was to be determined by available resources and prevailing local standards (Tongyi Chuban she, Zhonggong jiaoyu, p. 14). There are few figures available for teachers' salaries in the Jiangsu Base Area. In 1943, Jiangsu Base Area salaries were generally paid in

270

Notes to Pages

194-200

grain, with allotments for primary school teachers ranging from 70 to 140 jin of grain, depending on the level of the teacher and the kind of grain involved. See Yatifu bao 111 (17 July 1943):3. 104. Yanfu bao 176 (27 November 1943):3. Within Jiangsu itself, the GMD had little appreciable military presence at this time. These concerns reflected overall national policy. 105. For a list of zhengfeng materials in circulation in Central China, see Fuxiao bao 429 (12 May 1943):2. 106. Chen, Making Revolution, p. 114. 107. Fuxiao bao 415 (1 May 1943):1. 108. Zhang Yunyu, "Zai fan qingxiang douzheng zhong jianchi jiaoyu," pp. 41-48. 109. Hang Wei, "Suzhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo," pp. 22-23. 110. Suzhong bao 57 (16 May 1944):1; Suzhong jiaoyu 2 (1 September 1944): 2-3. 111. Wu Tianshi, "Suzhong sifenqu de jiaoyu gaijin hui" [The educational improvement committee in the central Jiangsu fourth subdistrict], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu, p. 2. 112. Suzhong jiaoyu 2 (1 September 1944):10. 113. Suzhong bao 54 (7 June 1944):1. 114. Suzhong jiaoyu 2 (1 September 1944):3,10-11. 115. Hang Wei, "Suzhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi pianduan," p. 17. 116. Interview with Zhu Shaoxing, 9 January 1980. 117. Huaihai ribao 142 (19 September 1943):3. 118. Ibid. The importance of these investigations is worth underscoring. Communist control of the base areas frequently extended only tentatively into peasant villages. Especially after 1943, the base area government intended to address that problem by a major political drive into rural areas already nominally under its control. For that effort, these civilian investigations were invaluable. 119. Fuxiao bao 504 (10 December 1943):2. 120. Interview with Guo Guanwu, vice-president, Yancheng Normal School, Yancheng, 20-21 January 1981. 121. Gan Zhongxu, "Wenjiao yanjiu hui" [A culture and education research group], Lao jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo huiyi lu, pp. 4 - 1 1 . 122. Yanfu bao 22 (1 May 1942):4. 123. Huaihai ribao 32 (26 July 1942):2. 124. Huaihai ribao 30 (11 June 1942):2; 32 (21 June 1942):2. 125. Suzhong jiaoyu 6 (20 May 1945):33, 37. 126. Yanfu bao 50 (6 October 1942):1. 127. Yanfu bao 28 (1 June 1942):5-8. 128. Yanfu bao 22 (1 May 1942):2. 129. Wu Tianshi, "Subei jiefang qu ganbu jiaoyu," pp. 49-51; Suzhong bao 23 (12 February 1944): 1, 3. Before the war, Hai'an had been the eastern reaches of Tai county. Dingsuo was a sizable market town about 4 kilometers north of the border with Rugao. 130. Suzhong bao 176 (20 May 1945):1. 131. Suzhong bao 172 ( 12 May 1945) : 1.

Notes to Pages 201-206

271

132. Suzhong bao 205 (17 July 1945):1; 210 (27 July 1945):1. 133. Interview with Zhang De, senior vice-president, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 20 March 1980. 134. Suzhong jiaoyu 6 (20 May 1945):28-30, 33. There are indications here that as of spring 1945 base area authorities did intend to convert middle schools at a faster pace than previously (ibid., pp. 39-40). 135. Suzhong jiaoyu 7 (15 June 1945):23. 136. Gu Chongshi, "Wufen qu zhongdeng jiaoyu de gaige" [Reform of the middle schools in the fifth district], Jianghuai wenhua, July 1946, p. 21. 137. Suzhong jiaoyu 6 (20 May 1945):10-12. 138. "Xuesheng hui de jiben renwu ji qita" [The basic responsibilities of student associations and other matters], Shenghuo 3 (9 March 1946):53-55. 139. Suzhong jiaoyu 6 (20 May 1 9 4 5 ) : l - 2 . 140. Suzhong jiaoyu 7 (15 June 1945):23-27. 141. Gu Chongshi, "Wufen qu zhongdeng jiaoyu de gaige," pp. 2 1 - 2 2 . 142. "Kaiban buguan zhengzhi xuexiao ba" [Establish schools which don't dwell on politics], Shenghuo 2 (5 February 1946):26. 143. Liu Jipin, "Gei qingnian tongxuemen de gongkai xin" [An open letter to our youthful students], Shenghuo 3 (9 March 1946):2-4. Liu, head of the Suzhong region's office of culture and education by 1944, provided an interpretation of New Democratic education, carefully distinguished from education of the anti-Japanese period, which was remarkably liberal. He called for a relaxation of government control across the board, criticizing the degree of government-imposed policy during the war. Education should respond to the popular will, according to Liu, even if the outcome differed significantly from the government's policy of "cultivating new citizens and cadres." (See Liu Jipin, "Lun muqian huazhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongzuo," p. 13.) Briefly, from 1946 to 1947, Liu's policies held sway in Communist Jiangsu. 144. Liu Jipin, "Lun muqian huazhong jiefang qu jiaoyu gongxuo," Jianghuai wenhua, p. 7. 145. "Dui jiaoxue gaijin de yaoqiu" [Requests made for the advance of study], Shenghuo 3 (5 February 1946):22. 146. There were at least eighteen publications specific to Central China from 1947 to 1949 in the field of government, finance, and party policy. Understandably the largest quantity of material concerned land reform, reportedly cataloged in at least five collections by the Yancheng party archives in 1980. For the same period, there were four cultural journals: Huaihai zazhi [Huaihai magazine] (July 1947February 1948), Xin wenyi congkan [New literature and art] (October 1948-March 1949), Suzhong wenyi [Central Jiangsu literature and art] (1947), and Dazhong wenhua [Culture of the masses] (December 1948-January 1949). (This information is based on catalogs at the Nanjing Municipal library and a review of catalogs at the Yancheng party archives in January 1981.) 147. Wu Yichi, "Xiwang women de xuexiao buyao daotui" [Hoping that our schools will not be overcome], Shenghuo 2 (5 February 1946):24-25. 148. "Kaiban buguan zhengzhi xuexiao ba," p. 26. 149. "Xiwang women de xuexiao buyao daotui," p. 25. 150. Suzanne Pepper, The Civil War in China: The Political Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 312.

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206-215

151. Ibid., p. 308. 152. Chang Qunyuan, Xinminzu zhuyi jiaoyu jiaocheng [A course of study for New Democratic education] (Shanghai: Zazhi gongsi, 1950), p. 336. 153. Yanfu dazhong [The Yanfu masses] 22 (15 February 1948):1. An edict was issued for the entire Yanfu region which called for the peasant associations to investigate each and every teacher in the region: anyone with a complaint against a local teacher was invited to send it in and the teacher would be singled out for criticism. 154. Yanfu dazhong 6 (22 December 1947):1. 155. Yanfu dazhong 11 (13 January 1948):1. It is extremely unlikely that half of these teachers were of poor peasant and tenant background. 156. Yanfu dazhong 50 (9 May 1948):2. 157. Yanfu dazhong 22 (15 February 1948):1. 158. Chang Qunyuan, Xinminzu zhuyi jiaoyu jiaocheng, p. 335. 159. Ibid., pp. 336-338.

Chapter 8 1. These observations are based on the author's visit to Yancheng city, 21-22 January 1981.

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Index

Administrative assemblies, county education (xiatt jiaoyu xingzheng huiyi), 84 Administrative status: competition over, among local municipalities, 40; designation of, for local schools, 114. See also Shi; Shizhen; Xiang American Plan, 104, 2 4 6 - 2 4 7 n . 33 Anfeng (Xinghua county): education extension hall, 54; local newspaper, 56; local schools, description of, 75 Anti-Japanese associations, 185 Associations, in European state building, 9 Baimi (Tai county), commercial levies in, 133-134 Bai Tiao (Communist organizer), 182, 204 Balance of power: between county seats and municipalities, 6; between the state and civil society, 9 , 1 0 Baoying city, population of, 44 Baoying county, school unrest in (1930s), 158 Base area cultural journals, 204, 271n.146 "Basic masses" (jiben qunzhong), 176 Batan (Funing county), 41 Beiyang (Yancheng county), local schools in, 69 Beiyang clique, 99 Big Sword Society, 119 Bingcha (Rugao county), Communist organizing in, 177 Budgets: county and subcounty, comparison of, 7 1 - 7 2 ; county schools (1913), 71; education, Guomindang period, 73, 162; mass education (1930s), 167; provincial schools (1913), 64 Bureau of Commerce and Industry (shiye si), 100

287

Bureau of Education (jiaoyu ting), 103; Guomindang period, 152; origins of, 100; publications by, 2 4 7 n . 4 6 , 2 5 7 n . 8 Central China Command, 29; establishment of Central China Bureau (1941), 175 Central Jiangsu: core and periphery, 5; cotton cultivation, 34; delineation, 4; ecology, 33; Japanese control, 28; tenancy, 33. See also Chinese Communist Party; Districts; Dongtai; Funing; Haimen; Nantong; Qidong; Rugao; Tai; Taixing; Xinghua; Yancheng Central Jiangsu Fourth Subdistrict, 25, 184,185,195,232n.3 Central Jiangsu Public School, 200 Central Jiangsu United Youth Association, 201 Central Place Theory, and local cities in Jiangsu, 45 Central University, 1 5 2 , 1 6 0 Chahe (Rugao county), location, 51 Chambers of commerce, 129; demise of, 151-152; as diagnostic indicators, 49; in local power struggles, 136. See also Dagang; Dongkan; Longgang; Lugang; Shagou; Shanggang; Wuyou; Yancheng; Yilin Changzhentonghai circuit, 140 Changzhou, 31 Changzhou xuetang, 63 Chemahu (Rugao county), education association in, 83 Cheng (administrative seats), in self-government regulations, 39 Cheng Dequan (provincial governor): on local school administration, 78; in the 1911 revolution, 97, 9 8 - 9 9

288 Chen Ji (Funing), Communist school building efforts in, 190 Chen Yi (Communist commander), 176, 184,199 China International Relief Commission, 37 Chinese Communist Party: historical sources of, 24; Jiangsu Provincial Command, 2 8 - 2 9 , 30; local school circles, organizing strategies of, 2 5 , 1 8 3 - 1 8 6 ; primary school teachers, mobilization of, 1 7 7 - 1 8 0 , 1 9 2 - 1 9 8 . See also Bingcha; Central China Command; Chen Ji; Communist middle schools; Communist youth organizing; Dongkan; Dongtai; Educational circles; Education associations; Eighth Route Army; Funing; Huai'an; Huduo; Jiangxi schooling; Juegang; Local intellectuals; Matang; New Democracy; New Fourth Army; Newspapers; Primary school principals; Private tutors; Provincial assembly; Qualification examinations; Rugao; Social education; Summer sessions; Taixing; Township elections; Wenjiao hui; Wenxie hui; Yan'an; Yancheng; Yilin Chongming county, disputes over school lands, 125 Circuits: imperial offices for, 39; in republican period, 235 n. 41 "Citizen" schools (guomin xuexiao), 114 Commercial dispute resolution offices (shangshigongduan chu), 140; in Funing, 141 Commercial institutions, as local diagnostic indicators, 4 7 , 4 9 - 5 1 Commercial-promotion agents (shicha yuan), 140 Commercial schools (shangye xuexiao), 135 Commercial taxes (lijin): and the abolition of self-government, 131; in the Guomindang period, 164. See also Baimi; Compulsory education tax; Hai'an; Jiangyan; Jurong; Qutan; Sigangkou; Tai; Taxes Communist middle schools, 181, 203 Communist youth organizing, 185-186 Compulsory education tax, 163 County-administered schools, 65. See also Budgets; Local schools County financial bureaus (caiwu chu), 161 County seats, balance of power with municipalities, 6. See also Balance of power; Budgets; County-administered schools; Education associations

Index Cultural consensus, 2, 20 Cultural identity, and tourism, 30 Cultural prejudice, 36; toward local teachers, 89 Dagang (Yancheng county): chamber of commerce 49; local schools, 69 Dalton Plan: Provincial Education Association writings on, 26; use by the Communists, 25, 188-189 Dazhong zhishi (Intellectuals of the Masses), 199 Diaojiapu (Taixing county), location, 52 Ding Richang (governor of Jiangsu), 60 Ding Zhou (educational inspector), 150 Dispersed schools, 1 8 8 , 1 9 0 , 205, 2 6 8 269 n. 85 District magistrate, in the imperial period, 39 Districts, 255n. 90; for education (1916), 140, 255n.91; in Guomindangperiod, 1 5 0 - 1 5 1 , 1 5 6 , 1 6 9 , 259n.45; subcounty, in Central Jiangsu, 35 Dongguo (Funing county), 41 Donghai (Haizhou), 43; population, 44 Dongkan (Funing county), 41, 42; chamber of commerce, 51; Communist mobilization in, 180 Dongtai: Communist assembly in (1944), 178; Communist school policy, 202; county and subcounty school expenses, comparison of, 72; Guomindang party members, background of, 169; local ecology, 35; local school closings, Guomindang period, 155; local school enrollments, 70; local schools, numbers of, in late Qing, 62; in 1910s, 6 6 - 6 7 , 241 n. 32; 1911 revolution, 98; population, 35; road building, 55; school unrest, 157-158; tenancy, 33 Dongtai city, 43; public sphere in, 54 Dongxingyong (Funing county). See Peasant associations Dongyi (Funing county), 42 Double employment in local schools, complaints about, 123-125 Duara, Prasenjit, work on state-societal relations, 13 Education, in European state making, 10 Educational circles: in Communist assemblies, 178-180; relations with commercial circles, 1 2 9 , 1 3 2 , 1 3 3 - 1 3 5 ; resistance to Guomindang campaigns, 155-156. See also Jiaoyu jie

Index Educational finances management bureau, 143 Educational reform, late-imperial period: comparison with Europe, 60; gentry activity in Jiangsu, 6 2 - 6 3 Educational section (xuewu ke), 78 Education associations: activities of, 8 3 85; Communist associations, 185; in county seats, 6; Guomindang efforts to abolish, 151; municipal associations, 8 2 - 8 3 ; origins, 11, 82; provincial efforts to register, 141. See also Chemahu; Fengli; Funing; Jiangyan; Juegang; Matang; Rugao; Rugao city; Tai; Yancheng Education commissioners (tixue shi), 61, 100 Education consultative bodies (jiaoyu xiehui), 151 Education extension halls, and the public sphere in Jiangsu, 43 Education improvement committee (jiaoyu gaijinhui), 195 Eighth Route Army, 29 Electrification, in Jiangsu, 55 Esherick, Joseph, study of the 1911 revolution, 57 Exhortation bureaus (quanxue suo): numbers, in Henan, Jiangsu, and Zhili (late-Qing), 62; origins, 61, 77; provincial efforts to control, 7 7 - 8 0 . See also Rugao; Tai; Yancheng Fangong Dike, 33, 35, 51 Fei Hsiao-tung (Fei Xiaotung), writing on Kai-hsien-kung, 7 3 - 7 4 Female teachers, 89 Feng Guozhang, 99 Fengli (Rugao county): correspondence with the Provincial Education Association, 108; education association in, 83 Foreign "isms," Provincial Education Association attraction to, 115 Functionalism, 16; and the CCP, 17 Funing: commercial dispute resolution office in (1918), 141; Communist assembly in (1942), 178; Communist summer session for educators, 197; Communist youth organizing in, 186; county and subcounty school expenses, comparison of, 72; education association in (1930s), 152; lawsuit over Ming Da primary school, 122-123; local schools, enrollments in, 70, 71; local schools, location of, 87; local schools, numbers of, in late Qing, 62; in 1910s,

289 6 7 - 6 8 ; in 1942, 182; Office of Education, reaction to the Guomindang, 153; population of, 3 5 , 4 6 ; road building, 55; school administration and political fiefdoms in, 81; school budgets, Guomindang period, 73; school levies, disputes over, 125-126; school unrest (1930s), 160; subcounty administrative status, politics of, 4 1 - 4 2 ; tenancy, 33; urban area, 52 Funing city, 4 1 , 4 2 ; commercial activity, 50; population, 44; postal rating of, 50; public sphere, 53, 55, 56 Gaoyou city, population, 44 Geisert, Bradley, work on local elites, 16 Gentry assemblies, 183 Gongsuo (professional guilds), 129 Guangling (Taixing county), location, 52 Guanyun city, 43 Gu Kebin (school inspector), 58 Guodun (Funing county), 42 Guo Guanwu (wartime Communist recruit), 197-198 Guomindang: party members, modern school background of, 1 4 8 , 1 6 9 ; scholarly debates about, 147-148; school publications, 171-172. See also Budgets; Bureau of Education; Commercial taxes; Districts; Dongtai; Educational circles; Education associations; Funing; Haimen; Provincial schools; Rugao; Salaries, teachers'; Tai; Yancheng Hai'an (Tai county): commercial activity, 50; commercial levies, 133-134; postal rating of, 50; public sphere in, 55, 56 Haimen: county and subcounty school expenses, comparison of, 72; decline of local schools, 66; land tax and surcharges, 131; local schools, numbers of (late-Qing), 62; 1911 revolution, 98; Office of Education, reaction to the Guomindang, 153 Haimen city: municipal school officials, 79; public sphere, 53, 55 Han Deqin (Guomindang provincial governor), 175 Han Guojun (provincial governor), 99; and local tax collection, 1 3 3 , 1 4 3 Henan-Anhui-Jiangsu Triprovincial Committee, 30 Hou Hongjian (provincial educator), 105 Huai'an: Communist primary school in, 191; school strikes, 1 5 8 - 1 5 9 , 1 6 0 Huai'an city, population of, 43

290 Huai'an xuetang, 63 Huai-hai administration region, delineation of, 29 Huai River, in Jiangsu's ecology, 31, 32 Huaiyang circuit, 140 Huaiyin, county middle school, 92 Huang Kecheng (Communist organizer), 268nn. 6 3 , 7 9 Huangqiao (Taixing county), 49; New Fourth Army seizure of, 175 Huang Yanpei: and the Guomindang, 148; and the Provincial Education Association, 1 0 2 , 1 0 5 , 1 0 6 , 247n. 38 Hubin Middle School (Maoshan), 181 Huduo (Yancheng county): Communist mobilization in, 180; Communist school policy, 207; financial institutions, 50; local schools, 69; postal rating, 50 Hu Linyi (governor of Hubei), 60 Impact-response model, in study of the CCP, 25 Imperial examination system, abolition of, 59 Institute of Education (Wuxi), 166 Intellectual youth, in Communist organizing, 199-201 Jiading, correspondence with the Provincial Education Association, 109 Jiang Jihe, 105 Jiangsu: ecology of, 31 ; imperial offices in, 3 8 - 3 9 . See also Central Jiangsu Jiangsu Base Area, 4. See also Chinese Communist Party Jiangsu jiaoyu (Jiangsu Education), inspection reports in, 1. See also School inspection reports Jiangsu jiaoyu canshi hui (Jiangsu Educational Advisory Committee), 104 Jiangsu Middle Schools Association, 172 Jiangsu-Shandong provincial committee, 30 Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui yuebao (Monthly Bulletin of the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association), 148 Jiangsu sheng xingzheng huiyi (Jiangsu Provincial Administrative Committee), 104 Jiangsu University, 152 Jiangsu xuesheng (Jiangsu Students), 1 5 4 155 Jiangsu zbongdeng jiaoyu (Middle School Education in Jiangsu), 172 Jiangxi schooling, Communist model for the civil war period, 202, 266n. 36

Index Jiangyan (Tai county), 43; commercial activity, 49, 50; commercial levies, 1 3 3 134; education association in, 83; New Fourth Army in, 175; population, 44, 45; postal rating of, 50; public sphere, 55 Jiaoyu jie (educational circles), definition, 22, 85 Jiaoyu jingfei weiyuan hui (Educational Funding Committee), 104 Jiaoyu yanjiu (Educational Research), 107,112,115,247n.37 Ji Baifu (Rugao primary school teacher), 1, 15,16,91 Jie River (Taixing county), 52 Jijiashi (Taixing county), location, 52 Jintan, lijin in, 135 Jiulong (Qidong county), 48; road building, 55 Ji Zhengang, and founding of the Maoshan base area, 175, 264n. 5 Juegang (Rugao county): Communist mobilization, 1 8 0 , 1 8 4 ; education association, 83; location, 51; postal rating of, 48 Jurong: lijin in, 135; tax revenues, allocation of, 132 Kaiming (Funing county), 42 Kangri Daxue (Anti-Japanese University), fifth branch, 181 Kou'an (Taixing county), 49 Kuhn, Philip, work on state-societal relations, 1 3 , 1 6 Land reform policies (Communist Party), 205-206 Lawsuits: over local schools, 121; over local tax collection, 136-137 Legitimacy: of local elites, 3 , 8 , 212; of the state, 2, 8 , 1 1 6 ; of traditional cultural institutions, 120 Lianshui: local schools, description of, 75; public sphere, 53; school unrest, 160 Lianyungang, 30 Li Chun, 99 Lijin. See Commercial taxes Liu Jipin (Communist organizer), on middle schools, 203, 204 Liu Shaoqi, 214 Lixiahe basin, 36 Local elites: changing social character of, 12; Communist mobilization, 176-178; definition, 3; patterns of activism (lateQing), 6 2 - 6 3 ; political strategies, 5;

Index relations between county and subcounty, 120 Local intellectuals: Communist definition of, 176; Communist recruitment of, 177 Local schools (western-style): administrative expenses (1930s), 164-165; administrative hierarchy, 8 7 - 8 8 ; closings during the 1930s, 1 5 5 , 1 5 6 ; Communist wartime recovery of, 180-183; definition, 19; description, 7 4 - 7 7 ; enrollment, 69-71; founding of, and the abolition of self-government, 6 5 - 6 6 ; founding of, and the provincial government, 6 5 - 6 8 ; founding of, in Communist Central China, 182; founding of, in early republic, 5; founding of, in late Qing, 6 2 - 6 3 ; founding of, 1920s, 1 4 2 143; late-Qing administrative designations, 62, 114; local taxes for, 133-134; locations of, 6 8 - 6 9 ; lower-primary to primary schools, ratio of, 6 6 - 6 8 ; political significance of, 7 , 1 2 , 1 8 , 65-66; provincial efforts to control, 139-144; publications of, 85; as sites for Communist assemblies, 1 7 8 , 1 7 9 . See also Dagang; Dongtai; Funing; Haimen; Huduo; Lianshui; Longgang; Lugang; Nantong; Rugao; Rugao city; Sanfeng; Shagou; Shanggang; Tai; Taixing; Taixing city; Wuyou; Xinghua; Yancheng Local society, definition, 3 , 3 8 Local waterways, and the location of local cities, 5 1 - 5 2 Longgang (Yancheng county): chamber of commerce in, 49; financial institutions, 50; local schools, 69 Longhai rail line, 30 Lugang (Rugao county): education association, 83; local schools, 69 Luo Hongxuan (Communist organizer), 184 Lu Xun Art Academy, Central China Branch, 181 Mackinnon, Stephen, work on statesocietal relations, 13 Maoshan Base Area, 175 Mass education (Guomindang period), 146; and local elites, 168-169; origins, 165; social activities of, 170-172 Mass Education Movement (1920s), 138 Matang (Rugao county): Communist mobilization in, 180; education association in, 83; location, 51 May Fourth Movement, influence on local schools, 127

291 "Mengluo zhuyi"(Monroe-ism), 149 Military education (junjiao), 104 Ming Da primary school (Funing county), lawsuit over, 122-123 Ministry of Education (xue bu), late imperial period, 61 Modern schools: definition of, 6; origins of, 59. See also Local schools Motou (Rugao county), education association in, 83 Nanjing, 31, 4 3 , 4 6 ; in 1911 revolution, 98; postal rating of, 47; wages, primary school teachers' strikes over, 159 Nantong: administrative assemblies in, 84; administrative expenses, of local schools, 164; commercial centers, 48; county and subcounty school expenses, comparison of, 71; local school enrollments, 70; local schools, numbers of, in 1910s, 67, 240n. 30; mass education institutes' convention in, 170; population of, 35, 46; school administration and political fiefdoms, 81; social background of students in, 92; tenancy, 33; urban area, 51 Nantong city, 31; municipal school officials in, 79; population of, 4 3 , 4 4 , 4 5 ; postal rating of, 48; public sphere, 54, 55 National Salvation Education (quiguo jiaoyu), 156 National Student Association (quanguo xuesheng zongbui), 172 Nation-state, the political idea of, 114, 210 Natural disasters, 34, 3 6 - 3 7 New Army commanders, 98 New Democracy, and base area education policies, 192 New Fourth Army, 147; securing control in Jiangsu, 29 New Policy Reforms, 1 2 , 1 1 9 - 1 2 0 Newspapers: in Communist Central China, 267n. 48; growth of, in the 1920s and 1930s, 5 5 - 5 6 Nonrevolutionary politicization, 16 Northern Jiangsu, ecological subregions, 32 North Jiangsu Assembly, 176 North Yangzi Command, delineation of, 175 Office of Education (provincial), 103; origins of, 100; staff of, 106 Offices of Education (county) (jiaoyu ju):

292 creation of, 80; in Guomindang period, 152-154, 2 5 8 n . 2 6 "Official" schools (guanli xuexiao), 114 Oxford University National Education Association, 115 Paragovernmental management, 10 Patriotism, and educational reform, 112— 113,114 Peasant associations, 250 n. 27; in Communist school policies, 206; Dongxingyong municipality association, in dispute over school levies, 126 "Peasant primary schools" (xiangcun xiaoxue), 114 Peasant schools, under the Communists, 191 Pluralism, in debates on the Guomindang, 148 Political reform, late-imperial period: debates about, 5 9 - 6 1 ; in Hubei, 60; in Jiangsu, 60; in Zhejiang, 60 Politics, western studies of, 2 1 - 2 2 Population: of cities in Jiangsu, 4 3 - 4 6 ; of local municipalities, 4 5 - 4 6 . See also Baoying city; Donghai; Dongtai; Funing city; Gaoyou; Huai'an city; Jiangyan; Nantong; Nantong city; Qingjiangpu; Rugao; Rugao city; Shannu Miao; Tai; Xinghua; Xinpu; Xuzhou Postal service: expansion of, 5 4 - 5 5 ; firstclass offices, location of, 47; as a local diagnostic indicator, 4 7 - 5 1 ; postal bureaus, location of, 4 7 - 4 9 Postgentry activists, 16; and strategies of dominance, 17 Postimperial institution building, 5 Practical skills (changzbi), 91 Presbyterian Council's Department of Church and Country Life, 115 Primary school principals, attacks on in Communist areas, 201, 202 "Private" schools (silt xuexiao), 114 Private tutors (sishu): Communist organization of, 186-189; Communist testing of, 25 Proactive politics, 11, 230 n. 15 Provincial assembly: election of, 40; in 1910s, 101; in 1940s, 177 Provincial bureau for the management of educational expenses (jiaoyu jingfei guanli chu), 252n. 45 Provincial Education Association (PEA), 20, 96; connections with the provincial government, 104; correspondence with, on local issues, 107-110; finances of,

Index 102; in Funing county lawsuit (1912), 122-123; marginalization of, 148; origins of, 102; public lecture and research activity of, 111-112; recruitment, 105-107; in Rugao normal school bulletin dispute, 127; and school unrest, 103-104; and social mobility, 20. See also Dalton Plan; Fengli; Foreign "isms"; Huang Yanpei; Jiading; Symbolic power; Tai Provincial government, as the central state, 19 Provincial Middle School No. 6 , 1 0 9 Provincial schools: budgets for, 64; Guomindang criticisms of, 155; in the Guomindang period, 149; numbers (early 1910s), 64 Provincial Women's Teachers' School No. 1,109 "Public" schools (gongli xuexiao), 114 Public sphere: in literature on China, 12; physical manifestations of, in Jiangsu's local municipalities, 53-56. See also Dongtai; Education extension halls; Funing city; Haimen city; Jiangyan; Nantong city; Newspapers; Postal service; Public woodlands and nurseries; Qidong; Rugao city; Tai; Taixing city; Taizhou; Xinghua Public woodlands and nurseries, and the public sphere in Jiangsu, 53 Pukou, 43 Qian Suofan (Communist organizer), 184 Qidong: commercial centers, 4 8 - 4 9 ; public sphere, 55; student unrest (1930s), 160 Qingjiangpu, population of, 44 QiXieyuan,99,104,142 Qixin primary school (Yancheng county), lawsuit over, 112 Qualification examinations, of local teachers: by the Communists, 194; in the 1910s, 141; in the 1930s, 156; of private tutors, by the Communists, 188 Quanxue yuan (exhortation bureau assistant managers), 62 Qutan (Tai county), commercial levies in, 133-134 Rectification campaign, 194, 206 Road construction, in Jiangsu, 55 Rugao: administrative assemblies, 84; administrative expenses, of local schools (1930s), 164; commercial centers, 48; Communist survey of schools in, 202;

Index county and subcounty school expenses, comparison of, 7 1 - 7 2 ; double employment, complaints about in local schools, 124; education associations in, 82, 83; exhortation bureau, 80; Guomindang party members, background, 169; Guomindang period school budgets, 73 ; land tax and surcharge estimates, 131; local postal ratings, 48; local school enrollments, 71; local schools, location of, 69; local schools, numbers of, in late Qing, 62; in 1910s, 67, 68; in 1940s, 182; 1911 revolution in, 98; Office of Education, Guomindang period factionalism in, 154; population, 3 5 , 4 6 ; school administration and political fiefdoms, 81 ;shizhen in, 40; tax revenues, allocation of, 131-132; tax revenues, treasuries for, 163; teachers' wages, strikes over, 159; tenancy in, 33; urban area in, 52 Rugao city: local schools, 69; municipal education association in, 83; municipal school officials, 79; population, 4 4 , 4 5 ; postal rating of, 48; public sphere, 53, 54,55 Rugao normal school bulletin, in dispute over activist vocabulary, 126-127 Rugao Normal School News (Rushi xiaokan), 171 Rural violence, 118-119; scholarly debates about, 119-121 Salaries, teachers', 8 9 - 9 0 ; in base area schools, 2 6 9 - 2 7 0 n. 103; disputes over, 90; in Guomindang period, 149-150; of primary school teachers, 15, 90; strikes over (1930s), 158-159 Salt reclamation companies, 36 Sanfeng (Yancheng county), local schools in, 69 School administration: county and subcounty integration, 7 8 - 7 9 ; municipal officials in county seats, 79; political fiefdoms, 8 0 - 8 1 School inspection reports, 9 0 - 9 1 ; as historical sources, 23; and the search for proper cultural form, 7 4 - 7 7 School investment strategies, 136 School lands, disputes over: in Chongming, 125; in Funing, 86-87; in Yancheng, 136 School levies, disputes over, 125. See also Shanggang; Taixing School publications, as historical sources, 23, 218-222. See also Base area cultural

293 journals; Bureau of Education; Guomindang; Jiangsu jiaoyu; Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hut yuebao; Jiangsu xuesheng; Jiaoyu yatijiu; Local schools; Provincial Education Association; Rugao Normal School News; Suzkong xiaokan; Xuzhou Middle School Weekly School rivalries, 94, 245 n. 139 School unrest: in Guomindang period, 157-161; and political purges, 157; in Zhenjiang (1920), 103. See also Baoying county; Dongtai; Lianshui; Provincial Education Association; Qidong; Salaries; Zhenjiang Schoppa, Keith, and work on state-societal relations, 1 3 , 1 6 Self-government reforms: abolition of, 63, 131; and local municipalities, 18, 39, 57 Shagou (Yancheng county): chamber of commerce, 49; local schools, 69; postal rating of, 49 Shanggang (Yancheng county): chamber of commerce, 49; disputes over local levies, 137; local schools, 69; postal rating of, 49 Shanghai, 30, 3 1 , 4 3 , 4 6 Shannu Miao (Jiangdu), population of, 44 Shen Enfu, 1 0 5 , 1 0 6 , 247n. 38 Shi (municipality), definition of, 40 Shizhen (commercially active market town), 40. See also Funing; Rugao; Yancheng Shuangdian (Rugao county), location, 51 Sigangkou (Tai county), commercial levies in, 133-134 Skinner, G. William, macroregions, 4 Social education (shehui jiaoyu), under the Communists, 191 Social hierarchy, in local educational circles, 19 Society for the Advancement of Education, 138 Society for the Promotion of Commoners' Education, 138 Songjiang, 43 State building, 8 State/local relations, 8; debates about, 1 3 - 1 4 , 1 3 0 ; and local school circles, 7; public dialogue in, 97 Strikes: in 1913, 93; in 1930s, 158-160. See also Huai'an; Nanjing; Rugao; Salaries; School unrest Students: associations, Communist survey of, 202; early republican period unrest among, 94; social background of, 92. See also Local schools

294 Summer sessions, in Communist-controlled territory, 1 9 2 , 1 9 6 - 1 9 7 Sun Quanfang, 99 Sun Yongjian (Communist organizer), 184 Susongtaicang circuit, 140 Suzhong, delineation of, 29 Suzhong xiaokan (Suzhou Middle School Bulletin), 171 Suzhou, 43, 46; mass education institutes' convention in, 170; postal rating of, 47 Suzhou Middle School, 171 Symbolic governance. See Symbolic power Symbolic power, 7, 8, 20; in correspondence with the Provincial Education Association, 1 0 8 - 1 0 9 , 1 1 6 ; and the local schools, 19, 21 Tai: correspondence with the Provincial Education Association, 107; county and subcounty school expenses, comparison of, 72; education association in, in 1930s, 152; exhortation bureau in, 80; local commercial levies, 133-134; local ecology of, 36; local school enrollments, 70; local schools, location of, 68; local schools, numbers of (1910s), 67, 68; mass education (1930s), 168; natural disasters, 37; population of, 35, 46; public sphere in, 55, 56; reaction to the Guomindang, 153; school strike in, 93; tenancy in, 33; urban area in, 52 Taiping Rebellion, 37 Taixing: administrative expenses, for local schools, 165; budgets for mass education (1930s), 167; commercial centers, Communist assembly in, 4 9 , 1 7 9 ; disputes over local levies, 137; local schools, number of, in late Qing, 62; in 1910s, 67; road building in, 55; school administration and political fiefdoms in, 81; tenancy in, 33; urban area in, 52 Taixing city: municipal school officials, 79; postal rating of, 48; public sphere in, 53, 55, 56 Taizhou: local schools, numbers of (lateQing), 62; 1911 revolution in, 98; population, 4 3 , 4 5 ; postal rating of, 48; public sphere in, 55 Tao Xingzhi, in Jiangsu Base Area, 173 Taxes: compulsory education tax, 163; in debates on state/local relations, 130; land tax and surcharges estimates, 1 3 0 131; local allocation for public works, 132-135; local educational levies, collection of, 133; local repositories for,

Index 1 3 4 - 1 4 5 , 1 6 3 ; provincial and local distribution of, 131-132; provincial revenues for education, 261 n. 76. See also Haimen; Han Guojun; Local schools; Rugao; Yancheng Teachers'School No. 1 , 1 0 9 Teachers' School No. 5 , 1 0 9 Telephone and telegraph offices, 55 Township elections, in Communist base areas, 196 Treaty ports, in Jiangsu, 43 United Youth Association, Jiangsu fourth subregion, 200 University System (daxue zhidu), 152 Urban hierarchy, in Jiangsu, 18; and interprovincial commerce, 43; local marketing network, 4 5 - 4 6 Urban land area, estimates of, 52. See also Funing; Nantong; Rugao; Tai; Taixing; Xinghua "Urban propaganda" (dushi kaihui xuanjiang), 166 Vocational Education Association, 138, 254 n. 79 Vocational schools (shiye or gongye xuexiao), 135 Wang Chaoyang (Provincial Education Association member), 105 Wang Yinhou (and Lu Peixian), correspondence with the PEA, 111 Wang Zhaoyang, writings by, 95 Waterworks, decline of, 34 Wenjiao hui (cultural education associations), 184-185, 267nn. 59, 60 Wenxie hui (cultural consultative associations), 183-184 Western Hills faction, 148 Wu Tianshi (Communist organizer), 173, 184,195 Wuxi, 3 1 , 4 3 , 4 6 ; mass education institutes' convention in, 170; school teachers' wages, strikes over, 159 Wuyou (Yancheng county): chamber of commerce, 49; financial institutions, 50; local schools, 69; postal rating of, 49 Xiang (administrative township): origins of, 235 n. 45; in self-government regulations, 39 Xinghua: budgets for mass education (1930s), 167; local ecology, 36; local schools, descriptions of, 7 4 - 7 5 ; local

Index schools, numbers of (late-Qing), 62; natural disasters in, 37; population, 35; public sphere in, 54, 55; school administration and political fiefdoms, 81; tenancy, 33; urban area, 52 Xinpu (Tai), population of, 44 Xinxing (Yancheng county), local schools in, 69 Xin zhishi (The New Intellectual), 2 0 1 202 Xu Dinglin (provincial assembly chairman), 101 Xuetang (late imperial middle schools): origins, 61; reversion to provincial control, 63 Xu Jiagang lower-primary school, inspection of, 58 Xuzhou, 30; population of, 4 3 , 4 4 Xuzhou Middle School Weekly (Xuzhou zboukanj, 171 Yan'an: Communist educational policies in, 180; Communist wartime experiences in, 25 Yancheng: chambers of commerce, 49; Communist youth organizing in, 186; double employment, complaints about in local schools, 124; education associations, in 1910s, 8 2 - 8 3 ; in 1930s, 152; exhortation bureau, 80; financial institutions, 50; Guomindang party members, background of, 169; lawsuits over new schools, 121-122; local ecology, 35; local postal ratings, 48; local schools, administrative expenses of (1930s), 164; local schools, location of, 6 8 - 6 9 , 87, 88; local schools, numbers of, in late Qing, 62; in 1910s, 6 7 - 6 8 ; in 1930s, 58; in 1 9 4 2 , 1 8 2 ; lower-middle school, description, 7 5 - 7 6 ; mass education (1930s), 168; New Fourth Army headquarters, 29; Office of Education, reaction to the Guomindang, 1 5 0 , 1 5 3 , 154; population, 3 5 , 4 6 ; school administration and political fiefdoms in, 81; school lands, disputes over, 1 3 6 , 1 3 7 ; shizhen in, 41 ; tax revenues, allocation of, 132; tenancy, 33; urban area, 52; Zhongshan middle school, protest over, 127-128 Yancheng city: museum, 214; population, 44; public sphere in, 53, 56

295 Yancheng Massacre (1928), 1 1 9 , 1 2 0 , 157,172 Yancheng Middle School, 215 Yanfu, delineation of, 29 Yanfu Middle School, 203 Yanfu Youth Association, 186 Yangbei (Funing county), 42 Yangzhou, 31; population, 43; primary school teachers' wages, strikes over, 159 Yangzi River, as shaper of Jiangsu's ecology, 31 Yegonghui (commercial assemblies), 129 Yen, James, and the Mass Education Movement, 138 Yilin (Funing county), 4 1 , 4 2 ; Communist organizing in, 188; chamber of commerce, 51; commercial activity, 50 Yishihui (deliberative bodies), in selfgovernment regulations, 39 Yixing Middle School No. 1 , 1 7 1 Youth problems research committee, 198 Yuan Shikai, 98, 99; and educational reform in Zhili, 61; in studies of statesocietal relations, 13 Yuan Xitao, 105, 2 4 7 n . 3 8 Yunyan River (Rugao county), 51 Zhang De (Communist organizer), 2 0 0 201 Zhangjian, 8 6 , 9 7 , 9 8 , 1 0 5 ZhangXun (military commander), 98, 99 Zhang Yilin, in protest over double employment, 1 2 4 - 1 2 5 , 1 2 7 Zhang Zhidong (governor of Hubei), 61; Exhortation to Learning, 115-116 Zhejiang Middle School No. 1 , 1 7 1 Zhen (marketing towns), in self-government regulations, 39 Zhenjiang, 43; postal rating, 47; school unrest (1920), 10 Zhili faction, 99 Zhonghua xueshengjie (The Chinese Students'World), 115 Zhongshan middle school (Yancheng county), protest over, 127-128 Zhou Fuhai (provincial Commissioner of Education): criticisms of middle schools, 155; on school enrollments, 70; on teachers' salaries, 149-150 Zou Ji, 81; in the provincial Office of Education, 106

Studies of the East Asian Institute

Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Literature in Shanghai and Peking, 1937-1945, by Edward M. Gunn, Jr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Yenan and the Great Powers: The Origins of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy, by James Reardon-Anderson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Uncertain Years: Chinese-American Relations, 1947-1950, edited by Dorothy Borg and Waldo Heinrichs. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. The Fateful Choice: Japan's Advance into Southeast Asia, edited by James William Morley. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Tanaka Giichi and Japan's China Policy, By William F. Morton. Folkestone, England: Dawson, 1980; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947, by Bruce Cumings. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism, by Richard Curt Kraus. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Education Under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, by Jonathan Unger. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Private Academies of Tokugawa Japan, by Richard Rubinger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Japan and the San Francisco Peace Settlement, by Michael M. Yoshitsu. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. New Frontiers in American-East Asian Relations: Essays Presented to Dorothy Borg, edited by Warren I. Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: II, The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960, by Roderick MacFarquhar. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion of the Asian Continent, 1933-1941, edited by James William Morley. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Fragments of Rainbows: The Life and Poetry of Saito Mokichi, 1882-1953, by Amy Vladeck Heinrich. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. The U.S.-South Korean Alliance: Evolving Patterns of Security Relations, edited by Gerald L. Curtis and Sung-joo Han. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983. State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan, by Ronald Toby. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 (he); Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991 (pb).

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298 Discovering History in China; American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past, by Paul A. Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. The Foreign Policy of the Republic of Korea, edited by Youngnok Koo and Sungjoo Han. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Japan and the Asian Development Bank, by Dennis Yasutomo. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1983. Japan Erupts: The London Naval Conference and the Manchurian Incident, edited by James W. Morley. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Japanese Culture, third edition, revised, by Paul Varley. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984. Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period, by Carol Gluck. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Shamans, Housewives, and other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life, by Laurel Kendall. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985. Human Rights in Contemporary China, by R. Randle Edwards, Louis Henkin, and Andrew J. Nathan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. The Pacific Basin: New Challenges for the United States, edited by James W. Morley. New York: Academy of Political Science, 1986. The Manner of Giving: Strategic Aid and Japanese Foreign Policy, by Dennis T. Yasutomo. New York: Free Press, 1986. Security Interdependence in the Asia Pacific Region, James W. Morley, Ed., Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Co., 1986. China's Political Economy: The Quest for Development since 1949, by Carl Riskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Anvil of Victory: The Communist Revolution in Manchuria, by Steven I. Levine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Urban Japanese Housewives: At Home and in the Community, by Anne E. Imamura. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987. China's Satellite Parties, by James D. Seymour. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1987. The Japanese Way of Politics, by Gerald L. Curtis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Border Crossings: Studies in International History, by Christopher Thorne. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. The Indochina Tangle: China's Vietnam Policy, 1975-1979, by Robert S. Ross. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Remaking Japan: The American Occupation as New Deal, by Theodore Cohen, edited by Herbert Passin. New York: The Free Press, 1987. Kim II Sung: The North Korean Leader, by Dae-Sook Suh. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Japan and the World, 1853-1952: A Bibliographic Guide to Recent Scholarship in Japanese Foreign Relations, by Sadao Asada. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Contending Approaches to the Political Economy of Taiwan, edited by Edwin A. Winckler and Susan Greenhalgh. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1988. Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945-1952, by Howard B. Schönberger. Kent, OH: Kent State Univerity Press, 1989.

299 Single Sparks: China's Rural Revolutions, edited by Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989. Neighborhood Tokyo, by Theodore C. Bestor. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Missionaries of the Revolution: Soviet Advisers and Chinese Nationalism, by C. Martin Wilbur and Julie Lien-ying How. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Education in Japan, by Richard Rubinger and Edward Beauchamp. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989. Financial Politics in Contemporary Japan, by Frances Ronsenbluth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu, by Alan Wolfe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Thailand and the United States: Development, Security and Foreign Aid, by Robert Muscat. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. China's Crisis: Dilemmas of Reform and Prospects for Democracy, by Andrew J. Nathan. Columbia University Press, 1990. Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture, by Peter Zarrow. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization, by Jung-en Woo. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Competitive Ties: Subcontracting in the Japanese Automotive Industry, by Michael Smitka. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. The Study of Change: Chemistry in China, 1840-1949, by James Reardon-Anderson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Explaining Economic Policy Failure: Japan and the 1969-1971 International Monetary Crisis, by Robert Angel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Pacific Basin Industries in Distress: Structural Adjustment and Trade Policy in the Nine Industrialized Economies, edited by Hugh T. Patrick with Larry Meissner. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Business Associations and the New Political Economy of Thailand: From Bureaucratic Polity to Liberal Corporatism, by Anek Laothamatas. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991. Constitutional Reform and the Future of the Republic of China, edited by Harvey J. Feldman. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991. Schoolhouse Politicians: Locality and State during the Chinese Republic, by Helen Chauncey. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992. Asia for the Asians: Japanese Advisors, Chinese Students, and the Quest for Modernization, 1895-1905, by Paula S. Harrell. Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming. Driven by Growth: Political Change in the Asia-Pacific Region, edited by James W. Morley. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, forthcoming. Social Mobility in Contemporary Japan, by Hiroshi Ishida. Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming. Pollution, Politics and Foreign Investment in Taiwan: The Lukang Rebellion, by James Reardon-Anderson. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, forthcoming.

300 Managing Indonesia: The Modern Political Economy, by John Bresnan. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming. Tokyo's Marketplace: Custom and Trade in the Tsukiji Wholesale Fish Market, by Theodore C. Bestor. Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming. Nishiwaki Junzaburo: The Poetry and Poetics of a Modernist Master, by Hosea Hirata. Princeton University Press, forthcoming. In the Shadow of the Father: The Writings ofKoda Aya (1904-1990), by Alan Tansman. New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming. Land Ownership under Colonial Rule: Korea's Japanese Experience, 1900-1925, by Edwin H. Gragert. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming.