VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933
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of approximately 2437 inhabitants. It differs from typical rural villages in at least three respects: it is very young, having a history of only about fifty years; it is rather a grain market town with many stores than an agricultural community; and it is really a suburb of Peiping, lying just north of the former capital, and its whole economic, political and social life is highly colored by this fact.
At present there exist in the town two sets of political organizations: the old type established by the people themselves, and a more recent type set up by provincial or Kuomintang authorities. The two sets of organizations function simultaneously, and each seems to be weakened by the presence of the other. Of the first type is the village self-government of the traditional kind, a Chamber of Commerce composed of the leading merchants, and an Association of Farmers for the Protection of Crops.
In 1915 a district self-government movement was started. The term is not exactly accurate, however, since all the officers were appointed from among the various heads of villages by the county government or by the governor of the capital district of Peking direct. This organization worked with the cooperation of the traditional village governments, and seems both to have supplemented and coordinated them.
In 1919 the provincial authorities decided to remodel the system of self-government after the Shansi plan. According to this system, which is almost identical with the plan adopted later by the Central Government, five and twenty-five families were to be gathered into groups each with a chief. One hundred families or more were to constitute a village with a village head. Above the village there was to be a district office under a leader who would serve as a link between the self-government of the villages and the officials of the county government. This district head was also to serve as chief of the local police.
This theoretic plan was not so democratically carried out. In Ching Ho the selection of the village head was not made by popular vote in a mass meeting, as was supposed to have been done. Only the leaders of the village were present, no vote was taken, and the office was assumed by the associate of the former village head. Nor was the district head elected, his office being taken temporarily
1 Ibid: chapters seven and eight, p. 96-121. The following description is taken from this section of the book.