142
C. MARTIN WILBUR
This individual is particularly interesting to the student of self-government in China, for he is almost the personification of that very thin tie which links the government of the village with that of the nation. Moreover, this Ti-pao takes on attributes and authority from both sources, being a semi-governmental official at least approved by the Hsien magistrate, and performing certain very definite governmental duties; yet being one of the members of the village in which he works, theoretically chosen by the people themselves, and performing for them many duties of purely local significance. Although the agent of the central government in all local matters in which the government interests itself, yet the Ti-pao is in some sense the representative of the people to hold the central government away. On close analysis his position seems to be a compromise between the government, which was interested in the people at least to the extent of taxes and peace, and the people, who wished for nothing better than to be left alone.
There are degrees of disharmony in this compromise, however, either the government stepping further into the precincts of village administration through the Ti-pao than the people desire, or, on the other hand, the villagers disregarding the Ti-pao as completely as they dare. The general opinion one receives from all reporters is that through the Ti-pao the government is succeeding in going more and more into the life of the village; in other words it is the present trend for the position of the Ti-pao as a petty government official to become fixed and to bulk larger than his function as a representative of the people. Whether this analysis is correct cannot be affirmed, however, and must remain a hypothesis.
Jamieson traces the rise of the position of the Ti-pao to the ancient system of tithing,1 a system which seems to have originated late in Chou times. Starting with the people as an aggregation of families, they are grouped first by tens into Chia (十) and then by hundreds of families into pao (保) or Li (里), although these numbers are merely theoretical, and the terms for the grouping differ in various regions, and through recorded history.2 Usually the Pao or Li is the only grouping which is kept at all, and this unit is the single one between the family and the Hsien, or magistral district.
1 Jamieson; op. cit., p. 67 ff.
2 See Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology, p. 105 ff: for a chronological citation of the system from Chou times to the present with the successive manners of grouping and the different names applied.
142
C. MARTIN WILBUR
This individual is particularly interesting to the student of self- government in China, for he is almost the personification of that very thin tie which links the government of the village with that of the nation. Moreover, this Ti-pao takes on attributes and authority from both sources, being a semi-governmental official at least approved by the Hsien magistrate, and performing certain very definite governmental duties; yet being one of the members of the village in which he works, theoretically chosen by the people them- selves, and performing for them many duties of purely local signi- ficance. Although the agent of the central government in all local matters in which the government interests itself, yet the Ti-pao is in some sense the representative of the people to hold the central government away. On close analysis his position seems to be a compromise between the government, which was interested in the people at least to the extent of taxes and peace, and the people, who wished for nothing better than to be left alone.
There are degrees of disharmony in this compromise, however, either the government stepping further into the precincts of village administration through the Ti-pao than the people desire, or, on the other hand, the villagers disregarding the Ti-pao as completely as they dare. The general opinion one receives from all reporters is that through the Ti-pao the government is succeeding in going more and more into the life of the village; in other words it is the present trend for the position of the Ti-pao as a petty government official to become fixed and to bulk larger than his function as a representative of the people. Whether this analysis is correct cannot be affirmed, however, and must remain an hypothesis.
Jamieson traces the rise of the position of the Ti-pao to the ancient system of tithing,' a system which seems to have originated late in Chou times. Starting with the people as an aggregation of families, they are grouped first by tens into Chia (†) and then by hundreds of families into pao ({%) or Li (F.), although these num- bers are merely theoretical, and the terms for the grouping differ in various regions, and through recorded history.2 Usually the Pao or Li is the only grouping which is kept at all, and this unit is the single one between the family and the Hsien, or magistral district.
1 Jamieson; op. cit., p. 67 ff.
2 See Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology, p. 105 ff: for a chronological citation of the system from Chou times to the present with the successive manners of grouping and the different names applied.
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