China

Local government

The Ming state system was built on a foundation of institutions inherited from the Tang and Song dynasties and modified by the intervening dynasties of conquest from the north, especially the Yuan. The distinctive new patterns of social and administrative organization that emerged in Ming times persisted, in their essential features, through the Qing dynasty into the 20th century.

At local and regional levels, the traditional modes and personnel of government were perpetuated in ad hoc fashion in the earliest Ming years, but, as the new empire became consolidated and stabilized, highly refined control structures were imposed that—in theory and probably also in reality—eventually subjugated all Chinese to the throne to an unprecedented and totalitarian degree. The Ming law code, promulgated in final form in 1397, reinforced the traditional authority and responsibility of the paterfamilias, considered the basis of all social order. Each family was classified according to hereditary status—the chief categories being civilian, military, and artisan—and neighbouring families of the same category were organized into groups for purposes of self-government and mutual help and surveillance. Civilians were grouped into “tithings” of 10 families, and these in turn were grouped into “communities” totaling 100 families, plus 10 additional prosperous households, which in annual rotation provided community chiefs, who were intermediaries between the citizenry at large and the formal agencies of government. This system of social organization, called lijia (later replaced by or coexistent with a local defense system called baojia), served to stabilize, regulate, and indoctrinate the populace under relatively loose formal state supervision.

As in earlier times, formal state authority at the lowest level was represented by court-appointed magistrates of districts (xian), and each cluster of neighbouring districts was subordinate to a supervisory prefecture (fu) normally governed from and dominated by a large city. Government at the modern provincial (sheng) level, after beginnings in Yuan times, was now regularized as an intermediary between the prefectures and the central government. There were 13 Ming provinces, each as extensive and populous as modern European states: Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi (incorporating present-day Gansu), Sichuan, Huguang (comprising present-day Hubei and Hunan), Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan. Nam Viet was a 14th province from 1407 to 1428. The large regions dominated by the great cities Beijing and Nanjing (in present-day Jiangsu and Anhui) were not subordinated to provincial-level governments but for administrative supervision were “directly attached” (zhili) to the capital establishments in those cities; they are normally referred to as the northern and southern metropolitan areas (Bei Zhili and Nan Zhili, respectively). Nanjing was the Ming capital through 1420, after which it was transferred to Beijing; however, Nanjing retained special status as auxiliary capital.

Ming provincial governments consisted of three coordinate agencies with specialized responsibilities for general administration, surveillance and judicial affairs, and military affairs. These were the channels for routine administrative contacts between local officials and the central government.