Why “Imperial Power Doesn’t Go to the Countryside” in China

"Imperial power (state power) does not extend to counties (townships), but only to clans in counties, and clans are all autonomous. Autonomy depends on ethics, and ethics creates gentry." This is a relatively popular cognitive paradigm about traditional rural areas, which has existed in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.

The historical records of the prosperity of aristocratic families during this period are corroborated by the empirical facts of the clan societies in South China and the southeastern coastal areas since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Therefore, the explanatory power of this popular paradigm is very sufficient.

However, based on this, it is believed that traditional Chinese rural society has generally been a small society since ancient times that is autonomous, clan-based, consanguineous, ethical, with imperial power not extending to the countryside, and with gentry as the core of the organization and intermediary link.

The homogeneous form is obviously a simplification of Chinese rural society in the two thousand years since the Qin and Han Dynasties. It not only ignores the complexity of the evolution of rural society in time, but also underestimates the diversity of rural social forms in such a large territory in space.