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Socioeconomic Change in Villages of Manchuria During the Ch'ing and Republican Periods: Some Preliminary Findings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Ramon H. Myers
Ramon H. Myers
Affiliation:
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
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Extract

A Great deal has been written about the Chinese state, but we still know very little about the common people, particularly peasants. How did they live? How did they found their communities? How did their socioeconomic status and property rights change over time. During the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, China's rural society and economy became the object of intense investigation by Chinese and foreign researchers. From this period dates our present, conventional wisdom of how rural communities were structured and had evolved since the nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 1976 , pp. 591 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 Sachio, Komatsu, ‘Manshūkoku ni okeru nōsanbutsu shōhinka no tenkai katei’ (The Process and Development of Commercialization of Farm Products in Manchukuo), in Hori, Tsuneo (ed.), Manshūkoku keizai no kenkyū (Studies of the Manchukuo Economy) (Tokyo: Nihon Hyōron Shappan, 1942), p. 135.Google Scholar

2 Kuo-wu-yuan shih-yeh-pu lin-shih ch'an-yeh tiao-ch'a-chü, Kōtoku gannendo nōson jittai chōsa (A Survey of Actual Village Conditions in 1934) (Ch'ang-ch'un: Man-chou kuo shih-yeh pu lin-shih ch'an-yeh tiao-ch'a chü, 1936) 3 vols (henceforth referred to as N.J.C. 1934). I have retained the Chinese rendering of Manchukuo government offices and agencies but listed survey works and titles in Japanese.Google Scholar

3 Kuo-wu-yuan shih-yeh-pu lin-shih ch'an-yeh tiao-ch'a-chü, Kōtoku sannendo nōson jittai chōsa (A Survey of Actual Village Conditions in 1936) (Ch'ang-ch'un: Man-chou-kuo shih-yeh-pu lin-shih ch'an-yeh tiao-ch'a-chü, 1936) 4 vols (henceforth referred to as N.J.C. 1936).Google Scholar

4 These volumes surveyed county as well as a single village. There are nearly a dozen of these studies in the Japanese Section, Orientalia, Library of Congress, but this writer does not know how many volumes were originally produced.Google Scholar

5 Ch'an-yeh-pu ta-ch'en kuan-fang tzu-liao-k'o, Nōson jittai chōsa sōgō kobetsu chōsa kōmoku (Investigation Topics for Total Household Survey in Surveys of Actual Village Conditions) (Ch'ang-ch'un: Manshū tosho kabushiki kaisha, 1937). This handbook sets forth the enumeration tables used in the 1934–1936 and later field studies and explains the various categories by which field evidence was collected. The following is a listing of some villages and their specific locational characteristics (pp. 2–3). See map I (1936 survey).Google Scholar

6 For example, Shih-yeh-pu lin-shih ch'an-yeh tiao-ch'a-chü (comp.) produced the following studies:Google Scholar

1. Buraku enkaku hen (A Study of Village Histories)

2. Nōka gaikyō hen (A Study of Farm Household Conditions)

3. Kosaku kankei narabi ni kankō hen (A Study of Tenant Relationships and Customs)

4. Nōsanbutsu hambai jijō hen (A Study of Sale of Farm Products)

5. Nōka no fusai narabi ni taishaku kankei hen (A Study of Farm Debt and Credit)

6. Koyō kankei narabi ni kankō hen (A Study of Employment Relationships and Customs)

7. Tochi kankei narabi ni kankō hen (A Study of Land Relationships and Customs)

8. Kōshu gayō hen (A Study of Cultivation Conditions)

9. Nōson shakai seikatsu hen (A Study of Rural Society and Living Conditions)

10. Sozei kōka hen (A Study of Public Taxation)

(Ch'ang-ch'un: Manshū tosho kabushiki kaisha, 1937.) These studies were based entirely upon the 1934 survey.

7 A famous Japanese scholar of the Institute of Developing Economics (Tokyo) once confided to this writer that he did not believe field studies carried out by an imperialist power subjugating another country to its control could be reliable for scientific study. Perhaps this explanation and a strong sense of guilt also accounts for the reluctance of post-war Japanese scholars to use these village surveys.Google Scholar

8 Amano, Motonosuke, ‘Shindai no nōgyō to sono kōzō’ (Agriculture During the Ch'ing Period and its Structure), Ajia keizai, 31 (1961), p. 231.Google Scholar

9 Yang, Ho-i, ‘Shindai Tōsanshō kaihatsu no senkusha—runin’ (Pioneers in Colonizing the Three Eastern Provinces During the Ch'ing Period: Exiles), Tōyōshi kenkyū, 32:3 (12 1973), pp. 22–6;Google ScholarRobert, H. G. Lee, The Manchurian Frontier in Ch'ing History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 79–83.Google Scholar

10 Amano, Motonosuke, ‘Shindai no nōgyō to sono kōzō’, p. 233.Google Scholar

11 Handa, Shigeru, ‘Manshūkoku shihon mondai no tenkai’ (The Evolution of Manchukuo's Capital Problem), in Hori, Tsuneo (ed.), Manshūkoku keizai no kenkyū, pp. 232–4.Google Scholar

12 Alexander, Eckstein, Kang, Chao, John, Chang, ‘The Economic Development of Manchuria: The Rise of a Frontier Economy’, The Journal of Economic History, 34: 1 (03 1974), p. 245.Google Scholar

13 See Kaisha, Minami Manshū Tetsudō Kabushiki, Chōsabu, , Shina ni okeru shūraku (jinkō) bumpu no kenkyū: Santōshō (A Study of the Distribution of Villages [Population] in China: Shantung Province) (Dairen: Minami Manshū tetsudō kabushiki kaisha, 1940).Google Scholar

14 Ramon, H. Myers, The Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung, 1890–1949 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 131–7.Google Scholar

15 A household was designated landlord status if the highest share of its income came from rent. An owner-cultivator household received its status if the highest share of its income came from managing its land. A tenant household received its status if the highest share of its income came from managing rented land. Income in all cases means cash income.Google Scholar

16 Nōson jittai chōsa sōgō kobetsu chōsa kōmoku, pp. 231–2. These categories of household socioeconomic status are as follows.Google Scholar

17 Ch'uan-kuo ching-chi wei-yuan-hui (comp.), Ch'uan-kuo t'u-ti tiao-cha pao-kao kang-yao (Summary Report of the National Land Survey) (Place of publication unknown: Chung-yang t'u-ti chuan-men wei-yuan-hui, 1937), p. 34. A survey of 1,745,344 households in sixteen provinces showed that, on the average, 5.78 per cent were landlords of different types, 68.42 per cent were owner-cultivators of all types, 15.80 per cent were tenants, 1.57 per cent were agricultural laborers, and 8.43 per cent were other households. Communist surveys show a much higher percentage of households being landlords and tenants, but the Land Commission survey was probably the best Chinese study of land tenure ever carried out during that periodGoogle Scholar. For other village survey data comparing village class structure by region, see Chung-p'ing, Yen (comp.), Chung-kuo chin-tai ching-shi shih t 'ung-chi tzu-liao suan-chi (Selected Statistical Materials on Chinese Modern Economic History) Peking: K'o-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1955), p. 261.Google Scholar

18 This concept is defined and developed in Jack [John Rankine] Goody, (ed.), The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971);Google Scholar it appears to have become standard terminology in household studies such as Peter, Laslett (ed.), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

19 The brief village histories for each village survey cite that initially one or two families of different surname settled in an area, purchased considerable land, and then began farming sections of it. These families later either sold this land at higher prices to new residents or employed laborers and leased part of their land to these households. The standard procedure for acquiring unreclaimed land during the Ch'ing period was for a household to apply at the local magistrate's office for permission to reclaim land. When this office granted the request, it issued a certificate granting the right to reclaim a certain amount of land and exempted the owner from paying land tax for the first three years.Google Scholar See Rinji Taiwan kyūkan chōsakai dai ichibu hōkoku (comp.), Shinkoku gyōseihō (Administrative Policies and Laws of the Ch'ing Empire) (Tokyo: Kumiko shoin, 1972), Vol. 2, pp. 345–8;Google Scholar Kantō tō tokufu rinji tochi chōsabu (comp.), Kantōshū tochi kyūkan ippan (A Draft of the Old Customs Concerning Land in Kwantung Prefecture) (Dairen, 1915), pp. 214–20.Google Scholar

20 See the brief village history descriptions in N.J.C. 1934 and N.J.C. 1936.Google Scholar

21 Some of these families even became large, extended family households (ta-chia). For some examples see Shih-yeh-pu lin-shih ch'an-yeh tiao-ch'a chü, Nōson shakai seikatsu hen (A Study of Rural Society and Life) (Ch'ang-ch'un: Manshū tosho kabushiki kaisha, 1937), pp. 97–113.Google Scholar

22 For evidence of this, see Ramon, H. Myers, ‘Rural Institutions and Their Influence Upon Agricultural Development in Modem China and Taiwan,’ Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2:2 (1969), pp. 349–70.Google Scholar

23 For one such study which attempted to measure the allocative efficiency in north China villages and found it extremely efficient, see Dittrich, Scott R. and Myers, Ramon H., ‘Resource Allocation in Traditional Agriculture: Republican China, 1937–1940,’ Journal of Political Economy, 79:4 (07/08 1971), pp. 887–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar