Worse than urban, here come the rural enforcers...
The evolution of 'face-to-face' society unforeseen by Fei Xiaotong
Chang Ping
Our last episode featured Fei Xiaotong 费孝通 and his vision of ‘earthbound China’. Much less rose-tinted than some other takes on the traditional society, we saw it echoed in Xu Weiming’s ‘Back in my hometown’, where
people are actually in a network of relationships that centres on oneself, then spreads outward… even rural rivers and forests are mostly in this concept: ‘What is mine is mine, and what I don’t need is everyone’s’.
Fei’s notion of ‘differential patterning’ (chàxù géjú 差序格局), leads in fact in a few different directions. For a start, agnatic lineages (patriarchal clans) can’t be equated with cosy nuclear families. Chinese history has hundreds, if not thousands of cases of people, all of the same clan surname, fighting pitched battles. Lineage wars were if anything a predictable outcome of premodern social structures based on ascribed status. So was the miserable status of women, younger sons and a long list of subaltern.
As a social anthropologist Fei knew this, but held hopes for ‘modernising’, a project common to much recent Chinese politics. Summing up, the following op-ed1 by Chang Ping 长平sheds light on Fei’s belief that ‘the original tradition of rural society can be destroyed and China can embark on the road to modernisation’.
Now resident in Germany, author Chang Ping made his name in the now lamented 2000s as lead columnist for Nanfang Zhoumo (南方周末 Southern Weekend), personally reporting the travails of rural people at that time.
Fiercer than the chengguan, here comes the nongguan
After the notorious chengguan, nongguan has recently become a buzzword on PRC Internet. Current affairs writer Chang Ping argues that the CPC did not allow China to move from [Confucian] ‘rule of ritual’ to [modern] ‘rule of law’, but instead used face-to-face society to roll out control by gangsters and thugs.
In Guidong County, Chenzhou, Hunan, a farmer surnamed Li contracted 1.5 mu of land and planted a large field of ginger, hoping for a good harvest. On the point of watering his fields on 23 April 2023, he found that all his ginger had been eradicated. After inquiries, he learned that the local ‘ag enforcement’ had do it.
Nongguan (’ag enforcement’) recently became an online buzzword in the PRC. The official term is ‘rural all-round administrative law enforcement’, or ‘agricultural law enforcement’ for short. Nongguan is deemed netizen misuse of the disreputable chengguan to stigmatise the new enforcement team. Officials don’t in fact shy away from the linkage, mostly using chengguan in place of ‘urban all-round administrative law enforcement’.
Chengguan having come before, no explanation is really needed, yet nongguan make people shudder. Chengguan are often described as ‘violent enforcers’, which is actually too polite: in the name of law enforcement, they simply carry out hoodlum rule to crush the lower orders. They differ from other hoodlums in rampant lawlessness.
Truly worthy of their reputation, nongguan had done a lot of evil by the time netizens paid them any attention. 50 pigs belonging to a farmer in Qinyang City, Henan, were confiscated and sold by the local nongguan; the money went missing. In the Northeast, nongguan proudly claimed that farmers who burned straw would be fined hundreds of millions of yuan. Hubei claims to have formed a 5,000 strong nongguan team, meticulously ‘managing’ farmers who need approval to plant fruit and vegetables beside their own ponds, and are forbidden to dry clothes in their yards. Nongguan busily hold training courses in some places, setting up examination booths in the fields; before they can work the land, farmers must pay for a licence. An internet video shows nongguan officials claiming that what traffic police and chengguan cannot handle, they can!
The cases of Yuan Yinbo Case and Xia Junfeng
Approaching the nongguan agency, Mr. Li from Guidong sought compensation for the loss of his eradicated ginger. They told him that ginger was not deemed a crop within the scope of food security: he must plant rice. He would otherwise be occupying arable land illegally, and not only not be compensated, but punished.
This reminds me of a case I interviewed in Xi’an over 20 years ago. Yuan Yinbo and Dong Cuixia, farmers in Shaanxi’s Xingping County, contracted some land on a farm in Xi’an’s northern suburbs in 1999, planting radishes and cabbages. Seeing it was about to be harvested, Pu Weibin, the farm manager, sent someone to snatch it up.
The Yuan family took Pu to court, but the judge mistried the case. Yuan Yinbo committed suicide by drinking pesticide in the judge’s office. His aged father fainted and died on the spot; two other family members committed suicide in despair. The villagers petitioned and protested. After I reported it in Southern Weekly, the case became the focus of public opinion. The Shaanxi Party Committee set up an investigation team. The court finally ruled that Pu Weibin had broken the law, and the Yuan family were compensated.
This was hardly a victory for the rule of law. At the time, however, there were no nongguan. An ‘excellent Party member’ and ‘system insider’, the hoodlum Pu Weibin did not yet bear an ‘all-round administrative law enforcement’ banner. Villagers were able to sue him in court; public opinion could still check him. ‘All-round law enforcement’ under the CPC is little different to illegal violence with no possibility of litigation or supervision. Lawsuits brought against chengguan in many places have almost all ended in failure. Xia Junfeng, a Shenyang peddler who in 2009 stabbed a chengguan in anger, got a lot of sympathy: he was a hero against tyranny in many netizens’ hearts. The authorities understood this. Xia appealed to no avail, and was executed in 2013.
From ‘imperial power in counties’ to hoodlum control
Nostalgic for ancient China, where ‘imperial power did not penetrate below the county’, many netizens denounce the destruction of its rural society by agricultural management.
Fei Xiaotong described the distinctive governance of traditional ‘earthbound China’ as ‘non-litigious’, meaning that it relied mainly on the rule of ritual based on a face-to-face social order, rather than modern society’s rule of law, under which all are equal.
In political management terms, Fei pointed out the hallmarks of China’s ‘dual-track’ social structure:
Our previous politics on the one hand enshrouded political power spiritually; on the other it imposed extremely serious restrictions on the scope of administrative agencies. The centralised core was suspended, preventing it from entering into people’s daily public welfare. Officials dispatched from on high got no further than the county magistrate, not in front of, or within, the gates of everyday families’ houses.
This is the governance structure that was later summarised by scholars as ‘imperial power not reaching below the county’. Wen Tiejun, a scholar of ‘sannong’2 issues, said: ‘Because there is too little economic surplus for small farmers, since the Qin Dynasty established prefectures and counties, it has always been the case historically that ‘imperial power does not descend to the county’. Although there were districts and townships below the county before liberation There is no government office, but there is no finance, and it is not a complete government at one level. Rural self-government is still maintained in the countryside. Landlords and self-cultivating farmers pay taxes, while poor and hired farmers only pay rent. The reason why this political system has lasted for thousands of years is that the ruling hierarchy is simple and redundant. , low operating costs.’
In my opinion, it is unrealistic to equate ‘imperial power in counties’ with the theory of ‘small government’ in modern society, and to expect a return to ‘rural China’. Fei Xiaotong also thought, ‘A new judicial system has been implemented in the countryside... In theory, this is a good phenomenon, because in this way, the original tradition of rural society can be destroyed and China can embark on the road to modernisation’.
The Party completely overturned China’s original rural social traditions after taking power in 1949, and established ‘imperial power’ in every corner of society. The problem lay not in the social transformation, but in preventing China moving from ‘rule of ritual’ to ‘rule of law’, making use of face-to-face society to bring about hoodlum rule. Today’s nongguan are strictly speaking nothing new. From ‘taking down local tyrants and dividing their land’ to the ‘Four Cleansing Movement’, from the ‘Cultural Revolution’ to ‘Family Planning’, they all follow the same movement-style ‘comprehensive administrative law enforcement’ model.
By the way, victims of chengguan were mainly people of two types: laid-off urban workers, and farmers who had migrated there to make a living.
Chang Ping, "Chang Ping Observes: Fiercer than the chengguan, here comes the nongguan”, Deguo zhi sheng, 7 May 2023 [长平:“长平观察:比“城管”更厉害的“农管”来了”,德国之声,2023年5月 7日 (in Chinese).].
[Trans.] Jargon for rural affairs, the ‘three ags’ are nongye (agriculture), nongcun (rural villages)and nongmin (the peasantry).