Social Transformation in Modern China: The State and Local Elites in Henan, 1900-1937 (review)

In 1974, Frederick Teiwes asked in a review article if it might be possible to obtain the data necessary to analyze the relation between Chinese elites and their political activities.¹ At the time, his despairing response indicated that not enough solid information existed to achieve this aim. But the author of the book under review here may have steered a new path in elite studies by collecting previously unavailable sources, as the following statement shows:

I based my research . . . largely on primary sources obtained on my trips to mainland China, Taiwan, and the Hoover Institution. . . . Through my fieldwork in Henan alone, I acquired a wealth of unpublished personal notes and diaries, recently compiled local histories (at the county level or even lower), CCP documents, unpublished manuscripts, unpublished or recently published government surveys, government statistics, personal memoirs, gazetteers, interview transcripts, and a variety of other items. Most of these materials were classified as internal information (neibu) and therefore could not be taken out of the country. Previously, some had been accessible only to officials in the provincial government. Many others were in the possession of private citizens.

(p. xv)

This extraordinary wealth of unpublished and previously inaccessible sources provides a solid foundation for Xin Zhang's study, enabling him to examine the rise of elites in two sectors of Henan Province during the chaotic first third of the twentieth century.

Zhang makes excellent use of his two contrasting narratives—one describing the advanced, modernized core area of northern Henan, the other telling the story of the backward, underdeveloped periphery in the province's southwest. The local elites that came to the fore in these years differed from the traditional examination passers and officials of the dynastic era. Instead, in Henan's southwest the surge in banditry gave rise to local militia leaders who commanded fortresses manned by motley bands of armed warriors and offered protection to terrorized villagers. For instance, Zhang's new sources enable him to tell the story of Bie Tingfang, an uneducated villager who rose to local prominence as a protector against bandits. First Bie was put in charge of one of the many fortress militias designed to protect the local people, many of whom paid hefty sums to gain Bie's protection. Eventually Bie registered all local males in his purview and insisted on protection payments whether or not they took up residence in his fort. Soon he was also protecting two local temples, with the result that when the head monk was dying, Bie purchased the temples and their lands, making himself a wealthy landlord. Apparently this whetted his ambition for further dominance, for he soon was committing acts of violence and even murder against local rivals, becoming little better than a bandit himself. Eventually, after a year in jail, he did achieve his goal of becoming one of the dominant militia leaders in his county, a new type of elite figure on the local scene (pp. 73–79). Zhang's account of Bie's story benefits from extraordinary sources, in particular the Bie Tingfang shilu (The veritable record of Bie Tingfang), which is referenced on every page of Zhang's retelling (first mention, p. 73 n. 13). In addition, Zhang has used the manuscript of an unpublished county history (first mention, p. 75 n. 18) as well as personal recollections that appeared in difficult-to-find local newsletters and other publications (see p. 74 nn. 15 and 16).

The virtues of Zhang's contrasting narratives are particularly clear when the author turns to Henan's "modern," northern sector, employing other remarkable sources, including an unpublished diary (first mention, p. 87 n. 12), to trace the different path taken by local elites there. In contrast to those scholars who have postulated that the social network of a typical individual Chinese was limited to his native village...