Chapter 9 Simplification from multi-level system of prefectures and counties to two-level system of provinces and counties

The Yuan Dynasty ruled the Central Plains with nomadic peoples, and there was no set of rules for the means of governance, so they followed the ready-made systems of various conquered regimes and mixed them.In addition, the Mongolian Yuan Empire’s southward conquest process lasted for 70 to 80 years, and some temporary measures implemented during the war gradually became permanent systems.With these two reasons, two basic characteristics were formed in the hierarchy of administrative divisions in the Yuan Dynasty. There are many levels, because several temporary and permanent divisions of the conquered regime are superimposed, so the most complicated regional level can reach as many as five levels, that is, province-road-fu-state-county.The simplest one is only two levels, such as saving one way.In most areas, three-tier and four-tier systems are implemented.The compound hierarchical governing relationship was learned and developed from the Liao Dynasty.Before the Northern Song Dynasty, the levels of administrative divisions were unitary governing relationships, the second level was the second level, and the third level was the third level.However, in the Liao Dynasty, a compound relationship appeared, that is, the two-tier system and the three-tier system coexisted. For example, Xijin Prefecture in Nanjing (now Beijing) not only directly governed 11 counties, but also unified six prefectures, and governed counties below the prefectures, forming the following relationship:

In this way, a county can be either a second-level administrative district or a third-level administrative district.The situation of roads and government offices in the Yuan Dynasty was similar to that of the Liao Dynasty. In addition to the counties directly under the jurisdiction, counties could also be governed by the subordinate states at the same time. In the Yuan Dynasty, there were many levels of administrative districts, and a complex jurisdictional relationship was adopted. Therefore, a complex and cumbersome administrative division system was formed. The relationship between the various levels is as follows:

The provinces of the Yuan Dynasty were learned from the Jin Dynasty.Province was originally the name of the government office, and its origin can be traced back to the Wei and Jin Dynasties.At that time, the central government authority was divided into three provinces: Menxia, ​​Zhongshu, and Shangshu.If there is a problem in the local area, the central government will send some officials to deal with it and form the Xingtai Province, which shows that it is the central action agency.This system was also used in the early Tang Dynasty, and it was most widely used in the late Jin Dynasty.Originally, after the Jin Dynasty destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty, it inherited the Song Dynasty's road division system, but the road area was divided into smaller areas.In the late Jin Dynasty, the interior of the border was not peaceful, and the chief of the road could not specialize in one side, so he often sent agencies from Taiwan and the province to deal with it. This practice lasted for decades.

In the process of conquering northern China, the Mongol Yuan learned the system of the Jin Dynasty. As a wartime measure, the Xingzhongshu Province (sometimes the Xingshangshu Province) was used as the administrative agency to govern the newly conquered areas. Over time, this agency managed The geographical scope of the province is also marked with the name of Xing Zhongshu Province, referred to as province or province.At the same time, the Zhongshu Province itself, as the central authority, also directly governs a large area including the capital.The province in the Yuan Dynasty had a very vast territory, and it was placed above the original Lufu prefectures and counties in the Jin and Song dynasties, so it formed a multi-level administrative division system (Figure 7).

In the Song Dynasty, the mansion was originally at the same level as the state, but it only expressed respect for status.The capital, accompanying capital and memorial places related to the emperor are all called Fu.In the Liao Dynasty, the government was the administrative district above the state.In the Yuan Dynasty, the Liao system was followed, and the government was placed above the state. In general, it was at the same level as the road, and in some cases it was lower than the road.The prefectures in the Yuan Dynasty were smaller than those in the Song Dynasty. Many prefectures governed only one county or no counties. Some counties in the south of the Yangtze River were promoted to prefectures because of their large number of household registrations, so prefectures and counties were at the same level.Therefore, from the perspective of the basic structure, there were roughly three levels of administrative division in the Yuan Dynasty, that is, province-road (prefecture)-(state) county.There is only one special case of the complete five-level division, that is, Zhongshu Province (approximately the provinces and regions of North China and Shandong and northern Henan) - Shangdu Road (now northern Hebei, part of Inner Mongolia) - Shunning Mansion (now Hebei Laiyuan to Xuanhua area and Counties such as Lingqiu in Shanxi) under the jurisdiction of Baoan and Wei (now in the area of ​​Zhuolu and Yuxian, Hebei), under the jurisdiction of one county and five counties respectively.There are very few cases of two-level system, and they are all special cases in remote areas. For example, Lingbei Province (approximately most of Inner Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic and northern Russia) only governs Hening Road (now the central part of Mongolian People's Republic and Inner Mongolia in the south), there is no prefecture under the road.

The complex and cumbersome administrative region system in the Yuan Dynasty was, on the one hand, a combination of various systems during the long-term war; on the other hand, it was also a means for ethnic minorities to rule the Central Plains.Ethnic conflicts in the Yuan Dynasty were sharp. In order to "pacify" the localities, the provinces, like the central government, had senior officials such as prime ministers and Pingzhang, who were responsible for all military, civil, and financial powers, and became the divisions of the central government.Therefore, the literature of the Yuan Dynasty stated that the role of the province was to appease the herdsmen, not the herdsmen.That is to say, the essence of the province is an administrative military region. Officials at all levels below the province can only work at the top level, and they are not allowed to leapfrog appeals. The control is very strict.

Since a foreign race ruled the Central Plains, the heads of each administrative region were Mongols or Semu people. Therefore, although there were many layers, the control power was not weakened, but the supervision between levels was strengthened.Of course, as far as administrative management is concerned, the more levels there are, the worse the efficiency will be, and the upper and lower barriers will be too great, which will affect local development.But the ruler's highest goal is to seek local tranquility, not local development. It is good to achieve development under the premise of tranquility. If there is a conflict between the two, the former should be preferred over the latter.

Of course, the excessive concentration of military and political power, after all, was in danger of creating a separate regime. Therefore, the power of the provinces was weakened in the late Yuan Dynasty, and major matters had to be reported to the Central Committee for approval.What's more important is to implement the strategy of intersecting (that is, interlacing) in the division of provinces, so that no province has a complete geographical area. This aspect will be described in detail in Chapter 5. There is another important reason for the complexity of administrative divisions in the Yuan Dynasty, that is, the territory of the Yuan Empire was too vast, and the provinces, as the first-level administrative regions, had too large a geographical scope.The provincial division is too large, which means that the management range of the administrative regions below the province is also large. If the level is not increased, it will be impossible to maintain an appropriate management range.During the Ming and Qing dynasties, as the provinces were divided into smaller ones, the administrative divisions were gradually simplified.

The number of provinces in the Yuan Dynasty was too small. There were only six provinces and one Zhongshu province in the early stage, and there were only 11 provinces in the middle period.It is obviously too small to govern only about 10 administrative units with a strong centralized government; on the other hand, it is not wise to govern only one county or no counties in one state.As for the existence of the two-tiered system, it is of course unreasonable for the province to lead the way, govern the government, or govern the state, and there will be no grass-roots administrative districts below.Therefore, after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty and the rise of the Ming Dynasty, reducing the level of administrative divisions naturally became the primary task.The specific measures are to cancel the special case of the five-level system and the two-level system, cancel the construction of roads, change the roads into prefectures, and divide the state into Zhili state and subordinate state (also known as Sanzhou), thus forming the following Hierarchical relationship:

Among them, the government and Zhili Prefecture are both at the second level, the state is at the third level, and only the counties are either at the third level or at the fourth level.This simplification improved the efficiency of administrative management, and it was also a direct consequence of the small size of the provinces in the Ming Dynasty.In the Ming Dynasty, nine provinces roughly equivalent to Lingbei and Liaoyang (approximately present-day Northeast China and Northern Russia) in the Yuan Dynasty were divided into two capitals and 13 chief ministers (commonly known as 15 provinces). For example, Zhongshu Province was divided into Jingshi, Shandong, and The three provinces of Shanxi.The territory is reduced, the scope of management is reduced, and the level is simplified accordingly (Figure 8).

The Ming Dynasty learned from the approach of the Song Dynasty and divided the highest level of local power among the Commanding Division, the Chief Commissioner, and the Examination Commissioner, using the Chief Commissioner as the name of the first-level local administrative division.The divisions of the three divisions in the capital are basically the same, but there are some discrepancies. For example, there is a Liaodong capital in the Northeast, but no political envoy.This duplex division is obviously also a legacy of the Song Dynasty.In the Ming Dynasty, the separation of the three divisions and the division of divisions were not completely consistent, which played a role in curbing excessive decentralization of power.Although the power of the three divisions was greater than that of the supervision divisions in the Song Dynasty, they still did not have enough power to authorize one party when dealing with local affairs, so the system of governors and governors came into being later. Governors and governors are officials sent by the central government. They can centralize and control the power of a part of a province or the whole province within a certain period of time, and they can also control several provinces at the same time, especially playing an important role in the security of the border areas of the provinces.In the late Ming Dynasty, there were many local affairs, and governors and governors gradually became regular systems, and even surpassed the original administrative divisions, becoming a new set of governors. In the Qing Dynasty, governors and governors were turned into fixed official positions, and the jurisdiction of governors and governors was adjusted to be consistent with the scope of the province.During the Kangxi period, the 15 provinces in the Ming Dynasty were divided into 18 provinces. During the Yongzheng period, the compound three-level and four-level administrative divisions in the Ming Dynasty were further simplified into a single three-level system, namely: province-prefecture-county.At the same level as the prefecture, besides Zhili Prefecture, there is also the Zhili Office, and at the same level as the county are Sanzhou and Santing.In this way, the administrative divisions with complex hierarchical relations from the Yuan Dynasty returned to a single and neat form.However, the Qing Dynasty was a unified multi-ethnic empire with a vast territory and a large population, which was very different from that of the Han and Tang Dynasties. The administrative division level could only be simplified to three levels, and further simplification was impossible.Not only that, but the three-level system was still considered too large in scope of management. Therefore, there were separate patrols and guards below the province as the provincial dispatched agencies to manage the prefectures and Zhili prefectures (Figure 9). At the beginning of the founding of the Republic of China, the system of the Qing Dynasty was changed, the government was abolished, and the prefectures were abolished, and Taoism was used as the first-level administrative district between provinces and counties, becoming a three-level system of province-dao-county.However, the Dao in the early years of the Republic of China did not really play the role of administrative division. It was only an agency for the transfer of official documents between provinces and counties, and each province was only divided into three or four, four or five Dao, which had no practical significance for division.Therefore, after the establishment of the Nanjing Nationalist Government, it simply abolished the Tao level and completely restored the provincial and county level system similar to the prefecture and county system in the Qin Dynasty.This is clearly a measure to strengthen centralization.Therefore, from the Yuan Dynasty to the 1920s, the administrative division level went through a simplified process from a multi-level system to a two-level system, which was exactly the opposite of the previous two cycles from the two-level system to the three-level system. However, the situation in the early years of the Republic of China was completely different from that of the Qin Dynasty 2,000 years ago.The number of provinces is only 3/5 of that of Qin County, and the number of counties is twice that of Qin County.There are dozens or even hundreds of counties directly under the jurisdiction of each province, and the scope of management is obviously too large. Therefore, at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, following the political needs of "suppressing the Communist Party", the Kuomintang government first set up administrative inspectors in Jiangxi Province. The provinces followed suit to form a virtual three-level system of province-special district-county. This system was inherited by the People's Republic of China, and later changed special districts into regions, but this division has never been regarded as a formal first-level administrative district.