Chapter 11 Chapter 4 Land Quantity System Residents in the City——The Expansion and Expansion of the Administrative Division

The size refers to the size of the area, so how is the size of the administrative district determined? Counties are basic-level administrative districts directly appointed by the central government. Therefore, delineating the size of counties is the basis for determining the size of other levels of administrative districts.In the Qin and Han Dynasties, a basic principle was established: "A county with a large area of ​​one hundred miles, its population will decrease if it is dense, and if it is sparse, it will be empty." That is to say, the area of ​​​​a hundred miles square is used as the base of the county's size, and the number of residents is used as the base. For regulation, the area of ​​a county shall be smaller in a densely populated area, and larger in a sparsely populated area.

This principle is naturally reasonable, so it has been followed by successive dynasties, and Baili County has become a customary name.In fact, if the specific number of Fang Baili is removed, there is still no higher principle to replace it.So today some counties in Qinghai Province and some banners in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are as vast as the coastal provinces, but they cannot be divided into small ones because the population is too sparse. As for how to determine the number of Fang Baili, there is no record in historical documents, and it is speculated that it was to adapt to the management level at that time.Assuming that the county seat is located at the geometric center of the county, the distance from the center to the four borders is 50, which is equivalent to 17.5 kilometers today. If you get up early and work late at night, you can walk back and forth on the same day.It is more appropriate for officials to go to the countryside to teach farming and mulberry, and for farmers to go to the cities to pay rent and taxes.Of course, this is an ideal situation, because the territory of a county will not be square, and the county seat may not be exactly at the geometric center.But such speculation is probably not too far-fetched, because all the basic principles are formulated according to the standard situation.In the Qin and Han Dynasties, the most economically developed area in my country was the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, where two economic centers, Guanzhong and Shandong (the area east of Xiaoshan), had formed.In terms of geographical landscape, the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River are dominated by a flat plain, so it is reasonable to set a square hundred miles on the plain as the standard for the size of the county.

There are similar examples in foreign countries. After the French Revolution, the administrative divisions were re-divided, and the delineation of the highest-level divisions was to enable all residents in this division to travel between the division center and their residence within one day. in principle. There is no clear stipulation on the size of administrative districts above the county level, and the size is generally measured by the number of counties under their jurisdiction.People in the Han Dynasty commonly called the county "a county of a thousand miles", which refers to the land that a county has about ten counties.People in the Three Kingdoms period called the state "a state of thousands of miles", which also means that a state roughly includes a hundred counties.After all, the county of a thousand miles and the state of a thousand miles are still indirectly determined by the two indicators of geographical area and population.Therefore, in the Qin and Han Dynasties, the states and counties in the south were much larger than those in the north. The reason was that there were fewer household registrations in the south, so the distribution of counties was sparse.

Since 2000, the size of county-level administrative districts has been relatively stable, while the size of administrative districts at and above the county level has fluctuated. There are also reasons for political purposes and administrative management needs to adapt to natural areas and economic development conditions.Therefore, not only the size of administrative districts at the same level in the same dynasty varies greatly, but also the size of similar administrative districts in previous dynasties has also fluctuated greatly, especially the newly created administrative districts of a certain dynasty have their own special size.Next, let's analyze the changes in the size of the three different administrative districts.

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