Nine
Corporate Property and ocal Leadership in the Pearl River Delta, 1898-1941

Rubie S. Watson

Scholars of late imperial China have long debated the relative openness of Chinese society. In the 1950s and 1960s these debates focused on the nature and extent of elite continuity and tended to emphasize questions of personnel rather than structure. Few would disagree with the view that later imperial society was divided into status groups and classes. At issue has been the movement between these groups. For many scholars, China provides an example of an agrarian society with an open, highly fluid system in which families entered and left the elite with considerable regularity. According to this view the division between China's late imperial elite and the ordinary population was guarded not by a closed door but by a revolving one.

In recent years, studies of elite mobility rates have been combined with a concern for the institutions, structures, and mechanisms that affect those rates. The advocates of openness maintain that China's competitive examination system and the custom of equal inheritance among sons made it difficult for a family to retain its status for more than two or three generations.^[1] Because access to the bureaucracy and the economic benefits of office holding were determined by examinations, scholars have argued that families could not easily pass their status on to their sons and grandsons.

These arguments for an open elite have been criticized by other scholars who maintain that the mobility advocates have predetermined their results by their definitions and methodology.^[2] Early mobility studies, they contend, focused on the office-holding elite and measured mobility by the number of higher-degree holders whose fathers, paternal grandfathers, and paternal great-grandfathers all lacked examination degrees.^[3] Critics have argued that imperial degrees and offices are too narrow criteria on which to build a model of social stratification. As long as elite status is defined solely in terms of office and degree holding, and as long as the measurement of mobility is restricted

to three generations of direct descent in the patriline, it is statistically quite easy to demonstrate high rates of mobility, the critics contend. Robert Hymes and Robert Hartwell, it should be noted, have found that mobility rates are significantly lower if the measurement of mobility includes collaterals and affines in the universe of potential office-holding relatives.^[4]

Elite status, many of the critics argue, is not simply a matter of degree holding; more attention, they urge, should be given to the interlinkages of wealth, lineage organization, local leadership, and scholarly achievement. Recent studies, which have tended to focus on one particular locale, have found considerable continuity of the local elite, with the patrilineal descent group providing a powerful bulwark against downward mobility.^[5] Hilary Beattie's work on Tongcheng county, Anhui, during Ming and Qing times is an excellent example of this approach. In her book, Land and Lineage in China , Beattie argues that private landowning, cohesive lineage organization, and joint property constituted a powerful set of safeguards that protected families from the four-generation rags-to-riches-to-rags scenario so prevalent in the Chinese folk tradition and the writings of mobility scholars.^[6] In a study of status in the Song, Linda Walton summarizes the critics' position:

A new picture has begun to emerge in which the elite of late imperial China can be seen as a large group of lineages who prepared candidates for the examinations and provided office holders for the state, but who achieved, protected, and enhanced their status locally through a variety of social and economic means, such as marriage alliances with other elite families, and the establishment of the institutions of joint property.^[7]

Scholars who argue for high rates of mobility point to the examination system as the institution that kept the elite open to new blood, while partible inheritance produced unavoidable pressures for downward mobility of older elites. There is, of course, much merit in the view that partible inheritance directly effected rates of social mobility in late imperial China,^[8] and I have no particular quarrel with this argument. However, there is a danger that explanations of this sort may make us think that we understand more than we do. In fact, the asserted link between partible inheritance and high rates of mobility remains largely unexplored in China. In Europe, for example, equal inheritance did not inevitably lead to a highly fluid pattern of stratification. Late marriage, nonmarriage, status endogamy, cousin (or "close" kin) marriage, and high rates of infant mortality contributed to retaining wealth under regimes of equal inheritance.^[9] Perhaps China specialists have too easily accepted the dogma that equal inheritance leads to an open social system.

The landlord-merchant elite described in this chapter was embedded within a large, highly-segmented lineage. Unlike some members of China's late imperial and Republican elite, the group discussed here enjoyed considerable staying power. For more than 250 years a single patriline (the

descendants of a mid-eighteenth-century ancestor) dominated political and economic affairs in the village of Ha Tsuen and its hinterland. I explain how it was possible for a single line of agnates to maintain a position of wealth and power in a society known for its downward mobility.

In this essay control over both the lineage's organizational machinery and corporate property are seen as mainstays in the arsenal of formal and informal supports that made elite domination possible. I argue that a high ratio of corporate to private property is likely to affect local political organization, the ways in which elite and nonelite are linked, and the continuity of local elites. Half or more of the land belonging to the residents of Ha Tsuen was not subject to partible inheritance but rather was tied up in indivisible corporate estates. The role that corporate lineage estates played in diminishing the effects of equal inheritance and in creating political capital for the people who controlled those estates is examined in detail. In Europe, late marriage and high rates of celibacy appear to have reduced the pressures of downward mobility in at least some areas where partible inheritance was the norm. Is it not possible that corporate estates may have a similar effect on elite continuity in China?

In this article I enlarge on themes developed in previous work and situate the Deng lineage of Ha Tsuen in a larger regional context.^[10] By placing the Ha Tsuen material in a comparative perspective it is possible to clarify at least some of the links between corporate property and class structure. Whether the patterns described here fit the Tongcheng model so ably described by Beattie remains to be seen.^[11] There were, to be sure, some significant differences between the lineages of Guangdong and those Beattie describes for Anhui. The question of regional variation will be taken up in a later section of this chapter.

Setting: Ha Tsuen and Its Elite

This article covers the period from the British takeover of Hong Kong's New Territories in 1898 to the Japanese occupation in 1941. Changes in village politics in the postwar period are detailed elsewhere.^[12] This discussion is based on data collected in the village of Ha Tsuen, located in the northwestern sector of the New Territories. Prior to 1898 this area was part of Xin'an county in Guangdong province. At the time of my fieldwork in 1977-78, the village had a population of twenty-five hundred; all were Cantonese speakers. The males of Ha Tsuen share the surname Deng and trace their descent from Deng Fuxie, an official who settled in the Hong Kong region during the twelfth century. The Deng controlled a hinterland consisting of an administrative subdistrict, or xiang ,^[13] containing fourteen satellite villages inhabited by dependent (non-Deng) tenants. Until the early 1960s, most villagers were engaged in double-crop rice production. By local standards the village was a

powerful and wealthy community; it was dominated by a small group of landlords and merchants who until recently lived off the rents they collected from their agnatic kinsmen and unrelated tenants. These landlords lived in Ha Tsuen but had extensive interests in shops, businesses, and factories outside their home village.

The landlord-merchants described here rank well below the national elite of Qing or Republican times. The China historian is unlikely to have seen much of this local elite in the archival record. Ha Tsuen never boasted a jinshi or juren degree holder, although their agnatic kinsmen in Kam Tin (six miles from Ha Tsuen) did produce an occasional scholar-official. The Ha Tsuen Deng seem never to have been very concerned with education. A few men sought the trappings of literati status, but their efforts were never crowned with any real success.

These people did not travel in the power circles of Guangzhou or Beijing. However, their agnatic ties linked them to wealthy and powerful men from other Deng communities in Xin'an and neighboring Dongguan counties. In 1709, five Deng settlements joined to establish a lineage hall (Duqing tang ) in Dongguan City. Members of the Duqing tang were bound by their common descent from their twelfth-century founder, Deng Fuxie. The guiding force behind this hall was a Kam Tin Deng named Deng Paosheng, a jinshi , but we know little about Ha Tsuen's involvement in this higher-order-lineage except that they were members of the Duqing tang and did, according to my Ha Tsuen informants, take their turn at organizing the ritual sacrifices commemorating the founding ancestors.^[14] From interviews and genealogies I know that the Ha Tsuen and Kam Tin Deng shared a particularly close relationship. Until the Second World War they had mutual responsibility for the care of graves belonging to a number of shared ancestors. Ha Tsuen was in fact an offshoot of Karo Tin; Ha Tsuen's founders had moved from Kam Tin in the ninth generation (in the mid-fourteenth century). The Ha Tsuen Deng are proud of their close links to Kam Tin whose elite have for generations been considered the cream of local society.

Beyond their connections to agnates in the region, the Ha Tsuen elite's extensive economic interests also took them out of their village into the xiang , the standard market town of Yuen Long, and the intermediate marketing networks of the region. Some of these contacts involved kin; others did not. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century Ha Tsuen's elite owned and operated cargo boats that serviced parts of the Pearl River delta, Western District on Hong Kong Island, and the coastal area as far north as Swatow. In the latter half of the nineteenth century two brothers, members of Ha Tsuen's wealthiest line, established a pawn shop and match factory in Yuen Long Old Market, the standard market town that serves Ha Tsuen. Members of this line were also the original shareholders in Yuen Long's new market (established in 1916), which eventually eclipsed the older market. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century men of this patriline built or expanded a

sugar-processing factory in Ha Tsuen and in the 1880s added a peanut oil factory.

That the marriage networks of this elite should mirror their expansionist economic outlook is not surprising. According to a survey to twenty elite women covering the period from about 1900 to 1978, all wives who married into this line came from beyond the immediate xiang , some from as far away as urban Hong Kong and the county administrative center at Nantou.^[15] For Ha Tsuen's landlord-merchants affinal ties were an important resource. Their mercantile activities and their role as political brokers depended on an extensive interpersonal network. The members of Ha Tsuen's local elite were never simply lineage or village personalities; their influence depended on extravillage ties as well as a solid economic and political foundation at home. As I have argued elsewhere,^[16] there is little doubt that affinity and ties to maternal kin helped to create and sustain the external relations that were so important to maintaining elite status.

No single factor can account for the privileged position of the local elite described here. Their ownership of important resources was certainly crucial, but their roles as merchants, political intermediaries, and managers of lineage institutions were also significant. Chinese rural elites were sustained by various institutions, many of which had little to do with everyday politics. In this chapter I examine in detail the relationship between control over lineage (corporate) resources and elite power.

Corporate Property

The list of corporate property types in China is extensive. There was, for example, temple land, temple association land, voluntary association estates, lineage land, and lineage segment land.^[17] Under these last two categories there were many subtypes: for example, charitable estates (yizhuang ), scholar estates, service land (yitian ), ritual land (jitian ), and ancestral estates (zu, tang ).^[18] Estates were formed by pooling resources or reserving the private property of a deceased ancestor (turning a private holding into a corporate holding). Here I focus on ancestral estates. The rents from these estates provide offerings for the estate's focal ancestor; leftover income is shared on a per capita basis among the estate's membership (i.e., the descendants of the focal ancestor or the descendants of those who formed the estate).

Clan or lineage estates in China are often seen as a form of charity in which benefits are provided for needy kin. The famous Fan estate founded by Fan Zhongyan is an example of a charitable estate, or yizhuang .^[19] That there is a benevolent, charitable aspect to many lineage estates is undeniable, but in the area I studied ancestral estates (zu ) are the primary form of corporate property, and they have little to do with charity. They were religious, economic, and political institutions. Here I stress their political role.

In 1905 the first land survey of the New Territories shows that about half

of all Deng-owned land belonged to corporate ancestral estates. Corporate landholdings were extensive and central to the local economy. When one asks villagers why they tie up so much of their valuable property in corporate estates, they do not answer by pointing to their charitable natures or the needs of their kin. Rather they say that they establish estates in order "to honor their ancestors" (a filial rather than a charitable act). No doubt their ancestors are indeed honored by these estates; zu rents guarantee that proper offerings and proper rites are carried out, giving their ancestors a kind of immortality. However, the formation of ancestral estates, especially large ones, also had the very practical effect of keeping land out of the cycle of family division and fragmentation that was so common in rural China. Estate land is inalienable, and those who share in it (the descendants of the ancestor) remain a group in both an economic and a political sense. As the number of descendants grows over the generations, the economic utility of the estate may decline, but its political significance may in fact increase.

Thus, in a society that practices equal inheritance among brothers, the formation of corporate ancestral estates is one strategy for avoiding or minimizing the disintegration of family property. I do not mean to imply that ancestral estates solve the problems of population pressure on the land; obviously this is not the case. Given a limited technology, the more people who have rights to the income from a piece of land, the less income each shareholder receives. However, in Ha Tsuen I found that members of well-endowed estates rarely shared equally in estate property. Some estate members controlled a disproportionate share of estate income and assets; some also monopolized the estate's political benefits.

Parallels with the use of "entail" among the English elite are striking. (See also Rowe in this volume.) From the mid-seventeenth to the nineteenth century entail was commonly employed as a strategy to preserve property for future generations.^[20] There are of course differences between entail and ancestral estate property: the zu is established in perpetuity, the entail for only a few generations (usually three). However, both were part of the strategic repertoire that protected property from sale, division, and fragmentation. Comparisons of entail and zu are particularly useful because they take the latter out of the lofty realm of the ancestral cult and place it on the more prosaic terrain of property holding, inheritance, and elite continuity.

Extent of Corporate Property in Ha Tsuen

According to the 1905 land records, 377.64 acres of Deng-owned land were tied up in corporate estates. Of this total, 369.69 acres were owned by ancestral estates (zu, tang ) and the remaining 7.95 acres belonged to hamlet or religious associations. According to my estimates, about 50 percent of land located in Ha Tsuen xiang and owned by the Ha Tsuen Deng was incorporated into ancestral estates. This figure is comparable to other estimates of

corporate property ownership in the area. For example, a survey of the standard marketing region of which Ha Tsuen is a part found that 44 percent of the land was "lineage owned in 1905."^[21] Two dominant lineage villages in the New Territories have a similar proportion of corporate to private property. Baker gives a figure of 52 percent corporate ownership for the Liao lineage of Sheung Shui,^[22] and J. Watson estimates a rate of 65 percent for the Man lineage of San Tin.^[23] All these figures, however, are much lower than Potter's reports for Ha Tsuen's near neighbor, Ping Shah. According to Potter, one of Ping Shan's eight hamlets (Hang Mei) registered a staggering corporate rate of 93 percent in 1960.^[24] Perhaps one reason Potter's figure is so much higher than those reported for neighboring lineages is that he based his calculation on the wealthiest hamlet in Ping Shah, the one that contains nearly all the community's large ancestral halls and many of its richest residents. (In the land records ancestral estates are listed under the hamlet where their managers live.) In surveys made of Guangdong province in the 1930s, Chen Han-seng calculates that what he calls "clan land" (presumably referring to lineage estates) made up about 35 percent of the total cultivated land.^[25] If only the Pearl River delta is considered, Chen's estimate climbs to one-half. Compared to these figures, Ha Tsuen is not unique in its percentage of estate land.

There is great variation in the size of Ha Tsuen's ancestral estates;^[26] the largest estate (Gouyue zu ) owns 40.96 acres, and the smallest has a miniscule 0.02 acres of poor hill land (table 9.1). Potter found a similar but more glaring pattern of difference in Ping Shah where 37 percent of the estates he surveyed (N30) owned less than 1 acre, and 50 percent owned from 1.1 to 15 acres. The largest owned 178.4 acres of land, an enormous holding for the area.^[27] To keep landholding in perspective, two facts are helpful: the largest private landholding in Ha Tsuen in 1905 was 71 acres, and about 1.5 acres of good paddy land supported a household in the period under discussion here.^[28]

Because a significant proportion of property in lineage-dominated areas was corporately owned, ancestral estates were important sources of rental land. According to my estimates, in Ha Tsuen in 1905 the landless rate was about 55 percent, and 97 percent of Deng households rented some of the land they farmed. Of those households that did own land, 84 percent had holdings of less than one acre.^[29] No doubt a considerable amount of valuable land was tied up in ancestral estates, which were often cast in the role of landlord. In Ha Tsuen some villagers said that their rents were reduced if they were tenants of their own zu , while others claimed that they paid the same rent as nonmembers. For the Pearl River delta village of Nanching, C. K. Yang reports that there was "no practical difference in the type of tenancy and the amount of rent charged" between private and ancestral land.^[30] Although there were no general restrictions on renting estate land in Ha Tsuen, some villagers claimed that members tended to have an ad-

vantage over nonmembers in competing for tenancy rights. There appear to be, however, no significant distinctions in terms of rental arrangement between lineage and private holdings.

It is clear that some estates produced large rents. However, few Deng could afford to live off the proceeds of ancestral estates without some other source of income. In 1905 the largest landowning estate in Ha Tsuen, Gouyue zu , had nearly 41 acres (see table 9.1) and in 1978 a membership of more than eight hundred men. During recent generations, rent from this estate produced a surplus after expenses that was sufficient to pay only a token cash dividend to members. In 1905, of course, a few estates produced large amounts of rent shared among a small membership. These estates were all recent in origin; two of the largest estates, with a combined holding of 51.34 acres, were formed in the 1880s and had only a few members. Until recently the yearly dividends from these estates were considerable, but it is unlikely that members lived solely on estate proceeds, for in 1905 these men. were among Ha Tsuen's wealthiest landlord-merchants.

The Benefits of Corporate Property: Estate Managers

In two recent articles concerning charitable estates in nineteenth-century Wuxi, Dennerline discusses the role that yizhuang played in political life.^[31] Although Dennerline is not primarily concerned to detail the exact processes

that connect yizhuang to political leadership, his discussion does make clear that local power and its exercise were inextricably bound to the control of charitable estates. Dennerline is no doubt correct in stressing the communitywide benefits of yizhuang , but he also states: "Once an estate was established, to control the management of it was a major political objective." He concludes that "charitable estates were ... tools by which the most powerful men in rural society exercised both their own influence within the lineage and the lineage's influence within the community."^[32]

The estates that Dennerline describes are not the same as those I found in Hong Kong's New Territories.^[33] Wuxi's charitable estates had an important welfare role (certified by the state), an insignificant aspect in the case of Ha Tsuen and, to my knowledge, other estates in the Pearl River delta. I place special emphasis on the unequal way in which corporate benefits were apportioned and the advantages estates gave to those who controlled and managed them. I do not deny that corporate estates offered important benefits to poor agnates; I do argue, however, that the wealthy benefited far more than did Ha Tsuen's smallholder-tenants.

I have already noted that ancestral estates make it possible to maintain a sense of group unity and purpose often endangered by the normal cycle of family division. Figure 9.1 represents the pattern of lineage segmentation among the Ha Tsuen Deng in 1905, and Table 9.1 provides a list of all Deng estates with more than ten acres of first- and second-class land. Ha Tsuen's landlord-merchants, it should be noted, were descended from ancestor Jingwu (generation 14). Taken together, Figure 9.1 and Table 9.1 make it clear that nearly all the largest ancestral estates in Ha Tsuen were clustered in the Jingwu line. Not only were Ha Tsuen's landlord-merchants members of the lineage's wealthiest estates, but they also managed these estates.

Ordinary villagers may have recevied a few dollars each year from their share of corporate holdings, but they were nearly always alienated from active control over the large estates. The real benefits were firmly in the hands of the wealthy, who served as estate managers (sili ). Managers handled, and continue to handle, the business affairs of the estates. They also act as the estates' legal representatives; in the words of a 1910 ordinance, the manager acts "as if he were the sole owner ... [of the estate land], subject to the consent of the Land Officer."^[34] In Ha Tsuen, once selected, managers usually retained the position for life. Often managers were the sons of previous managers, a pattern that is still repeated. Even today there is no formal procedure for choosing a manager, although the colonial administration has established guidelines for performing managerial duties. Nearly all the men who became managers, especially of the large estates, were members of the local elite. Potter notes a similar pattern in Ping Shan, "The last surviving gentry member of Hang Mei village, who died in 1920, was said to have been the manager of all important ancestral land estates in the village."^[35] In 1977-78

Source: Rubie S. Watson, Inequality Among Brothers, 46.

Figure 9.1
Outline of Major Segments of the Deng Lineage

managers of Ha Tsuen's largest estates were political leaders or wealthy men; often they were both. Among the Deng, managers have always been members of the estates they control.

The usual requirements for becoming an estate manager, especially of a large estate, were literacy, knowledge of the world outside the village, and wealth. Personal wealth, it was believed, ensured a minimum of honesty because the manager's private property could be confiscated if he strayed too far from acceptable behavior.^[36] The importance of wealth in choosing estate managers also ensured that a few men, mostly landlords and merchants, monopolized this source of local power.

Once a wealthy man became a manager he increased his opportunities for making money and acquiring influence.^[37] In Ha Tsuen, managers were especially powerful because they served life terms.^[38] Potter notes that in Ping Shana manager could take advantage of his position by loaning cash from the estate fund. At the end of the year when the accounts were due, he collected and put the principal back in the estate coffers and kept the interest for himself.^[39] Ha Tsuen residents report that managers often received "gifts" of money from prospective tenants or lessees of estate property who wanted to secure the tenancy of badly needed agricultural land. According to villagers, estate managers often acted toward tenants much like private landlords. At harvest time managers measured and determined the rent just as private landlords did, and, to the disgust of the villagers, they too used nonstandardized baskets (douzhong ) to measure the grain rents, keeping the extra for themselves.

It is no secret that on occasion the community of Ha Tsuen, and some of its ancestral estates in particular, have been badly served by their managerial elite. Many Deng believe that Ha Tsuen lost valuable property and suffered a general political decline through the corruption or incompetence of past leaders and estate managers. In particular, villagers point to the eclipse of their local market, darkly suggesting that at best their leaders were outmaneuvered by a group of outsiders and government officials or at worst their acquiescence was for sale.^[40]

Nearly seventy-five years after the event villagers are still upset by an area of marshland in front of the village that was usurped and leased by the colonial government to a consortium of overseas Chinese developers. The marsh-land reclamation, which created about five hundred acres of land, began in 1915 and set in motion a series of ecological changes that are still causing the Deng serious problems. Most notably and immediately affected was the narrow channel through which cargo boats serviced Ha Tsuen Market. Soon after the reclamation began, this channel became hopelessly silted and had to be abandoned, thus hastening, according to the Deng, the decline of their market. A number of villagers believe that the manager of the Yougong tang (the tang with responsibility for administering general village affairs, see be-

low) either refused to make a case for Ha Tsuen's rights over this marshland and/or accepted a payoff from the developers to let their arrangement with the government proceed unchallenged.

Ha Tsuen villagers also continue to feel bitter over the perceived betrayal by the manager of the Duqing tang , the estate of the Deng higher-order lineage. In 1892, in anticipation of commercial development in the area, the Duqing tang obtained rights (in the form of a reclamation certificate) from the Qing government to about 117 acres of coastal land near the present-day city of Kowloon. In 1894, before improvements were made, a Kam Tin Deng, a juren and manager of the Duqing tang , claimed personal possession of the certificate by taking it on lease (in perpetuity) apparently without the knowledge of other Duqing tang branch members. Palmer reports in his study of New Territories land tenure that after serving as both lessor and lessee in this transaction, the manager then proceeded to inform the five member branches, including Ha Tsuen and Karo Tin, of the new arrangement. He confessed that he had mortgaged the certificate to Fuk Tin (Futian) Company of Hong Kong, a commercial land enterprise owned by Li Sheng, a native of Xinhui county and a member of Hong Kong's trading and manufacturing elite.^[41]

The Deng eventually brought this case before the new Colonial Land Court which, to their great anger, decided in favor of Fuk Tin Company's rights to the disputed land. The court took the view that the Duqing tang had made no improvements in the land while it was in its possession and therefore had no right to the reclamation certificate. Villagers in Ha Tsuen still smart from this loss in which, once again, the local elite was hoodwinked out of their rights by what they consider the duplicity of a corrupt manager and the greed of a new class of commercial land developers. It is certainly worth noting that both these cases involve the victory of urban entrepreneurs over a traditional elite, two groups that for much of Hong Kong's history have remained highly suspicious of each other.^[42]

The 1905 land records include the names of the managers of each of Ha Tsuen's ancestral estates. An examination of these records shows that one man, landlord-merchant Deng Zhengming (a pseudonym), managed eight estates; during his lifetime he controlled, as either private owner or estate manager, a total of 193.75 acres in Ha Tsuen xiang . Zhengming's personal wealth included 68 acres of xiang land, a partnership with his brother involving at least three local factories, a money lending business, and a cargo boat company. Zhengming was the second largest landowner in Ha Tsuen; his brother was the largest, with a private holding of 71 acres.

Of the twelve ancestral estates in Ha Tsuen with more than 10 acres, Zhengming managed six, and of the nineteen estates with more than 5 acres he managed eight; thus, in his role as manager Zhengming controlled 52 percent of all ancestral land. According to my own calculations, the Deng

owned approximately 750 acres in Ha Tsuen subdistrict,^[43] which means that Zhengming either privately owned or managed more than 27 percent of Deng land in the area. Zhengming's philanthropy, his abilities as judge, and of course his wealth are still remembered; he remains a very popular figure in Ha Tsuen although he has been dead for nearly eighty years. Figures like Zhengming illustrate the complexity of managerial dominance. Resting in part on control of important resources, such dominance also relied upon the prestige that came from able management and the symbolic and political capital that prominent managers accumulated through their public and charitable activities.

Political Organization in Ha Tsuen

Chinese rural political organization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries must be understood in the context of a waning Chinese state and, in the case of Ha Tsuen, a colonial regime noted for its methods of indirect rule. As Ha Tsuen and other New Territories villages moved from Chinese to colonial control, changes were inevitable. There is little doubt that local commerce and manufacturing were directly affected by colonialization, but the British, like their Qing predecessors, continued to allow a considerable amount of local autonomy in the conduct of village political affairs. In the New Territories this remained true until the Japanese occupation.^[44]

The nature of local autonomy is well documented for this period. Hsiao Kung-ch'uan and Philip Kuhn have provided detailed studies of the mechanisms of local control in late Qing society.^[45] Although Mary Rankin focuses her analysis on Zhejiang, her characterization of rural political organization applies to areas well beyond the Jiangnan region. In Zhejiang she writes that the locally prominent dominated key public institutions, creating "the familiar end-of-dynasty pattern of autonomous control over peasants by socially conservative local oligarchies."^[46] Cole refers to lineages in Shaoxing as "mini-states" filling as they did a power vacuum at the local level, and Mann has utilized Max Weber's concept of liturgical governance to define and analyze these extrastate institutions and structures.^[47] There can be little doubt that liturgical forms of governance were widespread, and in this respect Ha Tsuen and other lineage-dominated areas were in no way unique.

There were no formal political offices and no formal arrangements for selecting community leaders in Ha Tsuen until the 1950s, when the colonial authorities introduced the Rural Committee system.^[48] Prior to this time there were, however, men who wielded great power and influence among the Ha Tsuen Deng. Elsewhere I have argued that lineage elders as a category did not play a decisive role in community affairs.^[49] Leadership fell not to the aged but to those with experience and economic influence.

Until the 1950s, community affairs and lineage affairs were not clearly

differentiated; politics was embedded in the structure of the lineage. Lineage institutions like Ha Tsuen's Yougong tang (Hall of Friendship and Reverence) served various functions. Yougong tang , founded in 1751, was one of two institutions that cut across hamlet and segment affiliations (the other was the village guard, which I will discuss below). Ha Tsuen's main hall (or da zu tang ) was at once religious center, meeting hall, administrative office, and symbol of Deng success and unity. In the absence of formal political organizations, it provided the framework for local decision making and administration. The term tang has a dual meaning in Chinese, referring to both the physical hall in which ritual offerings to the ancestors are made and the corporate estate, or "trust," of lineage property. In Yougong tang we see a structure of both religious and economic dimensions, but it functioned above all in the realm of politics.

During the period under discussion the manager of Yougong tang was expected to play a leading role in local affairs. Although formally charged with the duty of administering the hall's corporate property, he was far more than a mere accountant. The position of manager carried no inherent political powers, but in the hands of a forceful individual it placed the incumbent in a powerful position. Ostensibly the manager of the Yougong tang was selected by lineage elders. However, because it was essential that the manager be literate and possess business skills and independent wealth, there were few possible candidates. The selection was further restricted by the fact that the manager usually held the position for life. Considering all these limitations, the freedom of the elders to choose a manager was more apparent than real; they were, however, entrusted with the right to legitimize the manager's authority. This was done when the elders gathered with village notables for a special banquet that marked the installation of a new manager.^[50]

In 1905 Deng Zhengming managed the Yougong tang . Zhengming was a descendant of Jingwu and Zuotai and therefore a member of Ha Tsuen's elite patriline (Figure 9.1, generation 18); at the turn of the century he was a leading figure among this group. Wealth, philanthropy, political acumen, and knowledge of the world are the qualities that the Deng themselves mention when speaking of Zhengming. Personal confidence and wealth allowed Zhengming to enter the political arena, but it is important to stress that his ability to dominate local decision making did not rest on his charisma or money alone. Zhengming's role in local politics and the role of other members of the elite (all drawn from the Zuotai patriline) were supported by their wealth and their institutional control over Yougong tang and the village guard. These two institutions were closely linked; the manager of Yougong tang was in fact entrusted with overseeing the local security corps. Members of the local elite had no direct role in the village guard organization, but nevertheless they had considerable influence through the oversight function of the hall manager.

As manager of the Yougong tang , Zhengming was also in a position to dominate many economic activities. The manager administered Ha Tsuen's market and therefore had an important voice in determining market fees and licenses. He also oversaw the maintenance of the channel that linked the cargo boat traffic of Deep Bay to Ha Tsuen's market pier and had overall responsibility for collecting the fees charged for the use of that pier. Community projects such as the construction of public paths and public wells were largely in the manager's domain. Finally, and perhaps most significant, the Yougong tang manager (together with the elders) organized the bidding process by which the leader of Ha Tsuen's village guard was chosen.

Managers, Landlord-Merchants, and the Village Guard

The village guard was a local security force; it was neither responsible to nor directly linked with the formal apparatus of the state. In the case of Ha Tsuen, the guard was firmly controlled by the local elite during the half-century discussed here. Because of their coastal location, the Deng had two guard organizations, a "water guard" (shuixun ) and a land-based patrol group (xunding ). James Hayes, in a discussion of the Hong Kong region from 1850 to 1911, notes that dominant lineages "got a sizeable revenue from leasing fishing stations and beaches to villagers and boat people."^[51] Among the Ha Tsuen Deng, this sizeable revenue was protected by their special water guard.

The water guard was responsible for watching over the Deng's coastal fishing stations and oyster beds whereas the land guard protected xiang households. The organization of Ha Tsuen's two guards was very similar. Both had their own written constitutions that set out the responsibilities of guardsmen and specified the procedures for selecting members. Each year a new leader for the land-based security force was chosen by an auction held at Yougong Hall. The leader of the water guard was selected every three years. As organized by the hall's manager, the bids for both offices were sealed, but, according to villagers, this did not protect the process from favoritism or manipulation. The manager who organized the auction retained considerable control over the selection. The bids were often substantial, amounting to as much as one thousand Hong Kong dollars in the 1930s. Villagers report that in the past landlord-merchants often staked potential guard leaders to the money they would need if their offer was accepted.

The highest bidder became the head of the guard, and the cash he bid went into the coffers of Yougong tang . Each new leader was then formally confirmed by the manager and the lineage elders. After putting their seals to a paper signifying their public acceptance of the new leader, the elders were treated to a banquet hosted by the newly installed guard head. As long as each of Ha Tsuen's eleven hamlets was represented by at least one member,

the leader had the right to choose the guardsmen who served under him. The land guard maintained a force of up to fifteen men, and the water guard had twelve members. Guardsmen were usually poor tenant farmers. All were of the Deng lineage; no outsider has ever served in either of Ha Tsuen's security forces.

Although the guardsmen did not receive salaries, they shared in the fees they collected from all households located in Ha Tsuen xiang . The leader of the guard received the largest share and derived his profit from the fees he collected in excess of his original bid. The income for the water guard came from their right to take 18 percent of the value of all oysters harvested along the Lau Fau Shan coast. The water guard had a more clearly defined commercial role than that of the village guard. Water guardsmen kept track of the ownership of individual oyster beds and restricted collection to only those who had the rights to use Lau Fau Shan's lucrative fishing stations.

Ha Tsuen's village guard, like that of other communities, must be seen in the context of the endemic violence along the coast during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.^[52] Village guard organizations were important and useful. They provided farmers with a primitive form of insurance; if guardsmen could not retrieve stolen or lost goods, they were required to replace them. The guard also defended the community against bandits, pirates, and encroaching neighbors. In the New Territories each dominant lineage had its own village guard organization that presented a united front against the security forces of neighboring xiang . The Ping Shan Deng and Ha Tsuen Deng were often at odds over land, water, public thruways, and control over satellite villages. On occasion their antipathies spilled over into open confrontation and violence. In 1978, Ha Tsuen villagers recalled with pride their once bellicose reputation when their guard brooked no challenges.^[53]

Obviously Ha Tsuen's guardsmen served the entire xiang ; there can be no doubt that their regular patrols did deter criminals and unfriendly neighbors.^[54] This was no small matter in an area where local people could count only on the support they themselves could muster. It is clear, however, that the Deng had more to gain from the guards' actions than did their dependents. Because the guardsmen themselves received direct rewards from their activities, they had a vested interest in maintaining the hegemony of the Deng. In effect, their fee-taking privileges depended on their ability to maintain the local status quo. Prior to the 1950s, migration out of Ha Tsuen was the only escape from landlord-merchant dominated politics. Because bids for the guard monopoly were large relative to an average householder's income and members of the local elite often staked guard leaders to the funds they needed to make their bid, it is not surprising that the heads of Ha Tsuen's guard organizations were usually closely associated with local landlord-merchant families. As late as 1978, during my fieldwork, the leader of the

water guard was in fact a close political ally of one of the village's elite families.

Ordinary villagers did receive some advantages from the guard and its activities, but there can be little doubt that those who gained most from security activities were those who had the most to lose. Ha Tsuen's water and land guards provided the force that stood behind the economic and political power of the local elite, and as such they were important factors in the maintenance of the landlord-merchant elite. This force, it should be remembered, was guided by the manager of Yougong tang and the members of his family and line.

Comparative Perspectives

As noted in the introduction to this essay many scholars have viewed high rates of social mobility as characteristic of late imperial and Republican China. In comparison to the caste hierarchy of India or the rigid status boundaries of Tokugawa Japan, China appears to have been a society in which mobility was not only tolerated but also expected. Two main reasons are usually given for this fluidity: China's system of bureaucratic examinations, and the practice of equal inheritance among brothers. Together these institutions are seen as central to creating an open society in which family background did not predetermine status or the opportunity for advancement.

Discussion of the influence of these two institutions has focused on two populations at opposite ends of the social hierarchy: the small bureaucratic elite at the top, and the peasantry at the bottom. We have already noted some shortcomings of the mobility literature focusing on the degree-holding elite; now we must turn our attention to China's villages, for many scholars have found significant evidence for mobility there as well. Mark Elvin, for example, has argued that "Chinese rural society in the nineteenth and twentieth century was ... one of the most fluid in the world."^[55]

The most sophisticated work on rural social mobility has focused on the peasantry of North China. For the authors of these studies, inheritance practices play an important role in rural mobility patterns. Philip Huang, writing about rural Hebei and Shandong, argues that "few rich households maintained their status for more than a generation or two." He concludes, "The main reason for downward movement was the division of family property among sons"; according to Huang a single partition could drive a rich household down to middle- or poor-peasant status.^[56]

Clearly the North China countryside described by Huang and others (including Duara in this volume) differed markedly from the New Territories village discussed in this article. Although in Ha Tsuen a small group of landlord-merchants maintained dominance over many generations, on the

North China plain, owner-cultivators predominated, landlords were often absent from the local scene, and villages exhibited low levels of internal stratification and considerable mobility.^[57] In contrast to the aggressively self-protective, single-lineage village I studied, Ramon Myers has noted the lack of a strong sense of village identity in North China.^[58] He argues that "the influence of clan [lineage] management in village affairs and farming was very small" and concludes by pointing out that the composition of the village elite "constantly changed from one generation to another and was not based upon hereditary succession." These changes "very much approximated," Myers argues, "the rise and fall of households in the village."^[59]

Myers's discussion of local political organization is supported by Sidney Gamble's survey of northern villages, conducted in the 1920s and including communities in Shanxi and Honan as well as Hebei and Shandong. In striking contrast to the oligarchic forms of leadership characteristic of villages like Ha Tsuen, Gamble found that most surveyed villages operated a system of regularly rotated leadership positions.^[60] One should not, however, conclude that northern villages were little democracies led by meritorious community servants. Property qualifications for leadership positions were not uncommon, and Gamble mentions cases in which leadership passed from father to son or circulated among a small number of "local worthies."^[61] In general, however, the leadership patterns described by Myers and Gamble are a far cry from the gentry-led politics of Zhejiang or the landlord-merchant-dominated regimes of villages and towns in Guangdong's Pearl River delta.^[62]

Studies based on 1920s and 1930s land surveys of North China show that the majority (sometimes 75 percent or more) of peasant households owned the land they farmed and few cultivators were landless (20 percent or fewer by some counts).^[63] In a survey of land distribution figures for pre-1949 China,^[64] Esherick cites a rate of landlessness for China as a whole (32.1 percent of peasant households) that, while slightly higher than some estimates,^[65] is far lower than those reported for many communities in the southeast. Not surprisingly tenancy rates as well as landlessness rates tended to be low in the North. In Hebei and Shandong, for example, rates vary from the Guomindang Land Commission's estimates that 15 percent of farm households were tenants or part-tenants to the National Agricultural Bureau figure of 28 percent tenant and part-tenant for Hebei and 26 percent for Shandong.^[66] Many southeastern villages do not fit this owner-cultivator model.

Rates of landlessness and tenancy are extremely high in southeastern China.^[67] Unfortunately there are not a great deal of data on landlessness in the Pearl River delta region during the first two decades of the twentieth century, but the available data from a slightly later period suggest that Ha Tsuen's landless rate of 55 percent and its tenancy rate of 97 percent are not improbably high. Based on a survey of a number of Pearl River delta villages,

Chen Han-seng found tenant rates in the 1930s that ranged from 70 to 90 percent;^[68] he also discovered that "nearly half of the peasant families [in Guangdong] are entirely landless."^[69] Reporting on the Pearl River delta village of Nanching in the 1940s Yang notes that "we did not encounter a single peasant who did not rent some land from others."^[70] In a study conducted thirty years later, Potter found that of the forty-two Ping Shah farmers he surveyed 83.3 percent rented all the land they farmed and only 11.9 percent owned part of their farms.^[71] Potter does not give any estimate of landlessness for Ping Shan as a whole, but his extremely high rate of tenancy suggests that the vast majority of Ping Shan farmers were without land.

One way to account for high landlessness and tenancy rates in Pearl River delta villages like Ha Tsuen is to remember that 50 percent of agricultural land was held by corporate estates,^[72] and of the remaining 50 percent available for private ownership 36 percent was owned by six Ha Tsuen landlords. In total, about 86 percent of Deng-owned land in Ha Tsuen xiang was held by estates or a few large private landlords. It is not surprising, considering these statistics, to find that many Ha Tsuen farmers were without land. Although it is easy to appreciate that extensive corporate holdings have an effect on landownership patterns, it is far more difficult to know what political and economic significance to attach to these patterns.

The contrast with the Lower Yangzi region is interesting in this regard. Beattie's work on Tongcheng and Dennerline's work on Wuxi support the view that lineage organization and corporate property were important factors in establishing elite leadership patterns and in preserving elite status.^[73] On the surface the Deng lineage of Ha Tsuen and those described by Beattie and Dennerline appear similar in form and content, and it is tempting to conclude from these similarities that the relationship between lineage and elite was the same in each case. There is, however, considerable evidence to suggest significant differences in the ways in which lineage organization and landownership patterns combined in these two areas.

In this paper I emphasize the importance of corporate property and management more than Beattie does, but the differences between the Ha Tsuen and the Tongcheng data exceed matters of emphasis. Two factors are especially important in distinguishing these two areas: (1) the ratio of corporate lineage property to private property, and (2) differences in the types of landed estates established. Both Beattie and Dennerline report low rates of lineage property (as does Rowe, in this volume, for the Middle Yangzi). Beattie does not provide exact figures but notes that corporate holdings were not large in Tongcheng.^[74] Dennerline estimates that in 1881 only three percent of Wuxi land was owned by lineage corporations.^[75] In 1931 this figure had risen to 7.81 percent,^[76] but even this higher proportion is a far cry from the 50 percent corporate property rate reported for Ha Tsuen.

According to my reading of Beattie's and Dennerline's work, the charit-

able estate (yizhuang ) was the primary form of incorporating lineage property in their two regions. As noted above, charitable estates, unlike the ancestral estates (zu ) described for Ha Tsuen, functioned primarily as welfare institutions. In Ha Tsuen, income from zu resources were available only to the descendants of the founding ancestor (however designated). After proceeds paid for sacrifices at the founder's grave, the remaining funds, which were often considerable, were divided among the membership. Some families in the Pearl River delta received substantial personal incomes from estate property.^[77] In contrast, yizhuang profits were generally reserved for lineage widows, orphans, and the poor. In Ha Tsuen there were immediate and direct economic benefits from estate membership; in Tongcheng and Wuxi benefits to ordinary and even wealthy individuals and families were far less tangible.

In both areas, however, lineage estates played an important organizational role, and the wealthy men who managed them were assured a voice in local decision making.^[78] In Ha Tsuen economic benefits and political advantage tended to be closely linked, but in the cases described by Beattie and Dennerline the links seem less firmly established. In fact, from Dennerline's evidence there appears little overlap with political advantage accruing to the managerial elite and economic benefits going to the weak and poor.^[79] Before making a final judgment on the extent to which yizhuang financially benefited local elites, more information on managing these charitable estates is required. For example, did the overseers of such estates obtain direct economic advantages from their managerial role? If charitable estates did strengthen elite political control and economic dominance, what mechanisms made it possible to achieve these ends? And, finally, how important was lineage property in preserving landholdings from the fragmenting tendencies of partible inheritance? At this point the evidence suggests that yizhuang played a different economic role than the zu and tang estates of the Pearl River delta.

There were high rates of tenancy in both the Lower Yangzi region and the Pearl River delta.^[80] According to Perkins, provincewide tenancy rates for the early 1930s (tenant farm families as a percentage of total farm families) ranged from 46 percent to 33 percent for Jiangsu and 65 percent to 44 percent for Anhui. The same surveys found rates of 49 percent to 52 percent for Guangdong.^[81] Based on a 1930s survey of Wuxi, Buck calculates a 6.6 percent landless tenant rate and a combined rate of 52.5 percent for part-owners and tenants. For Tongcheng, Buck finds that 43.4 percent of county farmers were landless tenants and 86.8 percent were part-owners and tenants.^[82] Based on these figures it is clear that half or more of the farmers in each of these areas depended on rented land for their livelihood. In contrast to Ha Tsuen, which had both a higher tenancy rate (97 percent by my estimate) and a substantially larger portion of rented land in the form of corporate

estates, lineage property in Tongcheng and Wuxi appears to have made up only a small portion of the available rental land.

In Ha Tsuen—where half of Deng-owned land was tied up in corporate property, where more than a third of the remaining land belonged to a small number of locally resident landlords, and where more than half of the better endowed estates were managed by one of these landlords—tenant farmers had few choices but to deal with Ha Tsuen's elite. In Tongcheng and Wuxi, farm families also depended on rented land, but, because corporate property did not make up a significant portion of this land, farmers were not forced to rely on lineage estates and estate managers as much as their counterparts in Ha Tsuen. Control over corporate property in Wuxi and Tongcheng does not seem to have had the economic significance that it did in Ha Tsuen. That is, tenant farmers in these areas were far more dependent on private landholders, including presumably both agnates and nonagnates, than on corporate ones. In this sense Tongcheng and Wuxi managers appear not to have wielded the same kind of economic power that was the stock-in-trade of Ha Tsuen's managerial elite.

In Ha Tsuen the peasant farmer depended on the village guard for his security, on intermediaries for dealing with the outside world, and on the small elite of landlord and estate managers for access to land. Among the Deng the roles of guard overseer, intermediary, and landlord-manager were monopolized by members of a small, tightly-knit group whose ancestors had dominated local society for more than two hundred and fifty years. The ties that bound Deng peasant to Deng landlord were complex and compelling, allowing great durability and cohesion to lineage communities like Ha Tsuen and giving them organizational advantages over villages where centralization was more difficult to achieve.

There are interesting similarities between the lineages of Guangdong and the Lower Yangzi region: in each case the political role of the lineage was a factor in establishing and maintaining elite control. There were, however, significant differences in the realm of economic control. One suspects that the contrasting ratios of corporate to private property, along with the differing forms of corporate estates (yizhuang versus zu/tang ), may have created different patterns of elite domination and continuity in these two areas. Whether the discontinuity between the lineage's weak economic power and strong political power in Tongcheng and Wuxi established a less cohesive and more permeable elite formation remains to be seen. Differences in the nature of elite control were, of course, not simply due to corporate property rates or the differences between yizhuang and zu/tang . Factors like land concentration, elite residence patterns, and the proportion of office holders also affected elite control. There can be little doubt that the extent of commercialization and industrialization in these two areas also played a key role in the political and

economic life of local elites. In Ha Tsuen, the lives of ordinary villagers were encompassed by the lineage; in Tongcheng and especially in Wuxi this appears not to have been the case.

As noted in the introduction, one case study does not allow us to draw general conclusions about rural elites in China. But the Ha Tsuen material is fully consistent with data collected from the New Territories and other Pearl River delta sites. It certainly leads us to ask whether the presence of well-endowed lineage estates created a more rigid, more hierarchical, and less permeable class structure than existed in villages where corporate property was unimportant. Furthermore, the existence of major estates may well have allowed for more political centralization in lineage-based communities. The Ha Tsuen data support the view of those who claim that the corporate landlordism of southeastern China produces a social formation that differs from the owner-cultivator regimes of the north and, I submit, the private landholding complexes of the Lower Yangzi region.^[83]