重访传统:从“相忘”认识近世中国的小政府特色

Revisiting Tradition:Understanding the“Small-Government”of Early Modern China from the Central Government's“Forgetting the People”Attitude

近代中国在西潮冲击下发生巨变,形成一些固化的认知,导致传统常被“讲错”。传统被误读的一个基本因素是汉代确立的经典多是为“封建”时代所设计和书写的,却承担着指引郡县时代政治和民生的重大责任。充分认识封建与郡县理念的持续紧张,才能理解大一统的中国。包括专制与自治是否并存、小政府或大政府的政治模式,以及乡土社会是流动的还是呆滞的等关键问题,都需要重新认识。通过重访并据史迹重建传统的一些基本面相,可以清晰地看到,基于朝廷与民“相忘”的放任理念,在古代形成了一种上有专制、下有自治的小政府模式。而其前提,正是民间自身保持活络的流动性。

At a time when modern China was showing signs of“out of repair”,it encountered the impact of the Western influence and suffered repeated defeats in wars against western powers.Under the influence of Western ways of thinking,many people take it for granted that it is natural for barbarianism to be defeated in its confrontation with civilization,thus attributing the problem of China to tradition.This anti-tradition tendency has gradually become a fixed mentality,the result of which is that tradition is often misunderstood or mis-stated,presenting a very negative image.A basic factor that has led to the misinterpretation of tradition is that the classics established during the Han Dynasty were mostly designed for the“feudal”society,but they were used to guide the political and social operation in an autocracy that consisted of counties and prefectures below an authoritarian government.Only with a thorough understanding of the ongoing tension between feudalism and the prefecture-county system can we comprehend ancient China as a unified country.However,the separation of power and local autonomy under the feudal system sometimes complemented the centralized power of the autocratic system.Gu Yanwu's suggestion of“incorporating feudalism into the prefecture-county system”aimed to strike a delicate balance between centralization and local autonomy.The unified modern China exhibited a unique governance structure,which was not simply centralized power or local autonomy,but a dynamic balance of continuous interactions and negotiations between the royal court and the local society regarding authoritarianism and autonomy.On the premise of maintaining the heaven-granted authority,the court managed to practice an energy-saving concept of small government,adopting an attitude of forgetting the people,thus creating a governance model with a small authoritarian government at the top and a large autonomous society below.The central government tried to avoid interfering in the daily lives of the people by keeping a distance from the people,and in so doing the initiatives of local society were motivated and social order was maintained.On the one hand,the premise was that the rural society itself maintained a dynamic mobility(scholars used to misunderstand the countryside as a stagnant society,one of the most serious misrepresentations of tradition).On the other hand,the laissez faire-ism of the court enabled itself to maintain its authoritarianism.It was this balance that had helped maintain the long-term political continuity and social vitality.The basic concepts of authoritarianism and autonomy are a pair of contradictions,as was the case in early modern China.But the two can also reach a compromise that can be said to complement each other to some extent.The key to reaching such a compromise is forgetting the people on the basis of a small government and maintaining a dynamic community.When Western learning was superficially accepted,however,such an energy-efficient and effective political and social structure was displaced by the conflicts it might generate,which can be said to be a complete misinterpretation of tradition.By revisiting tradition and reconstructing some basic aspects of it based on historical materials,we aim to redress these misunderstandings of history and rediscover the richness of China's traditional governance.