Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.12, 2018

Grassroots Opinion and Order: A Historical Exploration of the Relationship between Grassroots Opinion and the State from the Pre-Qin Period to the Han and Wei Dynasties

(Abstract)

Bu Xianqun

Grassroots opinion refers to popular sentiment in a rural society. It originated in the pre-Qin period, flourished in the Western Han, reached a peak in the Eastern Han, and declined in the subsequent Han and Wei dynasties. Except for a short period after the Qin unified China, the interactive relationship between grassroots opinion and the state order characterized the course of historical developmental from the pre-Qin period to the Han and Wei dynasties. The discussion of policy under Western Zhou aristocratic rule was an early form of grassroots opinion, and it played a certain role in state political order in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. The governments of the Western and Eastern Han dynasties attached considerable importance to grassroots opinion, using Confucianism to remold it and concerning themselves with influencing or intervening in its direction. A variety of methods was adopted to bring it within the state order and combine it with the system of recommendation. Grassroots opinion was thus integrated into the mainstream of state ideology, giving it a positive historical function. Its influence was most evident in the Eastern Han. In certain periods, however, grassroots opinion could veer out of control and sink to being a tool of particular strata, evolving into a force that acted as a counterweight to the centralized state.