Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.9, 2019

The Substitution of Paper for Bamboo or Wooden Slips and the Upward Movement of Basic Ruling Centers in Ancient China

(Abstract)

Zhang Rongqiang

 The substitution of paper for bamboo and wooden slips had an important impact on the local administration and power operation modes in ancient China. During the Qin and Han dynasties, due to the inconvenience when writing the bamboo-or-wooden-slip scrolls, and the difficulties in transporting and keeping, all kinds of basic account books and registers such as household registration could only be produced in the townships, and at most they were delivered to the county-level institution. The basic administrative functions these instruments had to control the people and impose taxes and corvees carried were mainly performed by the township-level institutions, which were the utmost branches of the state power. However, the political status of township officers between official and civilian, and their economic behaviors of cruelly oppressing and exploiting the common people, had always been criticized by the rulers; the emperors could do nothing but sighing deeply, because the imperial government had no way to control those basic account books and registers which were necessary for the audits, and could not prevent local governments from submitting false reports. After paper replaced the bamboo-or-wooden-slip scrolls, under the internal drive that imperial government eradicated the defects and strengthened centralism, the creation of various basic account books and registers was moved up to the county governments, and the basic-level affairs were also centralized in the hands of the county heads. Although the substitution of paper for bamboo or wooden slips to paper provided technical conditions for the upward movement of basic ruling centers, the county governments did not have the ability to directly face the scattered, individual and small farmers. With the changes of local social structure in the late Tang Dynasty, the emerging gentry gradually stepped onto the stage of rural politics, thus opening up the situation of the later generations of “the imperial power does not go down the county.”