Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China

Reading response to Sommer, Matthew H. , Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China. Stanford:Stanford University Press, 2000.

In his book, Matthew Sommer seeks to explain the regulation of sexuality in late imperial China, especially legislation and central court practice during the Qing. His central thesis is that the organizing principle for the regulation of sexuality shifted from status performance to gender performance since the 18th century Qing dynasty. In the old paradigm, people at different status levels were held to different standards and familiar morality. As such, the debased people (jian min) were deprived of legal protection from sexual offence. Whereas in the new paradigm, a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability was extended across old status boundaries and all people were expected to conform to gender roles strictly defined in terms of marriage. Because of this paradigm shift, new crimes were invented, old criminal categories were reinterpreted and expanded, and a new cast of characters emerged as objects of apprehension and regulation.

To support his thesis, Sommer looks into Qing dynasty legal case records, including the very bottom of the judicial hierarchy (the county level) and the very top (central courts at the provincial and palace levels). Sommer concludes from these records major changes in Qing legislations that shows the extension of a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability: (i) elimination of the old status-based exceptions to the general prohibition of extramarital intercourse, namely prostitution and the sexual use of servile women by their masters; (ii) assimilate homosexual sodomy to the previously heterosexual category of sex offenses; and (iii) invention of new crimes against chastity, supported by an unprecedented propaganda campaign to promote female chastity (305). In sum, the regulation of sexual behavior was reorganized in Qing to uphold a gender order defined in terms of strict adherence of family roles.

Sommer argues that the legal changes were largely related to the social background of 18 th century China, in which, because men outnumbered women, patriarchal stability was perceived as under constant threat from a growing crowd of rogue males (the rootless rascals) at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. The growing number of people at the margins of society, for whom sexual behavior had come to play a basic role in survival, created a sexual anarchy that threatened the better-established householders. Thus, the paradigm shift in legislation was an effort to cope with this newly perceived danger. The Qing judicial purpose was to protect the patrilineal family order against pollution by outside blood, whether that threat took the form of rape or of the treacherous adultery of women (307). In other words, under the cover of promoting chastity and eliminating status discrimination, the real concern of the Qing state was to maintain social stability.

It is noteworthy that the Qing state's legal protection covered not only the elite but largely the peasant family, reflected by the shift of the elite gender discourse. Sommer highlights the centrality of non-elites in the Qing judicial system; he claims that the Qing legislation reflected the values and anxieties of the settled peasant community at least as much as those of the elite. Sommer's analysis allows us to better understand the social conditions of the Qing dynasty when it attained its peak in the 18th century.

Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900

Reading response to Naquin, Susan. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900. Berkeley: UC Press, 2000.

What happened to Peking, the former Ming capital, when the Manchu took over it in 1644 and brought in to it huge numbers of Bannerman (estimated 400,000)? In Part III of her book, Susan Naquin discusses the social, political and spatial reconfiguration of the capital city since the Manchu occupation. She places the city’s temples and their patrons at the centre of her narration and reconstructs the society in which they were embedded. She argues that the religious temples, which were prominent social space in the Ming dynasty, continue to be central to the urban life of Qing Peking.

Two contesting spatial paradigms are intertwined in this book: the enclosure of the capital as imperial domain, and the opening of the temples as public domain. The arrival of the Bannermen in 1644 expelled the min (civilians) from the northern Inner City to the southern Outer City. The Inner City was left exclusively for the Bannermen, who were composed by the Manchus, Mongols and Chinese. The geographical encapsulation of the Banner population allowed the throne to continue its high bureaucratized and collectivized governance and to strengthen the distinction between the conquerors and conquered (295). This was made possible by the construction of the walled enclaves which enclosed and demarcated the imperial domain. The high walls thus became important features in the capital, both physically and symbolically. The Qing court firstly dominated the walled imperial palace, then the Forbidden City, then the Inner City, and finally the summer resorts outside the city boundaries. With the imperial palace as the centre of gravity, the capital was made to demonstrate the power of the throne. There was apparently no public space in the Inner City. The socio-spatial reconfiguration of Peking was mean to reinforce the governance of the Qing court.

Although the wall had separated the Bannermen population from the civilians, both groups in the divided city were in fact facing parallel tasks of creating new communities for themselves. The Bannermen, who were foreigners to Peking, gone through the lengthy process of “domesticization”, making the capital as their homes. During the process, they “used religious rituals to create imagined but powerful communities of fellow believers that extended well beyond the territory directly controlled by the dynasty.” (352) Meanwhile, the boundaries between the Bannermen and the min blurred with time. The Peking locals, who were now formed by a heterogeneous population, used family, neighbourhood, native place, Banner, and religion as selective bases for association. The public sphere - place and organization such as temples, markets, theatres, tourist sights and lodges - helped the Peking people to create a homogeneous and distinctive local culture, one in which imperial Peking slipped from foreground to backdrop. (622)

By showing how the capital adjusted to the changes wrought by the Qing conquest, Naquin argues that “[i]n the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, immigrants were becoming natives, separate populations began to mix, and life outside the imperial domain developed its own culture and integrity... after five centuries [Peking] had become a diverse, self-confident, and complex city.” (450) Naquin points out that in the richness of its associational life, she sees no evidence that Peking was different from many other cities in China in this period. Thus, she concludes that the idea of Peking as the quintessential imperial capital contributed to the overemphasis on the city’s distinctiveness.

Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850

Reading response to Finnane, Antonia, Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004.

In her book Speaking of Yangzhou, Antonia Finnane provides a cultural study of the city Yangzhou, where she considers as a “local place with a local history.” Finnane examines the making of the city in the late Ming and Qing periods with reference both to the historiographical problem of the city’s place in history and to the semiotic problem of the meanings accumulating around Yangzhou over time. To Finnane, these two problems are interrelated: the actual construction of the city underpinned the construction of certain idea of Yangzhou, even if this idea incorporated and was enriched by earlier historical references. (15)

Thus, Finnane analyses Yangzhou both as a historical problem and a place that is historically known through the records of its past. She historicizes the Yangzhou through attention to developments in the late Ming and early Qing, traces the rise of the Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou from the late 16th century, and problematizes the history of the Ming-Qing transition with reference to the Ten-day massacre and the issue of loyalism. Finnane examines the relationship between the city and the greater Yangzhou region during the 18th century, through discussing the administration of the salt trade and water control in the city’s hinterland. The last part of the book explores the city from the perspective of gender and native place in the social hierarchy and queries the conventional description of Yanghzou as the pre-eminent site of the blurring of social boundaries held to characterize Chinese society in the 18th century (16).

The merits of Finnane’s book, in my opinion, lay on her challenges to the conventional narratives of “locality” and “loyalism” – the two notions that create the meanings accumulating around Yangzhou over time. Finnane sees the limitations to consider a city as bounded by the specificities of the locality. Yangzhou’s social, economic and cultural character was defined not by localized relationship inherent to that place and space but instead by its relationship to other places (9). Thus, she looks into the city’s history beyond its locality. An outstanding example is her narration on the rise of the salt merchants who came to Yangzhou from Shexian and Huizhou. These immigrants, perhaps outnumbered the Yangzhou locals, created a unique “local culture” in the city and exerted enormous influences to its “hinterland” – where Finnane extends from Yangzhou’s immediate surroundings to the places affected by Yangzhou’s salt trade and water control system.

Although the sojourners dominated the local society of Yangzhou, their understandings on the city were largely neglected in conventional historical narratives. Based on the “Ten-day Diary of Yangzhou” written by Wan Xiuchu, a predominant narrative on the fall of the city in 1645, Finnane compares and contrasts this memoir with other underplayed records and literatures. Through abundant primary and secondary sources, she demonstrates that the issue of loyalism anchored in Yagnzhou was in fact reconstructed by the loyalist historians and did not represent the complete scenario.

The Great Enterprise

Reading response to Frederic Wakeman, Jr. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China. Berkeley" University of California Press, 1985, vol. 1.

In his book, Wakeman narrates the process of, and the reasons behind, the fall of the Ming house and the rise of the Qing regime in the 17th century. Wakeman describes the entire transition from Ming to Qing, which took two-third of the century to be completed, as the "great enterprise" - a term to acknowledge the Manchus' efforts to gain and hold the Mandate of Heaven by ruling the "under-Heaven" (tianxia) of China. (Footnote 53) He believes that the Manchus did contribute to the reconstruction of the declining social order of the Late Ming.

Wakeman accounts the Ming social disorder to the factionalism that appearred both in the imperial court and the society at large. The corrupted eununchs, the Donglin party, the various gentry clubs, the warlords, were all examples of political factions that led to the split and decline of the Ming court. The situation did not improve in the later Nanjing regime at all when the imperial court was retreated from Beijing to the south. Interestingly, Wakeman relates the Ming factionalism to the demoralization of the literati, who used to be the social group that uphold confucian teachings. More, there was a geographical concern in the author's narration - the demoralized literati was mainly come from the relatively prosperous south, where the dynasty finally came to an end.

In contrast to the factionalism and the demoralization in the Ming court, Wakeman acknowledged the collaboration of the Manchus and the Chinese as the major factor that made the great enterprises of the Qing possible. The transfrontiersmen and the Chinese turncoats were the key actors that helped the Manchus to adjust to the political rise and to develop into an imperial Confucian dynasts. Yet, along with the great political success, Wakeman sees the moral uneasiness of these Chinese collaborators. On one hand, the Chinese adherents of the Qing dynasty gained a substantial opportunity to carry out the kinds of political reforms that they could never did in the corrupted Ming court. On the other hand, they lost the self-conviction of social idealists they had earlier admired themselves (20).

Throughout the book, the "Mandate of the Heaven" was a rhetoric for the Ming, the Manchus and Li Zicheng respectively to legitimate their sovereignty. Yet, the (re)creation of the mandate also reflects the ruler's own historiography.

The Great Transformation

Reading response to Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001 (1944 first published).

In his book, Karl Polanyi looks into the political and economic origins of the collapse of the 19th century civilization. He argues that the collapse was due to the civilization’s shaky economic foundation – it was rested on four institutional systems, in which the front and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. Polanyi’s central thesis is that it was the innovation of the self-regulating market, with the sole motive of gain, gave rise to the 19th century civilization; and such innovation, which was made possible by the development of market economy since the 17th century, led to the “great transformation” in history: economic arrangements were no longer embedded in social relations; instead, the situation reversed. Polanyi criticizes the establishment of market economy, for it subordinates human into the inhuman market mechanism, destroying the traditional rules of reciprocity and redistribution, and depriving human’s “right to live.” When Polanyi published his book in 1944, he probably did not foresee that China and other socialist polities have gone through the same “great transformation” by the end of the 20th century. Polanyi’s book thus provides useful theoretic frameworks for us to understand the post-socialist transitional economy. Two of these frameworks are particularly applicable: the double movement of self regulating market, and the commodification of the labor, land and money.

Polanyi argues that there is never a truly free, self-regulating market. There is always a double movement in which the principle of economic liberalism is balanced by the principle of social protection or interventionism. In our analysis on the post-socialist transitional economy, it is therefore necessary to discuss, on one hand how the state establishes and expands a self-regulating market; and on the other hand, how it protects the nation from the threat of social dislocation. How has the state, the society and the market shape, and was shaped, by the post-socialist “great transformation”? Polanyi raises the example that, when the market economy thrived, the power of the English Crown was transferred to the parliament led by capitalists who mobilized the commercial and industrial revolution. Similarly, will the economic reform in post-socialist states eventually lead to the political reform?

The self-regulating system functions best in One Big Economy. When the capitalists are looking for ways to expand the market into a global scale, does it implies that a global interventionism has to be developed as a counterbalance? The World Bank, IMF and WTO are institutional inventions in the 20th century supposing to serve this dual-function; yet, they bring in, other than a global market, is the global disparity and uneven developments. When the call for neoliberalism or globalization dominates the political and economic spheres, it is interesting to read Polanyi’s analysis today for he illustrates vividly that “improvement” do not necessary benefit all (e.g. the poor) in the society. (I find commonalities between Polanyi’s argument and David Harvey’s critiques on neoliberalism.) How do the post-socialist states alleviate social disparities while expanding the international market?

The disparity between classes, sectors and regions began when man and nature are being “priced.” Polanyi further analyses how labor, land and money were being commodified for sale in the market – a process that the post-socialist states are currently undergoing. Thus, we can expect the same consequences Polanyi describes, namely the dislocation of the rural society and the formation of classes, are seen in today’s transitional economy. Polanyi reaffirms the importance of state interventions to prevent the exploitation of the “fictitious commodities.” Nevertheless, after all, they are not genuine commodities and this creates the very sadness of the 19th century civilization – human, since then, is subordinated in the inhuman market mechanism, resulting in the many social problems we are now witnessing.