{"id":243625,"date":"2022-10-06T19:01:44","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T02:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=243625"},"modified":"2022-10-07T14:18:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T21:18:58","slug":"return-of-shihuzhang-system-sparks-fear-of-feudal-despotism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2022\/10\/return-of-shihuzhang-system-sparks-fear-of-feudal-despotism\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of “Shihuzhang” System Sparks Fear of Feudal Despotism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Sichuan city\u2019s adoption of Yuan Dynasty-style community policing has inspired fears of a return to the despotism of yore. Zigong is the latest municipality to launch a trial of the <\/span>shihuzhang<\/span><\/em>, or \u201cten-household captain system,\u201d in which a \u201ccaptain\u201d assumes responsibility for the governance of ten neighboring households. The <\/span>shihuzhang <\/span><\/em>system was first adopted during the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 C.E.), but its roots date back even earlier, to the Spring and Autumn Period (ca. 770-475 B.C.E.). Zigong is not the first locale to implement a <\/span>shihuzhang <\/span><\/em>system in contemporary China. Zigong\u2019s neighboring city Neijiang, Fujian\u2019s Wenzhou, Yunnan\u2019s provincial capital Kunming, and Xinjiang all have similar programs. <\/span>Infographics published by a Neijiang government WeChat account<\/span><\/a> indicate that captains are primarily responsible for enforcing the \u201croutinization\u201d of China\u2019s zero-COVID policy by publicizing it, tracking returning migrant workers, and scanning and reporting residents\u2019 health codes and travel histories. During lockdowns, captains are expected to \u201ccalm and reassure\u201d their neighbors, deliver groceries, and monitor compliance with home quarantine. Captains are further tasked with mediating minor conflicts, keeping an eye out for security risks, and collecting suggestions to pass on to higher-level cadres. Unlike the <\/span>community volunteers deployed to \u201cmobilize the masses\u201d (identified by political scientist Lynette Ong<\/span><\/a>), <\/span>shihuzhang <\/span><\/em>captains are explicitly tied to the Party system: they are a grassroots extension of the \u201cfive-level organization system\u201d headed by street-level Party committees. <\/span>Online reactions to the reinstitution of <\/strong>shihuzhang<\/em><\/strong> were largely negative, with a number of commenters viewing it as a sign of political regression<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wusm911\uff1aIt means they\u2019re petrified. They\u2019ve begun studying how nations fail.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rossmonica6\uff1aThey\u2019ve turned the nation into an impregnable prison, while fantasizing about going back to the golden era of Emperor Qianlong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lakritz5585\uff1a<\/span>Shihuzhang<\/span><\/em>, the [Song Dynasty-era] <\/span>baojia<\/span><\/em> system, and <\/span>lianzuo <\/span><\/em>[the collective punishment of entire families or clans] have all been resurrected.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u5b50\u6027\u7537\u4eba\u9a9e\u7fee\uff1aIs this [their way of] saying that residential committees aren\u2019t strict enough? They need an organization at a more grassroots level to govern and surveil the masses? What are they afraid of?<\/span><\/p>\n

Fennude70875769\uff1aThis has been going on in Xinjiang for a while now. It\u2019s called \u201c<\/span>10 households, one unit<\/span><\/a>\u201d and they\u2019ve got to sign a pledge agreeing to it!<\/span><\/p>\n

uUnderTheWall\uff1aD*mn, it\u2019s really called the \u201cten-household captain system.\u201d Now I\u2019m beginning to suspect people inside the system are treating <\/span>ruguanxue<\/span><\/em><\/a> [\u201cbarbarians-at-the-gate theory\u201d] as a real school of thought, like they\u2019re playing at running a postmodern nomadic empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jam79922967\uff1aI used to think we\u2019d regressed to the Cultural Revolution\u2014little did I imagine we\u2019d regressed all the way back to the Yuan Dynasty. Wait, no, the Qin Dynasty! <\/span>We\u2019re driving in reverse<\/span><\/a>, skrrt skrrt! [<\/span>Chinese<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a Chinese-language essay for the German outlet Deutsche Welle<\/span><\/a>, veteran journalist Chang Ping traced the history of <\/span>shihuzhang<\/span><\/em>, and tied it to Mao Zedong\u2019s admiration of Qin Shi Huang\u2019s style of \u201cgoverning the people,\u201d implicitly connecting the two to today\u2019s zero-COVID policy. Chang Ping wrote: \u201cMore than a few people see the Cultural Revolution-era struggle sessions against cadres and beatings of professors as a form of democracy and freedom\u2014the people and the government on the same level. This is a misunderstanding of the art of ‘governing the people.’ It is not a rights-based equality, but rather one based on universal enslavement to the emperor. Once we understand this, we are able to grasp why they institute unnecessary lockdowns, why they shut everyone inside their homes or field hospitals like prisoners, and why Sun Lijun and Fu Zhenghua, the regime’s former hunting dogs, will rot in prison.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Criticisms of <\/span>shihuzhang <\/span><\/em>from within China have been heavily censored. In one now-deleted WeChat essay, the author <\/span>compared the adoption of the <\/strong>shihuzhang <\/em><\/strong>system to the burgeoning use of \u201cdigital sentries,\u201d ostensibly a tool in the fight against COVID, to track citizens without their consent<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The public must not be denied dignity. Why would anybody want to treat a <\/span>shihuzhang <\/span><\/em>captain like family? Privacy is a refuge that protects one\u2019s dignity. Who would be willing to let a captain enter their home on a daily basis? Adults have the right to decide their own behavior. They are not children and absolutely do not need a captain to impose discipline on their lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, we\u2019re not speaking only of adults. In today\u2019s society, even intellectually-mature children would be unwilling to accept the captains. There is no meaningful difference between these captains and \u201c<\/span>digital sentries<\/span><\/a>,\u201d which is to say, there is no need for them to exist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I do not need a random neighbor to control my life in order to be a complete person in thought and deed, nor do I need them to come to my house for \u201cchats\u201d without reason. In my eyes, we are all equal. Constructs such as \u201c<\/span>shihuzhang <\/span><\/em>captains\u201d only serve to give people who puff up with the slightest bit of power another chance to use their demented minds to destroy that completeness. [<\/span>Chinese<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nor have censors spared essays that cast <\/span>shihuzhang<\/span><\/em> in a positive light. In one now-deleted piece, the author suggested the system might serve as an important route for youth to rise through the Party\u2019s ranks. <\/span>Nearly one in five of China\u2019s 107 million urban youth are unemployed<\/span><\/a>. (Official data does not track rural unemployment.) Competition for public-sector jobs, perceived as more stable and less arduous than private-sector work, is fierce. <\/span>More than 2.1 million people sat for the civil service examination this year<\/span><\/a>\u2014a 35 percent increase over last year\u2014for a chance at one of 26,000 jobs offered through the exam. <\/span>Many ambitious students seek out alternative paths to officialdom<\/span><\/a> such as the <\/span>xuan diao <\/span><\/em>(\u201crecruit and transfer\u201d) program that dispatches young graduates to serve as administrators at the lowest rungs of rural governments in return for the promise of fast-track promotions later on. As Victor Shih, professor of Chinese political economy at U.C. San Diego, told The Financial Times: \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a larger number of students interested in these <\/span>ji ceng <\/span><\/em>[grassroots] positions, even at the best universities in China [….] You wouldn\u2019t see the kinds of numbers we see this year without the job market being so poor.\u201d <\/span>An excerpt from the censored essay referenced at the start of the paragraph shows that similar pressures might drive students to volunteer as <\/strong>shihuzhang <\/em><\/strong>captains<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These numbers got me thinking that the “ten-household captain” system might someday become an important alternative route for college students to enter the nomenklatura, besides the one-in-a-million chance of testing into the civil service. Despite the current preference for recruiting \u201ccommunity-level cadres, grid management workers, current or former employees of government agencies, organizations, or institutions, military veterans, and Party members,\u201d it\u2019s possible that once the system is institutionalized, college graduates facing a competitive job market might be recruited as ten-household captains, much like <\/span>college graduates are recruited as village officials<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, there is much less competition for captain positions, a lower position with more spots to fill, than there is for civil service positions. Yet it is not beyond the realm of possibility that capable individuals could use such a grassroots position as a launchpad for their careers. [<\/span>Chinese<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The discourse surrounding the return of <\/span>shihuzhang <\/span><\/em>is an example of the increasingly contentious politics surrounding zero-COVID, as the pandemic extends into its third year. In Beijing, protest art scrawled on the walls of COVID-testing booths <\/span>warned people of becoming \u201cnumb\u201d<\/span><\/a> to routinized testing. <\/span>In Xinjiang<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Tibet<\/span><\/a>, discontent with repressive measures used to combat outbreaks went viral after residents of both regions took to Weibo to plead for help. On October 4, <\/span>passengers at Yunnan\u2019s Xishuangbanna airport accosted gun-toting officials<\/span><\/a> in hazmat suits after they were put under a snap lockdown. <\/span>A comment on Li Wenliang\u2019s Wailing Wall aptly captured the sentiment<\/span><\/a> in some corners: \u201cDr. Li, I saw that the WHO issued <\/span>a statement<\/span><\/a> today saying that the pandemic is coming to an end, but looking around me, I get the feeling that a very long [<\/span>pandemic prevention and control<\/span><\/a>] \u2018<\/span>chain<\/span><\/a>\u2019 has already taken shape.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sichuan city\u2019s adoption of Yuan Dynasty-style community policing has inspired fears of a return to the despotism of yore. Zigong is the latest municipality to launch a trial of the shihuzhang, or \u201cten-household captain system,\u201d in which a \u201ccaptain\u201d assumes responsibility for the governance of ten neighboring households. The shihuzhang system was first adopted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1093,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[99,14744,100,5,4202],"tags":[6858,53,6731,16851,17744,17783,7766,17745,17751,7523,5907,17964,14058,1251,2867,5417,7450,1587,15375,583,18100,771],"class_list":["post-243625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cdt-highlights","category-level-2-article","category-politics","category-society","category-translation","tag-cdt-translation","tag-censorship","tag-chang-ping","tag-communist-party","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-grassroots","tag-li-wenliang","tag-li-wenliangs-wailing-wall","tag-local-officials","tag-mao-zedong","tag-netizen-comments","tag-party","tag-police","tag-punishment","tag-qin-shi-huang","tag-quarantine","tag-social-stability","tag-stability-maintenance","tag-surveillance","tag-tencent-censorship","tag-unemployment","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nReturn of "Shihuzhang" System Sparks Fear of Feudal Despotism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2022\/10\/return-of-shihuzhang-system-sparks-fear-of-feudal-despotism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Return of "Shihuzhang" System Sparks Fear of Feudal Despotism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Sichuan city\u2019s adoption of Yuan Dynasty-style community policing has inspired fears of a return to the despotism of yore. Zigong is the latest municipality to launch a trial of the shihuzhang, or \u201cten-household captain system,\u201d in which a \u201ccaptain\u201d assumes responsibility for the governance of ten neighboring households. 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