Historical Tradition and Contemporary Transformation of Minimalist Governance in China

Tracing the historical origins and contemporary transformation of China’s minimalist governance,this paper summarizes two forms: “minimalism in governing officials” and “minimalism in governing the people”.The former is reflected by local officials’ “a single person government” and “the separation of officials and local staff”; the latter is reflected by the informal administration of rural society and “the mutual convenience between officials and the people”.The four key variables that affect the formation of minimalist governance,the limitations of the territory and population size of the Chinese Empire,the ideology of Confucianism and Legalism,the low tax system under the form of small-scale agricultural economy,the integration of centralization risks and bureaucratic organizational characteristics under the unified system.Minimal governance can reduce administrative costs and improve administrative efficiency,but this semi-administrative and informal operational mode also provides convenience for the disorder of grassroots power and the state involution.In the late Qing Dynasty,with the expansion of state power construction,the minimalist governance model gradually declined,but some minimalist mechanismshave survived.In the new historical period,the traditional minimalist governance with the cores of decentralization of power between the central and local governments and “the mutual convenience between officials and the people” is inter-embedded with modern bureaucratic governance,which constitutes an important factor affecting the modernization transformation of China’s national governance.