In this article, the author observes some features of political change in local society in the late Qing and early Republican China, by analyzing the speeches and actions of local elites in the rural areas of Shanghai County who compiled "Chenghang xiangtuzhi," the textbook for indigenous education. He reaches the following conclusions. Like authors of "Chenghang xiangtuzhi," local elites mainly composed of lower intellectuals and merchants, promoted various local public enterprises in accordance with good deeds 善挙, and thus played an important role in the communities based on marketing towns. After the introduction of the local self-governance system, they entered the lowest level of administrative organization, xiang 郷, and reflected the political opinions of local society. They also promoted indigenous education, introducing modern elementary schools, vocational education, and education for women and the poor. This education aimed at the total construction of their native society 郷土. Through analyzing descriptions contained "Chenghang xiangtuzhi" and speeches of its authors, we can appreciate the way system and order was constructed from native society. For example, over matters of taxation on which the fiscal side of the administrative organization was centered, as the aim of participating in formal politics, the local elites consciously attempted to secure a "civil political sphere" 民治 in the local fiscal system. Therefore, descriptions over taxation in "Chenghang xiangtuzhi" may represent one feature of their "sense of right." On the other hand, by considering the textbook authors educational thought, in which a view of order was condensed, we can understand their idea of the new order, the starting points of which was native society. The entire order could be recovered by expanding it up from native society to county, province and nation levels step by step. "Chenghang xiangtuzhi" tried to teach children a sense of public morality to support the new order, and to train talented people who could contribute to native society. The method of "Chenghang xiangtuzhi" in constructing order from native society was inherited by the later enlightenment movements in rural areas.
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