The Autonomy With Good Etiquette Based On Agreement

People cannot live alone without society, and social life cannot be safety without order. Whenever and wherever, there is an inner structure, which is shown by the legal system or traditional customs, in other words, it’s the social order. The area between the county government and each household is the key place of Chinese traditional autocracy communicating with local autonomy. In old times, the scope of the governance regime on grass-roots society is limited at county. The village below the county level is the countryside, far away from imperial court. This is where people manage their own life independently. What’s more, it is also the seedbed of the development of Chinese traditional social order. Liu’s community contract created by Liu Dajun, is a significant law and institution to maintain the order of this “place”.Liu’s contract is an early form of civil self-government organization, involved in the field of subaltern society and public life, which is to encourage moral behavior as a main standard system. Firstly, Liu’s norms overstep the boundaries of consanguinity family and patriarchal. It tries to build a harmonious picture of local society based on the relation of region. This is a revolutionary innovation of the ancient society in China. It attempts to break through the typical characteristics of “isomorphism between family and the state”, and expands the horizon of social order integration in the context of the ancient central autocratic system.Secondly, the Liu’s rules are created by the gentry, and it’s free to take part in to individuals via signing the agreement. It has a comprehensive system containing ethic norms, organizational structure and operating mechanism. It is the social rules that villagers use to make a fine self-management, as well it is a public business that the gentry of Sung tries to integrate community order. It is both as a special ideology, which reflects the unity of morality and amenity among ancient rural society, as a significant non-governmental autonomic organization, which embodies the unity of self-management of organized community.Due to this dual qualities, Liu’s law shows a distinctive order formation—“Autonomy with Good Etiquette”, that is, a ethical relations system in local community that shares an agreement on all-society interests and recognition of values, which build by means of the ethicized regulation of public behaviors and attaching importance to personal moral enlightenment activities. And it ties together with the authority composed by ethics, the public order full of reciprocity, the mutual aid system shares weal and woe, the reward and punishment structure separates well from evil and the organization contains democracy and flexibility. It effectively delivers a set of personal self-cultivation, community autonomy and local self-government as a one to portray an orderly and harmonious folk life prospect.Under this order, there a value system come into being, comprised by “contract-based autonomy”, “livelihood-oriented politics” and “conscientious law”, which makes profound influence on the relationship between the central government and the rural society in the background of the ancient Chinese authoritarianism. It pushes China dual-track political touchy nerves. Simultaneously, it also established the good people’s livelihood-oriented governance institution, adjusting and distributing the order of civil life and people’s mind. As well as, it makes Confucian ethics root in local people’s daily life, and becomes the effective “living law” running on rural society, as a carrier of traditional Chinese legal culture.