A Study On Suzhou Municipal Government During The Nationalist Government(1927-1930)

In ancient China,the administrative mode of urban-rural co-governance was long practiced,with no independent administrative bodies established for urban areas.During the late Qing and Republican periods,China’s local administrative system underwent a major transformation,of which the establishment of urban-oriented governments was an important part.The urban-oriented government started from the town self-governing bodies established during the local self-government campaign in the late Qing Dynasty,and evolved through the early Republic of China until it was established during the period of National Government.The Nationalist Party Government’s experiment in establishing urban-based local governments began with the establishment of the Guangzhou Municipal Government in 1921.After the establishment of the Nanjing National Government,the Special Municipal Organization Law and the General Municipal Organization Law were promulgated in 1928,stipulating that local governments can establish special municipalities(later renamed courtyard municipalities)directly under the central government and general municipalities under the provinces,and promoting urban-type local governments in the form of municipal governments nationwide.The Suzhou Municipal Government was one of the ordinary municipalities established in Jiangsu Province during this movement to establish “municipalities”.The establishment of Suzhou City went through two stages: the establishment of the Suzhou Municipal Preparatory Office in 1927 and the formal establishment of the Suzhou City Government in 1928.In 1930,the National Government promulgated the newly amended Municipal Organization Law,which raised the standards for the establishment of municipalities,resulting in the abolition of a number of existing municipal governments or municipal preparatory offices,and the Suzhou Municipal Government was among those abolished.From the establishment of the Suzhou Municipal Preparatory Office in 1927 to the merger of the city and county in 1930,Suzhou’s urban-type government existed for only two years and ten months,which was a very short period of time.However,its research value cannot be ignored in the history of the evolution of the urban management system of Suzhou and the evolution of the municipal system of the Republic of China.Firstly,the establishment of the Suzhou Municipal Government aimed at overcoming the fragmentation and dispersion of power among various agencies of municipal administration in Suzhou since the late Qing Dynasty by establishing a unified municipal administration.The Suzhou government thus established a relatively complete organization and a more complete set of rules and regulations,integrated the relevant municipal agencies,and formulated and gradually implemented the first urban plan in the history of Suzhou.After the city-county merger,the urban area of Wuxian County retained its status as a special management unit,and some of the rules and regulations,urban planning and management concepts from the period of the Suzhou Municipal Preparatory Office and the Suzhou Municipal Government continued to be in place.Secondly,after the establishment of Suzhou City Government in 1928,it faced a series of difficulties such as delineation of city and county boundaries,division of public funds and public property,and shortage of funds for education,and was abolished because it did not meet the criteria for establishing a city under the newly amended Municipal Organization Law.The plight of the Suzhou government and its abolition were closely related to the failure of the members of the Suzhou government to handle their relationship with local clans and gentlemen,which can be regarded as the representative and epitome of a group of municipal governments established and abolished at one time during the National Government,from which we can see the entanglement of interests and management conflicts between the new urban-type government and regional political districts,as well as the conflicts with local forces in the evolution of the municipal system under the Nanjing National Government.The stuttering of Suzhou’s urban-type government also became a helpful perspective on the structure of Suzhou’s urban society during the late Qing and the Republic of China.