Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2017

 

The Implementation of the Baojia System in Southern Gansu Tibetan Area in the 1940s (Abstract)

 

Liu Dejun

 

In the early 1940s, the Gansu provincial government began to extend the reach of the baojia system to the Southern Gansu Tibetan area. The implementation of the system had a revolutionary impact on the local tusi (chieftain) system, meeting with opposition from local political and religious forces and suspicion from ordinary Tibetans. In this contest between state administration and the chieftain system, the implementation of the baojia system had a profound influence on the modernization of grassroots society. It not only wrought great changes in the existing feudal mode of conservative rural governance, but also allowed national administrative organs to begin taking root in this region and gave ordinary Tibetans a growing sense of national identity.