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This article examines China's approach to integrating Korea into Chinese territory in history and its significant influence on the construction of the Chinese Empire and state. It discusses major instances of Chinese integration of Korea before and under the Mongol Empire and reveals that the tributary relationship with Korea that the Ming and Qing dynasties cultivated in the post-Mongol period allowed Korea to maintain a significant degree of independence from China. It points out that the Qing imperial discourse described Korea as a province by combining the Manchu ruling house's and European Jesuits' understandings of the Chinese empire. Qing China refrained from colonizing Korea in the nineteenth century primarily because of the post-Mongol shift in its policy toward the country and because of its Confucian ethos. The article further argues that China did not become a modern state until the 1950s, when the Chinese option of provincializing Korea permanently disappeared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In normal circumstances, the Qing government operated its usual social control mechanisms with the assistance of the local gentry, who mediated between the local government and the people. However, the gentry could come into direct conflict and confrontation with the government if their interests were not satisfied or were encroached on. The government-local gentry conflict in the Changsha Rice Riot of 1910 can serve as a typical case. Because of complex and intricate conflicts of interest, the local gentry not only failed to help the local officials suppress the riot, but took advantage of the mood of the famine victims to confront the local officials. This threw them into disarray, rendering them unable to control the development of events. The Qing government suppressed the local gentry by force and inflicted severe punishment upon the representatives of the old gentry who had incited the riot, so that they lost their ties with government. The new gentry, on the other hand, had also lost faith in the government because of the delay in the preparation of the constitution. The escalation of the government-gentry conflict led to cleavage between the government and the local gentry. The failure of this traditional mechanism of social control undermined the rule of the Qing dynasty and accelerated its fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do external shocks affect local government quality and, consequently, long-term economic development? The collapse in 1911 of the Qing Dynasty in China was one of the greatest institutional shocks in world history, marking the end of more than 2,000 years of imperial rule. We exploit this shock to examine the impact of changes in historic local government quality on economic development today. By measuring variations in governance quality across 1,664 Chinese counties and examining their impact on long-term economic development, we show that historical differences in local governance quality are strong predictors of current geographical differences in economic development. This positive relationship is robust to a rich gamut of controls and checks. To further address causality issues, we instrument historical government quality with the location of military towns in the preceding Ming dynasty. The analysis shows that history has left a deep legacy on governance differences across China that determine, to a considerable extent, current Chinese regional inequalities. • Historical differences in local governance quality in China are a predictor of current differences in economic development. • Centuries of a system —the Chongfanpinan— that enshrined geographical differences in government quality still matter for local development today. • The influence of 2000 years of imperial rule is still deeply embedded in Chinese society. • Such historical influence has survived the century of political and economic upheaval that followed the demise of the Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]