A Study of the Structure of "Fangke" in Governor-General Yamun in the Late Qing Dynasty

The late Qing was an important transforming period in the development of political system in China from the ancient to the modern.Fangke,as an informal institution independent of the bureaucracy of the Qing period,had actually become the basic carrier of interior administrative function of each Governor-General Yamun(Du-fu Yamen) in each province.With the changes of society and political situation,the structure of Fangke in each Governor-General Yamun became more and more complex.The characteristics combined the old and the new and parallelled with the emergence of Secretarial Office (Wen'an Chu) and its committees,which were supplemented to each other.This phenomenon reflected the trend of expansion in administrative function and fractionization of the political operation.Fangke established the crucial base of transformation of province officials in 1907.At the same time,it indicated that the old Governor-General Yamun gradually possessed the preliminary frame of modern provincial government,and became an important transition of traditional shogunate system to modern professional bureaucracy.