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China was a typical agricultural country in history, the governance and control over rural areas was important to political stability, and the agriculture tax was the most important revenue which the whole country was dependent on. In Qing Dynasty, the formal state institutions were only established to the counties level. The government had tried to establish Baojia System and Lijia System, through which to control the rural society.However, the desirable system had never been exercised. In fact, the two systems were not same in different areas. In 18th century, these systems were instead of various informal approaches. A lot of semi-official persons with different name, such as Lishu, Xiangbao and Difang, were in charge of the rural areas.I had explored the rural organizations in 54 counties of 9 prefectures in Qing Dynasty, and found that they all adopted the informal approaches. There were two kinds of organizations, Li and Bao. In structure, some places had two levels, and others had three. According to the relationship of different organizations, there were five different types of rural governance. The Lishu, Xiangbao and Difang were very important, because they not only collected tax and assigned corvee, but also took charge of public security.In Qing Dynasty, under the centralized bureaucracy, there was a great diversity of rural governance in Zhili Province. The counties did not follow the uniform mode which was set by the central government, but adopted the inform approaches, and adjusted according to the actual situations, then there were different types of rural organizations. The authorities approved of these approaches and were dependent on these organizations finally. This implied that the government did not intent to absolutely control the rural area. The relationship between government and village was mutual and compatible, and reflected the principle that government and the village kept order together.
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