以隋唐時期廢鄉官為轉折點,傳統中國鄉村治理經歷了從鄉官制到職役制的重大轉變。明末清初,顧炎武等倡導"寓封建于郡縣之中",試圖在縣以下重建鄉官體系,以彌補郡縣制的缺失。此后鄉官問題逐漸進入清朝官方視野,雍正君臣言論、地方志編纂及馮桂芬《校邠廬抗議》中皆有關于是否重設鄉官的議論,戊戌變法時還曾波及幾乎所有在京官員,而清末新政之時,討論方式又為之一變。不同時段對鄉官問題的爭論重心不斷轉變,其背后涉及對清朝鄉村行政體制架構的歧見,尤其進入晚清,傳統鄉官的思想資源得以重新激活,但已深受西方政治理論特別是地方自治思想的影響。圍繞鄉官的爭論決定了清朝鄉村治理的制度選擇與政策走向,既呈現了清代國家政權建設試圖進入鄉村的復雜進程,也在一定程度上反映出近代以來中國鄉村政權建設的內在困境。

Starting from the abolishment of rural officials in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the traditional rural governance in ancient China went through great changes from rural official system to the corvee system. In the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, scholars headed by Gu Yanwu called for "developing feudalism through prefecture and county system", trying to rebuild the rural official system in areas below the county to fill the gap caused by the prefecture and county system. Since then, problems related to rural officials had begun to come into sight of the Qing government, and whether to reset these officials was always discussed by Emperor Yongzheng and his officials, and in local chronicles, and Jiaobinlu Kangyi( 校邠廬抗議) by Feng Guifen. At the time, when the HundredDay Reform of 1898 took place, nearly all officials in the capital were involved in this discussion, which, however, was conducted in a different way in the late Qing period of the New Policy Reform. Despite the shift of the focus on the argument in different times, what was always involved behind was the prejudice against Qing’s rural administrative system, and in particular, ideological resources of the officials, even though activated in the period, were deeply influenced by western political theories and especially the idea of local self-government. The discussion with rural officials as objects plays a decisive role in system selection and policy trend of the rural governance, which not only shows a complicated process that the Qing government wanted to build its political power in rural areas but reflects, to some degree, the internal difficulty faced by rural power construction in modern China.