PROVINCIAL AN 0 LOCA L ADMINISTRATION 695
only should the loans be voluntary, but the creation of the village granaries them-
selves should be voluntary, and the emperor should forbid magistrates from forc-
ing their establishment.
Yu also quoted Chu Hsi's reasons for preferring the village granaries to Wang
An-shih's green-shoots system. Chu Hsi objected to the operation of the green-
shoots system because loans were made in cash instead of grain, the granaries
were located in the district town rather than in the village, the granaries were
managed by officials rather than by the elders or men of virtue in the village
itself, and the officials were totally lacking in any compassion for the problems
of the borrowers.
Chu Hsi was also cognizant of the difficulty of reproducing the perfection of
the sage institutions of antiquity, but he believed that the village granaries were
a close approximation. The elassical principle of accumulating enough savings
from every three years of agricultural production to support the village for one
year, or saving enough from thirty years of production for a reserve that would
last for nine years of famine was the ideal. The ever-normal granary system of
the Han was second best and had remained a good system, but in Sung times it
only existed on the books. The village granary system was unquestionably supe-
rior to anything that existed because it would eliminate the control of corrupt
magistrates and end the necessity for punishment, exile, and transportation as
means of enforcing repayment of loans. Nonetheless, Chu Hsi warned that men
of rectitude had to be recruited to run thc village granaries lest deceit and cor-
ruption destroy the attempt. He also emphasized the greater need for creating
an atmosphere of harmony and instituting irrigation projects to increase crop
production and increase savings so that the government would not have to wait
until the next famine occurred before taking remedial action.~1
Workfare ProgramsChu Hsi's village granaries were not extended throughout the Sung empire, and
the attempt to introduce them into in the mid-fifteenth century did not last, but
these facts did not deter Yu's faith in the superiority and efficacy of the method.
Nonetheless, he did not limit his choices only to the village granaries. He felt
that they should be used in conjunction with the ever-normal granaries as well,
and he was also responsive to the suggestion by Chao Pien, a provincial gover-
nor in Sung times, to mobilize the population for the construction of irrigation
dikes and induce wealthy families to contribute grain to finance those projects
to overcome the effects of drought. Yu expressed admiration in general for the
practice of Sung governors in mobilizing people for wall, road, and dike con-
struction, and tree planting as well during periods of famine, a Chinese version
of the New Deal Public Works Administration and the South Korean New Vil-
lage movement (s(lemaii! undong).
Discounting the brief experiment with Chu Hsi's village granaries, these pro-
jects were combined with state grants and loans in the Sung dynasty to provide