708 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
large families, in 486 Li Chung proposed a new system of organization called
the Three Chiefs (San-chang), the head officials of three hierarchical units at
the subdistrict level, based on the basic five-family unit. The highest unit was
to be the hsiang, consisting of 12S families, and headed by a hsiang-cheng
(hyangji'ing in Korean). The chief of each of the three units were chosen from
eminent members of the community and exempted from labor service, given a
three-year trial period of office and promoted if they did well.
Since some officials opposed the measure because it would be too radical a
reform, Li Chung argued that reform was always difficult because the people
never understood its purpose even though the plan would benefit them. But if it
were implemented when a census was being taken or when taxes were collected
after the harvest, the government could win popular support for the measure
because the peasants would see that the tighter organization would result in the
registration of all families who had hidden their status from the tax collector,
more equitable distribution of taxation, and reduction of tax rates to individual
families. Yu Hyongwon commented on Li's plan that even though the rich and
powerful were discomfited by the san-chang system, "yet after a short time taxes
were made more equitable and were reduced, and those above and below were
put at ease."4 Yu, in other words, agreed that a mutual surveillance organization
superimposed on the village by the central bureaucracy was justifiable if it resulted
in greater equity in the distribution of taxes, even if the short-sighted village
inhabitants could not appreciate its benefits.
In the late sixth century Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty again restored a mutual-
surveillance system based on earlier modes of organization based on Su Wei's
proposal for a soo-family hsiang. Emperor Wen adopted the plan, but a decade
later he abolished it when he received repOits that the hsiang-cheng were taking
bribes and the people disliked the institution. In short, mutual surveillance orga-
nizations were unpopular with the villagers because they were oppressive.
The T'ang dynasty regime of the seventh century adopted a version of the
mutual-responsibility network similar to the Sui, and Yu Hyongwon used it as
the basis for his model for the Choson dynasty in the seventeenth century. The
basic unit consisted of the basic four-family lin, the sixteen-family pao (four
lin), the hundred-family Ii, and the five-hundred-family hsiang. The chief of the
Ii, the Li-cheng, was in charge of taking the census, encouraging agriculture and
sericulture, investigating criminal acts, and "pressing the people to pay their taxes
and perform labor service." The cities were divided into wards (pang), each
headed by a ward chief (Pang-cheng) who kept the keys to the ward gates and
was in charge of police duties and public morals. Villages (ts'un) in the coun-
tryside were placed under the jurisdiction of the village chief (Ts'un-cheng).
The Li-cheng and other officials of this mutual-surveillance network were selected
by the district magistrate from commoners and unemployed officials lower than
the fifth rank.S
Yu cut off his treatment of the history of mutual-surveillance institutions in