Cheng Tinggong (b. 1443, jinshi 1475) was the Left Administrative Vice Commissioner (zuo canzheng 左參政) of Guangxi province when he contributed a preface to its first-ever official provincial gazetteer in 1493. The gazetteer itself is no longer extant, but Cheng’s preface and another by the gazetteer’s editor, Zhou Mengzhong 周孟中 (1437-1502), were preserved in a later provincial gazetteer compiled in 1531.

The excerpt below reflects Cheng’s ethnocentric perception of the “barbarians” of Guangxi as morally inferior and thus somewhere between full human beings and animals. But he also expresses a conviction, rooted in a Neo-Confucian belief in the common moral nature of all living beings, that Confucian local officials have both the ability and the responsibility to uplift the barbarians morally and change them into regular subjects of the imperial state. He does not explain how this transformation is to be achieved, but we know from other Ming sources (e.g., source 5.17) that the establishment of Confucian schools for indigenous elites was a vital part of the “civilizing” project.

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Guangxi is on the remote western frontier and has a mixed population of imperial subjects (min 民) and barbarians (Yi 夷). There are four kinds of imperial subjects: The literati study the Odes and Documents, the peasants make a living by farming, the artisans produce implements, and the merchants trade in goods and money. The Qin empire formerly relocated five hundred thousand commoners to populate the Lingnan region; [the four kinds of imperial subjects] must be their descendants, then? There are also four kinds of barbarians [in Guangxi]: the Yao 猺, the Lao 獠, the Ling 狑, and the Zhuang 獞.¹ The Cooked ones pay taxes and corvée, while the Raw ones engage in raiding for plunder. In ancient times, there were [southern peoples] described as tattooing their foreheads²; [these four kinds of barbarians] must all be of their kind, then? In commanderies (prefectures) and towns where the numbers of imperial subjects and barbarians are roughly equal, the administrators are rotating officials (liuguan 流官).³ In areas populated mostly by barbarians, the administrators are native officials (tuguan 土官).⁴ In general, the barbarians are all governed by “bridling” (jimi 羁縻) only.⁵

But is it truly the case that the barbarians cannot be turned into imperial subjects? Heaven gives life to all creatures and endows each with the same [moral] nature (xing 性). Human beings, barbarians (Yi-Di), and animals are all alike in having proper norms for relations between rulers and subjects, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and older and younger brothers. It is just that the barbarians’ [norms] are adulterated (za 雜) and the animals’ [norms] are imbalanced (pian 偏). When barbarians are unable to follow their [moral] natures, then they are no better than animals. But when imperial subjects are unable to follow their [moral] natures, they too are no better than barbarians. This is why the Annals is strict about the boundary between the Xia on the inside and the barbarians on the outside.

However, rotating officials and their deputies are typically appointed from among the Confucians (Ru 儒), while native officials have Confucians appointed as their deputies. Moreover, their supervisors are always high-ranking Confucian ministers, as one can see from the records in this gazetteer. In that case, is it not Confucians alone who bear the responsibility of transforming barbarians into imperial subjects? This is why the Annals holds the morally worthy to higher standards. That is the didactic and admonitory intent of this gazetteer, hence I have emphasized it here to exhort all in government office to work together in fulfilling it.

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1. Ling may be an abbreviated form of Jiling 狤狑, an ethnonym that first appears in Song sources relating to the Hunan-Guizhou frontier. Zhuang is an ethnonym that began to be applied to certain Tai-speaking peoples of the Guangxi frontier in the late Song period; these were previously known as Man or Lao. ↩︎
2. This alludes to the description of the Man people of the south in the document “Wangzhi” (see source 1.6). ↩︎
3. “Rotating officials” refers to local officials appointed by the imperial court to fixed terms, after which they rotated out to a new post. The so-called rule of avoidance dictated that rotating officials would never be appointed to serve in their place of origin, thus avoiding conflicts of interest. ↩︎
4. In Yuan, Ming, and Qing terminology, “native officials” (also known as tusi 土司) were indigenous chiefs on the southwestern frontiers whom the imperial court incorporated nominally into the government structure by granting them hereditary titles like Pacification Commissioner (anfushi or xuanweishi). ↩︎
5. This refers to the Tang-Song jimi system of autonomous frontier polities, which evolved into the Yuan-Ming-Qing “native officials” system. ↩︎