The Establishment of Modern Health Demonstration Zones and the Regulation of Life and Death in Early Republican Beijing

Abstract

Even as new-style police were created in conjunction with late Qing administrative reforms, traditional community organizations continued to play a pivotal role in the regulation of individual conformity. Before the "new government" (新 政), for example, Beijing was always a city where social self-regulation figured centrally. Since such regulation 2 passed through the considerable authority of various assembly halls, business associations, households, and the like, police were only called out to maintain order when crime threatened public security. For a relatively long historical period, then, the power of the police to saturate and compartmentalize community space in Beijing was extremely limited.