Balloting Minyi (People's Will): Populist Measures during the Late Ming Fiscal Reform

While Mencius’ idea that the voice of heaven speaks through the voice of people appears constantly in Confucian discourses, the emphasis on minyi (people’s will) is generally considered a rhetoric device with little institutional implication. However, during the late Ming fiscal reform (usually referred to as Single Whip Method), many examples indicate that officials indeed resorted to popular support to implement and even justify their reform measures. Public hearings were held and in rare occasions, even ballots were utilized to accurately measure people’s intention in participating the reform. This article aims to explain such a peculiar development by first examining the critical role of grassroots collaboration to the success of the late Ming Nanjing fiscal reform. While partly shaped by its special political environment as auxiliary capital, Nanjing’s populist approach to fiscal reform also represents one radical interpretation of the Single Whip Method that enlisted popular participation to remedy the deeply rooted corruption in the system. That is, in an effort to battle malfeasance, there arose a populist model of political action and interaction that in many respects resembles the practices of modern participatory politics but was created in a unique pre-modern Chinese context.