ABSTRACT
Since the rural communities on the North China plain and in the Yangzi delta differed so markedly, the relationship between state and rural society in these two areas would certainly not be the same. However, divergence in state and rural society relations between the two macro-regions can only be seen clearly through a concrete and systematic comparison of the two areas. Dominated by the recent tradition of local studies, past scholarship has usually focused on a particular geographical area to study state and rural society relations.1 This approach can help us uncover specific details of state-society relations in an area, nevertheless, it has its limitations. It can tell us much about the hows of state and society relations in a particular area, but it can tell us little about the whys. To explore the whys, we have to go beyond this approach and undertake a multi-regional comparison.
