The Records and Archives Administrative Reform in China in 1930s

1930년대 중국 문서당안 행정개혁론의 이해

Historical interest in China in 1930s has been mostly focused on political characteristic of the National Government(國民政府) which was established by the KMT(中國國民黨) as a result of national unification. It is certain that China had a chance to construct a modern country by the establishment of the very unified revolutionary government. But, it was the time of expanding national crises that threatened the existence of the country such as the Manchurian Incident and the Chinese-Japanese War as well as the chaos of the domestic situation, too. So it has a good reason to examine the characteristic and pattern of the response of the political powers of those days. But, as shown in the recent studies, the manifestation method of political power by the revolutionary regime catches our attention through the understanding of internal operating system. Though this writing started from the fact that the Nationalist Government executed the administrative reform which aimed at "administrative efficiency" in the middle of 1930s, but it put stress on the seriousness of the problem and its solution rather than political background or results. "Committee on Administrative Efficiency(行政效率委員會)", the center of administrative reform movement which was established in 1934, examined the plan to execute the reform through legislation by the Executive Council(行政院) on the basis of the results of relevant studies. They claimed that the construction of a modern country should be performed by not political revolution anymore but by gradual improvement and daily reform, and that the operation of the government should become modern, scientific and efficient. There were many fields of administrative reform subjects, but especially, the field of records and archives adminstration(文書檔案行政) was studied intensively from the initial stage because that subject had already been discussed intensively. They recognized that records and archives were the basic tool of work performance and general activity but an inefficient field in spite of many input staff members, and most of all, archival reform bring about less conflicts than the fields of finance, organization and personnel. When it comes to the field of records adminstration, the key subjects that records should be written simply, the process of record treatment should be clear and the delay of that should be prevented were already presented in a records administrative meeting in 1922. That is, the unified law about record management was not established, so each government organization followed a conventional custom or performed independent improvement. It was through the other records administrative workshop of the Nationalist Government in 1933 when the new trend was appeared as the unified system improvement. They decided to unify the format of official records, to use marker and section, to unify the registration of receipt records and dispatch records and to strengthen the examination of records treatment. But, the method of records treatment was not unified yet, so the key point of records administrative reform was to establish a unified and standard record management system for preventing repetition by simplifying the treatment procedure and for intensive treatment by exclusive organizations. From the foundation of the Republic of China to 1930s, there was not big change in the field of archives administration, and archives management methods were prescribed differently even in the same section as well as same department. Therefore, the point at issue was to centralize scattered management systems that were performed in each section, to establish unified standard about filing and retention period allowance and to improve searching system through classification and proper number allowance. Especially, the problem was that each number system and classification system bring about different result due to dual operation of record registration and archives registration, and that strict management through mutual contrast, searching and application are impossible. Besides, various problems such as filing tools, arrangement method, preservation facilities & equipment, lending service and use method were raised also. In the process this study for the system improvement of records and archives management, they recognized that records and archives are the identical thing and reached to create a successive management method of records and archives called "Records and Archives Chain Management Method(文書檔案連鎖法)" as a potential alternative. Several principles that records and archives management should be performed unitedly in each organization by the general record recipient section and the general archives section under the principle of task centralization, a consistent classification system should be used by classification method decided in advance according to organizational constitution and work functions and an identical number system should be used in the process of record management stage and archive management stage by using a card-type register were established. Though, this "Records and Archives Chain Management Method" was developed to the stage of test application in several organizations, but it was not adopted as a regular system and discontinued. That was because the administrative reform of the Nationalist Government was discontinued by the outbreak of the Chinese-Japanese War. Even though the administrative reform in the middle of 1930s didn't produce practical results but merely an experimentation, it was verified that the reform against tradition and custom conducted by the Nationalist Government that aimed for the construction of a modern country was not only a field of politics, but on the other hand, the weak basis of the government operation became the obstacle to the realization of the political power of the revolutionary regime. Though the subject of records and archives administrative reform was postponed to the future, it should be understood that the consciousness of modern records and archives administration and overall studies began through this examination of administrative reform.