Ruling large expanses of terrain, state-builders face tradeoffs between exercising uniform control and focusing on priority areas. Chinese statecraft masters the art of deploying power resources sparingly, explicitly defining administrative priorities for county-level jurisdictions. Supported by a variety of primary evidence from the Qing dynasty, my central hypothesis is that, even if priorities were biased, outdated and manipulated, they had tangible effects on governance. Routine counties had small governments and were often run by incompetent magistrates, whereas priority counties had bigger governments and magistrates chosen in a deliberative yet corruptible process. Separating two distinct bureaucratic worlds, an administrative rift was running through China. Man-made spatial organization crisscrossed provincial boundaries and defied the center-periphery divide, hotly debated in past scholarship. The construction of the empire's mental map and the resulting "one country, two systems" demonstrate the merits and vicissitudes accompanying the still ongoing Chinese practice of differentiating governance. 

The image below shows files of the Board of Personnel, listing appointments of county magistrates. Above the appointment, you see an annotation in smaller-than-usual script, indicating the priority of the post. For example, the first appointment (on the right) is to a vacancy of middle 中 importance, because it tends to have a lot of official business 繁. The second appointment (on the left) is also to a county of middle importance; in this case the middling importance is a result of overdue taxes 疲 and a difficult population 難. The body of the text contains the officials' CVs, including previously held posts, which are annotated in the same way. Both officials held important 要 positions before. It is not clear why they are now sent to less important places. Did they perform badly? Were they corrupt? Or is the imperial court taking into account their somewhat advanced age (they are both over 50 years old) and doing them a favor by dispatching them to a less demanding post?

Source, without red markings: The First Historical Archives of China, 中國第一歷史檔案館，清代官員履歷檔案全編 [Complete Edition of the Qing Dynasty's Official Personnel Records] (Shanghai: Huadong Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 1997).