Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China (Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions)

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN CHINESE HISTORY, LITERATURE AND INSTITUTIONS

General Editors PATRICK HANAN & DENIS TWITCHETT

Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China

Other books in the series

The HsUyu Chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel STEPHEN FITZGERALD: China and the Overseas Chinese: A Study of Peking's Changing Policy, 1949-1970 CHRISTOPHER HOWE: Wage Patterns and Wage Policy in Modern China, 1919-1972 DIANA LARY: Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925-1937 GLEN DUDBRIDGE:

Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China by RAY HUANG Professor of History, State University College, New Paltz, New York

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521104876 © Cambridge University Press 1974 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1974 This digitally printed version 2009 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 73-79311 ISBN 978-0-521-20283-1 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-10487-6 paperback

Contents

List of

figures

page vii

List of tables

viii

Preface by D. C. Twitchett

x

Acknowledgements

xii

A note on weights and measures

xiv

The Ming emperors

xv

Map of Ming provinces

xvi

1

1 4 32

Fiscal organization and general practices I Governmental organization II Rural organization and basis of taxation

2 The I II III IV

heritage of the sixteenth century and major fiscal problems The level of state income and modifying factors Land and population data The maintenance of the army The monetary problem

3 The I II III

land tax—(i) Tax structure The complexities of the tax structure Regional variations The service levy and its partial absorption by the land taxes IV Further modifications of the tax structure

4 The land tax—(ii) Tax administration I Tax administration by the local government II Factors affecting the general administration [v]

44 46 60 63 69 82 84 98 109 134 141 142 154

vi

Contents III The level of collection IV Disbursement of tax income V A final analysis of the land tax system

5 The I II III IV V 6

page 163 175 182

salt monopoly The mechanism of the salt monopoly Governmental control and manipulation Administrative cycles in the sixteenth century Revenues, salt prices, and their effects on consumers

189 189 195 205 212

Responsibility for the failure

221

Miscellaneous incomes I Revenues from commerce and industry II Administrative income III Cash income from commutation of services and supplies IV Non-cash income V Summary of miscellaneous incomes

225 226 244 252 257 262

7 Financial management I The ministry of revenue in the sixteenth century II Inter-provincial and inter-ministerial administration III Appropriation of military supplies IV Fiscal retrenchment under Chang Chii-cheng

266 268 277 284 294

8

306 307

Concluding observations I The risks of over-simplification II Ming financial administration and its place in Chinese history

List of abbreviations Appendixes A. Landed properties not subject to regular taxation B. Customary fees and extra services collected by the magistrate of Shun-an county, Chekiang, 1561 C. Barter rates and excise tax on each yin of salt, 1535 D. Partial returns of the land survey of 1581, as recorded in Ming Shih-lu Notes to the text Bibliography Glossary index General index

313 324 325 327 328 329 331 361 377 383

Figures

1 Ming provinces

page xvi

2 The Grand Canal (Ts'ao Ho), ca. 1610

54

3 Land tax structure in the late sixteenth century

83

4 Diagram showing distribution of tax revenue

182

5 Northern frontier army posts in the late sixteenth century

289

[vii]

Tables

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Financial burden to the taxpayer of tax grain delivered or commuted, for four prefectures in South Chihli, ca. 1585 page Service levy collection in Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien, 1572 Service levy distribution in six counties in the southeastern provinces, 1572-1621 Service levy distribution in three counties in north China, 1608-20 Quotas of fish duty and local business tax of Yung-chou prefecture, Hukwang province, 1571 Provincial tax quotas in piculs of grain based on the tabulation of 1578 Estimated land tax rates of Hang-chou prefecture in 1572 Estimated land tax rates of Fen-chou prefecture in 1608 Estimated land tax collection and disbursement in piculs of grain, ca. 1578 Distribution of land tax revenue from Lin-fen county 1591: in grain Distribution of land tax revenue from Lin-fen county 1591: in silver Distribution of land tax revenue from Wu-hsien county 1575: in grain Cash income from salt monopoly, as of 1578 Estimated annual income of the salt monopoly, ca. 1575-1600 Miscellaneous incomes, ca. 1570-90 Collection quotas of eight inland customs stations,

1599-1625

101 126 127 130 140 164 167 169 177 178 178 180 214 216 227

231

17 Collection offish duty, 1578 18 Estimated annual proceeds from miscellaneous incomes, ca. 1570-90 19 Reported annual revenues from miscellaneous sources of income of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, ca. 1570-90 20 Reported disbursement of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, 1551-7 [ viii ]

245 263 265 270

List of tables 21 Reported revenues of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, 1567-92 22 Reported deficits of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, 1583-90 23 Estimated basic revenues of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, ca. 1521-90 24 Cash disbursement in Peking by the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, ca. 1580 25 Major items of supply disbursed by the fourteen frontier army posts in 1575 26 Revenues of the fourteen frontier army posts, 1578

ix

page 270 270 271 276 291 291

Preface

When some twenty years ago I finished the first draft of my own study of T'ang financial administration, I began to undertake the preliminary reading for a similar study of the Ming period, feeling that it would be possible to pose and answer many questions which cannot even be formulated in detail for earlier periods because of the lack of evidence. I soon found myself frustrated by the complexity of the task. The sheer bulk of source material which has to be covered is daunting in itself, and since then far more of the Ming historical literature has been made generally accessible. But in addition the subject matter proved to be infinitely more complicated than in the case of the T'ang. The main problem was that whereas the earlier dynasties had systematically attempted to impose a uniform and universal set of comparatively simple institutions throughout their empire, and incorporated these in a tightly drafted system of centrally codified administrative law, the gradual abandonment of this concept of uniform government from the late eighth century onwards, and the decentralization of control over detailed policy-making and enforcement, had led by Ming times to a situation of bewildering local diversity. It had reached the point where in some fields it was no longer possible to make simple generalizations about the empire as a whole. Eventually I was side-tracked into other things and abandoned my plans. Since Professor Huang and I first met in the early 1960s and began discussing the subject matter of this book, it became clear that far from exaggerating the difficulties of the subject, I had underestimated them. The comparatively straight-forward and clear-cut picture given in the 'Shih-huo chih' sections of the Ming dynastic history, from which I had gained my own first overall impressions of the subject was gradually transformed into an infinitely complex and ill-defined mosaic of often apparently unrelated detail. Although many detailed articles and a few important large-scale studies of individual aspects of Ming finance have appeared during the past decades in China and Japan, Professor Huang's is the first attempt in any [x]

Preface

xi

language to give a general account of financial policy, placing this mass of newly discovered detail in a broader historical perspective. The reader may sometimes find that his account of certain aspects of policy contains apparent anomalies and even internal contradictions. This, however, reflects the fact that in many fields government policy and local practice did contain glaring inconsistencies and anomalies. Ming government, notably effective as it was in many respects, was not a tidy and uniform system, particularly at the local level. The detail in this volume, overwhelming as it may sometimes appear, is also far from complete. But at the present primitive stage of our knowledge of the subject, and of the detailed history of the period, it is important to present the evidence in full, rather than rushing to erect facile generalizations. The study aims to present a general framework to which further detail may be related, not to provide yet another grand historical pattern. It is to be hoped that not only will it stimulate further detailed studies of financial history, but that it will also provide reliable guidelines on these aspects of government policy for the growing numbers of young historians working on late Imperial China. In particular it should help scholars working in the important area of local history in Ming and Ch'ing times to interpret the perplexing masses of statistical and administrative detail included in local gazetteers and elsewhere. DENIS TWITCHETT

1973

Acknowledgements

It is my sincere hope that the publication of this book will bring some measure of satisfaction to those who, during the past several years when it was under preparation, generously helped me in many different ways: provided inspiration and guidance, supplied bibliographical materials, answered specific questions, read parts of the manuscript and offered valuable criticisms. Any errors which remain are of course my own. My thanks are due to Dr William Theodore de Bary, Vice-President and Provost, Columbia University; Professor Wing-tsit Chan, Chatham College; Professor Albert Feuerwerker, University of Michigan; Professor Ping-ti Ho, University of Chicago; Professor James T. C. Liu of Princeton University; Professor John Meskill, Barnard College; Professor F. W. Mote, Princeton University; Dr Joseph Needham, Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; Professor Morris Rossabi, Case Western Reserve University; Reverend Henry Serruys; Mr Wei-ying Wan of the East Asian Library at the University of Michigan; Dr Eugene Wu of the Harvard-Yenching Library and his staff, among them in particular Mr George C. Potter; Dr K. T. Wu, Division of Orientalia of the Library of Congress; and Professors Lien-sheng Yang and Ying-shih Yu, both of Harvard University. Professor John K. Fairbank and his committee at the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, gave me a fellowship grant in 1970 when I was completing the first draft. In particular I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Fairbank for his kindness in advising me how to deal with the subject matter. In his opinion, a study in depth of a specific topic may, by extension, be related to the study of other topics within the same area, without the necessity of covering these in similar detail. Originally I had intended to write on the fiscal administration of the entire Ming period, but the material had a constant tendency to get out of control, and on Professor Fairbank's advice I eventually arrived at the present format. Having benefited from his insight, I record this here with appreciation, in the hope that others may continue to benefit from it. For a great many years Professor and Mrs Chao-ying Fang have been [xii]

Acknowledgements

xiii

giving valuable guidance to scholars in the field of Chinese studies. Having the good fortune to work closely with them in 1967 on the Ming Biographical Project, I took every advantage of their immense knowledge of the Ming dynasty and their willingness to share it with others. Dr L. Carrington Goodrich, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and editor of the Ming Biographical Project, has at my request read practically every word I have written for several years. His criticism is always offered in a tone of affection. Charles O. Hucker, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, is a special friend. I made his acquaintance by correspondence more than twelve years ago when I was a Ph.D. candidate, and have never ceased to be grateful for his continuing help since then. Professor Denis C. Twitchett, Cambridge University, has helped me to prepare the final draft for publication and graced the present volume with a preface. My indebtedness to them all is great. The basic research for this book was done several years ago with free time obtained through fellowship grants. An area study fellowship jointly sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) covered one term in 1966. Summer research grants were made available by the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan and the Research Foundation of the State University of New York. My grateful acknowledgement to them, however, should not be construed to mean that my sponsors endorse the opinions in this book. I am grateful for the assistance rendered by Miss Hilary Beattie, Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has made a significant contribution to improving the style of my writing; I alone am responsible for the inadequacies inherent in the original draft. Although I have retained American spelling in this volume, I hope that the text will be equally acceptable to readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Closing this acknowledgement, I would like to extend my deepest appreciation to my wife, Gayle, who for seven years has shared my hopes and endured the hardships that I brought to the family through my interest in historical research. Her enthusiasm is always a source of my strength. Only after completing this book did I get in touch with Dr Ch'iian Han-sheng. Several articles recently published by him in the Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies will be of invaluable interest to readers of this volume. While I am most grateful to Dr Chiian for sending me off-prints, unfortunately it has not been possible to include the titles in the present bibliography. Mulberry Close, Cambridge 12 July 1973

R. H.

Weights and measures

The Ming tried to standardize weights and measures. Though metal scales, weights, and measuring receptacles were issued by the ministry of works no examples have yet been discovered. So far the closest thing found is an ivory scale made in the Chia-ching period, which, being an engineering scale, differs from the fiscal standard. The following equivalents are based on specialist studies of Ming paper currency and copper coins and weights and measures, and are known to be relatively accurate, although their absolute accuracy cannot be guaranteed. 1. Measurement of Length. The cKih, or 'foot', is approximately 12.3 inches. 2. Weights. The chin, or 'catty', is approximately 1.3 pounds. It is divided into 16 Hang, or 'taels', each of which of which is about 1.3 ounces. 3. Capacity. The dry measuring unit is generally known as the shih, though some scholars, such as Rieger, Sun and de Francis, prefer to romanize the term as tan or dan. Here translated as 'picul', it equals about 107.4 liters. Except for the division of the catty into 16 taels, the fiscal units always followed the decimal system. Ming accounts do not use a decimal point but enumerate the fractions of the basic fiscal units by name. Each fraction of a basic unit has its own special term. For example, a millionth of a tael is called a wei, and a trillionth a mo. All these cumbersome figures have been converted into the basic units and whenever 'decimal points' and 'decimal digits' are mentioned they refer to these converted figures. 'Billion' is used to mean one thousand million, and 'trillion' (as in the preceding paragraph) one million million. Numbers in the text are, in general, spelled out up to 100, but figures are used for percentages, units of currency and series of numbers. [xiv]

The Ming emperors

Temple name T'ai-tsu Hui-ti T'ai-tsung, Ch'eng-tsu Jen-tsung Hsiian-tsung Ying-tsung Ching-ti Ying-tsung (restored) Hsien-tsung Hsiao-tsung Wu-tsung Shih-tsung Mu-tsung Shen-tsung Kuang-tsung Hsi-tsung Chuang-lieh-ti

Reigned 1368-98 1398-1402 1402-24 1425 1425-35 1435-49 1449-57 1457-64 1464-87 1487-1505 1505-21 1521-66 1566-72 1572-1620 1620 (one month) 1620-7 1627-44

[XV]

Era name Hung-wu Chien-wen Yung-lo Hung-hsi Hsiian-te Cheng-t'ung Ching-t'ai T'ien-shun Ch'eng-hua Hung-chih Cheng-te Chia-ching Lung-ch'ing Wan-li T'ai-ch'ang T'ien-ch'i Ch'ung-chen

mm mx &m mm 'Km

itm

mm & Ik

81

nm m^

MONGOLIA

/ T'ai-yuan «

LIAOTUNG (MANCHURIA)j

NORTH CHIHLI

SOUTH / CHIHLI /"Nanking

/ Kun-ming /

KWEICHOW /-N

}V~*y~ \

^-—^"'v/'

<~l~P KWANGTUNG

\

Chinese frontier provincial boundaries -n-ruxn Great Wall of China

FIG. 1. Ming provinces.

[xvi ]

1 Fiscal organization and general practices Most governmental institutions under the Ming preserved certain features reminiscent of previous dynasties, the T'ang, Sung and Yuan, yet at the same time developed distinctive characteristics of their own. The dynasty's fiscal administration was no exception. Such Ming practices as the employment of supervising secretaries as fiscal auditors, the organization of six ministries, the circulation of government notes, the utilization of the Grand Canal as a trunkline connecting the north and the south, the trading of tea for horses with nomadic groups, and bartering salt under governmental monopoly for military supplies in the frontier region, were clearly copied from earlier dynasties. On the other hand the Ming administration saw more concentration of power in the emperor's hand, smaller administrative overheads, a greater reliance on agrarian sources for state income and a stricter control over maritime trade which virtually committed China to a state of limited seclusion. The imitation of the past was not totally unjustified. Infiscalmatters all dynasties in post-T'ang China faced the same fundamental problems. To secure the durability of the empire, imperial control over the nation's financial resources had to be firm and thorough. Yet the empire's vastness and its regional diversities worked against a policy of centralization, as did pre-modern methods of transport and communications. The gap between aims and the limited available means of achieving them was not easily bridged. In these circumstances it was not surprising that all dynasties tended to draw on past experience. The particular style of Ming administration, geared to the concept of a village commodity economy, could be labelled conservative, and could indeed in the light of economic development in China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, be regarded as anachronistic. This conservative outlook was, however, the inevitable outcome of political centralization in a vast country under pre-modern conditions. It must be noted that economic development in China before the Ming showed considerable regional imbalance. It was based on a few handicraft industries and on foreign trade, which affected only certain geographical I

[1]

HTF

2

Fiscal organization and general practices

areas. As the Ming administrators saw it, to promote those advanced sectors of the economy would only widen the economic imbalance, which in turn would threaten the empire's political unity. It was far more desirable to keep all the provinces on the same footing, albeit at the level of the more backward sectors of the economy. The Ming fiscal policies were largely determined by this attitude. Such an approach seems absurd to the modern historian, in that it sacrificed China's long-term economic growth for the sake of a short-term political aim. Ming administrators, however, did not have the foresight to visualize the contributions that industry and commerce could ultimately render to a modern state. For the small states of Western Europe government promotion of industry and commerce could facilitate a swift capitalist transformation of their economies. In China, which was vastly larger, it could not have effected such rapid and far-reaching change. Moreover, unlike the emerging national states in Europe or even the rival feudatories in Japan, Ming China never placed itself on a competitive basis with its neighbors; it could therefore afford the price of backwardness. Within their own horizons Ming administrators saw no compelling reason to revise their policies. On the contrary, there was good reason for them to proceed on their traditional course, in perfect accord with the traditional Confucian doctrine that agriculture alone provided the economic foundation of the state. The tragedy was that despite their striving for simplicity and uniformity, and their willingness to base their policies on the minimum level of economic activity, the Ming administrators never fully accomplished their purpose. China's internal diversity simply defied any uniform control from the center, especially in the area of fiscal administration. In agriculture, there were wide regional variations in climate, soil, topography, and labor supply, not to mention the enormous variety of crops, differing market conditions, multiple kinds of land tenure and leases, and the diverse standards of units and measurements across the country. Legislating from the capital, the Ming court could not take all these factors into account. Without attempting to reconcile these differences it was to find that to proclaim a uniform land tax law was one thing and to have it applied in every corner of the empire was another. It was generally assumed by many late Ming writers that in the early years of the dynasty the empire's fiscal programs had been carried out in full, and that only toward the end did the administration become corrupt. The assumption is only partially true. There is sufficient evidence that even at the very beginning government regulations were compromised, imperial decrees discounted, and official data to some extent tampered with. This was not necessarily the act of dishonest officials. In the early stages it was due largely to the fact that fiscal schemes conceived from above failed to

Fiscal organization and general practices

3

correspond to conditions at lower levels, or else the desired degree of centralization exceeded the technical capacities of contemporary government. As a result, imperial laws had to be adjusted. Local manipulations and revisions were necessary. Indeed, in the dynasty's later years deviation from prescribed procedures became a general practice; by then widespread abuses were only to be expected. This lack of exactitude in the fiscal machinery had numerous consequences. An outstanding example was that Ming officials customarily compensated for shortages in one item of state revenue with funds and materials derived from another. What we regard as the salt gabelle in Ming times actually contained portions of the land taxes. After the middle period the land taxes also became inseparable, if not totally indistinguishable, from several other sources of income. Government income and expenditures in Ming times can be compared to water channels in a swamp, in that they had constant tendency to diverge and re-converge. These complexities do not facilitate our task. Most of the Ming institutions do not lend themselves to precise classification or definition. They were in flux, their changes being determined in the main by external environment rather than internal development. They owed more to the manipulations and compromises of the administrators than to any logical growth of their own. In this book, the greatest difficulty has been to confine the material under topical headings without creating a misleading impression that a jigsaw puzzle is a checkerboard. We have therefore, chosen to rely more heavily on description rather than on tabulation of data. In places the logical sequence of presentation is slightly modified to suit the material. Cross references in parentheses mark topics treated in different chapters or different sections of the same chapter. While this is not the ideal way of writing a financial history, we hope that it will permit a more realistic view of the subject. Similarly a mixed approach is adopted in the present chapter. It may be noted that throughout the Ming period, except for the reign of Hung-wu, reorganization of officialdom was seldom attempted. In its span of 276 years the dynasty saw China's commodity economy transformed into a money economy, taxes in kind and statutory labor largely replaced by silver payments, and a conscripted army gradually replaced by a recruited army; yet, surprisingly, few fiscal offices were created in the middle period of the dynasty and still fewer offices abolished. This was possible because the functions of government agencies were not always fixed by stature, but were rather based on customary usage. Administrative procedures moreover were rarely superseded by new laws. Old and new statutes alike were simultaneously preserved. The obsolete sections were simply disregarded and the surviving clauses selectively applied to individual cases according to the circumstances. All offices in fact went through some kind of evolu-

4

Fiscal organization and general practices

tionary process, their functions being readjusted from time to time, sometimes so smoothly that the change went unnoticed even by contemporaries. This introductory chapter on the fiscal structure must therefore deal with its form as well as its dynamics. I GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION The nature of the Ming monarchy and its role in public finance Under the Ming system there was no central authority administering the empire's finance other than the emperor himself. The premiership was abolished in 1380 and never revived. The grand-secretaries limited their functions to rescript-drafting. Although they were consulted by the emperor and did participate in decision-making, they were never officially accorded any power. The minister of revenue supervised routine fiscal matters, yet he could never act without prior imperial approval. The emperor, truly an autocrat, received memorials from a large number of censors, supervising secretaries and ministerial officials, down to division heads and section chiefs. Suggestions and criticisms on fiscal matters could be initiated by practically anyone, regardless of his area of specialization and current assignment. The emperor was also approached by scores of imperial commissioners, governors and governors-general. Their proposals and requests could be handed to the ministry of revenue for comment, or else, when important issues were involved, referred to the Nine Ministers' Conference for deliberation.1 But the final decision was always the emperor's own. In practice, in the course of the dynasty, there were a few persons who managed to exercise the power reserved to the throne, notably GrandSecretary Chang Chii-cheng during the reign of Wan-li, and 'eunuch dictators' Wang Chen, Liu Chin, and Wei Chung-hsien in the Cheng-t'ung, Cheng-te, and T'ien-ch'i eras respectively. Yet, although Chang gained his powerful position through informal arrangements with his fellow officials behind the back of a youthful emperor, even then the formality of seeking the sovereign's approval on major and minor matters was not disregarded (7, m). The eunuchs, with the indulgence of the emperors, violated virtually every fundamental law of the empire. All of them were later condemned, or charged with conspiracy. It is noteworthy that none of the three eunuchs died a natural death and Chang Chii-cheng was posthumously disgraced. Outwardly the imperial power could not be delegated and never was. In general, official and office titles in this work follow Charles O. Hucker,' Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 21 (Dec. 1958), pp. 1-66. This article is reprinted in Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese

History, ed. J. L. Bishop (Cambridge, Mass. 1968). But the Ming emperors are referred to throughout by their reign titles rather than temple names.

1,1 Governmental organization

5

Several emperors ascended the throne when they were minors but no formal regency was ever established for them. In the realm of fiscal administration some of the matters brought to the emperor's attention could be exceedingly trivial. Even minor issues - such as the relocation of a particular business tax station, or from which productive area a particular county was to draw its salt supply, or how many rolls of silk were to be awarded to a foreign tributary mission, - were all submitted to the emperor for final approval. The sovereign was expected to attend to all administrative details, the precedent having been established by the dynastic founder. In one eight-day period Hung-wu is said to have received 1,660 memorials in which 3,391 issues were discussed.2 Apparently the founding emperor felt that this personal control over what seemed to be insignificant matters was justified. In the early years of the dynasty taxes were collected almost exclusively in kind. The government had to avoid the accumulation of tax proceeds at the intermediate level, in order to avoid over-burdening the service facilities, the weakest section of the whole fiscal establishment. The solution was for each revenue-gathering agency to make delivery directly to a dispensing agency; items of income and expenditure were matched up so as to cancel each other out. Under this system bulk deliveries were few, but there were numerous modest-sized consignments of materials and goods moving from one end of the empire to another. The disposal of each of those small consignments, therefore, could not be treated lightly, for each was a thread in the fiscal fabric. If control over any one of them were relaxed it would permit precedents to be established that might ruin the whole system. In later years, owing to deviations from fiscal regulations at the local level, imperial control over the nation's financial affairs slackened considerably, but the custom of the emperor attending to minor matters persisted. The assertion of the imperial prerogative was now limited, however, to those selected cases which were actually brought to the court's attention. It seems outwardly strange that, even though after Hung-wu few emperors effectively exercised their legislative power, and no sweeping fiscal reforms were ever proclaimed by them, yet toward the end of the dynasty, taxes in kind and labor services were largely commuted to silver payments, the fiscal responsibilities of the military bureaucracy were reduced to a minimum, the ranks of the army were filled with recruited soldiers and army posts were paid from the capital. It may be added that even the use of silver in private business transactions, which came to be universally accepted in the later period, had been forbidden in earlier years. The answer to the puzzle is that even though ostensibly the succeeding emperors had in general refrained from revising the dynastic founder's fiscal legislation, they did authorize occasional exceptions to the established procedures. Such changes followed a pattern. They usually started with

6

Fiscal organization and general practices

a petition from a lower-echelon bureaucrat, the requested exception applying to his office alone. The emperor's approval, most likely granted along with other routine matters, then established the required precedent. Sooner or later similar petitions were submitted and approved until the original exception had become a common practice. Thereafter no formal petition was required; either an imperial decree directed the remaining offices to follow suit or the latter proceeded to carry out the reform without explicit approval. In this way a major reform might take several decades to accomplish. The chiin-yao method (3, m), for instance, took almost fifty years from the time of its earliest experimental use to become generally accepted. The Single Whip Reform took even longer, and even at the collapse of the dynasty it had not attained a final, definite form. The removal of earlier restrictions, especially when the restrictions could not be effectively enforced, took much less time. An example is the relaxation of the use of silver as a common medium of exchange. It started with a petition from a prefect in Kwangsi whose original proposal applied only to the legalization of copper cash in private trade (2, in). Apparently, the precedent-establishing effect quickly caught up with the approval of this petition and soon the earlier decree forbidding the use of silver bullion, too, became defunct.3 This exercise of legislative power by the Ming emperors sometimes had a very similar effect to the judiciary decisions handed down by a supreme court in the Western world. Another paradox in the administration was that in spite of their autocratic power many later Ming emperors found themselves in a defensive position vis-a-vis the bureaucrats who raised questions concerning their spending habits. There were several reasons for this. One was that in the eyes of the Confucian bureaucrats the private life of the emperor was a matter of public concern and subject to discussion if not criticism. Another was that since the early sixteenth century few Ming emperors, with the notable exception of the last emperor, Ch'ung-chen, had shown any genuine interest in state affairs. Some of the emperors were either too indolent to care or too incompetent to make a decision. Thus disagreements between the monarchs and their courtiers on strictly public matters were few. Controversies were usually related to the emperor's private life. Thirdly, according to the theory that all under the heaven belonged to the emperor, the Ming system made no clear-cut distinction between state income and the emperor's personal income, and between governmental expenditure and the emperor's expenditure. The sovereign's personal spending was therefore closely related to public finance. Frequently the issues raised by the courtiers concerned exorbitant palace expenses, excessive procurement programs, the misconduct of eunuch commissioners in charge of those programs, and land grants to the emperor's favorites and relatives. But since the final authority rested in the sovereign, bureau-

1,1 Governmental organization

7

cratic action was limited to remonstrance, resignation, attempted impeachment of those who carried out the emperor's orders, and exaggeration of portents as heaven-sent warnings to the wayward emperor. When all these failed there was no recourse left. Furthermore, in carrying out these steps the bureaucrats always risked reprisals from the throne. With the exception of the dynastic founder, who was self-taught, all Ming emperors received a Confucian education.4 Thus indoctrinated, they were expected to follow the frugal standards of their forefathers, to respect public opinion, and to remain above malice and self-indulgence. The actual effect of these moral precepts is difficult to gauge. In view of the unattractive personalities of most Ming emperors it is easy for us to conclude that the so-called Confucian morality was no more than a fiction. Yet considering the unlimited power at the disposal of the crown, one might wonder what would have happened had this power never been subject to any moral restraint at all. Grand-secretaries, outwardly powerless, could also exercise considerable positive influence from behind the throne. It is true that newly-appointed grand-secretaries serving mature sovereigns were in general more inclined to be subservient. But by tradition the grand-secretaryship under the Ming was a long-term appointment. In normal circumstances grandsecretaries were expected to hold office for life. Many of them did so and served under several emperors. Because of their prestige and the public trust which they enjoyed, they could act as intermediaries between the emperor and the ministerial officials, thus providing a stabilizing force in the court. There were numerous examples of such senior statesmen in the early Ming period. Even in the later years towering figures of this kind were by no means lacking. Chang Chii-cheng's case may be somewhat too complicated to accord exactly with this description. But Yang T'ing-ho (in office, 1507-24), who introduced a drastic austerity program in the court upon the accession of Chia-ching, and Yeh Hsiang-kao (in office, 1607-24), who masterminded the transfer of some 7 million taels of silver from the emperor's personal treasury to replenish the empty state coffers in the T'ai-ch'ang-T'ein-ch'i periods, show well how grand-secretaries could be instrumental in carrying out popular policies and restoring public confidence.5 Nevertheless, none of the deterrents to unlimited exercise of imperial power - including Confucian morality, reverence for the standards set up by imperial ancestors, public opinion, or the influence of senior statesmen - had the effect of law. If an emperor chose to defy all these and was determined to exercise his absolute power to the full, there was no way of checking him. This situation actually prevailed during the reign of Wan-li. In the 1590s the emperor dispatched eunuchs to collect business taxes in the provinces, superseding the civil officials (7, m). Many courtiers, after

8

Fiscal organization and general practices

remonstrating to no avail, handed in their resignations. The emperor was so annoyed by the opposition that he ignored their resignation requests. Some officials subsequently left without authorization and the emperor, in turn, kept the vacant offices unfilled. The sequence of events precipitated what amounted to a 'constitutional crisis', and the deadlock remained unbroken until the sovereign's death in 1620. Palace expenditures and the eunuchs The complexities of palace expenditures in Ming times can best be understood by first visualizing the layout of the Ming palace complex. The center core of the palace was the Forbidden City, a walled and wellguarded compound of about a quarter of a square mile of elegant architecture, consisting of the residential quarters of the imperial household, many ceremonial halls, studies, libraries and the office of the grandsecretaries. Encircling the Forbidden City was the Imperial City, also walled and restricted, which was in turn surrounded on all sides by the city of Peking proper. Ministerial offices were located outside the walls of the Imperial City. Inside the wall, encompassing an area of three square miles, was a huge maintenance area.6 Installations inside the Imperial City included treasuries, receiving and storage depots, material processing and manufacturing plants such as a bakery, confectionery, dispensary, distillery, leatherworks, tailor's shop, silversmith's shop, printing shop, dyeing shop, etc. There was even an arsenal which manufactured firearms and gunpowder. Most of those supply agencies were manned by eunuchs, some of them exclusively, others with a handful of civil service officials nominally in charge. Next to them were other eunuch agencies which, drawing supplies from the aforementioned warehouses and shops, provided household services in the Forbidden City. Offices of the civil service physically located inside the Imperial City included the supervising secretariat, which had the function of inspecting the supply depots, and the court of imperial entertainments, which was nominally subordinate to the ministry of rites. The total number of these offices and service and supply installations was over fifty. Apart from the eunuchs, artisans performing statute labor and their hired assistants constituted a major portion of the palace population, which, even in the later fifteenth century, exceeded 100,000. Because the salaries of Ming officials were only nominal (2, i), the amount of cash paid to the functionaries by the ministry of revenue remained fairly small and insignificant, but it appears from the accounts that prodigious quantities of grain were rationed to the palace personnel, including soldiers called to perform constructional labor in the compound. While the service agencies were primarily concerned with serving the

1,1 Governmental organization

9

imperial household, their operation was not totally separated from governmental functions. The enormous quantity of silk fabrics processed in the complex was issued mainly to clothe the palace women, but was also awarded to foreign tributary missions and the civil and military bureaucracy, sometimes in large quantities. The imperial smithy produced silver utensils for the Forbidden City, but also cast metal frames for important state papers. The court of imperial entertainments provided delicacies for the emperor's table, but also prepared state banquets, served dinner to officials on special duty, rationed meat and wine to them, and provided food for sacrifical services. As for manufacturing military ordnance, there is no need to stress that it was a matter of state function rather than palace consumption. All these shops and depots must have used up considerable quantities of materials for their own plant maintenance.7 In brief, the Ming organization followed the familial principle so closely that the palace and government were virtually one and indivisible. The underlying principle was that the emperor shared his material goods with his bureaucrats. It also involved something akin to the inseparability of church and state. One of the primary functions of the Ming monarchy was to perform endless court rituals in an ostentatious setting. The construction of palace buildings and the numerous ceremonies both in and outside the palace, including imperial accessions, weddings, and many other such activities, always incurred immense costs. It was difficult to ascertain which was the emperor's personal spending and which was state expenditure. No ministry of imperial household was ever established; no accounts of the net expenses of the Forbidden City were ever prepared or published. Figures referred to as palace expenses came from two sources. One was the delivery reports and procurement orders of the several ministries which submitted materials and goods to the palace compound; the other was the papers of the supervising secretaries who audited the accounts and made inventories of the warehouses. No complete set of data is currently available. The customary method of estimating palace expenses by Ming officials was to sort out a few essential items for consideration, such as cotton cloth, silk fabrics, tea, wax (used for candle manufacture), and dyes, all of these in large quantities. The merging of palace maintenance with public finance was undoubtedly a serious handicap to fiscal operations. More must be said about the organizational weakness of the logistical system. Even though the palace warehouses were designated as 'belonging' to the ministries of revenue, works, and war, in practice the ministerial officials were only responsible for maintaining the levels of their supplies. They had little authority to distribute the materials stored in the palace grounds, that being a prerogative of the sovereign. In managing the warehouses, the rule was that the civil officials kept the books and the eunuchs kept the keys.

10

Fiscal organization and general practices

The ministries held their silver bullion outside the palace. The only agency that received silver payments in the Imperial City was the Inner Ch'eng-yun Treasury. Each year the ministry of revenue delivered to it about one million taels of silver derived from land taxes, which was earmarked as the emperor's privy purse (see Gold Floral Silver, 2, i). Rents from the imperial estates which constituted the cash incomes of the dowager empresses were also collected by the ministry and handed over to the Inner Ch'eng-yiin Treasury. The treasury had little to do with palace maintenance, however. It was in reality an intermediate agency. The funds received by it were usually spent on gifts and personal grants, contributions to religious institutions, and purchases of gems and curios. Any surplus was transferred to the Tung-yii Treasury inside the Forbidden City.8 The Kuang-huei Treasury, also located inside the Imperial City, was concerned with petty cash only. All revenues arriving in Peking in copper coins and paper currency had to be surrendered to this coffer. Its operation caused considerable irregularity in the fiscal system. For instance, normally when the inland customs duties were collected in silver, the proceeds were under the jurisdiction of the ministry of revenue. But if in a particular year the deposits of the Kuang-huei Treasury ran short, the emperor would then order that the next year a percentage of the customs duties be collected in coins and paper notes. In the end the palace treasury was replenished, but at the same time the ministry of revenue lost a portion of its normal income from this source. The expenditures of the Kuang-huei Treasury were also irregular; but a major portion of the copper coins and paper money was distributed by order of the emperor to officials at festival times, and disbursed as petty cash for lesser purchase orders in the capital.9 After the early fifteenth century the eunuchs were organized into twentyfour agencies, but no chief eunuch was appointed. The director of ceremonies was generally regarded as the senior eunuch; but even then at no time did he assume any responsibility as a fiscal officer.10 It may be said that the emperor was his own treasurer inside the palace compound. Eunuchs in Ming times became notorious. Customarily they were dispatched by the emperors to the provinces to supervise a variety of state functions. Yet for much of the dynasty there is no evidence that they seriously interfered with governmental operations, despite their occasional abuses of power. Some of them were stationed at the sea ports to receive tributary emissaries, one was in Nanking to take charge of imperial tombs, and others attached to the army as personal agents of the crown.11 As long as the normal operating procedures of the government were not altered because of the presence of these eunuchs, they could not be considered to have supplanted the bureaucracy. In the 1590s however the Wan-li Emperor commissioned them to manage local business taxes and in the last two decades of the dynasty the Ch'ung-chen Emperor put them in

1,1 Governmental organization

11

charge of city defense. In these two instances at least the integrity of the civil service was threatened. Throughout the dynasty senior eunuchs were frequently dispatched on procurement missions. Supplies thus procured included palace furniture, porcelain, and silk fabrics. Palace furniture was made in Nanking; the procurement usually caused little controversy except for the fact that on their return trips the eunuchs often demanded extra government transportation on the Grand Canal to carry their own private cargo. Porcelain was manufactured in Kiangsi; the items in demand included flower vases, bowls more than ten feet in diameter, chess games, porcelain screens, sacrificial vessels, and all the chinaware for the court of imperial entertainments. Silk fabrics were woven in Chekiang and South Chihli, of varying type, color and design, to the imperial specifications. The manufacture of these two last items, which might number as many as a quarter of a million in a single order, called for statutory labor and the requisition of materials in the local districts, plus extra logistical support. It was a constant cause of tension between the civil officials and the eunuchs, because the demand for materials and labor cut into the incomes of the ministry of revenue and the ministry of works; it affected the local administrations of the provincial officials as well. One more area of tension between the eunuchs and the bureaucrats was the purchase of palace supplies. All the warehouses in the palace grounds received relatively fixed quotas of materials derived from tax proceeds or requisitions from the provinces. But whenever shortages occurred, the extra purchases were still the responsibility of the respective ministries, using funds derived from their own accounts. A special item of supply might have been commuted to silver payments, in which case the ministry intercepted the money but was responsible for supplying the article. The eunuchs always demanded larger and more extravagant orders, which were consistently opposed by the bureaucrats. Only in a few instances would the emperor's decision favor the latter. This kind of conflict, combined with the other vested interests of the eunuchs in charge of the supply depots, was one of the reasons why tax payments in the later period could not be totally commuted to silver.12 The lack of such a sweeping reform, as we shall see later, affected the empire's tax structure deeply. The minister of revenue and the ministry of revenue The hu-pu shang-shu in Ming times is now recognized by us as the minister of revenue, but the translated title with its sense of authority derived from Western usage may be somewhat too complimentary to the Ming officeholders. Throughout the Ming period no hu-pu shang-shu ever rose to become a Cochrane or a Colbert. The Ming office had never been intended to be that of a policy-maker. Since its establishment in 1368 the ministry

12

Fiscal organization and general practices

of revenue had gone through major reorganizations several times in Hung-wu's reign. In 1372 there was one shang-shu and under him four bureaus. In 1373, however, the office was demoted and split up. Five shang-shu were appointed to take charge of five sections, none of them to assume an overall command. Only after 1380 was the position of a single chief administrator revived and the shang-shu, with his rank elevated to 2a, gained some semblance to a minister.13 Even then the Ming emperors often treated their ministers of revenue with outrageous brutality, paying scant regard to the dignity of their office. In 1385 Minister Yii T'ai-su was chained to his desk by Hung-wu because he did not conduct business as speedily as the sovereign wished. In 1421 Minister Hsia Yuan-chi was imprisoned by Yung-lo merely because he tried to dissuade the monarch from launching another expedition into the Mongolian desert. Only on the emperor's death in 1424 did he regain his freedom. In 1441 Minister Liu Chung-fu was pilloried by Cheng-t'ung simply because he suggested that palace horses be entrusted to civilian stables for maintenance. And in 1547 Minister Wang Kao was first beaten in public and later exiled by orders of Chia-ching on a false charge of receiving bribes, the true offense being his lack of enthusiasm for purchasing ambergris, a rare kind of incense that the emperor wanted for his Taoist altar.14 Of the 89 ministers of revenue appointed after 1380, 25 left office through retirement, 22 were transferred to other duties, 16 were dismissed, 7 died in office, 7 resigned because of illness or mourning, 3 were executed, 2 were banished with their names removed from the civil service register, 1 was exiled, 1 left office without authorization, 1 was killed in battle, and the last minister, Ni Yiian-lu, committed suicide at the fall of the dynasty.15 This leaves only 3 unaccounted for; the reasons for their leaving office cannot be ascertained from the materials currently available. Even among those who later left through retirement or otherwise, 3 ministers, namely Chin Lien in 1451, Han Wen in 1507, and Pi Tzu-yen in 1633, had been arrested while still in office. At least 5 more relinquished their positions in order to avoid surrender to the palace eunuchs. After fighting losing battles with the eunuchs, Ch'in Chin retired in 1527, Ma Shen in 1569 and Wang Ying-chiao in 1622; Pi Ch'iang resigned in 1586, and Wang Lin was transferred in 1585. The list shows the insecurity of the ministers; their tenure was very much dependent upon the whims of their autocratic masters and the favor of the latters' trusted attendants.16 Perhaps the only minister of revenue during the dynasty who managed to exercise some initiative and handle his office with a sense of authority was Ko Tse, who served under Yung-lo, Hung-hsi, and Hsiian-te. He is said to have countermanded the latter two emperors' decrees which made abrupt tax reductions without his consent. As a senior statesman and an

1,1 Governmental organization

13

imperial tutor, Ko was able to defy the throne without causing himself serious trouble. Nevertheless, in the end his policy was overruled.17 Most of the time the minister of revenue acted as the fiscal adviser to the crown; under normal circumstances his ministerial duties involved only very limited planning. Since the early years of the dynasty when taxes were paid in kind and labor services performed by the taxpayers in person, the military installations, the palace grounds, and several other disbursing agencies in Peking were assigned fixed quotas of materials and services to be furnished by designated collecting agencies. In the sixteenth century most but not all of the materials and services were commuted to silver payments; but the cash incomes were never consolidated. The disbursing agencies simply maintained separate expense accounts in silver derived from the commutation, still paid by the same collecting agencies which earlier had furnished them with supplies and services. The only exception was the palace. Due to the lack of a central fiscal agency in the Imperial City, the ministry of revenue handled part of the silver consignments paid in lieu of palace supplies. In addition, the ministry of works, the court of the imperial stud under the ministry of war, and the court of imperial entertainments under the ministry of rites all maintained large separate expense accounts, as did the army installations. The ministry of revenue performed some bookkeeping functions connected with the delivery of silver payments, but could not exercise budgetary control over the appropriation of funds. The surpluses from those expense accounts were held by the respective offices as their own treasury reserves and remained beyond the ministry of revenue's reach. The same procedure governed the several fiscal offices in Nanking. When the dual-capital system was put into effect in 1421, government organs were duplicated in the auxiliary capital. By customary arrangement the ministry of revenue in Nanking performed certain regional functions in the south. But this office, subordinate only to the throne, was by no means a branch office of the ministry of revenue in Peking. The minister of revenue in Nanking reported directly to the emperor, maintained his own quota of receivables, and controlled silver vaults, granaries, and warehouses.18 Even auditing the separate expenditures and making inventories of the supply depots in Nanking were functions of the censorial officials, not the ministry of revenue in Peking. All this means that the revenues and appropriations had already been established on a semi-permanent basis. The utmost the minister of revenue could do was to make minor readjustments, revising the commutation rates, recommending further commutations, and sometimes switching the deliveries of materials and funds from one point of origin to another, all on an ad hoc basis. The ministry of revenue under the Ming was therefore much less an executive agency than a gigantic accounting office. Had there

14

Fiscal organization and general practices

not been a rapid increase in military expenditures in the later part of the dynasty which forced the ministry to take a more active role in governmental finance, the minister of revenue could have continued to remain for all practical purposes the emperor's chief accountant. Yet, merely to supervise the flow of supplies across the empire was an awesome task. To ensure that all tax payments both in commodities and in silver were properly delivered, the ministry of revenue prepared the socalled stub-books (k'an-ho). Like bus tickets carrying detachable coupons, the sheets of the stub-book were made of two, three, or more parts. But the most commonly used kind had only two parts, consisting of a detachable coupon and a stub for each sheet. The remaining book with stubs on it was sent to the receiving agency. Over the perforation line separating the coupon and the stub the vermilion seal of the ministry was applied, and the serial number of the delivery was recorded. Each part thus carried half of the seal imprint and the writing on its edge. During the transaction the deliverer and the receiver pieced the coupon and the stub together to verify the order. This eliminated subsequent dispute over the delivery and quantity of the article. In the rare situations when the delivery involved an intermediate agency, the extra coupon on each sheet of the stub-book served the purpose for intermediate delivery. When the deliveries were completed the receiving agency reported to the ministry with a 'fulfillment of the order' (fung-kuari).19 Any shortage or irregularity was also reported to the ministry of revenue. This device reflected the fact that the fiscal system relied on centralized directing with decentralized handling. Supplies, in commodities or in cash, were rarely handled in large volume during transit. The aggregate figures of the various articles appearing in official documents had in most cases been compiled for statistical purposes only. In practice it was typical for a receiving depot to receive supplies from scores of different delivery agencies; at the same time a delivery agency also made articles available to dozens of different service installations. The volume of the transaction was always kept at the lowest possible level to avoid transportation and storage difficulties. Furthermore, the commodities thus handled, including not only grain, hay, and cotton wadding, but also such things as indigo, hemp, and sesame seeds, were of so many kinds that there was no way for the accounts to be combined. This system of control caused a fantastic accumulation of bookkeeping. The ministry of revenue had to scrutinize all the accounts, usually down to the county level; in 1385 it reviewed the accounts of 2,437 fiscal offices.20 The situation was not greatly improved in later centuries, when the use of silver had become more widespread. In 1572 the ministry is said to have consolidated twenty-two kinds of accounting books and discontinued the use of another twenty-eight kinds. We do not know how many kinds were retained after the reform.21 As late as 1632

1,1 Governmental organization

15

Minister of Revenue Pi Tzu-yen submitted a memorial to the Ch'ung-chen Emperor in which tax arrears across the empire were listed. The list covers four and a half pages of fine print in the present reproduced form. Among many other items, the minister was able to report to the emperor that Wu-hsien in South Chihli still owed the palace some 28 taels of silver, which was supposed to cover the portion of honey requisitioned from that county.22 Considering its assignment, the staff of the ministry of revenue was surprisingly small. The number of officials assigned to it was listed as 51 in 1390, plus 160 lesser functionaries handling the clerical work. In the late 1570s there were 74 officials plus 165 lesser functionaries. Except that from time to time dozens of imperial university students were attached to the ministry to gain administrative experience, the size of the ministry virtually remained unchanged through the rest of the dynasty.23 The minister of revenue had no executive officer, no comptroller, and no chief statistician. All this is understandable when one remembers that he himself for most of the time was serving in those capacities under the emperor. Nor did the minister have a planning staff. Even though the ministerial organization provided a 'business assistant' and a 'document checker', those officials carried out only housekeeping and clerical supervising duties within the ministry; they were by no means under-secretaries. When Minister Ni Yiian-lu in 1643 promoted a brilliant but hitherto unknown student as his business assistant and placed five staff members under him to take charge of office routine, the delegation of responsibility was considered a novelty.24 Under the minister of revenue were two vice-ministers, but neither was active within the ministry. One of the vice-ministers was customarily appointed superintendent of imperial granaries. He maintained his separate office and reported directly to the emperor. The T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, which after its establishment in 1442 handled all the silver bullion under the ministry's jurisdiction, was placed under his supervision. To add to the confusion, sometimes this vice-minister was also promoted to become an extra hu-pu shang-shu, thus becoming equal in rank and title with the minister, though in practice he limited his function to that of treasurer and granary superintendent and did not interfere with other business of the ministry.25 The other vice-minister was usually given a field assignment such as commissioner in charge of the Grand Canal, or superintendent of military supplies to Manchuria, and thus also was absent from the ministry's office. In carrying out his duties the minister of revenue dealt directly with thirteen bureaus of the ministry, which were organized to correspond to the thirteen provinces of the empire. After 1575 matters concerning North and South Chihli, the salt monopoly, inland customs houses, the granaries

16

Fiscal organization and general practices

on the Grand Canal and imperial stables and pastures, were ordered to be placed under the jurisdiction of the Fukien, Szechuan, Shantung, Yunnan, Kwangsi, and Kweichow bureaus respectively. The assignment was arbitrary, mainly because the aforementioned bureaus, which supervised the fiscal administration of remote provinces normally had less volume of work and could take on the extra duty.26 Within each bureau there were supposed to be three or four staff members of civil service status, but the positions were not always filled. Even when they were, some of the occupants were often detailed to the frontier provinces to manage field installations. For about a century before 1570, the staff members were not even required to report to the ministry daily; they held official positions on an inactive basis in order to gain seniority. It was Wang Kuo-kuang, minister of revenue from 1572 to 1576, who first demanded that all personnel on the ministry's payroll actually report to the office.27 When in the decade after 1610 the positions of bureau heads were again left vacant, Minister of Revenue Li Nii-hua acted simultaneously as the head of several bureaus under his own command.28 It seems surprising that with its limited manpower the ministry could afford these further reductions of its authorized strength. This can be explained by the nature of the ministry's routine, which was basically clerical and technical, something in which the civil service bureaucrats were least interested and for which they were least qualified. The mainstay of the office personnel were the lesser functionaries. Self-trained, informally recruited, and often regarded by the civil service regulars with disdain, they nevertheless became indispensable due to their special knowledge of procedural details and customary usage. Apparently they held their positions as a life-time profession and passed their trade on to their friends and relatives. Ku Yen-wu has pointed out that in the early seventeenth century practically all the lesser functionaries on duty with the ministry were natives of Shaohsing prefecture, Chekiang province.29 The official papers and accounts of the ministry were reviewed and audited by a specially appointed supervising secretary. Sun Ch'eng-tse, supervising secretary in that capacity during the reign of Ch'ung-chen, indicated in one of his memorials that while conducting the auditing he dealt with the lesser functionaries directly, and no civil service officials appeared on the scene.30 Service agencies directly subordinate to the ministry were few. The superintendency of paper currency, the office of currency supply and office of plate engraving were rarely mentioned after the fifteenth century, due to the gradual discontinuation of the production of paper money. Even though coining money was a function of the ministry of revenue, the mint in Peking was controlled by the ministry of works. Only in 1622 for the purpose of increasing coin production was an additional mint created under the ministry of revenue, operating simultaneously with the existing

1,1 Governmental organization

17

mint and other mints under the jurisdiction of the ministries in Nanking and provincial offices.31 All those mints, however, were manufacturing plants. They were not grouped together under an imperial mint. The warehouses, which were under the control of the ministry of revenue but actually in the hands of the eunuchs in the palace grounds, have already been noted. The ministry of revenue had no regional offices in the provinces. But the inland custom stations outside Peking were managed by ministerial personnel, usually secretaries of the several bureaus on leave of absence from the ministry (6, i). Their tour of duty was limited to a one-year term. Habitually these officials referred to their posts as 'branch offices, ministry of revenue'. The title is misleading. The offices were strictly customs duty collecting stations and no other ministerial functions were performed by them. Moreover, in the later sixteenth century the inland customs duty was gradually merged with other business taxes under provincial jurisdiction. The customs stations in reality became operated jointly by the ministerial officials and local prefects. Towards the end of the dynasty, vice-ministers of revenue were put in charge of the services and supplies of field armies. They became imperial commissioners of a sort. In performing their field assignments they reported directly to the emperor rather than to the ministry. Other officials of lesser ranks, such as directors and vice-directors of territorial bureaus, were likewise dispatched to the frontier to take charge of army logistics.32 For all practical purposes they were on loan from the ministry to the respective governors-general on the border. In no significant way did those officials extend the ministry's authority to the field; nevertheless they maintained a close liaison between the army command and the office in Peking. Other ministries All the other five ministries were in one way or another involved in fiscal administration. Some of their interests in governmental finance were derived from concerns shared with the ministry of revenue. These matters usually caused no serious problem. For instance, the ministry of personnel was concerned with the sale of ranks; the ministry of justice with the commutation of punishments to fines; and the ministry of rites with awards to foreign tributary missions and the licensing of Buddhist monks and Taoist priests. As long as those ministries did not actually operate fiscal installations to manage the funds, differences between the ministries could be easily resolved. Such overlapping interests, after all, could have been expected in any form of government. Under the Ming system, however, the ministry of war to a lesser extent and the ministry of works to a greater extent were virtually competing

18

Fiscal organization and general practices

with the ministry of revenue in fiscal management. The division of authority went back to the early days of the dynasty when taxes were rarely levied in cash. Since those days the land taxes in a large area extending over four provinces had been reduced to one-half in exchange for the services provided by the taxpayers in stabling of government horses. But when the services were discontinued, the ministry of revenue was not authorized to increase the taxes. Instead, the civilian households were ordered to deliver silver payments to the court of the imperial stud to provide the army with combat horses.33 The payments were still assessed according to the previous quota of'studs' and designated as 'feeding fees', although there were now no horses in their care. In reality this meant that half of the regular land taxes in the affected areas was collected by the ministry of war (3, n). The ministry of works not only collected the forest produce levy at many stations and intercepted part of thefishduty, but also requisitioned materials and funds from all provinces. The duties and functions of the ministry included construction of palaces, mausoleums, public buildings and city walls, undertaking water-control and reclamation projects, exploiting water and forest resources, and manufacturing military equipment and ships. In addition, right from the early days of the dynasty when no funds were provided for those undertakings, the ministry of works called upon corvee labor and collected materials all across the empire. While unskilled labor was provided by the general population, skilled labor was levied from those households which were registered as artisans. The weavers in South Chihli and the porcelain workers in Kiangsi fell into this category, as did the artisans of numerous trades in the maintenance area within the Imperial City. The requisition of materials was even more extensive. Bows and arrows were contributed from most prefectures. Lumber was derived from the produce levy and glue from fish duty. Leather and fur were furnished by those who were registered as hunters. Dyes and potash alum were supplied by the districts specializing in those products. When corvee labor was called up for water-control projects, not only did those on call provide their own tools, but each man also brought along some supplies from his home locale, including wooden poles, nails and ropes. The material and labor requisitions could be both scheduled and unscheduled. The former were assessed to every prefecture of the empire and the prefect in turn divided the quotas among his subordinate counties. Some of the assessments were collected annually, others biennially or triennially.34 Since all these obligations in Ming times gradually began to be commuted, the ministry of works slowly became a recipient of silver payments in the provinces. The income may be considered as a huge expense account, directly derived from taxation, which enabled the ministry to remain selfsufficient. It is in fact true to say that the ministry was gradually transformed into a taxation agency that rivalled the ministry of revenue.

1, I Governmental organization

19

The deterioration of the empire's population data further intensified the conflict of interest. In the early years the land tax and the service levy (see 1, II below) were separate impositions; those with artisan registration were clearly distinguished from the general population. From the mid fifteenth century onwards the population registration became a matter of formality. The registered statutory laborers had already absconded and many miscellaneous requisitions, such as those assessed on hunters and fishermen, had become uncollectable. Most counties had adopted the solution of transferring the burden of service and supply obligations to landed property, converting these quotas into surcharges on land or even adding them to the land tax proper. The commutation of the service levy therefore in the end resulted in both the ministry of revenue and the ministry of works chasing the same tax income. For extraordinary quantities of supplies needed in Peking, the procedure was 'local procurement' (tso-pan). For instance when a major construction project was undertaken, the required lumber might exceed 1 million taels of silver in value. Obviously, the order could not be filled from the regular requisitions. By local procurement the ministries directed the provincial officials in the lumber-producing areas to furnish what was needed, the cost being compensated by tax proceeds derived from the same provinces. In other words, either the lumber was paid for with tax proceeds due to the central government or the taxpayers submitted the required raw materials in lieu of regular tax payments. The ministry of works, deriving its cash income from commutation of service obligations, which were scattered over the empire, and restricted in amount, often found the resources at its disposal on the spot insufficient to pay the costs. It would petition the emperor and by order of the sovereign the ministry of revenue had to make the local tax proceeds under its jurisdiction available for the occasion. The only large item of tax proceeds was derived from the land taxes. The procurement orders of the ministry of works subsequently invaded that domain too. 35 It seems that the ministry of works in the early part of the dynasty had been an operating agency. But clearly as time went by it became more and more concerned with fiscal management. The spectacular water-control projects under the direction of Liu Ta-hsia in the later fifteenth century and P'an Chi-hsun in the sixteenth century (7, i) were executed with little active participation from the ministry. It merely allocated materials, funds, and labor to the project directors. Land reclamation, similarly, slipped into the hands of provincial and local officials. For palace construction either ministerial officials or eunuchs were put in charge. But inasmuch as the service facilities and technicians were under the control of the eunuchs, they alone could carry out the operation. Even when a ministry staff member was commissioned as the project director, he could not do more

20

Fiscal organization and general practices

than assume the overall responsibility and carry out the financial planning.36 To supply material and labor for the manufacturing plants and warehouses inside the palace compound was mainly, though not exclusively, the responsibility of the ministry of works, and so was the budgetary allocation for eunuch procurement missions. All this deprived the ministry of its operating capacity and reduced it to a logistical branch or service support agency of the court. The Ming system created numerous palace installations without a ministry of imperial household to coordinate them. It was the ministry of works, in its changing role, that came close to filling this gap. The unexpected role sometimes confused the ministerial officials and caused them to be inconsistent. In the event of an extraordinary order for silk fabrics initiated by the eunuchs, the bureaucrats at the ministry of works would, generally as a matter of principle, join their civil service colleagues in objecting to its excessiveness. But when the cost of the order was to be borne by the ministry of revenue and the latter ministry argued against surrendering its own tax quotas for this purpose, the matter became a dispute between the two ministries. At this point the ministry of works' officials would change their stand and say that such a supply order was, after all, only reasonable.37 The net result of the divided fiscal authority had serious consequences, however. Throughout the Ming period no central treasury was ever established. The T'ai-ts'ang Treasury under the ministry of revenue was only one of the silver vaults in Peking. It exercised no control over the Ch'ang-yin Treasury or the Chieh-sheng Treasury, which were subject to the court of the imperial stud and the ministry of works respectively, nor the silver vault inside the court of imperial entertainments, not to mention the Inner Ch'eng-yiin, Kuang-huei, and Tung-yii Treasuries inside the palace. The ministry of revenue in Nanking also had its own treasuries. Except by a specific order from the emperor, silver deposits could not be transferred from one unit to another. In the Wan-li period, even after the emperor's order for transfer, no agency would yield its bullion readily, knowing well that the order had been initiated by some rival office rather than by the emperor himself. Usually it memorialized the throne for reconsideration and applied delaying and haggling techniques to avoid the loss of silver to the other agency, giving in grudgingly only after all means of resistance had been exhausted.38 Fiscal agencies of the central government in the provinces Throughout the Ming period no regional treasuries were ever established in the provinces by the central government. Owing to the monolithic structure of the state, the primary fiscal function of all provincial and local governments was to serve the central government. There was no need for

1,1 Governmental organization

21

the central government to add regional offices in the provinces. The few fiscal installations considered in the present category were exceptional cases, each specializing in an inter-provincial service or a special type of revenue. They were the imperial commissionership in charge of the Grand Canal (2, i), and the managerial offices of the salt monopoly (5, i), tea and horse trade, maritime and inland customs duty, and the forest levy (6, i and iv). It may be noted here that in theory most of these offices were under provincial jurisdiction. But when the censors were dispatched to exercise surveillance over the salt monopoly and tea and horse trade, they actually became fiscal officers operating in the provinces under the emperor's authority. They reduced the operating agencies, still nominally under provincial jurisdiction, to the status of their direct subordinates. In order to avoid duplication, detailed descriptions of these offices will be postponed until the discussion of the services and revenues under their management. However, it may be observed that in general the efficiency of these offices was low, and the revenues under their management never reached levels comparable to those of the T'ang and Sung. In part this was due to the fact that at the beginning of the dynasty the Ming had neglected commerce as a major source of state income. Although the material requisitions under the Ming were comprehensive, more emphasis was placed on goods that were actually needed for use by the state; consideration of their intrinsic financial value was secondary. The aforementioned managerial offices were moreover scattered over the empire without an effective chain of command to back them. As will be seen in the forthcoming chapters, this lack of organizational support induced some of the agencies in the later part of the dynasty to maintain a de facto joint administration with the provincial officials. Provincial government and local government The primary consideration behind the organization of the provincial and local governments was that of fiscal management. An edict in 1373 assigned upper, middle, or lower grades to the prefectures of the empire. The first category included those prefectures which produced an annual land tax income of 200,000 piculs of grain* or more, the prefect to be ranked 3b; the second category embraced those whose annual income was less than 200,000 piculs but more than 100,000 piculs, the prefect being ranked 4a. All other prefects were of the lowest category and ranked 4b. Apparently in the early years of the dynasty it was expected that the tax quotas of all territorial units would be revised from time to time to reflect changes in population and land data; the status of each unit, together with the rank of its administrator, would then be adjusted accordingly. The system was too * For explanation see: A note on weights and measures, p. xiv.

22

Fiscal organization and general practices

cumbersome to be carried out in full; by 1371 the empire already had 12 provinces, 120 prefectures, 108 subprefectures and 887 counties.39 (In later years their numbers increased to 13, 140, 193, and 1,138 respectively.) Nor was any periodic revision of the tax quotas of the territorial units seriously attempted, most districts retaining their tax quotas on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. Even though in the sixteenth century there were still scattered cases where counties were promoted to subprefectures or vice versa, they were increasingly rare in occurrence. In the meantime officials were ranked equally according to the levels of administration, with the exception of the two prefects in Nanking and Peking who were one grade higher than their counterparts elsewhere.40 The local government could be arranged in either four or three tiers. The four-tier pattern included the province, prefecture, subprefecture and county in descending order. The three-tier type involved a subprefecture directly subordinate to the provincial government (without any intermediate prefecture), or else a county directly subordinate to a prefecture (without any intermediate subprefecture).41 There were also subprefectures, which, while subordinate to prefectures, had no counties under them. The two metropolitan areas, namely North Chihli and South Chihli, each the size of a province, had no provincial administration, their prefects and subprefects reported directly to the central government. Consequently, in the national accounts the 8 prefectures of North Chihli and 15 prefectures and 3 independent subprefectures of South Chihli were never consolidated under the respective metropolitan areas. The fiscal data of these 26 units were placed on the same footing as those of the 13 provinces. These different patterns again reflected a primary concern for fiscal administration. The guiding principle behind it was that the county was a basic tax-collecting unit, the prefecture a basic accounting unit, and the province a revenue transit unit. Whenever possible, the seat of a county government was located within one day's travel distance from its borders. The size of the county, therefore, was more or less predetermined. The offices of the higher echelons also had to be centrally located among their subordinate units to facilitate operations. It was moreover necessary that all those governmental offices be situated in walled cities and population centres for convenience with regard to military operations, their own maintenance, and land and water transportation. In special circumstances the Ming court could actually relocate a sizeable city merely to suit administrative purposes. Yet, territorial organization could not completely ignore geographical and historical factors. In the selection of a prefectural capital, in particular, they had to balance the demands of organizational uniformity and the physical advantages of the sites. The creation of subprefectures eliminated the difficulty when the divergent demands could not all be reconciled. Most of them had the effect of breaking the large

1,1 Governmental organization

23

prefectures into administratively manageable units; others accommodated those districts which had an intermediate level of revenue but were, however, disadvantageously located geographically. Created to adjust imbalances, the subprefectural government had no distinctive features of its own. When the subprefecture was subordinate to a prefecture, it functioned as a branch office of the prefect. If the subprefecture was immediately subordinate to a province, it functioned as a prefecture of a minor order. In the latter case its fiscal accounts were put on the same footing as those of the prefectures.42 When a level of government became unnecessary in the chain of command, it was eliminated. Since fiscally the provincial government served mainly as a relayer of revenue, it was not required in the two metropolitan areas whose prefectures and subprefectures were conveniently close to the northern and southern capitals. According to their organizational principles there was no great difference between the central government and local government. All provincial and local officials down to county magistrates were appointed by the throne. All revenues, in a sense, were imperial income. There was no expenditure of the central government that could not be paid by provincial and local officials. This monolithic order was slightly compromised during the later years, notably in the southern provinces after the mid sixteenth century. Nevertheless even then the parcelling-out of funds was never clear, definite and thorough. In most instances every item of income was shared by both the central government and the provincial government. The relative fiscal autonomy in specific areas could only be considered, at least in theory, as growing out of standing authorizations which permitted their officials to disburse some of the funds on the spot on behalf of the throne, without frequent requests for prior approval. The funds thus disbursed were not recognized as institutionalized local revenue.43 Most of the provincial and local officials delivered portions of their tax proceeds to the various receiving depots according to established procedures. Some of those depots were located on the northern frontier, some in Peking or Nanking, and some quite close to the point of origin of the taxes. Some but not all of the deliveries were consolidated at prefectural and provincial levels. A consignment delivered outside the fiscal officer's district constituted an item of ch'i-yiin, literally a 'checked-out item', which will however be referred to as 'transferred revenue'. Upon the completion of delivery the item was removed from the local administrator's jurisdiction. The balance retained within the territory was called ts'un-liu, literally a 'staying-in item', but will be termed 'retained revenue'. Any tax income could simultaneously comprise portions of transferred revenue and portions of retained revenue for the collecting district. From the retained revenue the local officials drew their salaries. The stipends due to govern-

24

Fiscal organization and general practices

ment students and imperial clansmen were also derived from this portion, as were local relief payments authorized by the emperor. Any surplus was kept by the provincial or local official for the crown, and could not be disposed of without the emperor's approval. From time to time the central government directed the provincial and local officials to make local procurements (tso-pari), build ships, construct palaces for imperial princes, or make unscheduled deliveries; all such expenses were also met from the retained revenue. This practice meant that most of the provincial and local officials, down to county magistrates, were simultaneously regional treasurers of the imperial government. An item of retained revenue was neither a surplus nor a local revenue, but represented the account managed by a local official when he acted in the capacity of a minor regional treasurer of the empire. All territories were expected to be self-sufficient and only in exceptional cases were grants-in-aid dispatched from adjacent districts by order of the central government. In the 1580s and 1590s, when Yunnan was fighting a border war with Burmese leader Nanda Bayin, the governor repeatedly petitioned Peking for aid and for some time the emperor authorized subsidies from Szechuan. In 1594, however, the governor was finally instructed to manage the affair with the resources of the province and no more subsidy was forthcoming.44 It reaffirmed the principle that interprovincial aid was not to be lightly granted. This decentralized operation under centralized control meant that among officials of all levels, the county magistrate always had the heaviest fiscal responsibilities. For this reason, in discussing the particular functions of the various offices, it is easier to start from the county upward than to descend from the province downward. Except for the maritime and inland customs duties, the forest produce levy, the salt revenue, and some administrative incomes which were collected and managed by special agencies and higher offices, practically all state revenues passed through the hands of the county magistrate. The collection of land taxes, including the surcharges, was completed at the county level. Most of the magistrates also handled local business tax, stamp tax, store franchise fees, license fees, excise on wine and vinegar, fines, payments for rationed salt, and part of the fish duty. (For such miscellaneous incomes, see chapter 6.) The magistrate managed public land in his district, filled material requisitions, called statutory laborers to serve at various state agencies and when the services were commuted, collected payments for them. Wherever land reclamation programs were in effect, or horse-stabling services by civilian households were required, or the proceeds from military farming had to be collected, all responsibility for them fell on the magistrate. In addition he conducted the periodic population registration, compiled the Yellow Book, organized the village communities

1, I Governmental organization

25

in the so-called li-chia service system, appointed tax captains for tax deliveries (1, n), reported natural disasters for tax remissions and administered famine relief. While there were few imperial agencies in the provinces, there were still fewer provincial and prefectural fiscal agencies in the counties. Normally the offices of the higher echelons were located in the walled cities which also happened to be provincial and prefectural capitals. In a few cases the higher offices operated fiscal installations such as business tax stations immediately adjacent to those cities. Otherwise, the territory of a county was under the undivided authority of its magistrate. 45 The costs of office maintenance, apart from salaries, were not borne by the ordinary revenue, but derived from special materials and labor requisitions from the village communities, the li-chia. These materials and services were not furnished merely for the maintenance of the magistrate's own office, however. Allocations from them were also made to all superior offices, because aside from li-chia requisitions no other funds were provided for operating expenses. The procedure was not changed even after the commutation of material and labor requisitions into silver payments. Such entires as '20 taels of silver, this county's contribution to the wages paid to the prefect's sedan chair bearers', and '18 taels, our share of stationery expenses for the provincial administration commission', appear in all late Ming editions of local gazetteers. Some of the proceeds from local collections went all the way to the capital. In the later sixteenth century the two county magistrates in Peking were still responsible for providing food, money, and stationery for the triennial civil service examinations, which were a function of the imperial government. Regional offices of the central government, though few in number, also derived their office maintenance funds from local collections. The messengers, doormen, and guards for the Ch'ing-chiang-p'u forest-produce collecting station, an agency of the ministry of works, were always supplied by Shan-yang county in which it was located.46 This practice in itself probably to an extent inhibited the central government from establishing too many branch offices in the provinces, because their operating expenses were inevitably an extra burden to the local population. A related practice was that officials in charge of special functions were concurrently given provincial assignments. The commissioner in charge of the Grand Canal, for instance, was concurrently appointed the governor of Huai-an, so that he could use local resources to establish his logistical base. The upkeep of local police, militia, transport offices and postal stations, and the normal maintenance of waterworks within the county, were also among the magistrate's duties. Since most counties were expected to be self-sufficient, the li-chia collection fell more heavily on those counties along major land and water routes. Sometimes the magistrate appealed

26

Fiscal organization and general practices

and secured a grant-in-aid from an adjacent district. Such a grant, as has been mentioned, was an exception rather than a rule. The understating of the central government was duplicated at the local level. Governing an area of some 500 to 1,000 square miles, with a population ranging from 30,000 to 250,000, the magistrate's regular staff included only three members of civil service status: the vice-magistrate, the assistant magistrate, and the docket officer. Some of the officers in charge of the county granary, police force, business tax, postal station, and fish duty might also have civil service status, but such positions were not established in all counties.47 Most of the workers in the county government were lesser functionaries. Sometimes the county magistrates assigned normal administrative duties to the district Confucian instructors. The government had no functionaries in the rural areas; during the reign of Hung-wu in fact the magistrates were not even permitted to leave their cities. At the intermediate level, the prefect's fiscal responsibility was largely supervisory. The prefect saw to it that all the scheduled tax deliveries were properly carried out and the reserves were kept in good order. He also operated a number of revenue and service agencies including a prefectural granary, police, postal, business-tax and fish-duty stations, though not all these installations existed in every prefecture. In some areas there were major watergates in the canals and rivers, and government mines, pastures, dyeing, weaving, and miscellaneous manufacturing plants, which also required the prefect's supervision. At the beginning of the dynasty taxes were fixed for each prefectural unit. Since the later fourteenth century prefectural tax quotas were relatively settled (2, i), only a few internal readjustments being made from time to time. The prefect had a certain unspecific authority to readjust the quotas of the subordinate counties. Those readjustments could be formal or informal. Approval from provincial authorities or the throne and the concurrence of surveillance officials might or might not be sought, depending on the circumstances. Normally no prefect would increase or decrease a county's tax quota outright, but he could suggest the switching of tax deliveries, the modification of surcharges, or the revision of commutation rates, thus in effect reapportioning to some extent the tax burden of the subordinate counties. Some vigorous prefects and their county magistrates actually revised internal tax procedures, directed the reapportionment of payments among individual taxpayers, and even carried out local land surveys.48 But all this depended upon the prefect's or the magistrate's personal character, prestige, and resourcefulness. The local official exercised his discretionary powers at a certain risk, and he expected no explicit authorization from his superiors. He was protected only by the

1,1 Governmental organization

27

general understanding that since he was obliged to produce his regional tax quota he should have some freedom in devising the best possible method. After his revised tax procedure had been in effect for some time it would become established and gain the respectability of customary law. On the other hand he had also to take into account the possibility of local resistance and impeachment by censorial officials if he carried his program too far. Most prefectures supervised only a handful of subprefectures and counties, usually less than ten. But there were exceptional cases. K'ai-feng prefecture of Honan had four subprefectures and thirty counties. Tsi-nan prefecture of Shantung had four subprefectures and twenty-six counties. The size of prefectural government could also vary widely. A prefect might be assisted by one vice-prefect or seven,49 and the number of his other staff members varied similarly. The record office of the prefectural government, or the county government, which employed a sizeable number of lesser functionaries, was organized into six sections to correspond to six ministries of the central government. As might be expected, the duties of a subprefect resembled those of a prefect administering a smaller district or of a magistrate administering a large county. Executive organs were less integrated at the provincial level. The provincial administration office was the chief fiscal agency, but the surveillance commissioner's office was also authorized to inspect water-control projects, the tribute grain, land reclamation, salt administration, postal services, and sometimes military defense. The investigatory function of the surveillance commissioner in the course of time often came to exceed its original limits.50 Practically every surveillance commissioner produced some income of his own, partly through fines and confiscations and partly through commuting the services and supplies required for the various projects and programs under his supervision. One of the functions of the surveillance commissioner was to check and rectify abuses in tax administration. As an extension of this, some surveillance commissioners set up ground rules for collecting silver payments as service levy. In so doing they were virtually acting as tax legislators. Two outstanding surveillance commissioners who did this in the sixteenth century were P'an Chi-hsiin (1521-95) in Kwangtung (3, i) and P'ang Shang-p'eng (Chin-shih, 1553) in Chekiang (3, m), both of whom were instrumental in devising the Single Whip Reform. The provincial administration office was headed by two administrative commissioners, of the left and the right, the former being the senior. The office kept vital statistical records, corresponded with the ministries on budgetary, taxation and procurement matters, and was responsible for all cash deposits, granary reserves, and warehouse stocks within the province.

28

Fiscal organization and general practices

In the early years of the dynasty the administration office had a much smaller operating capacity. Few provincial administration offices had revenue offices directly under them. After the supply depots were taken over from the army in the early fifteenth century, all granaries in the interior provinces were managed by prefects and magistrates; provincial granaries existed only in the frontier areas.51 But the material-processing and manufacturing plants, warehouses, and armories were placed at the provincial level so that the administration office could fulfill the function of a maintenance and transit agency. There were also provincial mints in most provinces. The fiscal function of the provinces steadily increased during the middle period, due to the increasing use of silver which permitted some degree of concentration of financial resources at the provincial level. The decline of the military colony system (wei-so), which forced the provincial officials to organize their own defense, was also conducive to the extension of fiscal authority in the provinces. This development was by no means balanced, however. Provincial officials, especially in the southern region, had considerable freedom in administering those revenues designated as 'military supplies' (ping-hsiang); yet in many other matters they were still much restricted by the standing operating procedures. The appointment of provincial governors, which began in 1430, was the cause of considerable organizational ambiguity. Originally the governorship was not intended to be a permanent office, nor was the governor nrsant to be a regional executive officer. A governor was an individual delegated by the central government to tour a particular province or a part of a metropolitan area. But in practice governors came to hold their positions as regular appointments; they consolidated their offices at the provincial level and treated the administrative commissioners as their staff members. Yet the fiscal responsibility of the provincial administration office was never completely shifted to the office of the governor. In general governors submitted their memorials directly to the emperor and the administrative commissioners maintained their regular channel of communication with the ministries, the former reporting on specific matters and the latter on routine business. Right to the end of the dynasty it was the provincial administrative commissioner, not the governor, who was held responsible by the ministries for fiscal delinquencies in a province, such as tax arrears. Moreover the fiscal administration of more than 100 separate administrative units proved too burdensome a task for the provincial administration office. Numerous difficulties arose if the office had to confine its activities within the provincial capital. In the Yung-lo period, senior staff members of the commissioners were authorized to operate branch offices within the provinces. Originally an informal arrangement, this delegation of authority later became formalized. As the system developed, both the administrative

1,1 Governmental organization

29

commissioners and surveillance commissioners had 'circuit intendants' strategically located in the provinces, some performing specific functions in wide areas, others supervising general administration within limited districts. There was a great variety. Furthermore even some of the prefectures in the metropolitan areas were placed within the authority of circuit intendants from the adjacent provinces.52 The earlier purpose of establishing circuits was to expedite field operations and to exercise close scrutiny over local administration. But the decentralization, once started, tended to gain momentum. From the sixteenth century onwards many circuit intendants made on-the-spot decisions on fiscal matters; they sometimes approved local tax legislation initiated by the prefects. Even the court in Peking began to assign specific duties to the individual circuits. On balance, the circuit intendants, performed a useful function: they introduced some measure of decentralization within a much too centralized governmental structure. A point to be observed is that in normal accounting a circuit was not a regular fiscal unit. Only on special occasions did the circuit intendants actually handle revenue, and they had no formal responsibility as fiscal officers. Fiscal administration of the army At the beginning of the dynasty military commanders took a much more active role in public finance than they did in the later period. Most of the granaries were placed under the army's control. The army itself had its own administrative organs starting at the lowest level with the military colony (wei) and independent battalion (so), and surmounted by the five military commissions at the capital. The lowest grade in the military bureaucracy was 6b and army officers always held higher ranks than their civil service counterparts. After the first quarter of the fifteenth century, nevertheless, the influence of the whole military hierarchy rapidly dwindled. The first blow came in 1425, when the Hung-hsi Emperor assigned a number of civil officials to assist the unlearned military commanders with their administrative duties. From this precedent evolved the military defense circuits of the later days. Thenceforth the military defense circuit intendants, being civil officials of the surveillance branch of the provincial government, all but took over the administrative functions of the district commanders.53 In 1435 by order of the Cheng-t'ung Emperor, all granaries hitherto under military management were turned over to the civil administration, the only exceptions being those in Liao-tung (Manchuria), Kan-su,* Ning-hsia,* Wan-ch'iian, and some coastal areas where the military colonies were located beyond * Under the Ming those were frontier military districts, not to be confused with the modern provinces bearing the same names.

30

Fiscal organization and general practices

the territories of counties and prefectures.54 This realignment significantly reduced the fiscal authority of the army officers and further integrated land revenues derived from military and civilian sources. From local gazetteers it can be seen that in the later period provincial officials handled the production of the military colonies, paid in kind or in cash, in just the same way as they did the land taxes. The two kinds of revenue began to merge (7, n). This in turn meant that the army was accountable to the civil government for its grain production. All these measures, nevertheless, did not diminish the nominal fiscal responsibilities of the regional military commissioner, nor of the army officer on administrative duty at the provincial level. An imperial edict dated 1554 still required him to submit annual reports specifying the food production and consumption of his command, and quarterly reports on fort repairs and equipment maintenance. The reports were transmitted to one of the five chief military commissions in Peking, and thence either to the ministry of revenue or to the ministry of works according to the nature of the business.55 It is doubtful, though, that such reports had much practical value, aside from their use for general reference purposes, since by then the regional commissioner could no longer be considered a fiscal officer in the same way as he had been earlier. For his own office maintenance the regional military commissioner made a special requisition from the military households in his territory, resembling the li-chia collection of the civil government. A local gazetteer from north China dated 1609 indicates that the procedure remained in effect up to that time.56 The collection was supervised by the civil government, but the proceeds were submitted to the commissioner's office. On the northern frontier the regional military commissioners remained autonomous until the mid fifteenth century, but thereafter there was an even more complete takeover of these districts by the civil bureaucracy. Governors and governors-general were appointed to administer the frontier posts and territories, with regional inspectors and vice-inspectors to assist them. They built a new chain of command, reducing the military commanders to the status of their deputies and subordinates. In fact, few officers were ever appointed as military commissioners thereafter. The senior army officer in a frontier region was usually a vice military commissioner {tu chih-hui fung-chih) or assistant commissioner {tu chih-hui ch'ien-shih). Those titles signified the holders' ranks rather than their assignments. The assignment was termed tsung-ping, or commander-in-chief, a position that differed drastically from that of a regional administrator. In the later part of the sixteenth century even the maintenance of the army at the lower levels fell into the hands of civil officials. Swarms of them, holders of nominal assignments as directors and secretaries of the ministry of revenue, and as prefectural judges and vice-magistrates of the interior provinces,

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moved into the border lands. Some of them took over army administrative functions down to the battalion level.57 The aristocracy The aristocracy in Ming times could never lawfully interfere with governmental operation. Only a few distinguished military commanders were granted aristocratic titles as dukes, marquises and earls, as were some of the emperors' in-laws. They received no fiefs; none commanded a personal army. Most of them were stipendiary members of the military hierarchy, although they passed their titles to their descendants. Even the most powerful among them, the Mu family in Yunnan, whose members held the position of senior army commander in that province throughout the dynasty and occupied large tracts of land, did not come anywhere near reducing that province to a private domain. Imperial princes, including the emperor's uncles, younger brothers, and sons with the exception of the heir apparent, were all removed from the capital upon attaining maturity. They were given territorial titles, but in reality the so-called principalities existed only on paper, reminiscent in a way of the British aristocracy in recent days.58 On the other hand each prince under the Ming received a magnificent residence provided by the state, usually in a remote province but never near the coastal region. In addition he was granted an annual stipend, normally 10,000 piculs of grain. His small staff was appointed and salaried by the state, while household attendants were furnished by the local districts. A detachment of some 3,000 men, also on the payroll of the imperial army, was assigned to each prince of the first degree as his personal guard. The only function of a prince of the first degree was to provide moral leadership for all imperial clansmen under his jurisdiction. The title of the prince and its accompanying privileges were inherited by the eldest son, while other descendants were granted lesser titles and smaller stipends. All imperial clansmen, that is, descendants of the founding emperor, were supported by the state for life. Their given names were assigned by the ministry of rites and entered in the 'jade genealogy'. None of them, including the princes, could leave his city of residence without the emperor's approval. None of them was permitted to enter the civil or military service. They were not eligible for the civil service examination and not allowed to engage in trade. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the number of imperial clansmen grew to unmanageable proportions. Only in the later sixteenth century was the last rule revoked owing to the government's continued defaulting on their stipends.59 The emergence of aristocratic estates, embracing large tracts of land, was a development of the later fifteenth century. At about the same time the

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Fiscal organization and general practices

emperor's in-laws, along with the eunuchs, began to take advantage of the state monopoly of salt and thereby created considerable disturbance in the empire's fiscal administration. But such abuses, even then connived at by the emperor in question, were usually corrected during subsequent reigns. The privileges of the aristocrats were never institutionalized.

II RURAL ORGANIZATION AND BASIS OF TAXATION The Yellow Book Ten years before the founding of the dynasty, Hung-wu had already decreed that all the population and households under his control be properly registered. In 1370 he personally directed that each household be issued with a registration certificate.60 The first Yellow Book was compiled in 1381 and with it came the li-chia system. Thereafter census-taking was supposed to be carried out once every ten years. The last census was conducted in 1641-2, only two years before the collapse of the dynasty. The population records were made in four sets, so that copies could be deposited with the county, prefectural, and provincial governments. The fourth copy was submitted to the imperial government, which constructed a special depository outside the city walls of Nanking for their storage (2, n). This last copy had a yellow cover, from which the term 'Yellow Book' (huang-ts'e) was derived. Most of the households under registration were classified into one of four categories, namely, the general population, hereditary military families, artisans, and saltern households.61 The most complicated category was probably that of artisans. These were classified according to trade as masons, carpenters, weavers, printers, etc. Apparently in the early Ming the members of a household were supposed to be permanently confined to their district of registration. Private travel, for which passports were required, was not forbidden outright but was nevertheless discouraged.62 Those who stayed outside their districts of registration for prolonged periods had to report to local officials. Persons who were not bona fide merchants and applied as such were punished. After the mid fifteenth century these restrictions could no longer be enforced and were gradually relaxed. There is some evidence nevertheless that local officials still occasionally issued passports in the sixteenth century. The vocational classification, applicable to households instead of individuals, implied that a family trade was to be inherited in perpetuity. Sons and nephews were expected to follow in the steps of their fathers and uncles. Yet the state never insisted on rigid social stratification. No decree was issued to effect class segregation. No law was ever proclaimed to prohibit marriages between different groups. The vocational registration

1, II Rural organization and basis of taxation

33

was designed entirely for maintaining the army and servicing the government. The state merely demanded that each type of household provide it with a specialized type of service. In practice as long as sufficient carpenters could be summoned to provide unpaid labor in the state construction projects, the government was unconcerned if the sons of a registered carpenter took to professions other than carpentry. Even in the early years substitutes were accepted without question. The hereditary military families filled the vacancies in the army, but their remaining members chose their occupations freely and were as eligible for the civil service examinations as the general population. In fact a number of top civil officials under the Ming originally came from hereditary military families.63 Another feature of the system was that merchants did not appear as a major category in the register though some city-dwellers, while registered as general population, were marked as 'wealthy households' or 'shopkeeper households'. They were required to make good the special purchase orders occasionally issued by the government, and to make forced contributions now and then. The coverage of the population registration was so broad that few escaped the service obligation. The nobility, government officials, and qualified students, along with their family members, were partially or totally exempted. Care was taken that Buddhist monks and Taoist priests be licensed for a fee. According to a policy declared during the Hung-wu period, the licensed ecclesiastics ought to have performed general service,64 but in practice they were excused. With these few exceptions each subject made some form of service contribution to the state. Hunters for instance had to surrender to the government a certain number of animal skins each year.65 Similarly, salt workers toiled for the state to fulfill their productive quota in exchange for a small grain payment. Even musicians were liable to be called to perform without compensation.66 Households of this sort which did not fall into the major categories were registered under the heading 'miscellaneous'. As the demand for unpaid services continued to grow, there was a multiplication of these miscellaneous households in the later part of the dynasty. A family assigned to tend to the vegetable garden of an imperial prince was called a 'vegetable household', one acting as caretaker of the tomb of the nobility a 'tomb household'. The family of a palace woman was designated a 'female household', a term that applied somewhat incongruously to her male relatives. But on account of their having placed a daughter or a sister at the service of the inner court, they were exempted from the services normally required from the general population.

34

Fiscal organization and general practices The li-chia system and the service levy

The most essential services were furnished by the rural communities. In the villages the population was organized into the li-chia. Every 110 households formed a //, or a village community. Each // was divided into ten chia, or sections, consisting of 10 households each. The remaining 10 households reckoned to be the largest and most affluent among the 110, took it in annual turns to be the li chief. Likewise each year a particular chia was called to service. Under the direction of the //chief of the year, it performed the local tax collection and delivery, and met all material and labor requisitions on behalf of the entire li. The other units paid their regular taxes, but were not liable to service obligations that year. Thus in a decennial period all households took a one-year turn at discharging their service obligations. After the ten-year cycle a new census was taken and all li-chia were reorganized in accordance with the changes that had occurred during the decade. With certain variations, the wards and precincts in the cities were organized along similar lines. The service obligations fulfilled by the li-chia were referred to by contemporaries as /, sometimes translated as 'service'. It was more than labor service however, for it also included the contribution and handling of materials and always some small cash payments. As it was basically a form of taxation it will be in this work referred to as 'service levy'. When taxes were paid in kind the local collectors were responsible for the measuring, sorting, packing, temporary storage and final delivery of the commodities, sometimes but not always involving long-distance haulage. Corvee labor in the Ming again far exceeded the prototype that was customarily employed in local road and waterwork maintenance, the latter kind could be and was in fact called for beyond the regular li-chia rotation. The li-chia obligation included labor services such as providing office attendants for all echelons of the administration, from the county all the way up to the imperial government. Aside from the doormen, guards, messengers, and sedan-chair bearers mentioned earlier, the cooks, buglers, boatmen, patrolmen, jailers, grooms at government stables, receiving men in the warehouses, operators of canal watergates, and clerical assistants wherever required, were also drafted from the general population. Material requisitions from the li-chia were quite extensive. First of all, each community supplied the local government offices with its share of the required stationery, oil, charcoal, and candles. Military equipment including swords, bows, arrows, and winter uniforms were also contributed by the population. With few exceptions, all communities had their contribution quotas. Botanic and mineral drugs for the imperial academy of medicine were selected from the best specimens from various locales, and practically every community had to furnish its share of these. Local

1, II Rural organization and basis of taxation

35

delicacies were submitted to the court of imperial entertainments, as was the calendar paper for the imperial astronomy. Palace supplies, notably tea, wax, pigments, and lacquer, were regularly delivered by the areas which produced them. To take an extreme case, when the Ning-kuo prefecture of South Chihli was called upon to provide sweeping brooms for the imperial palace, the prefectural quota was then divided among all the li-chia in the subordinate counties.67 All the articles cited above were scheduled and their quantities fixed on an annual basis. The local gazetteers called them sui-pan, or 'annual contributions'. There were other items for which quantities were not fixed and deliveries were spread over a number of years, for example colored paper requisitioned once every three years and sulphur and nitrates once every ten years for the ministry of works.68 The gazetteers referred to these as tsa-pan, or 'miscellaneous contributions'. In a different category from requisitions were purchase orders of the central government that were fulfilled by the local government. As already explained, these were called tso-pan or local procurement, and their costs were supposed to be paid with the district's retained revenue. As will be seen later (3, m), when after the mid sixteenth century some of the tso-pan orders were unpaid or only partially paid, they were transformed into sui-pan and fulfilled by the village communities. The sui-pan, tsa-pan and tso-pan thus became the three 'contributions' of the local community. Although they might appear under slightly different headings in the financial sections of the county gazetteers, their occurrence was universal.69 Theoretically at least, all the materials on requisition enumerated so far could have been furnished by the villagers in the form of local produce. The service levy however also embraced a number of items that made cash payment inevitable. It must be noted that other than the li-chia requisition, the government had no funds for providing banquets at the local level, for entertaining visiting dignitaries, or even for escorting and executing prisoners. The expenses of official travel, constructing and repairing office buildings, delivering New Year and birthday greetings to the emperor, erecting monuments, and sponsoring local candidates for civil service examinations were likewise borne by the li-chia, which was the regular and only source of supply. The actual assessment of the service levy on the villagers varied from one county to another. The basic fiscal unit was the ting, or able-bodied male, but the call for material and labor services was directed not to individuals, but to households. In principle, the apportionment of the burden was to take into account the number of male adults in the household and its property-holding. Unlike the land taxes, which applied general rates to all taxpayers, the service levy thus maintained some spirit of progressive taxation. At the beginning of the dynasty all households were classified

36

Fiscal organization and general practices

into upper, middle, and lower categories, so that that service obligations could be distributed accordingly.70 The i was therefore neither a poll tax nor a property tax, but a combination of both. The general trend in the later part of the dynasty was to emphasize the latter more than the former. The gradual commutation of service obligations into silver payments and the partial absorption of the service levy by the land taxes caused numerous problems everywhere (3, in). The fundamental difficulty stemmed from the fact that the two types of taxation had been based on divergent principles. The demand for adaptation to local needs also conflicted with the requirement that at least minimal imperial uniformity be maintained. The li-chia system and the service levy were clearly designed to suit the village commodity economy. The extensive labor requisitions provided the outlet for under-employment in the villages and the material requisitions permitted local products to be submitted as tax payments without the need to market them. When there was a fixed demand for service by the government, the system was not at all absurd. Even though it resembled drawing water from a deep well, not merely bucket by bucket but also drop by drop, the villages' delivery of materials and provision of labor was regular and automatic. This saved the government many logistical problems and reduced its administrative overhead. Yet during the middle of the dynasty the gradual sophistication of governmental functions and the increasing demand for services, against a background of fundamental economic change, made both the li-chia and the collection of the service levy outdated. Though the chun-yao method and the Single Whip Reform were provided as remedies for this, throughout the Ming period these village organizations were never abolished, nor was the fiscal scheme of defraying the operating costs of the government by direct impositions on the villages discarded. The result was that the land taxes were complicated. Since the service levy was partially and indirectly assessed on landed properties it made the tax burden on the latter not only difficult to readjust but also difficult to calculate. Other service obligations fulfilled by the general population In the early years of the dynasty the additional obligations were in the area of transportation. One such was the 'tax captaincy' (liang-chang) established in 1371. In general it applied to the central and eastern provinces where the population density and the presence of large landowners made the system workable. Local officials were ordered to divide their territories into tax districts of an annual tax assessment of 10,000 piculs of grain each. The largest taxpayer of each district became the tax captain. He was responsible for mobilizing the population in his district and conducting the designated delivery. An order of 1373 further specified that each tax

1, II Rural organization and basis of taxation

37

captain should be assisted by one bookkeeper, twenty measurers, and a thousand porters, all drafted from the tax-paying population.71 The li-chia system and the tax captaincy complemented each other. The /*, composed of 110 households, was roughly the size of an average village. Tax captains, who numbered thirty or forty in a medium-sized county, resembled headmen of townships. A tax captain might have ten, twenty, or thirty li under his jurisdiction. The li chief collected tax payments in the villages and furnished the tax captain with the required manpower. The latter consolidated the payments and planned and carried out the delivery. All administrative details pertaining to packing, routing, and temporary storage of the tax grain, selection and procurement of transportation, organizing the convoy and maintaining its logistical support were decided by him. The transportation costs had been collected from the taxpayers on a pro rata basis, but any losses and spoilage of the commodities in his custody had to be made good by the tax captain. The tax captain who was unpaid, received his commission from the local magistrate, but had to proceed to the Nanking ministry of revenue to receive the stub-book in person, and was held accountable for tax arrears in his district. On the other hand he wielded unspecified power in the rural areas. In the days of Hung-wu he was given audience by the emperor: in 1381 the sovereign is said to have received 1,325 tax captains from Kiangsi and Chekiang on one day.72 Tax captains and their family members could also in those days utilize their positions as stepping stones to governmental posts. When they committed a misdemeanor, the punishment was drastically reduced. A death sentence could be commuted to beating or fines.73 The foremost study of tax captaincy to date is that by Liang Fang-chung. Liang's investigation, based on local gazetteers, discloses that the system was definitely institutionalized in South Chihli, Chekiang, Kiangsi, Hukwang and Fukien. It was also applied, probably to a lesser extent, in Shantung, Shensi and Honan. Even in some remote provinces, such as Szechuan, where it was not generally introduced, similar delivery agents were sometimes appointed.74 The organization of the army transportation corps on the Grand Canal (2, i) in time reduced the usefulness of the system. From the mid fifteenth century the district under each captaincy was reduced in size and at the same time the position was filled by several households jointly, signifying that the Ming court could no longer commandeer the top gentry for this purpose. The lesser landowners who came to undertake the task could never be as effective tax expediters as their predecessors.75 In a rural area it was obviously much easier for a man who owned 10,000 mou of land (see p. 40) to give orders to owners of 500 mou than vice versa. Presumably the decline of the tax captaincy as an intermediary between the government and the general population also affected the operation of the li-chia

38

Fiscal organization and general practices

system. Inadequate control over the rural areas subsequently became one of the fundamental defects of the fiscal system. The tax captaincy survived as long as the dynasty, however. Right up to the Ming collapse the annual delivery of some 214,000 piculs of highly polished grain for palace consumption in Peking was still handled by civilian agents called chieh-hu, or 'tax transmitting households', a modified form of the captaincy. This consignment, along with many other miscellaneous deliveries, was never taken over by the army transportation corps (4, i).76 The imperial postal system operated 1,030 relay stations in the provinces.77 It was nominally subordinate to the ministry of war, but its logistical support was entirely decentralized. In the Hung-wu period the duty of servicing the stations was assigned to individual taxpayers of substantial means, outside the li-chia system, or to political prisoners whose punishments were commuted to service obligations. During the middle period the burden was gradually shifted to the general population. At the same time the postal stations began to find that their primary function was no longer sending on documents, but rather providing transportation and hostel services for travelling officials and foreign tributary missions. The demand for sedan chairs, horses, boats, food and drink, along with labor requirements, rose sharply. Local li-chia, sometimes assisted by adjacent districts, filled their requisition orders. The additional service for the postal stations, the i-cKuan, was however separated from the regular li-chia account, though the burden was borne by the same taxpayers. This was partly because the services and supplies were delivered via a different route but it was also due to the fact that the i-cKuan account was an unstable one, with a constant tendency to expand. In general, the service levy under the li-chia system increased steadily during the dynasty. The chiin-yao (equalization of labor service) and the minchuang (militia service) were introduced in the late fifteenth century, and for regional defense, the ping-hsiang (military supply) was added in the sixteenth century. These will be dealt with in later chapters (3, m and iv). Main features of land tax assessment The land tax (fu) provided by far the largest item of the state income. Even excluding the surtaxes and surcharges, it still produced on average some 27 million piculs of husked grain each year. The salt revenue, the second largest item, generated approximately only 10 per cent of this amount in comparable monetary value. But the collection of land taxes was a very complicated matter. To explore these complexities is one of the main

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39

purposes of this work and will occupy a large part of subsequent chapters. Here only the most outstanding features of the tax assessment will be outlined. The land tax followed the previous 'two tax system', which meant that the assessment was based on productivity. The' summer tax', paid basically in wheat, was originally set to be collected in the eighth lunar month of the year. The 'autumn grain', consisting basically of husked rice, was to be collected in the second month of the year after the harvest. Land which yielded double crops paid taxes twice.78 Under previous dynasties the summer tax also comprised a number of commodities such as cotton, silk, and tea, and the Ming in general retained those items. For the basic assessment the general fiscal unit was the picul of grain, either in husked rice or wheat depending upon local produce. A picul of wheat was considered as equal in value to a picul of husked rice, though the former was worth considerably less. But the equalization was only for the purpose of simplifying the accounting and no taxpayer could take advantage of the price differential. When the commodities were commuted to silver payments commutation rates for husked rice were generally higher than those for wheat. As early as the Hung-wu era substitutes were accepted. Land taxes in Yunnan were customarily paid in precious metals and mercury and even cowrie shells.79 In other regions sorghum, millet, and beans were accepted at discount rates. The acceptance of substitutes prior to the settlement of the regional tax quota should not be confused with commutation. The order was rather the reverse, with substituted commodities calculated in terms of quantities of staple grains so that the figures could be integrated into the national accounts. Such substitutes, at all events, did not constitute a high percentage of the total tax income. Commutation took place occasionally in the early years but became frequent in the sixteenth century. It could be ordered in two stages. For instance, a picul of husked rice was first commuted to a bolt of cotton cloth, and then the cloth was commuted to 0.3 taels of silver. The two stages could be separated by a span of over a century. There were also cases where one was permanent and the other temporary. The commutation rate might or might not follow market prices. Occasionally commutation was offered at deliberately lower rates as a form of tax relief. A particular rate therefore applied only to one specific tax consignment. It is difficult to say which order of commutation was permanent and which temporary. In general an order which had been in effect over a score of years could be considered to be permanently binding, yet there was no absolute guarantee that it would not be reversed or modified. In the sixteenth century court orders became more explicit, usually declaring whether the commutation was to be temporary or permanent.80 The rates moreover corresponded more closely to the market

40

Fiscal organization and general practices

prices. Despite the numerous commutations husked rice and wheat remained the basic tax standards throughout the dynasty. Even after a county collected more than 90 per cent of its land taxes in silver, the silver was still computed from the grain assessment. Taxpayers were required to deliver the payments to distant granaries and warehouses. In the beginning the state was not concerned with the collection of transportation fees. Local officials fixed such rates simply to prevent excessive collection by tax captains. But after some transportation was taken over by the government, as in the case of the tribute grain transported on the Grand Canal, it began to count the transportation fee as a part of its regular income. Even after the basic assessment was commuted to silver, the transportation fee was still assessed as if bulky cargo were in transit and still computed by the distance of haulage. In a few extreme cases the surcharges thus computed exceeded the value of the basic payment. The actual burden of' 1 picul of grain' therefore varied widely, depending upon whether the payment was made in silver, grain, or another commodity, what kind of transportation cost was involved, and the commutation rate applicable to that picul of grain. The most 'expensive' picul could cost the taxpayer seven times the amount paid for the least expensive picul. Surtaxes were distinguished from the surcharges. They usually involved hay, hemp and raw silk, collected along with grain payments in the productive areas. Nor should they be confused with li-chia requisitions, though in some special cases the same commodity, such as silk, could be duplicated in both surtaxes and li-chia annual contributions. Occasionally a county could have submitted a certain number of rolls of silk fabric in lieu of raw silk in its tax quota, only to receive another local procurement order from the court also asking for silk fabrics, although the latter were often specified to be of higher quality. Tax payments were determined by acreage under cultivation, the only exception being the land taxes paid by the aboriginee tribes in the southwest provinces where the chieftains handed over lump sums, the amount having been arrived at through negotiation rather than investigation of acreage. For other agricultural land the unit of measurement was the mou. Five feet constituted a pace, and 240 square paces a mou. A standard mou, therefore, covered approximately 6,000 square feet and was about the acreage of two tennis courts combined. Normally such an area of agricultural land in south China could be expected to produce 2 piculs of husked grain annually.81 The standard mou was more a concept rather than an actual fiscal unit. Contemporary sources indicate that on the richest soil in the Yangtze delta a standard mou could yield 3 piculs of husked rice. There were also claims

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that the yield per mou could reach 4 piculs.82 In the arid northwest, on the other hand, it was not uncommon that the yield per mou was below half a picul. Furthermore, on the less productive soil dry cereals were planted which had a lower market value. Sometimes wide variations in fertility could prevail in the same locality due to a peculiar water supply situation. The variations were further intensified by differences in labor supply. In general the most fertile land needed the least labor. Conversely, the least productive land demanded far more labor investment in irrigation and thus often cut per capita production to the minimum, such as in the case reported by Ho Liang-ch'iin (1506-73) in the mid sixteenth century in his native Hua-t'ing county of South Chihli, that five mou of land required the continuous toil of a husband-and-wife team.83 As universal application of the standard mou would clearly be unfair, an alternative was found in the so-called 'fiscal mou'. Ping-ti Ho, in connection with his study of the Chinese population, has amassed much data concerning fiscal mou conversion from an extensive survey of local gazetteers. In general, each mou of standard measurement which had a normal yield or better was still counted as a fiscal mou. The less productive land was converted into fiscal mou by counting one and a half, two, three, or even eight mou as a fiscal mou. The conversion was not based on any uniform scheme decreed by the central government, but rather every district was left to find its own formula. In some special cases the 240-square pace standard was completely ignored and instead, the local district introduced its own unit of measurement for the sake of convenience.84 The conversion method consequently showed a great variety; some of them were undoubtedly based on local usage and had a historic origin. Yet the conversion was by and large reasonable. After scrutinizing the gazetteers, one is left with the impression that through all the various devices an effort was made to guarantee that a fiscal mou of agricultural land should have a minimum annual productivity of 1 picul of husked rice or its equivalent. In many districts in the southern provinces, the level could have been 2 piculs, though this observation cannot be sufficiently documented as yet. The extant materials seem to suggest that even the fiscal mou conversion was not formally authorized by the central government. All this bears out the earlier observation that the attempt to impose a uniform land tax throughout the vast empire extended centralization beyond the technical capacity of the times. Though the Hung-wu Emperor proclaimed uniform tax rates for the individual prefectures, this goal was nowhere attained. The uniform rates mentioned in the Ta-Ming Hui-tien, namely 0.0335 piculs per mou and 0.0535 piculs per mou applicable to private and public land respectively, were no more than a general guideline in fixing the level of collection.85 Put into effect only in a few newly-settled counties and prefectures in north China, even this guideline still required

42

Fiscal organization and general practices

local revisions and internal readjustments. In south China the taxable land often included hills, ponds, and marshes, and frequently all these topographical features were present in the same piece of landed property. No uniform rates were possible. Those properties which had above normal yields also deserved to be taxed at higher rates. In addition, public land inherited from earlier dynasties, the confiscated land added by the new dynasty, and properties of which the tenure was in question, all presented problems of readjustment, inasmuch as under the Ming no attempt was made to separate rents due on government land from regular land taxes. Consequently, after the fiscal mou conversion each county was still required to differentiate the tax rates into different grades. In the later centuries, 5 or 6 grades could be considered typical for a county in north China. In south China a county's tax grades were seldom fewer than 20. In 1543 Hu-chou prefecture of Chekiang reported that it administered 599 grades of basic tax rates. Cheng Hsiao (1499-1566), writing at about the same time, disclosed that in seven counties of this same province, the tax rates ramified into 800 grades. With the inclusion of surtaxes and surcharges, those grades could swell to the thousands.86 Some of the complexities undoubtedly accumulated during the dynasty's later days; but their foundation had already been laid immediately after its birth. Complicated and ever-changing topographical features also presented a severe obstacle to the tax administration. There is no indication that under the Ming this obstacle was overcome. A laconic entry in the Ming-shih created an impression that during the Hung-wu period a national land survey had been conducted and the returns had been edited into the 'fishscale book' (yii-lin fu-ts'e), so-called because the topographical charts which outlined the contours and boundaries of every plot of land under cultivation resembled fish skin in appearance.87 Recent studies, however, point out that the statement is misleading. A land survey actually was conducted in Chekiang and South Chihli in 1386 and completed early the following year,88 but it was not a national land survey.89 While in other districts the fish-scale book is occasionally mentioned, there is no evidence that the field investigation followed a general standard or was under central direction. The fish-scale book was in fact by no means a Ming invention; its origin could be traced at least to the Sung. The Mongols had also prepared it in several southern provinces.90 On the other hand in the case of some districts in north China, such as Chi-hsien in Honan and Ta-ming prefecture of North Chihli, it is known that no fish-scale book had ever been compiled there until the sixteenth century.91 The multi-standard in fiscal mou conversion is further evidence that in the early Ming period there was little coordination in compiling land data. Doubtless it is too much to expect the Ming administrators in the fourteenth or fifteenth century to have overcome all the technical difficulties inherent in any

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attempt to establish a general standard for land classification, whereby all the cultivated acreage in China could be compiled in a few categories without disparity. Such a scheme might be difficult to effect even in modern times. Yet it is clear that while this fundamental problem remained unsolved the type of centralized administration attempted under the Ming was over-ambitious.

2

The heritage of the sixteenth century and major fiscal problems The origins of the problems treated in this chapter can for the most part be traced to the founding of the dynasty. When Hung-wu proclaimed himself emperor in 1368 he enjoyed freedom of action that few dynastic founders in Chinese history could ever have dreamed of. He had overthrown a hated and much discredited alien rule and he was not obliged to observe any existing statute or even customary practice unless it served his purpose. The country, exhausted by civil strife, was ready to accept deliverance by any form of law and order. In organizing his empire one of Hung-wu's major concerns was the preservation of his own power. His bureaucrats were expected to carry out the wishes of the crown, not to exercise their own initiative. Local officials were not even permitted to enter the rural areas.1 Villages were organized into self-governing units, with 'virtuous elders' assuming the responsibility of disciplining the populace in each local community.2 In fiscal administration, priority was given to accounting control rather than to field operations. The emperor's frugality was such that both the government budget and administrative overhead were reduced to a minimum.3 Since the supply procedure laid stress on lateral transactions at the lower level, there was no need to build up the logistical capacity of the middle echelon. This approach eschewed the possibility of deriving administrative efficiency from basically sound organization and depended rather on incessant regulation and supervision by the sovereign himself. Though the general level of taxation was low, tax legislation was promulgated by the emperor in the capital, with little regard to local conditions. The emperor's own writings indicate that his fiscal legislation was beset by numerous technical difficulties.4 When tax arrears occurred, tax deadlines could not be met, imperial decrees were misinterpreted, or regional fiscal accounts could not be integrated at the intermediate level, the monarch refused to retreat from his previous position. He resorted to a reign of terror, executing those officials who had failed to carry out his orders, perhaps because he thought that the technical difficulties could have been overcome by force. The bloody persecutions in 1382 and 1385, both the result of discrepancies [44]

The heritage of the sixteenth century

45

in fiscal accounts, involved thousands of offenders.5 Leaving aside the extreme cruelty which it entailed, the major result of this unrealistic approach was thatfinancialorganization under the Ming was never placed on a rational basis from the very beginning. The lateral transfers of materials and goods at the lower level, as has been pointed out in the previous chapter, were intended to save service facilities. But Hung-wu, in his desire for economy, extended the use of this type of transaction to extreme lengths. In 1388 the emperor invented a method of supply which required each county to service an army unit in its vicinity. The grain payments were not to go through the regular governmental channels at all, but were to be handed by the taxpayers directly to the soldiers. Ying-t'ien prefecture in South Chihli was ordered to experiment with the new procedure for a year. The 5,000 soldiers on duty with the Ching-wu Guard no longer received their rations and pay from their paymasters. Instead, more than 5,000 civilian households fulfilled the latter's function, delivering their tax payments to the homes of the army personnel. The scheme was declared workable and was supposed to be extended over the whole empire in 1390.6 Although this fantastic procedure was later discontinued, the principle of disbursing tax revenues without first consolidating the payments persisted and became a general practice under the Ming. It was also followed by the Ch'ing until the late nineteenth century (see chapter 8). Hung-wu's fiscal scheme, while crude, served his purpose. The dynastic founder had no ambition to expand his realm beyond the boundaries of China.7 Within the country he was content to rule in a spirit of agrarian simplicity.8 After Yung-lo took over in 1402, however, those restraints were altogether abandoned. The new emperor, impatient with details, gave but little thought to internal organization. As long as he could make the populace deliver the needed supplies for his military campaigns and construction projects (see 2, i below), he never gave serious thought to fiscal procedures. As the dynasty entered the second quarter of the fifteenth century, the constitution of the empire imperceptibly altered. The power that had founded the new dynasty was already a thing of the past. The army declined and the navy all but disappeared. The emperor no longer ruled the nation directly but merely controlled the bureaucracy. It was the absolute obedience of bureaucrats to the throne that now supported the absolute monarchy. Ideological cohesion among the civil officials was now of greater importance than the military or financial strength of the state. The general mood in Peking was now one of preserving the status quo. The bureaucrats, who in effect represented the top gentry, were ready to maintain a consensus based on traditional Confucian political economy but regarded any major innovation as unorthodox and therefore suspect.

46

The heritage of the sixteenth century

A general reconstruction of the financial establishment was now no longer possible. Even when circumstances required institutional reforms by the government, it merely effected makeshift revisions and compromises. The administration's greatest handicap was that state revenues were fragmented. Even though nominally under centralized control, in practice they could not be integrated. The second half of the fifteenth century was a particularly lackluster period in the dynasty's history. The emperors made few major decisions on public affairs, yet palace expenditures increased while all state institutions declined. In the sixteenth century the crisis, developing on many fronts, could no longer be ignored. The most pressing problems were the deterioration of the armed forces and the monetary system, and most of the readjustments made by fiscal administrators in this century were aimed at relieving these two difficulties.

I THE LEVEL OF STATE INCOME AND MODIFYING FACTORS The quota system Sixteenth-century writers often create the impression that both state expenditures and taxation had in their day reached precipitous heights. The argument is misleading. On the contrary, the major problem in their time was that the projected state income was too small and its level not readjustable. In 1502 the ministry of revenue submitted a long report to the Hung-chih Emperor listing all major state incomes. Of key importance were the regular land taxes, estimated to have comprised close to 75 per cent of all receivables. The annual amount, still calculated in grain, was given as 26,799,341 piculs.9 Under the Sung, state income and expenditure had both been assessed in terms of a standard fiscal unit, namely the string of copper cash, the value of which has generally been considered comparable to that of the picul of grain under the Ming. The Sung accounts show that by the mid eleventh century the annual state budget had already reached a level of between 126 million and 150 million units.10 Although these accounts have yet to be studied in detail to discount inflationary influences, there is little doubt that the financial capacity of the Ming was well below that of its forerunner some four centuries earlier. Moreover in Sung times, the state produced nearly 3,500 short tons of copper and 5,000 short tons of iron annually in the 1050s. In 1159, it generated an income of 2 million strings of copper cash from the maritime tariff.11 The Ming records of the sixteenth century show nothing comparable. The narrow tax base in the sixteenth century was the direct result of the fiscal policies of the Hung-wu Emperor, in whose reign a tax quota system

2,1 The level of state income and modifying factors

47

was put into effect.12 In 1377 the monarch dispatched teams composed of ministerial officials, imperial university students and eunuchs to tour the 178 local business tax stations and fix their tax quotas. 13 In 1385 he ordered that stone tablets inscribed with the tax quotas of the provinces and prefectures be erected inside the ministry of revenue's office.14 In 1393 the income from the land taxes reached the figure of 32,789,900 piculs.15 The sovereign, satisfied with this, subsequently declared that newly-reclaimed land in the northern provinces was never to be taxed,16 when taxation by regional quota became an unwritten law. Though minor readjustments were made from time to time the basic settlement was never abandoned. In 1412, in the reign of the Yung-lo Emperor, taxes from agricultural land were said to have reached an all-time high of 34,612,692 piculs.17 The nature of the increase has never been adequately explained. It is likely that an additional quota for Annam, recently annexed as a new province, was included in this total, 18 for when revenues in that territory proved to be uncollectable the empire's land tax income was re-stated as being close to 30 million piculs.19 A further revision of the tax ceiling came in 1430. During the decade when Peking was occupied with the Annam problem the landowners in the Yangtze delta, resentful over the high surcharges added to their land taxes, deliberately kept their payments in arrears until the uncollected amount exceeded three years' total income. As a major concession to those districts the Hsiian-te Emperor authorized a general tax reduction; some 3 million piculs of the national total were written off, most of the benefit going to the lower Yangtze districts.20 The lost tax income was not, however, compensated for by additional collections elsewhere. Subsequently the annual projected income remained at some 27 million piculs, regardless of increases in population and land brought under cultivation. In fact in their reports to the imperial government most provincial and local officials simply resubmitted earlier acreage figures as current data (2, n). On the few occasions when increases in cultivated acreage were reported, the general rule was that they be utilized by the local administration for internal tax reapportionment, and not serve as a basis for tax increases. Thus taxation became virtually independent of cultivated acreage, a situation which the 1502 report of the ministry of revenue only confirmed. It should be noted that fixed tax quotas were basically a Ming policy and that this approach was never followed so rigidly by the T'ang or Sung. In addition to the land taxes the Ming also relied heavily on requisitions of labor and basic commodities, again in accordance with the Hung-wu Emperor's fiscal policies. Here too the quota system was applied; its unsatisfactory results will be discussed in later chapters.

48

The heritage of the sixteenth century Inadequate budgeting

A misconception generally subscribed to by Confucian bureaucrats was that a low level of taxation always automatically benefited the taxpayers. Ming experience shows that this was not always the case. Insufficient tax income meant that the government was unable to husband the empire's resources to the best advantage, which in fact proved to be a disservice to the taxpayer. In the sixteenth century inadequate financing resulted in the failure of many governmental functions, notably coining money (2, iv) and salt distribution (5, iv), thereby causing considerable distress to the people. Furthermore, though formal taxation might fail to cover expenditures, indispensable items still had to be paid for in one way or another. The resulting unauthorized collections made effective auditing impossible and the funds so obtained were usually misspent. Rampant official corruption under the Ming was another result of inadequate budgeting. The operating expenses of many offices were clearly below the necessary minimum level (4, v), and the rates of government emoluments were absurd. The Ming civil service was very small. In 1371 provincial and local officials totalled only 5,488.21 In 1455 there were 1,520 civil officials in service at Peking.22 Even in the early sixteenth century when the offices had been significantly enlarged, there were still only 20,400 civil officials throughout the empire. The lesser functionaries totalled about 51,000 persons but they served both the civil government and the army.23 The state was unable to pay reasonable salaries to this small administrative body. The earliest salary schedule,fixedin 1392 and nominally in force throughout the dynasty, was not generous. It provided annual grain payments of 1,044 piculs for the top rank, la, which were scaled down to 60 piculs for the lowest rank, 9b.24 From the late fourteenth century, however, the payment had been partially substituted by paper currency.25 In the fifteenth century the items of substitution included silk fabrics, cotton cloth, pepper and sapanwood. The conversion rates were so fixed that the substituted portions, comprising 50 per cent and more for rank 4b and above and smaller percentages for the lower ranks, were virtually unpaid. It is estimated that the conversion rates adopted in 1434 reduced the payments to 4 per cent of their original value.26 In 1432 some officials received confiscated garments and salvaged materials as part of their salaries.27 In 1472 peas were given out as partial emoluments. The following year in Nanking it was found that the peas were suitable only for feeding horses.28 During the three years from 1475 to 1477 even these substitutes were withdrawn.29 Officials supplemented their nominal salaries with the commutation payments of the personal attendants (tsao-li) furnished them by the government, a practice started in the early years of the fifteenth century; the

2,1 The level of state income and modifying factors

49

officials sent the attendants home after demanding from them 12 taels of silver per man. After 1429 the practice became generally recognized. The ministry of war, which had called on such personal attendants as a part of local corvee labor service, waived the service call altogether and instead collected the payments and distributed them among the officials.30 The minister of revenue, ranked 2a, in this way received an extra 144 taels of silver annually, not from his own treasury, but from the war office. The amount was probably just sufficient to pay his household staff. In the late fifteenth century the portions of official salaries that had been paid in grain were converted to silver, but the payments were so low that the total of all "salaries paid in Peking remained an insignificant item in the general account (7, i). The financial integrity of government officials consequently became a relative matter. Throughout the fifteenth century there were numerous cases in the capital of officials heavily involved in corruption. The resulting scandals exposed such senior dignitaries as the Chief Censor Liu Kuan (in office, 1415-28), Minister of Personnel Yin Min (in office, 1473-86), and Minister of Rites Chou Hung-mo (in office, 1481-8).31 Minor infractions of the code are too numerous to be cited. One private account indicates that the most venerated Minister of Personnel Ni Yiieh (in office, 1500-1), who had a name for righteousness and honesty, was in reality not free from the suspicion of irregular practices.32 In 1470 Minister of Personnel Yao Ku'ei reported that his office was haunted by professional moneylenders seeking information. Those persons offered selective loans to officials in the capital, and when they received provincial appointments accompanied them to their new posts. Some of the appointees, the minister added, never again freed themselves from the clutches of their creditors.33 The situation apparently worsened in the sixteenth century. The recorded impeachment cases reveal a general lowering of moral standards: offenses considered serious in the previous century were now no longer recognized as such. Capital officials, being virtually unpaid, received no travel allowances when they were transferred to provincial posts. Ku Yen-wu in the early seventeenth century confirmed that those officials had no way to reach their new posts other than raising loans.34 The expandable and contractible fiscal unit Though the budgetary ceiling of the proceeds from the land taxes remained fixed at some 27 million piculs of grain, the government could not always limit its expenditures to this prescribed level. One of the most convenient ways of creating extra income was to make fiscal units expandable. The population was ordered to provide the state with certain amount of goods and labor which nominally were paid for with the tax grain collectable in

50

The heritage of the sixteenth century

the local districts, as local procurement orders (tso-pan, 1, n). In reality the taxes thus written-off constituted only a token payment, a mere fraction of the value of the conscripted labor and the commandeered goods. The Yunglo Emperor undoubtedly adopted this practice on a large scale. The records of his military campaigns, palace construction, and six major maritime expeditions indicate that their actual costs far exceeded the normal income of the state; at a guess by two or three times.35 In 1422 Minister of Revenue Ko Tse reported that of the land taxes due in the fiscal year from 1419 to 1421, less than 23 million piculs of grain had been actually turned in at imperial granaries.36 The annual average over the three-year period was less than 8 million piculs. There is reason to believe that the bulk of the tax proceeds had been disbursed to pay for the goods and services of the populace at inflated rates. No actual accounts are available but the records relating to construction labor, the shipbuilding program, and procurement orders for lumber and other commodities bear witness that no clear distinction was drawn between government purchases and outright requisitions.37 Official payments, even when these were made, were never intended to cover the whole cost. In these circumstances allfinedistinctions relating to the state budget, tax rates, regional quotas and accounting systems were irrelevant. No Ming emperor after Yung-lo dared to try the taxpayer's tolerance so far. Several of his successors in the early fifteenth century in fact ordered tax concessions (including the tax reduction of 1430 by Hstian-te), that were designed to mitigate the grievances of the general public after Yunglo's excessiveness.38 Nevertheless the restraint was only relative. Partly owing to technical difficulties the basic fiscal unit, the picul of grain, still had no absolute monetary value assigned to it. Occasionally it was expanded by the government in order to make up for a deficit. For example, taxpayers in Shansi were required to deliver portions of their tax payments to the northern army posts. In 1443 the payments were converted at 0.25 taels of silver per picul. In 1457, only fourteen years later, the rate was revised to 1 tael per picul, thus increasing the actual payment four-fold.39 Such practices not only distressed the taxpayers, but also greatly increased accounting problems. Because of the quota system and the insufficiency of tax income, the higher offices tended to pass their fiscal responsibilities down to the lower echelons, which then had to cover the deficits as best they could. It was not uncommon for the drafted civilian tax agents to be called upon to bear the burden. No saving resulted, merely individual injustice. These practices, though of historic origins, were more widely applied under the Ming because the projected governmental income was so low. Closely related to the issue of the expandable fiscal unit was the practice of collecting surcharges, which particularly affected the 'tribute grain' (ts'ao-liang) - the 4 million or so piculs of husked rice collected as part of

2,1 The level of state income and modifying factors

51

the land taxes in five provinces and South Chihli, and hauled by the army transportation corps up the Grand Canal to Peking.40 The original practice, devised under Hung-wu and Yung-lo, had been for the population to deliver its tax grain at any depot designated by the state, paying all the transportation costs incurred. After the army transportation corps took over the long-distance delivery the costs were still paid by those districts which furnished the grain and, even in the fifteenth century, by the particular taxpayers in those districts. These surcharges were not credited toward their tax payments but added as an additional service obligation. This might not have created such a problem if the surcharges had been small, but they were large. For the grain consignments from Hukwang, the farthest province involved, the surcharges covering the handling losses alone added 80 per cent to the basic payments.41 The heavy surcharges were not entirely unjustified. Long-distance delivery of grain involved many transfers before the destination was reached. Porter and wagon services were required to clear the canal sluices; lighters were called for when canals and rivers became too shallow. These transfers resulted in losses. Husked rice, when dampened, ferments easily. Quite frequently after each transfer the grain had to be sun-dried, during which process its volume shrank drastically, by as much as 8.5 per cent in five hours42 (as established by an official experiment). Matters would have been simplified if the government had considered such inevitable losses as part of the expected operating expenses. But under the quota system and in accordance with Ming accounting methods every item of receivables had to be counted down to the last peck, and there was no way to cover extra expenses except by additional collections from the taxpayers. In practice the surcharges were not consolidated as a single item, but divided under six or more headings, including extras to cover anticipated losses, mat-cover fees, lake-crossing fees, Yangtze river ferry fees, etc.43 In the sixteenth century when portions of the tribute grain were commuted to silver payments, the conversion had to be calculated as including these miscellaneous items. The rationale behind it was that the taxpayers and the tax-paying districts were already used to paying the surcharges, while the government needed the additional cash income. In fact, even when the payments were made in kind the surcharges were calculated to produce a surplus, which was already counted as a budgetary item. It certainly could not be dispensed with. To complicate the matter further, in 1471 the transportation corps also took over a number of grain consignments which up to then had been delivered by the taxpayers themselves at the auxiliary granaries on the Grand Canal. These consignments, even though they originated from the same local districts, were not combined with those which had been taken over in the early fifteenth century. They were designated as 'added trans-

52

The heritage of the sixteenth century

mittance' (kai-tui), to be distinguished from 'regular transmittance' (cheng-tui).^ The customary surcharges on added transmittance were much lower than those on regular transmittance. In the mid sixteenth century when a taxpayer in Yang-chou prefecture of South Chihli was assessed 1 picul of grain in regular transmittance, he actually paid 1.73 piculs. For added transmittance, however, he would only be required to pay 1.27 piculs. A commuted picul of grain in regular transmittance cost the taxpayer about 1.2 taels of silver but in added transmittance entailed a payment which varied from 0.5 taels to 0.7 taels depending when the commutation order was issued.45 The resulting confusion is apparent: tax receivables in the official accounts did not correspond to the actual financial burden of the taxpayers. Sometimes there was no way of ascertaining the land tax rates in a particular district, even when the basic assessment was quoted in piculs. In other words, the fiscal unit was a relative, not an absolute index; it was partly abstract and partly real. The picul of grain could also be contracted to reduce its value. An outstanding example is the so-called 'Gold Floral Silver' (chin-hua-yiri), institutionalized in 1436. Outwardly, the move was to facilitate tax transmittance. A total of 4.05 million piculs of tax grain from six southern provinces and South Chihli, supposedly from those districts where no adequate transportation was available, was commuted at the flat rate of 0.25 taels per picul, with virtually no surcharges added.46 In reality however, the quota was almost exclusively taken up by the richest prefectures where transportation was not a problem. The circumstances under which the commutation was ordered suggested that it was another major concession by the court to the landowners in the districts concerned, who had been showing dissatisfaction at paying higher taxes. The sponsors of the proposal, Minister of Revenue Hu Ying (in office, 1431-6), Nanking Minister of Revenue Huang Fu (in office, 1432-40), and Governor of South Chihli Chou Sheng (in office, 1430-50), were all champions of tax reduction. The Cheng-t'ung Emperor, who approved it, was then only nine years old and could not have understood all the implications of the move. Because the payment was set lower than the grain price and handling costs, the measure thus alleviated the tax burden in these districts without overtly revising their regional quotas in terms of piculs of grain. The income, slightly over 1 million taels, was subsequently known as Gold Floral Silver, and was never to be dispensed with throughout the rest of the dynasty. In accordance with tradition, the bullion was turned in at the Inner Ch'eng-yun Treasury, and was used by the emperor to pay army officers in Peking. The rest became his privy purse and beyond the auditing of the ministry of revenue. The implications of the Gold Floral Silver were profound. It permanently

2,1 The level of state income and modifying factors

53

cut off 15 per cent of the proceeds from the land taxes and created another discrepancy between the nominal revenue and actual income. Lack of service support The system of lateral transactions accorded well with the establishment of regional tax quotas; both emphasized operations at the lower level and could be linked together on a semi-permanent basis. But this mode of administration inevitably retarded the development of service facilities. The financial establishment was, therefore, preoccupied with tax collection and delivery and neglected to build up logistical capacity at the middle level. The basic services rendered by the lower echelon to the higher offices lacked service support in the form of maintenance and subsidies from the latter. In the long run this clearly made operations more expensive. Much effort was duplicated and the materials and labor were either wasted or could not be accounted for. This lack of service support can be seen in the administration of the Grand Canal. Of the three dynasties which preceded the Ming, only the Yuan concentrated on transportation by sea. Both the T'ang and Sung had relied on inland waterways for the redistribution of the nation's financial resources. Under the two previous dynasties the canal administration was in the hands of one or more 'transportation commissioners' (chuan-yunshih). Those officials managed the regional surpluses turned over by the provincial administrators and usually also controlled the salt monopoly. Supplying tax grain was only a part of their function. Many of the commissioners were empowered to dispose of government properties at their own discretion, and were expected to make a profit by buying merchandise at one end of the waterway and selling at the other. Revolving funds were provided to facilitate the operation. Their jurisdiction covered the construction of service ships, the organizing of the crews, and the maintenance of the canal system. In other words, they combined the functions of regional treasurer, transportation authority, and purchasing agent, and operated on a commercial basis.47 The anti-commercialism of the Ming prevented government agencies from participating in trade. Yet the entire tribute grain system and the canal administration received no central financing. The waterway was maintained by local corvee labor without any subsidies from the central government.48 The transportation corps by the mid fifteenth century had 121,500 officers and men operating 11,775 grain boats. The personnel drew their pay and rations from the 124 guards and independent battalions from which they were detached.49 Even the construction of service craft, carried out every ten years, was financed partially by deductions from the payroll of the soldiers operating them, and partly by remittances from those

54

The heritage of the sixteenth century

Peking

T'ung-chou # ~ Chang-chia-wan Ho-hsi-wu •Tientsin" Ching-hai

Ho-chien •

L'ing-hsien Hsing-chi) Ts'ang-chou

"Xf—~N

Tung-kuang

—— Grand Canal —— Chiang-nan Canal 0

Mis

100

FIG. 2. The Grand Canal (Ts'aoHo), ca. 1610.

2,1 The level of state income and modifying factors

55

districts which furnished the tribute grain.50 The transportation costs, as noted above, were collected from the taxpayers on a pro rata basis, any surpluses on the surcharges were surrendered to the government treasury and subsequently transferred to Peking (see 'speed-the-delivery money', 6, m). Thefinancingwas thus so decentralized that the imperial government took no fiscal responsibility for the operation, but rather derived extra administrative income from it. A censorial official was appointed canal commissioner, and an army officer was made commander-in-chief of the transportation corps. Neither built up logistical support for their subordinate units. Junior officers, down to captains and lieutenants, were made financially responsible for the tax grain in their custody, which could only be discharged at the T'ung-chou granary. The decline of the service fleet was thus hardly surprising. In the late fifteenth century it was frequently reported that soldiers' pay and rations were in arrears and the service units short of personnel. Some detachments of the transportation corps had collective debts of several thousand taels of silver or more.51 In the early sixteenth century some army officers committed suicide and another found sanctuary in a Buddhist monastery after failing to discharge their delivery obligations.52 The transportation corps survived merely because the court, realizing the inadequate maintenance of the servicefleet,relaxed administrative discipline. Permission for army personnel to carry a limited amount of private cargo for profit had already been authorized early in the fifteenth century.53 Toward the end of the century, the soldiers, rarely-paid, had to rely on this private trade for support. In 1480 it was reported that the southbound service boats were heavily loaded with commercial cargo while civilian vessels returning to the south had nothing to carry.54 The state lost through the unpaid customs duties.55 The operation of the Grand Canal is only one example of the inadequacy of government service facilities under the Ming. That the logistical system established by the Hung-wu Emperor was never reformed was partly due to the low level of state income. In the sixteenth century every particle of government revenue had already been counted as a budgetary item; through standing delivery procedures it had already been disbursed before it was collected. Even revenue agencies were not permitted to utilize their internally-generated funds to improve their services. This lack of investment prevented the expansion of government enterprises, a notable example being the records of government mining (6, i). The size of the industries under government control and the huge quantities of raw materials, goods and manpower mobilized by the Ming state were apt to impress and mislead the observer. In reality these financial resources were accumulated in an irregular and disorganized manner. The higher offices which controlled them had neither the authority nor the capacity to integrate the operations of their subordinate units. The

56

The heritage of the sixteenth century

budgetary income of each of those offices was actually only a projected maximum. Only under the most ideal conditions could the funds arrive in full, because the diffuse supply procedure inevitably led to delinquencies by the delivery agencies responsible for handing them over; at the same time, naturally no agency would deliver more than was required. In brief, all such organizations had a 'built-in' tendency to degenerate. The government shipyard near Huai-an may be cited as an illustration. The Ch'ing-chiang-p'u dockyard was one of the largest public works establishments in the empire, and constructed about half of the grain boats needed by the army transportation corps. In its heyday it completed 746 craft within a year and in 1464 still had an annual capacity of 550 vessels, an impressive figure by pre-modern standards.56 From the later fifteenth century all the materials and labor needed by the dockyard were paid for in silver. The earlier procedure whereby the soldiers operating the boats paid 30 per cent of the cost of new materials still persisted, however.57 These funds were remitted by 82 guard units. The dockyard in turn was organized into 82 small units, each with its own housing for which it was assigned a narrow strip of land about thirty yards wide on a bank of the Huai river. The total length of the adjacent units was over two and a half miles.58 The commanding officers of the 82 units, generally captains on temporary duty from their respective guards, were responsible for financing the ship construction program. The central office merely allocated them raw materials and labor from its own account, which was also derived from small quantities of funds paid by scores of counties and prefectures. In the sixteenth century many of the captains in charge of the dockyard units were said to have incurred personal debts because of the managerial responsibilities with which they were encumbered.59 The palace expenditures Despite the smallness of state income palace expenditures steadily increased during the fifteenth century. The size of the palace staff provides a yardstick for this. The Hung-wu Emperor, according to the traditional historians, had in 1369 limited the number of palace eunuchs to sixty,60 a figure which Hucker has shown to be grossly under-reported.61 Most likely it included only those who had civil service ranks, and no household attendants and auxiliaries. It does seem, however, that at the founding of the dynasty the palace staff was not too large and unwieldy. After 1420, the eunuchs took over duties which previously had been assigned to palace women and their offices soon proliferated into twenty-four bureaus and directories. A report by the ministry of revenue in 1443 indicated that the eunuchs consumed 120,000 piculs of husked rice; if this figure, as seems likely, was an annual

2,1 The level of state income and modifying factors

57

one, it suggests a palace staff of about 30,000 eunuchs.62 Even in the Chiaching period, when efforts had been made to reduce the palace personnel, their number was still close to 10,000 in the mid sixteenth century.63 A modern scholar has estimated that by the end of the dynasty there were 70,000 eunuchs in service.64 The cooks serving in the court of imperial entertainments, all statutory laborers, numbered 800 in the Hung-wu period. In the early years of the Yung-lo period when kitchen services were provided in both capitals, their number swelled to 3,000, and before the reign was over it had further expanded to 9,000. Under Hsiian-te the court employed 9,462 cooks. An austerity program in 1435 reduced their number to 5,000 but in 1487 it was increased to 7,884, not far from the all-time high.65 Palace supplies increased in the same fashion. At the beginning of the dynasty Ch'ang-chou prefecture in South Chihli each year delivered to the palace 100 catties of tea. By 1431, the amount had increased to 290,000 catties, or about 200 tons.66 The supply of yellow wax used for candles was expanded most rapidly in the late fifteenth century. In 1430 the annual requirement was 30,000 catties, but by 1488 it had reached 85,000 catties, and in 1503 was in excess of 200,000 catties.67 To provide charcoal supplies the Hsiian-te Emperor established a special factory at I-chou, about 100 miles west of Peking. The charcoal burners were statutory laborers from Shantung, Shansi, and three prefectures of North Chihli; more than 30,000 of these served for three months each year. The operations of the factory grew to such a scale that its supervisor assumed the title of either extra transmission commissioner or minister of works.68 In the early years of its operation the factory produced some 10,000 tons of charcoal and kindling wood annually. By 1442 its output had increased six-fold. Transportation of the fuel to the capital became an extra burden for the population along the route. The cost of hauling one ton of charcoal over the short distance is estimated to have been 5 taels of silver. Because of the uneconomical nature of this operation, toward the end of thefifteenthcentury part of the required charcoal was purchased in Peking and the statutory laborers at I-chou were gradually replaced by soldiers. Even then each season 19,900 charcoal burners still had to be enlisted from the general population. On the above estimate the annual consumption of fuel and heating material in Peking in thefifteenthcentury would have cost 500,000 taels of silver, had the court paid the expenses in cash.69 The exact cost of palace maintenance is beyond calculation. The supplies were drawn from numerous warehouses and depots and the services involved a sizeable number of the population. The rice consumed by the palace personnel was derived from the regular land taxes. Fur and leather were contributed by the local communities while silk fabrics were both collected as surtaxes on the land taxes and obtained through local procure-

58

The heritage of the sixteenth century

ment orders. Some of the supplies, such as porcelain of the imperial design, were in fact priceless because they were unique. Hsiian-te in 1433 ordered 443,000 pieces of chinaware from Kiangsi. When Hung-chih died in 1505, his as yet unfilled order for porcelain still totalled 300,000 pieces.70 Some of the articles seem to have been deliberately made to become collectors' items. As far as is known palace supplies of all kinds submitted annually must have been worth more than 5 million taels. These items, largely covered by the service levy, cancelled much of the effect of the basically low level of taxation. Since a major portion of those accounts consisted of statutory labor and transportation costs, it was also likely that the tax burden would fall more heavily on the poor and inarticulate, who were often called upon to perform the unpaid services. Closely related to the normal palace expenditures were the construction costs of public buildings and mausoleums, and the maintenance of military supernumeraries in the capital. The Peking garrison was converted into a huge labor gang and construction materials were requisitioned from the provinces. The building projects that went on incessantly from the early fifteenth to the seventeenth century might have been a less significant factor in governmentalfinancehad the latter been better organized. In view of the dynasty's limited fiscal capacity it was clearly unsound to give priority to such construction works. It was the army that suffered most from the thoughtless appropriation of the financial resources. In addition to depriving the capital garrison of its combat readiness, several emperors in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century also filled the officers' corps with supernumerary unqualified personnel. This was an abuse which the civil service, thanks to its rigid standards of appointment, escaped. The unqualified personnel were absorbed exclusively by the army. Emperors' in-laws, their favorites, and even the latter's relatives were constantly admitted as supernumeraries of the officers' corps. In the 1460s some of the capital garrison guards had close to 3,000 officers each, whereas the total authorized strength of such a guards unit, including officers and enlisted men, was 5,600 men.71 The sovereign's maternal uncles, father-in-law and brothers-in-law usually became marquises and earls and their sons and nephews then became generals and colonels. A favorite eunuch's nephews, sometimes a large group of them, would be commissioned as regimental commanders by the throne. It was not uncommon for the father or brother of a woman attendant in the palace to receive the honorific title of guard captain or even battalion commander,72 as a reward for her diligent service, a method of acknowledging merit rather similar to European royalty's granting of medals to cooks. Army commissions under the Ming were traditionally hereditary. The supernumeraries in the capital thus gradually proliferated beyond control, in the same way as did the imperial clansmen residing in the provinces, who

2,1 The level of state income and modifying factors

59

were also supported by the state for life. In 1371 the total number of army officers was reported to be 12,980.73 Before the end of Hung-wu's reign it had already increased to 28,000,74 and in 1455 it was reported that there were 31,790 officers in Peking alone.75 In 1469 the total number of army officers was said to have exceeded 80,000,76 and by about 1520 it had further expanded to an unmanageable 100,000,77 most of whom undoubtedly resided in the capital. Thefinancialconsequences of this abuse of rank were somewhat strange. Because the pay of the supernumeraries, being the same as that of the regular army officers and civil officials, was low, it did not significantly enlarge the state budget. The cash portion of their pay was actually derived from the emperor's own purse, owing to the institutionalization of the Gold Floral Silver. But there was only a limited quantity of materials (including grain and cotton cloth) available to the ministry of revenue to meet these salary obligations. The greater the number of persons on the payroll, the smaller was the share of each. This in part explains the low salaries received by the officials. A major item of state income which was seriously affected by the superfluous personnel was the tribute grain. For a time the tribute grain to Peking had fluctuated in volume, but from 1472 it had been settled at 4 million piculs annually. A small portion, usually about 300,000 piculs, was forwarded to the frontier army posts.78 The amount available for appropriation in Peking was therefore around 3.7 million piculs. The distribution was effected through a rationing system. With few exceptions, all civil officials, army officers, and lesser functionaries received 1 picul per man per month regardless of rank, as part of their pay. Soldiers and artisans on duty received half this amount.79 By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century there were no fewer than 300,000 men eligible for the grain payment.80 The 1502 report by the ministry of revenue indicated that the annual amount payable was 3.38 million piculs.81 Whenever there was a shortage in grain delivery or an additional demand for payment, the capital granary incurred a deficit. Thus the tribute grain, which entailed such high delivery costs, contributed little to the empire's finances. While it solved the food supply problem in the capital, most of its recipients, being supernumeraries, performed no useful function to the state. The situation was partially rectified by Grand-Secretary Yang T'ing-ho (1, i). In 1522, at the accession of the Chia-ching Emperor, this austere statesman summarily removed 148,700 superfluous persons from the payroll, including numerous honorary officers who were stripped of their ranks. The cutback saved the state 1.532 million piculs of grain annually.82 The commutation of this surplus into silver payments was one of the key measures which enabled the empire to survive its financial crisis in the mid sixteenth century (7, i).

60

The heritage of the sixteenth century II LAND AND POPULATION DATA Land data

In the 1587 edition of the Ta-Ming Hui-tien are three sets of land data, the total figures of which are as follows:83 1393: 850,762,368 mou; 1502: 622,805,881 mou; 1578:701,397,628 mou. Until recently it was thought that these figures represented cultivated acreage under taxation and that they had corresponding statistical value. Only after a thorough investigation by several Japanese scholars in the 1940s was the true nature of these figures gradually revealed. It now appears that the 850 million mou figure of 1393 was not a fiscal record in the true sense but as Fujii Hiroshi has shown, included waste land and land earmarked for reclamation.84 Nor was the figure obtained through a national land survey as was earlier believed; most of the provincial figures were simply random estimates. The taxable acreage in the early Ming was less than 400 million mou, as shown by the figures recorded in the Shih-lu.85 The 1502 figure seems to have been derived from the compilation of the Yellow Book in that year, but the actual acreage was 200 million mou less, being recorded in the 1510 edition of the Ta-Ming Hui-tien as 422,805,881 mou. Shimizu Taiji, who first discovered the discrepancy, points out that the editors of the later edition of the Hui-tien, perhaps disturbed by the small acreage reported by Hukwang province, arbitrarily added 200 million mou to the provincial figure.86 According to these two scholars the 1578 figure similarly inflated the Hukwang acreage by some 190 million mou. To be statistically consistent, the total figure should be revised approximately 500 million mou. In his contribution to Wada Sei's annotated translation of the economic monographs in the Ming-shih, Fujii summarizes the revised acreages as follows: 1381:366,771,549 mou; 1391:387,474,673 mou; 1502:422,805,892 mou; 1578: 510,612,728 mou. Though the findings are amply documented, the documentary evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive, the deductions are most logical, but no absolute proof can be found.87 Furthermore these revised figures are still no more than fiscal acreages which were never intended to represent the actual acreages under cultivation (see fiscal mou conversion, 1, n). In point of fact it would have been extremely difficult to establish a uniform statistical standard in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Once the tax quota was put into effect cultivated acreages and population data became relatively unimportant to the central offices, for they were no longer the bases of taxation. The interpolation of vital statistics in official publications by senior bureaucrats is an indication that they were not seriously concerned with quality control in data processing.

2, II Land and population data

61

The expansion of agricultural land in the sixteenth century indicated by Fujii's revised figures is of course related to our topic of study. The numerous inconsistencies in the primary data submitted by the regional offices make it difficult, however, to use thesefiguresas the basis of a comparative study. The limited quantitative surveys in the following chapters are based on the regional data, whose internal consistency can at least be ascertained. Population data

Sixteenth-century population reports were even more subject to corruption than were the official land data. Under-reporting was a universal tendency. Unlike the cultivated acreage the population returns could not be checked for even relative accuracy. The traditional Ming practice was merely to spot the mathematical errors in the reports. When the breakdown figures did not correspond to the aggregates, the whole set of books was rejected, with a severe fine imposed on the district which had submitted them.88 In order to avoid the fine, the counties and prefectures simply resubmitted their earlier returns as current reports, sometimes with slight modifications in the last two or three digits. Ping-ti Ho has shown, as an example of this, that for the three decades from 1522 to 1552 during which the compilation of the Yellow Book took place four times, Feng-hua county in Chekiang persistently reported neither increase nor decrease in the district's 18,865 households, and Hsiang-shan county even recorded its population as consistently comprising 17,812 persons throughout.89 The formality of submitting decennial population and land returns was never discontinued, however. The Ming court designated an island on the present Hsuan-wu lake outside Nanking as the site of an archive to store these records. The whole region was declared a restricted area and before the reports arrived thirty new bungalows were constructed for their storage. Cooking and the lighting of candles were both forbidden on the island, as measures of fire prevention. The format of the records was meticulously prescribed and the stationery standardized. A number of imperial university students were assigned to check the returns for consistency.90 Much of the work was wasted, nevertheless. Wei Ch'ing-yiian points out that Hsing-hua county in South Chihli in 1582 included 3,700 households as purporting to have residents 100 years old or older. In the early Ch'ing an official reported that many late Ming records still retained the personal names and property-holdings of the Hung-wu era.91 The inadequacy of the Yellow Book was fully recognized by contemporary writers. Wang Shih-cheng (1526-90) called its compilation 'a children's game'. The 1609 edition of the Wen-shang county gazetteer, Shantung province, deplored its 'waste of paper and writing brushes'.92 The 1572 edition of the Ku'ai-chi county gazetteer, Chekiang, in accordance with the

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official report stated that the district's population was 62,004 persons, but the editors also added that the actual number must have been more than four times that figure.93 The official population data appear in the Ta-Ming Hui-tien as follows :94 1393: 60,545,812; 1491: 53,281,158; 1578: 60,692,856. These figures have little intrinsic value. Nevertheless, they at least do not contradict the assumption that population in the late sixteenth century must have significantly increased from its level at the founding of the dynasty. Of the three figures that of 1393 is undoubtedly the closest to reality, given the stern administrative discipline and the severe punishment for falsification of fiscal records during the Hung-wu period. Thefigureof 60 million or so is also consistent with the reported salt production of the era.95 It is known that in later centuries individual districts often reported population decreases that had occurred but not the increases.96 The 60 million level of the later records can therefore be regarded as a sign of net growth. Non-quantitative statements indicating population growth are abundant in the contemporary sources. Ping-ti Ho, on the basis of a lengthy study of the contemporary literature, suggests that the population level of 1600 was around 150 million.97 Suffice it to say that this estimate accords with general descriptions of economic activities in the late sixteenth century, with the suggested increase of salt production in the same period (5, n), and with post-Ming population records. As for the effects of population growth, Ming writers maintained almost unanimously that a large population was a favorable factor in taxation. This attitude seems to reflect ideological bias rather than objective analysis. Little consideration was ever given to the lower per capita incomes resulting from increased population. It is true that in the sixteenth century the Ming state still possessed a considerable amount of empty space, notably in Hukwang and Honan, and was therefore little concerned with population pressure; the expanding handicraft industries moreover provided an important outlet for additional manpower.98 This did not however alter the fact that in certain districts the extra number of mouths to be fed might already constitute a problem. The Ku'ai-chi county gazetteer, cited above, raised this issue in suggesting that the county's natural resources could not adequately support half its population.99 Food shortages in Fukien were cited by Ming writers as well as modern scholars as one fundamental reason why its residents pursued maritime trade in defiance of imperial law, which eventually led to piracy on the coast after the mid sixteenth century.100 Many historians are currently showing interest in the urban culture of the late Ming and there has been much discussion of the widespread production of commercial crops and goods by landowners in the phenomenally prosperous lower Yangtze valley.101 Inadequate data makes it difficult to gauge the general standard of living under the Ming. However, P'eng

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Hsin-wei in his study of China's monetary history does suggest that there was a lowering of the standard of living as a consequence of population growth and that this affected taxation adversely.102 Another factor to be considered is that the Mingfiscalapparatus was so immobile that it never developed the capacity to cope with the changing variables of a dynamic society. The dogmatic Confucian belief that more productive labor meant greater tax revenues was in reality only wishful thinking. Even though it might be true economically, the Ming government could not take advantage of it administratively. Because of the quota system, the tax burden of a depopulated district or of a declining community could not easily be lightened. The standard solution was to increase the taxes of the remaining residents, which led to further abscondings and uncollected revenues.103 Conversely, increased population seldom contributed directly to higher tax proceeds. The surplus population tended to be mobile, and therefore difficult to bring under tax control. Even when more population could be registered and assessed, the local administrators were unenthusiastic about reporting the actual returns, for fear that the reported increases would prompt the court to readjust their regional tax quotas upward. At most they would reapportion the tax burden among the enlarged pool of taxpayers, easing their own collection problems and at the same time earning for themselves the reputation of benevolent administrators. Local deviations from standard procedures in compiling tax registers started early. By the latefifteenthcentury, the so-called 'white-books' had already made their appearance. As a formality the local officials still submitted the Yellow Book to the imperial archive but for actual tax administration they compiled another set of data, conventionally known as white books. It is said that when Wang Shu (1416-1508) was the governor of South Chihli, in about 1479, he actually gave the local officials his personal permission for the preparation of these records.104 In the sixteenth century the data in these accounts appeared in some of the local gazetteers.105 Ill THE MAINTENANCE OF THE ARMY The legend and legacy of a self-supporting army

The claim that under Hung-wu and Yung-lo the Ming army attained selfsufficiency in grain supplies through military farming still remains an obstacle to our understanding of the dynasty's financial history. This legend was built up by late Ming writers who most likely had themselves been misled by the earlier records. The primary sources contain plentiful material for its construction. The total acreage allocated to military farming is recorded in the Ta-Ming Hui-tien as having been in excess of eighty-nine

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million mou.106 Its total yield in 1403 is stated in the Shih-lu to have been more than 23 million piculs, almost comparable to the entire income from the land taxes.107 The Ming-shih further asserts that each soldier participating in the program was allocated fifty mou of land, from which he was expected to produce a minimum of 18 piculs of grain. He kept 12 piculs as his own pay and allowance, and turned in the surplus at military granaries. On the frontier, 70 per cent of the soldiers were enrolled in the program, and 80 per cent in the interior.108 These estimates imply at least one million soldiers occupied in grain production. It might be conjectured that such a prodigious program, if carried out in full, could have averted any problems over army supplies in Ming times. The above assumption is, however, not only untrue but also impossible. In the late sixteenth century even some Ming writers began to question the validity of the earlier reports. The acreage allocations showed that Szechuan alone had 65,954,526 mou. One author, working out the garrison strength in that province around the year 1400, discovered that the allocation would have granted every soldier 4,500 mou of land.109 Other evidence contradicting this claim can readily be found in contemporary writings. The Hung-wu Emperor himself disclosed that two military commands in South Chihli, even after putting soldiers on farm duty for over twenty years, had not come close to self-sufficiency in food supplies.110 Entries in the Shih-lu, indicating that army units in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century relied on supplies from civilian sources, are too numerous to be cited in full.111 In 1404, even after Yung-lo's vigorous promotion of military farming, its production in many areas could not meet half the food requirements of the cultivators themselves.112 The total figure for the yields of the empire's military farming program was steadily revised downward until in 1423 it was quoted as being close to 5 million piculs.113 Actual production could well have been much lower. In 1429 Minister of Revenue Ko Tun (in office, 1427-31) brought it to the Hsiian-te Emperor's attention that many guard units assigned fewer than a dozen soldiers to farm duty and produced less than 100 piculs of grain, while each unit needed tens of thousands of piculs for its annual maintenance.114 This suggests that this vaunted self-sufficiency and the national statistics associated with it represented a projected target only, and involved overestimates at all levels. It is impossible to ascertain the actual results of the program in its early years, partly because of the systematic suppression by Ming bureaucrats of information that tended to discredit the dynastic founders, and partly owing to the absence of documentation from the army officers, who as a group left no records. Wang Yu-ch'iian, who directed a collective research project on military farming under the Ming, calls its acclaimed success 'exaggerated' and 'without factual basis'. 115

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The level of attainment must be viewed in the light of the conditions under which the farming program was organized. It was put into effect with practically no prior planning or preparation. No field investigation was ever conducted; no pilot project was carried out. Nor was any office of control set up. The emperors, by issuing orders, merely forced the military commanders to carry them out with whatever resources were at their disposal. The extant information shows that the distribution of seeds and draft animals, and the allocation of manpower and farm land was at no time brought under centralized control.116 There was little possibility therefore for the program to develop into a permanent system. The criss-crossing supply lines

The Ming army was organized by the Hung-wu Emperor as a gigantic military machine. By 1392 it was estimated to have some 1.2 million men on active service,117 and to have enrolled 1.7 million to 2 million hereditary military households.118 But it lacked internal cohesion. Not all the households appearing in the roster had chosen to be so registered. They included large number of political prisoners, criminals, exiles, and minority groups from the north-west.119 During the Hung-wu period large numbers of civilian households in Hukwang, Kwangtung, Fukien and Shansi had been pressed into military service and placed under military registration.120 Desertions seem to have been quite common even in the early years.121 Each hereditary military household, in addition to furnishing a soldier for active duty, also answered the service calls of the guard unit to which it belonged. One of these obligations was to provide 30 per cent of the military equipment required, the other 70 per cent to be furnished by the civilian population in the adjacent counties and prefectures. This procedure was possibly established in the later years of the Hung-wu period.122 The soldiers did not receive their regular pay in cash, but from time to time the emperor handed out general awards of paper currency to the officers and men on active duty. Such grants were unscheduled. The regular pay consisted of a monthly ration of 1 picul of grain per man plus a small amount of salt for family maintenance.123 Winter uniforms were issued in the form of either ready-made garments or cloth and cotton wadding, depending on the conditions of supply.124 Since under the Hung-wu Emperor a soldier often received as much as 25 kuan of paper currency annually, the payments were fairly adequate. During the middle of the Yung-lo period, around 1410-20, however, the general awards were gradually cut off, and were thereafter totally suspended except on the occasions of a new emperor's accession.125 The wei-so units were in reality of two different types. On the northern frontier, in certain districts on the coast, and in Kweichow, the guard and

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battalion headquarters functioned virtually as local governments. Practically all the population of these regions during the early years of the dynasty was under military registration and all the land was governmentowned. Here the standard land allocation for military farming, fifty mou per soldier, was in general carried out.126 But productivity in these areas was generally poor and the farming program was undoubtedly also handicapped by problems of security and other physical factors. In the interior the wei-so had no territorial responsibility. The army units were stationed among the general population, and only limited and dispersed amounts of land were available for military farming.127 The fragmentary data indicate that in general each soldier was allocated twenty mou or less.128 The regulation of 1402 which required each soldier on farm duty to turn in 12 piculs of surplus grain in addition to providing 12 piculs for his own maintenance was apparently difficult to carry out in full.129 Clearly the standard had been set at the maximum possible level. After the introduction of the farming program in 1371,130 the guard units were expected to cut down on supplies requisitioned from civilian sources. In spite of this the earlier supply procedure continued. As explained in the previous chapter no overall logistical command had ever been established. Following the directives of the ministry of revenue, local magistrates supplied grain consignments to the adjacent army units. Deliveries at the lowest level followed standing orders and developed into a network of supply lines criss-crossing the empire.131 In our present state of knowledge there is no way to discover how much tax revenue was thus disbursed. The complexity of the accounting system remained a fundamental problem that was never solved throughout the dynasty. It was possible for army officers to exaggerate the achievements of the farming program when they were in fact being subsidized by the civil government. In 1407, at a time when Yung-lo was issuing stern orders that military farming be expanded, a censorial official reported that its actual production could not be effectively ascertained.132 Significantly, the same problem existed in later centuries. The decline of the military establishment While the real achievements of the farming program in its early stages are unclear, its decline after the first quarter of the fifteenth century is no mystery. A decree of 1425 permanently reduced the annual surplus grain quota to be provided by each soldier on farm duty to 6 piculs,133 a move that was both thoughtful and realistic. No new source of supply was provided to compensate for the reduced quota, however. The granting of paper currency to soldiers as general awards had already been suspended. Subsequent land tax reductions and occasional tax remissions further undercut the capacity of local government to pay the army units.

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From 1435 the 12 piculs of grain that each soldier was supposed to provide as his own pay was no longer checked in and handled by his unit commander but was simply withheld by himself during the harvest.134 In theory, farm land was never granted to individual soldiers; it was rather the army personnel who were assigned to plots of public land. But in reality no rotation was ever put into effect. The system merely turned soldiers back into farmers and demanded from them grain payments that were five to ten times the regular land taxes paid by the general population. By the mid fifteenth century, if not earlier, soldiers had already started selling and mortgaging the land in their custody. Such cases are frequently mentioned in the late Ming records.135 The scale of the deterioration of the Ming armed forces, especially those in the interior provinces in the 100 years or so following the mid fifteenth century, seems to have been unprecedented in Chinese history. When supplies were short, the army simply reduced the soldiers' rations. Part of their pay and rations could also be converted to cloth, pepper and sapanwood. The conversion rates varied from one command to another and there was a differentiation between married and unmarried soldiers.136 At 1 picul per month, the ration was not abundant to begin with, and the conversion virtually constituted cancellation of payment. When in 1468 some soldiers were told that the converted portions of their pay were henceforth to be reduced to 4 taels of pepper and sapanwood per man and that the commodities were to be issued at distant warehouses, they simply refused to accept the payment.137 A battalion headquarters in Shansi reported in 1489 that its soldiers had received no grain ration for two years, and cloth and cotton wadding for six years.138 Only in 1511 was the Ming government able to settle the arrears, some dating back for nine years or more, due to soldiers in Honan. The overdue rations were then converted into copper coins at the rate of 20 cash per picul, a payment which represented about 5 per cent of their original value.139 In 1528 the emperor in a general order acknowledged that the soldiers in many wei-so had not been paid for years.140 The result was that the army's ranks were thinned by desertion. The military colony system could not have survived at all, had it not been for the vigorous 'troop purifying' policy of the court. When a soldier deserted the 'troop purifying censors' held his relatives and neighbors responsible.141 The case was usually settled when the scores of persons thus encumbered would agree to purchase a substitute, finance his marriage and relocation, and send him off to fill the vacancy.142 But all this was a slow process. Before one case was closed another desertion occurred, until in the end the guards and battalions were reduced to skeleton organizations. During the Hung-wu era the military units in Kwangsi had comprised 120,000 men; by 1492 only 18,000, or 15 per cent, remained.143 The 3-2

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Nan-ch'ang Left Guard in Kiangsi province had an authorized strength of 4,753 men; in 1502 only 141 of them were on barracks duty, less than 3 per cent of the original quota.144 The Ching-hua Battalion was authorized to have 1,225 men; in the sixteenth century only 34 soldiers were in the camp, plus some 300 men serving in the transportation corps.145 By the early sixteenth century it was typical for a military colony in the interior to operate at 10 per cent of its prescribed strength. The seventyeight guard units around Peking, which in the early fifteenth century had been backed up by 380,000 hereditary military households, provided the capital garrison with only 50,000 to 60,000 soldiers. Many of them were employed as construction laborers by the palace, while others took positions as grooms in army stables, office attendants, and household servants. Not more than 10,000 of them still bore arms, and some of those were actually paupers hired as substitutes.146 The army posts on the northern frontier fared somewhat better. At an official count in 1487 some 300,000 men were serving on the frontier.147 This came about because it had been necessary gradually to replace the weiso regulars in these posts by recruits.148 By about 1500 it was estimated that recruited soldiers constituted half the combat strength in these units149 which in turn meant that the imperial government had to step up its subsidies to the northern army posts. Until then the annuities delivered by Peking had been limited to 480,000 taels of silver,150 afigurewhich had to be increased significantly at the turn of the century. In the three years from 1500 to 1502, in response to military pressure from the Mongolian tribes, the ministry of revenue rushed another 4,150,200 taels of emergency funds to the several commands.151 This trend, once established, was never to be reversed. Supplying the army in the north became a crucial issue and one of the most difficult tasks of the ministry of revenue (7, n). Though the abovefigureswere by no means prodigious in terms of the empire's total resources, the government had no income already earmarked to meet this expenditure. The unrealistic legend of a self-sufficient army still persisted. Thus not only its financing, but the wei-so system itself became a burden to sixteenth-century administrators. Though its efficiency was gradually being reduced to the minimum, it could neither be abolished nor reorganized. It had been such a fundamental institution of the state that latter-day administrators, with so few financial resources at their disposal, did not even dare to think of introducing innovations into it. Only in 1643, less than a year before the end of the Ming, did Minister of Revenue Ni Yiian-lu boldly suggest that hereditary military households be altogether eliminated, and his proposal was.rejected by the Ch'ung-chen Emperor.152

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IV THE MONETARY PROBLEM Paper currency

The adverse effects of the inflation of paper currency under the two early Ming emperors have been generally recognized by economic historians.153 The exact extent of the damage to governmental finance caused by their inflationary policies has not yet been fully assessed however. Cursory observation might lead one to the conclusion that the blunder had only temporary effects; but in reality the inflation had long-term consequences in that one mistake led to another. The failure of the paper currency started a chain reaction, the unfortunate effects of which spread to the minting of copper coins and subsequently to the use of silver in tax administration. Though there were many reasons for the Ming dynasty's failure to integrate itsfinancialaccounts and discard its tax quota system, one of them was undoubtedly the lack of a workable monetary system, and this in turn originated in the unrestricted issue of paper currency in the early years of the dynasty. The Hung-wu Emperor's attitude toward money is difficult to explain. Over-confident in his own powers of regulation, he must have decided that the paper currency would hold its arbitrarily assigned value. Yet there is no indication that he ever understood that his inflationary policy in fact constituted a form of taxation. It could have been anticipated that by defraying expenditures with unlimited quantities of government notes, the circulation of those notes would soon reach saturation point. There is no evidence that he realized these implications. Hung-wu is known to have circulated paper currency in the form of general awards, and to have distributed it as special grants to imperial princes and high-ranking officials, and as return gifts to foreign tributary missions. He also used them to pay for grain purchases and handed them out as relief for natural disasters. Though it used to be regarded as impossible to ascertain the amount of paper currency in circulation, its general range can in fact be established. Its high level is surprising. In the Shih-lu for the year 1390 are sixty-nine entries indicating various occasions on which the dynastic founder made payments in paper currency.154 Of these sixty-nine casesfifty-threeeither specify the exact amounts distributed or define the nature of the grants clearly enough to permit calculation of the sums involved. Together they total 88,607,315 kuan. While in the remaining sixteen entries the quantity is not reported, its total value can be estimated with some accuracy as close to 7 million kuan. Thus in that year the emperor handed out no less than 95 million kuan of paper currency. The state income in government notes is recorded that year as totalling 20,382,990 kuan.155 Deducting the latter figure from the

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former, one may conclude that in the year 1390 alone the Ming founder inflated the market with some 75 million kuan of new notes. At the official rate of exchange, 1 kuan per picul of husked grain, the amount of new money in circulation was thus equivalent to two and a half years' income from the land taxes. Even at the market value, which was by then 4 kuan per picul of grain,156 the amount was still worth more than half a year's land tax income. This estimate does not conflict with the known productive capacity of the superintendency of paper currency. The emperor's own statements disclose that in the Chinese year of 1385, the workers in the superintendency actually produced somewhere between 27 million and 34 million kuan of new notes.157 This amount is considerably less than the 75 million kuan circulated in 1390. Nevertheless in 1385 the market value of the paper currency was 2.5 kuan per picul of grain.158 The total value of the new currency put into circulation in that year was still not much below half a year's income from the land taxes. In the early years of the fifteenth century, currency inflation had already got out of control. In 1404 an imperial censor suggested that salt be sold to the entire population on a uniform rationing system, with payment made exclusively in paper money. His original plan required the raising of a huge annual income of 1 billion kuan. The ministry of revenue's counter-proposal reduced the payment by half.159 Even though the rationing was never carried out according to either the original plan or the counter-proposal, the scale of the projected income gives some idea of the total amount of currency then in circulation. It is evident that Yung-lo's policies also contributed to this advanced state of inflation. Though he reduced the official exchange rate to 30 kuan of currency per picul of grain,160 the actual purchasing power of the paper money was below even this level. When Hsiian-te ascended the throne in 1425 the paper notes had only from one-fortieth to one-seventieth of their original value.161 Such rates, nevertheless, were not price indices comparable to those in a modern society where they fluctuate in accordance with supply and demand conditions of the market. In the early fifteenth century private business was limited in scope. Commercial transactions using large amounts of paper currency were unheard of. The so-called market value of the paper currency, while in part determined by the users, to a large extent still relied on the regulating power of the state. Whenever this power was lacking the populace avoided the currency altogether; the result was therefore not further devaluation but total disuse. The Ming court naturally did not neglect its policing of private transactions. In 1426 earlier laws proscribing the circulation of gold and silver were reaffirmed.162 In 1429 a stiff fine was imposed on violators, each tael of silver used in a transaction being assessed at 10,000 kuan of paper

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currency.163 Such regulations could not be effectively enforced because private business dealings were too scattered and silver was relatively abundant. Hsiian-te, contrary to his own monetary policy, had himself distributed 963,829 taels of the precious metal in general awards at his accession.164 The most effective method of maintaining the value of paper currency was to find outlets for the notes that were circulating among the populace. In the early fifteenth century the government permitted the use of paper currency to pay taxes and fines, but were careful to restrict the amounts involved. Because of the widespread lack of confidence in the paper currency, administrators did not dare accept such payments on a large scale; this would entail financial loss, which could not be supported since the government had no budgetary surplus. The next step was to create new tax revenues and make them payable exclusively in paper notes. At the suggestion of Minister of Revenue Hsia Yiian-chi, Hung-hsi in 1425 introduced store franchise fees levied on shopkeepers. The scope of the levies was widened and the rates increased by Hsiian-te who in 1429 ordered that all the franchise fees in thirty-three cities be increased five-fold. The highest fee paid by the shopkeepers was 500 kuan per month per store. Donkey carts entering and leaving the city gates of Peking and Nanking also paid tolls, at 300 kuan a, time. In addition a levy, assessed by tonnage was made on shipping using the Grand Canal, generally bringing in about 500 kuan for a boat going through the whole length of the waterway.165 The year-end report for 1431 indicated that in that year 200 million kuan of paper currency had been produced by these 'miscellaneous collections'.166 In 1433 the collection further expanded to 288 million kuan.167 The deflationary effort was declared a success. The emperor announced: 'Now both within and outside the capital paper money is circulating well.' He ordered a uniform reduction of the tax rates, in general to about one-third of the previous level. Further reductions were ordered by Cheng-t'ung and Ching-t'ai, until by 1442 the rates were no more than 10 per cent of what they had been at their highest point. In 1452 the tolls on carts at the city gates, differentiated into four categories, were 8, 4, 2 and 1 kuan respectively. The 4 kuan rate was less than 2 per cent of the previous payment.168 The 1429 schedule was clearly excessive and must have caused serious hardship to merchants and the general public alike. But once this drastic step had been taken and its effects realized, it was unwise to abandon it without devising follow-up measures to strengthen the paper currency as a permanent institution. Clearly a golden opportunity for currency reform presented itself at this point. To say that the Ming government's failure to seize it was due to its lack of the technical knowledge is unconvincing, because as early as 1425 a soldier had already submitted a plan for a

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currency reform, urging the replacement of the Hung-wu issue with new notes.* The sovereign not only read it, but circulated it among his ministers, indicating that the suggestion was a wise one which coincided with his own opinions.169 In view of this, it can only be concluded that any currency reform on such a scale was already beyond the capacity of the Ming court. It should be noted that the plan submitted by the soldier was not limited to the simple matter of issuing a different kind of paper money but also pointed to the need for a more integrated fiscal administration, entailing the gathering of accurate fiscal data and balancing the budget. Such a program, if carried out at all, would have required a complete departure from Hungwu's concept of governmental finance. Hsiian-te, who was at that time harassed by the problems of tax arrears and the Annam situation, could not be expected to venture so far. Yet without the suggested reorganization the introduction of new currency would be pointless and would only shake public confidence still further. As it turned out, all the paper notes issued afterwards still bore the regnal title of the Hung-wu Emperor.170 The empire's major problem was in the area of land taxes and military farming. In the 1420s and 1430s the court, under pressure, only reduced some of the payments without compensating for the tax losses thus incurred. Artificial outlets for paper money were restricted to heavy taxation on the urban sector of the population, since in the cities the police power of the state was much more effective. In a predominantly agrarian society, however, such a basis of circulation was much too narrow; it was merely a closed circuit. The 200 million kuan or more of paper money derived from the annual miscellaneous collection could not have been worth more than 500,000 taels of silver. At the same time the tolls and franchise fees were already felt to be too heavy and could not be continued permanently. The failure of the policy was a foregone conclusion. When Hsiian-te died in 1435, a child emperor came to the throne. The prefect of Wu-chou, Kwangsi province, petitioned for the legalization of copper cash in private trade (at that time the unenforceable imperial law forbidding the use of copper coins had not yet been rescinded). The petition was approved, thus providing the population with an excuse to regard the decrees proscribing the circulation of precious metals as no longer in force either.171 When in the following year the court itself authorized the collection of land taxes in silver (see Gold Floral Silver, 2, i), the fate of paper currency as legal tender was sealed. Its further devaluation was only to be expected. In 1436 it was reported that more than 1,000 kuan of paper were required to purchase 1 tael of silver.172 Nonetheless, in the 1440s the value of the * In the early Ming many learned men were drafted to become soldiers. This particular man had been a political prisoner; Hsiian-te later discharged him from hereditary military registration on reading his paper.

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notes increased to a rate of less than 500 kuan per tael of silver,173 as a consequence of the Ming court's final effort to re-enact the law forbidding the use of copper coins. This step was in theory logical. The largest denomination of the paper currency was 1 kuan. Though they were unable to compete with silver, it was decided that the notes at their depreciated value should replace copper cash for use as small change. In 1448 a regulation to this effect was proclaimed and in Peking the police began to arrest those who used the coins in transactions.174 But the government notes could not easily be revitalized in view of their previous history, and petty transactions were extremely difficult to regulate. When in the following year the Ming armies suffered a crucial defeat at T'o-mo-pao and the youthful emperor was captured by the Oirat chieftain Esen, during the ensuing state of emergency in the capital the unenforceable law was simply ignored. No effort was ever made thereafter to promote the general acceptance of government notes. Paper currency was never entirely abandoned, however. Even though it fell into disuse, it survived as a fiscal unit. Certain revenues which had been assessed during the Hung-wu period in paper notes and later converted into silver at the sixteenth-century exchange rate of 0.003 taels of silver per kuan, thus dwindled preposterously. Nor was there ever any thorough reorganization of the revenues created in the early fifteenth century for the purpose of promoting the use of the paper currency. As a matter of principle some of these items still had to be paid partially in paper notes. In 1466 it was already reported that the notes 'could not attract the attention of passers-by when they were piled up in the stores', yet even as late as the 1580s the magistrate in Peking was still required to purchase paper currency in order to fulfill his tax-delivery obligations.175 The currency had no commercial value, except in so far as some dealers specialized in the business of buying it for resale to those taxpayers who had to include the notes in their tax payments. From 1488 the government in general recognized 1 kuan as equivalent to 0.003 taels of silver,176 but in the assessment of taxes one type of currency could not be substituted by another. The total amount of taxes actually paid in the currency was negligible.177 In 1527 the notes were no longer officially counted by the kuan. The assigned value of the blocks varied from place to place.178 Until the mid fifteenth century the Ming court had used paper currency to pay part of official salaries and sometimes the soldiers' pay as well. Thereafter such practices were generally discontinued and the paper currency became in effect a kind of 'ceremonial money'. It was distributed to officials as nominal travel allowances, and occasionally meritorious ministers and governors-general also received parcels of paper money, never exceeding 1,000 kuan at a time, as a form of special honor from the throne. On festival occasions the emperor handed it out as awards to his

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court.179 In 1618, during the Manchurian campaign the government still paid some of the soldiers with the paper currency.180 The last time paper notes were distributed as a part of the general awards seems to have been in 1620 on the accession of the T'ien-ch'i Emperor, more than one and a half centuries after they had been discontinued in general use.181 Copper coinage The coining of money was considered throughout the dynasty more as an administrative function than a public service. The mint had no operating budget and its statutory laborers received rations but no pay. Ordinarily the necessary materials were supplied either by the artisans or by designated merchants at prices determined by the government. Furnishing such supplies constituted part of their service obligations. After the mid fifteenth century most of the laborers paid silver rather than perform the service obligations in person; the actual workers were hired substitutes. Many earlier practices, such as holding the workers and suppliers financially responsible for minting operations, continued however. Some of the foremen in the mint, known as lu-fou, or 'furnace chiefs', supplied the needed charcoal. A seventeenth-century handbook indicates that the melting of the metals had to be carefully timed. Otherwise over-melting resulted in shortages of raw materials, which the suppliers had to make up, and under-melting yielded fewer coins than required, which became the financial liability of the furnace chiefs.182 Most of the coins circulated under the Ming were of one denomination only, known as Mien or wen, and sometimes referred to by Western writers as the copper 'cash'. But cKien (mace) was also a unit of weight, namely one-tenth of a tael, the Chinese ounce. In theory at least each coin, a ch'ien, should also weigh 1 cWien. In other words 10 coins were supposed to weigh 1 tael; and 160 coins 1 catty.183 Coins of larger denominations were rarely minted. Hung-wu minted some coins in denominations of up to 10 cKien. Similar coinage produced during the T'ien-ch'i period in the seventeenth century was a total failure.184 The bullion theory of money was a time-honored tradition and was probably even more reinforced during the Ming than in earlier times. The dynasty's monetary policy must have further dissuaded the people from putting their faith in abstract money. Copper coins, in principle, were to be made of pure copper. An alloy containing an admixture of tin was acceptable, but lead tended to debase the value.185 A memorial of 1505 requested the emperor's permission for coinage to be allowed to contain anything from one-sixteenth to one-eighth of tin, but this rule was at that time applied only to the coinage in Peking.186 In the fourteenth century, prior to the proscription of private trans-

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actions in precious metals, it was decreed that 1,000 standard coins were to be worth 1 tael of silver. After 1500, partly due to the rise in the price of copper, the rate was revised to 700 and sometimes 800 coins per tael of silver. The actual rates in private transactions varied considerably from this norm, depending on local copper prices and the quality of the coins.187 The coins were produced not by stamping but by die-casting. An illustration in the Tien-kung K'ai-wu shows that the two halves of the hollow molds resembled an attache-case standing on one of its ends and containing dozens of impressions of coin. The molten metal was poured in from the top. 188 After the coins were cast, a great amount of work was involved in trimming and polishing the edges. One source indicates that up to onethird of the metal had to be filed off in order to produce top-quality coins.189 The description of the trimming process is not entirely clear, but it seems that a lathe-like device was used. Coins were fixed in position for trimming by stringing them on a square rod, of which the two ends were clamped tight. In the early sixteenth century, it is claimed, this process was eliminated in favor of hand-trimming in order 'to save manufacturing costs'. 190 The workers, therefore, mixed more tin and lead in the alloy to facilitate the trimming. This is said to have been a major cause of the deterioration in the quality of government-minted coins, which in its turn encouraged counterfeiting. These details are of considerable significance; for they show that it was inadequate financing rather than lack of technological skill that forced down manufacturing standards. The minting of money was from the beginning retarded by the policy of promoting paper currency. The government was unwilling to create coinage that would compete with its own legal tender, and even more so after the devaluation of the paper notes which put them roughly on a par with the copper coins.191 It has already been observed that up to the mid fifteenth century the Ming court from time to time proscribed the circulation of coins. Such orders were ineffective as the populace simply resorted to using the coins minted by previous dynasties. Copper coins were minted, albeit infrequently, by Hung-wu, Yung-lo, and Hsiian-te, but seventy years after 1433 no coins were produced at all.192 The records of the early production are incomplete but the fragmentary figures show that the quantities were not enormous. The largest numbers of coins minted by Hung-wu, for example, were the 222,401,956 cash in 1372 and 199,849,832 cash in 1374, both amounts being close to 200,000 taels of silver in value.193 Official records indicate that even at the high point of production in the fourteenth century the state's normal annual productive capacity was only 190,667,800 coins.194 The experience of the Northern Sung indicates that to provide an adequate money supply the state would have had to produce 2 to 3 billion coins annually, roughly 50 new coins per capita per year.195 Ming production, because of its con-

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The heritage of the sixteenth century

stant fluctuation, never approached this level. Moreover a large proportion of the coins minted in the early Ming circulated overseas. Cheng Ho's expeditions had exported unspecified sums of copper cash,196 and in other cases coins were also granted to foreign emissaries. In 1453 the Japanese tributary mission alone carted off 50.118 million Ming coins.197 Up till then the Ming court had no legitimate way to circulate its own coins in the domestic market. By about 1450, when the prohibition on the use of silver and copper coins was rescinded, the acute demand for copper cash led to a 'copper coin famine'. Yet throughout the rest of the century the government did practically nothing to relieve the shortage. At the same time large quantities of privately-minted coins appeared in the markets. The makers of these counterfeits, which contained lead, iron, and sand, could imitate any of the ancient issues which were in circulation.198 When the court finally took action in 1503 there were no funds available to finance the production of coinage and the capacity of the mint in Peking was very limited.199 The solution was to follow the fourteenth-century precedent of assigning productive quotas to the provinces. The provincial officials were then required to turn out a certain number of coins to the specification of the central government. Ordinarily, coining money was a profitable undertaking. Even in the late sixteenth century the minting of copper coins could still yield a 40 per cent return (6, n). In this case however the central government was not authorizing the governors to mint their own money. Its requisitioning of specified quantities of coins from them was, as pointed out by a supervising secretary, in effect a new form of taxation.200 Nanking, the southern capital, was required to produce 25.6 million coins. Many officials in the south jointly signed a petition to the emperor stating that the local districts had bad years and the assigned quota was much too heavy a burden on the populace. The emperor subsequently reduced the quota to two-thirds.201 Yet this quota, even if realized in full, would have been worth only 36,657 taels of silver, an amount too insignificant to alleviate the coin shortage. In 1505 it was acknowledged even in official circles that government artisans could not compete with the workmanship of the counterfeiters. A group of officials, after touring the Peking mint, reported that the government workers 'clumsily hammered and chiseled the coins', which were 'awkward, unbecoming, and shapeless'.202 When the order to coin money was issued in 1503 the total production envisaged was about 200 million coins.203 By the summer of 1505 the ministry of revenue reported that less than 20 per cent of the assigned quota had actually been produced.204 Apparently the original plan had still not been fully carried out even by 1509, in which year the whole project was suspended.205 The Chia-ching Emperor was the last Ming monarch to make a serious

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attempt to maintain copper coinage as a state institution, ordering production to be resumed in 1527.206 Despite efforts to improve the workmanship and increase the weight of the coins, monetary disorder worsened during his reign. By the 1550s the market was so inundated with lowquality counterfeits that the rate of exchange was 6,000 coins to 1 tael of silver. Unscrupulous persons put shopkeepers out of operation by forcing them to accept coins at the official rate of 700 per tael. A memorial to the emperor in 1554 claimed that people were dying in the streets of Peking because of the prevailing confusion in the monetary system.207 The logical connection was not clearly stated but it is reasonable to deduce that there was a sharp rise in food prices and in unemployment. The economic historian, Li Chien-nung, sees in this the operation of Gresham's Law that bad money drives out good. He claims that because the Chia-ching coins were too heavy for their face value they were melted down by counterfeiters for the metal which they contained; some of the high-quality coins, moreover, were hoarded by the people at large.208 There is a grain of truth in this theory but as a complete explanation it is unacceptable. Li ignores the factors of the quantity of government coinage in the mid sixteenth century and its quality control. The Chia-ching coinage has unfortunately been the subject of considerable misunderstanding. The Ming-shih states that in 1553 government mints produced a total of 95 billion coins, the information being cited from the Ta-Ming Hui-tien.209 P'eng Hsin-wei, a major authority on Chinese monetary history, calls this fantastic figure 'impossible'. Himself a collector, P'eng declares that there is no trace of some of these coins said to have been produced in such vast quantities, and suspects that while there might have been a proposal for their mass production it could not have been put into effect.210 One might add that the value of 95 billion coins in the mid sixteenth century would have been roughly equivalent to the total cash income of Peking over a period of twenty years. To attain such an output most of the government mints would have had to be expanded a hundred times over. All the verifiable information indicates that the total amount of coinage was very small. In 1527 the mints of Nanking and Peking turned out only 41,491,200 coins. In 1540 it was decided that the operation was unprofitable and it was again suspended.211 The boldest proposal for large-scale production during the entire period came from Supervising Secretary Yin Cheng-mou (later minister of revenue, 1576-8) who in 1555 called for an annual output of 650 million coins utilizing Yunnan copper supplies. This would have required an annual investment of 390,000 taels of silver,212 but when the plan was put into effect, it was drastically scaled down and only 20,000 taels of silver invested. The annual output was only slightly more than 33 million coins, worth less than 50,000 taels of silver. Though

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the project realized a nominal profit of 150 per cent, this was only made possible by demanding that the local population transport the money to the central provinces. The Yunnan provincial administration repeatedly pleaded that the burden was too great for the province to bear and in 1565 production was finally ended.213 The production of coinage at Nanking and Peking, suspended in 1540, was later resumed, though the exact date is uncertain. But in a report to the emperor in 1564, Grand-Secretary Hsu Chieh (in office 1552-68) revealed that there was only 28,000 taels of silver invested in the Peking mint.214 In short, there is no evidence that coin production could ever have significantly exceeded the 100 million level in any one year in the Chiaching period, and in some years it was suspended completely. Even though the Chia-ching Emperor attempted to establish a bi-metallic monetary system and the copper coin supply did not necessarily have to accord with the per capita ratio of the Sung, the new production, at a rate of less than one coin per person, could not possibly have met the general demand, especially in view of the higher level of economic activity in the Ming. The lack of quality control of the Chia-ching coinage is confirmed by Hsu Chieh's statements. The government mints produced many types of coins, of which the grand-secretary attached samples for the emperor's inspection. One of them, which was trimmed by means of the lathe-like device, was known by the users as 'wheeled edges'. Another kind, which had a painted surface, was termed 'golden backs' while the third type, the surface of which was black and rough, was given the name 'paraffin money'. There were still worse coins which did not fall into even these classifications. Hsii convincingly argued that these shortcomings were the fault of the government agencies rather than the general public. At his suggestion the mint in Peking suspended its operations, as did the Yunnan mints in the following year.215 Part of the responsibility for this failure rests with earlier emperors. The coinage was not gradually built up to begin with. Handicapped by this late start the government in the sixteenth century further underestimated the magnitude of the problem. At a time when it should have put all its resources into the production of a new currency, it looked merely to the immediate profit, to the detriment of long-term planning. The new coins, small in quantity and unstandardized, had no chance of success. Nor did Ming coinage ever depart from the traditional design. Unable to replace the issues of previous dynasties, the court merely proclaimed laws to demonetize them, which only confused the users.216 After the failure in the 1560s no further attempts were ever made to regulate exchange rates in private transactions. The people were advised by successive imperial orders to handle the different kinds of coins 'as they wished'.217 Up to the end of the dynasty the taxes paid in copper coins

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were limited to certain business taxes in the cities and percentages of the inland customs duties. Preference for one kind of coin over another continued in official collections,218 but this still does not mean that the Ming coins were the legal tender. After 1571 government mints were occasionally put back in operation,219 and a general order for coin production issued in 1576 even anticipated that the population would be able to pay the land taxes in copper cash, a goal that was never realized.220 In general, the government's attitude was cautious.221 It accepted the market value of its own coinage, and occasionally managed to realize a small profit on minting money by taking advantage of the fluctuations in its value (6, n). In the late sixteenth century the use of silver in tax payments as well as in private transactions spontaneously increased. The precious metal was always handled in ingots, chunks, and bits, and no contemporary evidence has ever come to light that suggests the slightest intention of minting silver dollars. Modern China produced its own silver dollars for the first time in the nineteenth century.222 It is difficult to dimiss the possibility that this prolonged inertia has been somehow related to the painful experience with copper cash under the Ming. Unminted silver in tax administration and as a common medium of exchange The use of uncoined silver in the fiscal administration of a large country at the dawn of modern times was a unique situation. When the Ming government failed to develop an adequate income from silver mining (6, i), its loss of control over money and credit was complete. This meant that fiscal administrators had to perform their task without one of the essential tools. The resulting hindrance to tax collection and delivery was evident, but there were other implications besides. The money supply situation in the late sixteenth century is still open to speculation. Liang Fang-chung has estimated that between 1390 and 1486, domestic mining produced a total of 30 million taels of silver, and that in the last seventy-two years of the Ming, more than 100 million silver coins were imported from overseas.223 P'eng Hsin-wei shows that under the Yuan Chinese silver had steadily flowed into central Asia. By the time the Ming came to use silver in official transactions it was already in short supply. He interprets one seventeenth-century source to mean that towards the end of the Ming there was only 250 million taels of silver in the hands of the populace. This figure included silver utensils and jewelry that could readily be converted into cash.224 Such hypotheses naturally require a great deal of verification. Yet it seems to be a fact that the volume of silver in circulation in the late sixteenth century was small. There is evidence that farm prices were apt to drop sharply immediately after the harvest, when

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taxes had to be paid in silver, a subject that will be taken up later in connection with the land tax administration (4, m). Price fluctuations would have occurred under any circumstances but their severity suggests that inadequate money supply could have been a key factor. The use of silver bullion in tax administration was fundamentally unplanned and not even adopted by choice. Its drawbacks could not have been foreseen and modified. The commutation of taxes and service obligations in the sixteenth century was a long-drawn-out and quite unsystematic process. The insufficiency of silver in circulation was doubtless one reason why some of the obligations were never commuted. Ku Yen-wu, describing conditions in the mid seventeenth century, still felt that collection of taxes in silver was a mistake and argued for a reversion to taxes in kind.225 Tax delivery in the late sixteenth century involved basically a northward movement of the bullion. The central and southern provinces submitted their payments to Peking while the northern provinces, in addition to making deliveries to Peking, also forwarded tax payments to the army posts further north. After the mid sixteenth century annuities to those posts from the capital were stepped up. The revenues from the salt monopoly moved along the same path. The essential routine deliveries can be estimated to have involved the movement of at least 5 million taels in a more or less southeast to northwest direction.226 Undoubtedly a large proportion of the bullion returned eventually to its points of origin. The northern frontier was an absolute barrier as far as silver was concerned. Without this return its northward movement could not have continued uninterruptedly for over a century. Though the data are still inadequate, the work of several modern scholars on the cotton and cotton-goods trade and the porcelain industry, and contemporary records of the frontier, suggest that the silver returned by roughly the same route as it came, destined for purchase of basic commodities in the south and the southeast.227 This circuit placed diagonally like a huge paper clip on the map of Ming China, while promoting the circulation of money, could also conceivably have intensified the regional economic imbalance within the empire. It forced the regions at one end of the circuit to earn their silver through industrial production and those at the other end through governmental services. Ku Yen-wu, who had travelled widely, pointed out that in his time silver shortages were most acutely felt in Teng-chou and Lai-chou in Shantung and west of Hu-hsien in Shensi, two major areas that were left out of the bullion circulation.228 At the same time the slow process of tax collection and delivery must have kept the bullion, which constituted a significant proportion of the money supply, out of normal market circulation for months. A more detailed study of this subject will be the task of general economic

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historians; but from the standpoint of financial history it can be shown that the sixteenth-century use of silver in tax administration, especially without effective backing by copper coins, had several disadvantages. Promoting the use of unminted silver could actually discourage investment. Clearly a man who was worth 1 billion copper cash could not possibly have kept that number of coins in his possession. On the other hand a millionaire in the late Ming could physically hoard a million taels of silver within his household. A memorial dated about 1580 declared that there were many households south of the Yangtze that possessed literally several hundred thousand taels of silver each.229 The usual method of safe deposit was to bury the bullion underground.230 Understandably, silver became widely used for jewelry, ornaments, and utensils all of which, in theory a form of ready cash, actually reduced the amount of money in circulation. One advantage of the system, nevertheless, was the absence of inflationary pressure. The long-term price structure in silver in the sixteenth century was remarkably stable. Barring regional differences, seasonal fluctuations, and the effects of natural disasters, basic commodities throughout the century showed little price variation.231 The only notable exception was the widespread fall in farm prices reported in the decade between 1570 and 1580, which was possibly a consequence of the financial retrenchment carried out by Chang Chii-cheng (7, in). State treasuries are known to have accumulated large quantities of silver during his period in office. Prices began to rise towards the end of the century, but still only gradually. It was only in the early seventeenth century that military expenditures disturbed the economy to such an extent that price increases became drastic. By this time moreover one must also take into account the effects of increased importation of silver, a trend that was to continue for another 200 years.

3 The land tax—(i) Tax structure Land taxes in the late Ming period were undeniably as complex as personal income tax in the twentieth-century United States, if not more so. Presentday income tax is complex because the schedule has to deal with numerous special cases, of which the upper income group is the most complicated of all. The complexities of the Ming system, however, applied to all taxpayers, to owners of 5 mou and 5,000 mou of land alike. This makes the tax structure most difficult to describe. Furthermore even though tax regulations at the local level under the Ming followed a general pattern, there were numerous internal variations between one prefecture and another and sometimes even among counties in the same prefecture. The conventional way to examine a specific financial institution is to start with a schematic presentation, explaining the terminology and presenting diagrams. This approach has not been completely abandoned. (The main features of the land tax system have already been enumerated (1, n) and in Fig. 3, they are presented diagrammatically.) But it has its limitations in dealing with the Ming taxation system. A more detailed investigation of the problem would soon show that there is no way of citing all the varieties and exceptions which occurred. In these circumstances generalizations could easily be misleading. This section therefore proceeds in the following order: first the tax regulations of a selected county are described and the causes of their complexities traced. It should provide valuable insight into other cases in the same system. Next the major regional differences are outlined. The merger of the regular land taxes with the service levy, a fundamental cause of all these complexities and one of the most important developments in Ming financial history, is the topic of the third section, and is followed by an explanation of the remaining common tax denominations. While figures are cited as required, discussion of the general level of tax collection is reserved for the following chapter on tax administration. In other words partial evaluation of specific cases precedes overall generalization, and some conclusions are drawn prior to reviewing numerical data. An analysis of the dynamics of the system will precede the exhaustive description of its terminology. [821

oo partial absorption into the land tax

KEY (A) = always paid in silver. (DAS) =directly assessed in silver. (FCSP) = further commutation to silver possible. (M) = mostly commuted. (R) = rarely commuted. (P) = permanently commuted.

(S)

= some commuted, applicable to surcharges also. (Tp) = could be used to pay iso-pan orders. (VR) = very rarely commuted.

regular transmittance (S) added transmittance (S) tribute grain to Peking

paid in grain

V

THE LAND TAX

regular land taxes on the mou

basic assessment in piculs of grain

accessory surtaxes

basic assessment in other commodities

hay-I-transport (S) farmland silk (S) poll tax silk (M) hemp (S)

white grain to Peking (VR) southern grain to Nanking (S) frontier post delivery (S) local granary delivery (M)(Tp)

+ surcharges covering spoilages and transportation (S) permanently commuted

J

commuted to other commodities + surcharges covering transportation

[ G o l d Floral Silver (P) principally in cotton wadding, cotton cloth, sesame seeds, dates (FSCP)

principally in silk wadding (S), silk fabrics (S), and cotton wadding (R)

variations of land taxes

horse payment (A), revenue from grassland reserved for salterns (M), rents on government pastures, palace estates, etc. (DAS)

absorptions of uncollectibles

fish duty (M), local business taxes (A), stamp tax (A), rents due to lost public land (M)

FIG. 3. Land tax structure in the late sixteenth century.

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The land tax—(i) Tax structure

This revised order is dictated by the subject matter. Land taxes under the Ming were at no time completely static and were subject to both controlled and uncontrolled growth. The rationale of the changes can often be discovered beneath the inconsistencies. If it can be ascertained where control was exercised in the course of this growth and where it was lacking, it should not be difficult to understand the structure and functions of the land taxes. I THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE TAX STRUCTURE The extent of the complexity: the case of Shun-te The financial section of the 1585 edition of the Shun-te county gazetteer commences with the observation that in general the tenants in the district paid their landlords a rent of 2 piculs of unhusked rice per mou, amounting to 0.9 piculs when husked. Since the basic tax rates assessed in husked grain averaged 0.03 piculs per mou, the collection represented only onethirtieth of the landlord's income. Because the tenant shared the crop with the landlord on a fifty-fifty basis, the taxation level actually stood at onesixtieth of the total grain output. Why then, the gazetteer asked, were there complaints of over-taxation?1 The modern historian might well ask the same question. Before attempting to answer it however it is essential to describe the local background of the tax assessment. Shun-te was situated in Kuang-chou prefecture near modern Canton on the southeast bank of the Hsi river. Both climate and soil were favorable to rice production. Hilly land comprised only 8 per cent of the district's taxable acreage.2 In 1581 a land survey was conducted with the purpose of tax reapportionment (Chang Chii-cheng's land survey, 7, m). As was the case elsewhere, tax assessment in the county up till then showed considerable illogicality. Even though official accounts showed that 48,313 mou of land were government property, such public estates remained unidentifiable in practice. Taxpayers were assessed at higher and lower rates, yet it was impossible to determine how many of the high rate payers held land which had originally been government property. It was equally uncertain that all the low rate payers had clear titles to their land. In other words, land tenure had become confused and the rents on public estates had become hard to separate from the regular land taxes on private property. Nor did the rate differentiation bear much relation to soil productivity. When the survey was completed the county government finally acknowledged, apparently with Peking's approval, that the public land had been lost. Thereafter all registered acreage was recognized as private property. The rents on the lost public estates were collectively assumed by all land-holders under the new registration. Full advantage was taken of the survey to reapportion the

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regular land taxes among the landowners. The tax quota that the imperial government had assigned to the county was thus more evenly distributed among the taxpayers. The reapportionment was beyond any doubt a great improvement. The decision to hold the new landowners collectively responsible for the dues on lost government properties was inevitably criticized, but nonetheless the amount apportioned to each individual taxpayer was infinitesimally small. The new formula for tax assessment was both fair and simple. It embodied the following three major items :3 (a) All taxable land in the county was classified into upper, middle, and lower grades according to soil productivity. Hilly land was included in the lower category. The basic assessment on upper-grade land was 0.0404 piculs of husked rice per mou; that on middle-grade was 0.0273 piculs per mou and on the lower grade 0.0172 piculs per mou. (b) All taxable land, regardless of classification, was assessed at a uniform 0.0094 piculs per mou to compensate for the rents lost to the government by the write-off of public estates. (c) A 1 per cent surcharge was added to the grain payment to cover losses due to handling. This applied to both the regular taxes and the residual rents. In the gazetteer the regular land tax was referred to as min-mi, literally 'civilian rice' and the shares of rent kuan-mi, literally 'official rice'. These two terms will be employed in the following paragraphs to avoid confusion. After fixing these three major provisions, the gazetteer editors refrained from stating the total combined amount of kuan-mi, min-mi, and surcharges collectible from each class of land. It seems rather strange that they should have avoided such a simple mathematical computation since all they needed to do was to add the particular min-mi rate to the general kuan-mi rate and add 7 per cent. It can thus be worked out that the amount assessed on upper-grade land was 0.053286 piculs per mou, on middle-grade 0.039269 piculs per mou, and on lower-grade 0.028462 piculs per mou. The ratio is close to 5:4:3. In point of fact such a computation was of little practical value because by 1585 all the taxes in the county had been made payable in silver. There was a difference between the conversion rates for min-mi and kuan-mi. For the former it was 0.6028 taels of silver per picul, close to the market price in the late sixteenth century; and for the latter it was 0.2653 taels of silver per picul, a rate greatly to the advantage of the taxpayer.4 This makes the procedure more cumbersome but does not prevent the calculation of the total tax payments. The only difference being that this time the 7 per cent surcharge has to be added separately. The separately converted items of kuan-mi and min-mi, when added together, constitute the total payment. The calculation shows that each mou of upper-grade land was assessed

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The land tax—(i) Tax structure

at 0.0287262258 taels, the middle-grade mou at 0.0202767782 taels, and the lower-grade at 0.0137623186 taels. The ratio is now close to 4:3:2. The question might be asked why such vital figures were omitted from the gazetteer. Equally puzzling is why, after the public estates were writtenoff, the two tax denominations of min-mi and kuan-mi should still have been preserved and different conversion rates applied to them. The first question can be answered in full here; the second will be discussed under the next heading Causes of the complexities, below. It must be recalled that at no time in the Ming period was silver ever announced as the official standard. The national accounts still used the picul of grain as the basic fiscal unit and the local districts had to do likewise in order to maintain the fiscal uniformity of the empire. Even though commutation of tax payments from grain to silver became widespread, in theory there was no guarantee that the central government in an emergency would not instruct the county magistrate to deliver a certain number of piculs of grain to another district. When such a situation occurred, the conversion rates had to be discarded and the surcharge percentage revised. The tax provisions in the gazetteer that have been outlined so far in reality involved both permanent regulations and temporary procedures; they followed both the central accounting system and local usage. The total tax quota assigned in piculs of grain to the county could be regarded as permanent, in accordance with the general practice of the time. The basic apportionment of min-mi and kuan-mi was in principle settled in conformity with the national standard. The commutation of grain payments to silver, the adding of the 7 per cent surcharge and the particular conversion rates were, however, subject to later readjustment. Moreover the tax rates in silver computed above, each containing ten digits after the decimal point, were not necessarily the amounts paid by the individual taxpayer, but were only a general standard. The tax structure had to be adjusted to include the partial collection of the service levy. By 1585 Shun-te county had seven major items of service levy (each could also be broken into two or more components) that were totally or partially levied on agricultural land. This was simple compared to many districts where the surtaxes often exceeded twenty in number. This simplification was promoted partly through the efforts of P'an Chi-hsiin, provincial surveillance commissioner of Kwangtung (1, i). In 1559 P'an demanded that all the districts under his jurisdiction collect a silver payment called the chiin-p'ing-yin, or 'equalization silver payment', a concept not fundamentally different from that of the Single Whip Reform.5 The gazetteer shows that the equalization silver payment in Shun-te was collected from three sources. The first was the pool of taxpayers consisting of all able-bodied male adults, the ting. Secondly, 'abstract ting' were formed, by assessing every fifty mou of taxable land as equivalent to a real

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ting for tax purposes. Their total was then added to that of the male adults. Thirdly an extra 'piggy-back' assessment was added to each picul of the regular min-mi collection.6 The most notable feature of this formula is the way in which it combined poll and property taxes, the former being represented by the first source and the latter by the second and third sources. The second and third sources could not be combined, because they represented different principles of taxation. The units of fifty mou of taxable land involved acreage alone, regardless of soil productivity. Their purpose was to make the taxation broadly based, ensuring that each landowner paid his fair share. Those who owned less than fifty mou also paid fractions of the abstract ting assessment. The amount added to the min-mi, on the other hand, reflected both acreage and grain yields, greater emphasis probably being given to the latter. A man who was assessed a large amount of min-mi as his basic tax payment was likely to own land of good quality and enjoy a substantial grain income; it was unlikely that such a man would hold huge tracts of lower-grade land. Since the equal silver payment meant that such a man was taxed twice, both on his entire acreage and on his total grain income, the system also implied some measure of progressive taxation, which should in theory have been effective even when the affluent owner divided his property into small lots and registered them under different names. The equalization silver payment was designed to pay all the annual office expenses of the magistrate's own administration to replace part of the requisitions from the li-chia. A similar collection called chiln-yao (equalization of corvee labor, (3, n)) was designed to replace all the labor service requisitions which were also managed by the county magistrate. At the time the gazetteer was published there was as yet no indication that the two kinds of service levy might be combined, because the chiln-yao collection had just been changed from quinquennial to annual collection and the procedure was not all settled.7 The chiin-yao, which also combined the features of a poll and property tax, was however derived from two segments instead of three. It imposed a collection on the ting or able-bodied adults and added another surtax to the min-mi, but omitted the conversion of every fifty mou of taxable land into an abstract ting. Its rates were, of course, different from those of the equalization silver payment. The county in addition contributed its share of palace supplies and furnished raw materials under the jurisdiction of the ministry of works. The materials were partially delivered in kind by the magistrate and partially submitted in silver payments. Owing to the accounting system, which was based on allocation of funds prior to collection rather than after it, the assessments remained as three separate items (supplies to the palace, in kind, materials to the ministry of works, in kind, and materials to the ministry of works, in cash), each involving a surtax on both the min-mi and

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the kuan-mi. In every case the kuan-mi rate was considerably less than that on the min-mi, in accordance with the earlier principle that tenants on government land, who paid a higher percentage of their grain income to the state, should be assessed with lighter service obligations than private landowners. But because each taxpayer's basic assessment now included both kuan-mi and min-mi these three service assessments resulted in six different kinds of surtax on his property.8 The county magistrate was also required to deliver silver payments to subsidize postal stations in the adjacent districts, the funds being derived from a single surtax on min-mi? Like other counties, Shun-te was obliged to maintain its quota of militia, which was usually supervised by the military defense circuit intendant. About twothirds of the necessary funds were derived from a surtax on min-mi and the remaining third was paid by the abled-bodied male adults, the ting.10 The above items represented three surtaxes on kuan-mi, seven surtaxes on min-mi, one combined tax on the total acreage of taxable land, plus three different kinds of assessment on the able-bodied male adults in the household. In addition to these there were other minor kinds of service levy, such as funds collected to pay for military equipment in a nearby army unit.11 The accounts being small, they are here regarded as nuisance taxes and excluded from the discussion. At this point it begins to become apparent that what initially seemed to be a single tax formula could develop into a great maze of surcharges and surtaxes. We have made several mock case-studies of the tax schedule for different taxpayers holding varying amounts of land of upper, middle, and lower grade and with different numbers of male adults in their households. Using longhand it takes at least one and a half hours to settle the most simple case, for the decimal digits in the fiscal units can in theory be extended indefinitely. Yet on the other hand the actual level of taxation, despite the fourteen kinds of surtax, was low. For small landowners with less than 30 mou of mainly lower-grade land each, and no more than two male adults in their household, the tax burden was in general less than 5 per cent of their estimated grain income. The progressive feature of the tax formula can also be verified. For a medium landowner who had 300 mou of mostly upper-grade land, and five to six adults in his household, the total tax burden could be close to 10 per cent of his estimated grain income. The low level of taxation can be further confined from the aggregate figures listed in the gazetteer. In 1585 the min-mi and kuan-mi plus the 7 per cent surcharge together totalled 34,689 piculs. The amount was actually paid with 17,952 taels of silver.12 Following the detailed description of the tax procedure in the gazetteer, we computed the additional tax burden borne by the agricultural land as a result of the apportionment of the service levy, seven items in all, but not including the portions assessed

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as poll taxes. The aggregate was 11,324 taels. The total burden on the taxable acreage was therefore 29,276 taels of silver. Dividing this figure by the 883,706 mou of land under registration13 shows the average tax burden to have been 0.0332 taels per mou. Since hilly land in Shun-te comprised only 8 per cent of the total taxable acreage, its lower yields should not have affected the average grain output in the district significantly. The opening paragraph of the gazetteer mentions that an average mou of land produced 1.8 piculs of husked grain. The local grain price being somewhere between 0.5 and 0.6 taels of silver per picul (4, n), the average mou must have produced an annual income of around 1 tael of silver, not counting miscellaneous crops planted out of the regular season. The general level of taxation was therefore close to 3.5 per cent of farm income. An unofficial source indicates that in the late sixteenth century the grain price in Kuang-chou prefecture could fall as low as 0.3 taels per picul,14 perhaps due to the effects of deflation in the decade between 1570 and 1580 (2, iv and 7, in). That would reduce the estimated annual income to 0.54 taels of silver per mou but even then the level of collection would still have been no more than 6.12 per cent of farm output. It is not difficult, however, to imagine the actual situation when this complicated tax schedule was applied to sixteenth-century agrarian society by an understaffed local government. Ming writers left volumes of complaints against the corruption and abuses of rural collectors, office clerks, and influential landowners. Such malpractices took various forms and employed different methods, and were only to be expected. The fundamental fallacy of the taxation system was neither a high level of collection nor a lack of egalitarian provisions in the tax legislation. On the contrary, those objectionable features were notably absent. The weakness of the system was the complexity of the tax schedule, which even the gazetteer could not spell out in full. Tax rates stated to twelve or fourteen decimal digits were grotesque, and had never been seen before Ming times. Faced with the same absurdity at about the same time, the prefectural gazetteer of Sung-chiang in South Chihli declared: 'Silver should not be counted beyond one-thousandth of a tael; grain should not be counted beyond one-thousandth of a picul. Anything beyond that must be omitted, otherwise we shall all fall into the mists and fogs of the wicked. ' 15 No such basic reform was ever carried out in the Ming however. The first imperial edict ordering the elimination of figures after the fifth place after the decimal point in all fiscal accounts was issued in 1685 by the K'ang-hsi Emperor of the Ch'ing dynasty.16 Even so the cumbersome digits still appeared in Ch'ing ledgers for another fifty years. As has already been observed, Shun-te county also started with tax rates containing no more than four digits behind the decimal point. The proliferation of digits could be stopped neither by the gazetteer writers' appeals, nor the emperor's

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edicts, for it was a direct consequence of the manifold complexities of the basic tax structure. Causes of the complexities The tax procedure of Shun-te county was by no means the most complicated among those in operation in the late sixteenth century, though it was not the simplest either. Because every district had its own particular problems of taxation, it is impossible to cite a typical case. Yet most of the complexities of procedure had common origins. The effects might be different but the causes were similar. The tax administration of Shun-te county has been described in considerable detail because its gazetteer enumerated step by step in a more illustrative way the method of arriving at the rates of collection. Among the many factors contributing to the complexities of the tax structure, agricultural methods cannot be ignored. Rice cultivation, especially when it involved terrace farming, had a predetermined effect on land-holding in that it was conducive to the parcelization of agrarian land. The irrigation of rice paddies on different levels, complicated by the topographical contours, made large-scale operation virtually impossible. Ho Liang-chiin's statement that a husband-and-wife team could properly cultivate only between five and twenty-five mou of land in his native Hua-t'ing county, South Chihli, must also hold true of many southern provinces.17 This resulted in the division of agricultural land into small units, sometimes regardless of ownership. Ho further attested that one household might own scores of plots of land scattered in different locales, the total tax payments on the smaller plots ranging from 0.1 to 0.2 taels of silver.18 In Chia-shan county, Chekiang province, in about 1525 the average taxable acreage in each li was recorded a s ' slightly over 3,000 mou \ 1 9 When divided among the 110 tax-paying households, this means that the average land-holding of each household, including hills and ponds, must have been close to 30 mou, or less than 5 acres. It was quite common in those days for such small parcels of land to be further divided into even smaller plots, sometimes even of fractions of a mou, for sale or mortgage. Fu I-ling's most revealing study presents many actual cases of such fragmented landownership, drawn from sixteenth-century deeds of sale, mortgage agreements, and family compacts, recently discovered in a small village in Yung-an county, Fukien province.20 Fu's sample is small, for the type of documents in his possession, never having been regarded as respectable source material by traditional historians, must now be extremely rare. Wei Ch'ing-yiian's photographic reproduction of a household's tax record of 1644 from Ch'imen county, South Chihli, shows a similar case. The taxpayer in question owned altogether less than 32 mou of land, consisting of eight small plots

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scattered over four different villages.21 The fact that such documents can still be found here and there shows that small-scale land-holding by marginal landowners was by no means unusual in the late Ming. The parcelization of agricultural land can be further verified from the descriptions in the 1566 edition of Hui-chou prefectural gazetteer, South Chihli, and the 1572 edition of KWai-chi county gazetteer, Chekiang province.22 This situation created a double problem in tax administration. Tax legislation had simultaneously to deal with many small landowners and a few medium and large landowners. To suit the small taxpayers, the rates had to be fixed on a minute scale; the range for maneuver was limited and the surtaxes had to be added very carefully. In principle, heavier service levy obligations should have been assessed on the larger landowners, but the fragmentation of agricultural land-holdings made it easy for affluent households to obtain separate registrations under different names, thus evading heavier payments. The tax formula of Shun-te county shows an attempt to break through this dilemma. It abandoned the graded ting and made all able-bodied males pay at uniform rates. By the device of abstract ting and a dozen or so surtaxes on the basic payment it managed to equalize the tax burden somewhat. Many of these complications could undoubtedly have been eliminated, if the medium and large landowners had all had their landed properties in consolidated and compact estates. In that case the heavier tax rates could have been assessed directly on such affluent proprietors. While the unit of land tax assessment, the mou, was rather small, the unit of payment was much too large. Unlike the T'ang and Sung, which used the copper cash as the fiscal unit, the Ming never developed an effective monetary system (2, iv). When unminted silver was used in taxation, the problem was that the smallest weights of the precious metal were too large for ordinary payment. In the sixteenth century 0.6 taels of silver could be considered as the normal price of a picul of husked rice in south and central China. Even if the basic assessment were fixed in grain at the simplified rate of 0.03 piculs per mou, the rate in silver would still be counted in thousandths of a tael. The surtaxes on the basic payments could not be fixed on an overall percentage basis. Instead, there was a separate rate for each item; in Shun-te, for instance, the chiin-yao rate was settled at 0.1403 taels of silver on each picul of min-mi in basic payment?* In practice, no taxpayer was assessed a min-mi payment even in whole piculs; it always involved hundreths and thousandths of a picul. The result was endless computation of smaller and smaller fractions. Technically speaking, it would have been much easier to combine the several surtaxes into a larger percentage, if these surtaxes had also been fixed on a percentage basis to begin with. The merging of the surtaxes would have followed naturally. As illustrated by the case of Shun-te, the several items of service levy

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represented different expenditures. The persistence of lateral transactions in tax payments made it extremely difficult to merge these revenues. Even when silver became widely used in tax collection, no regional treasuries were ever established by the imperial government nor did the provincial governors set up central treasuries. As banking techniques were not developed to handle public funds, cash flows had to follow earlier procedures and the numerous consignments of commodities that had moved from one end of a province to another and from one end of the empire to another were merely replaced by equally numerous silver consignments. There is very little substance to the theory that the use of silver constituted a significant improvement in fiscal administration; it was rather a case of the same tune played on a different instrument. As long as the central government did not revise general fiscal procedures, it would not relax its control over local administration. Tax collection by the local districts continued to provide the expenses of offices on different levels. Not only did every account have its own quota which had to be neither over- nor under-collected, but in addition it was often delivered by a separate agent to a separate deadline. According to Ho Liang-chun, up to the mid sixteenth century even the rural collection of these separate items was handled by different persons. The lack of integration was so complete that the villagers were visited by squads of tax agents once every several days.24 At this point local officials felt compelled to initiate some basic reform, regardless of explicit approval from higher levels of government. The various kinds of service levy were in reality not merely separate surcharges on the land taxes. They were different types of taxes partially or wholly imposed according to the same tax formula but deriving from different principles of taxation. The equalization silver collected in Shun-te county was designed to replace certain li-chia material requisitions and in principle the handling of the supplies had involved labor service. The chiin-yao payments substituted for corvee labor; the militia service had originally been organized within local communities. These three kinds of impositions therefore had to be imposed on the ting. In view of the low level of land taxes in the county one might think that no great harm would have been done and the benefit of immense simplicity would have been achieved if the said service obligations had been altogether waived and the entire financial burden transferred to landed properties. This was impossible, however. The principle that all male adults were liable to state service had to be upheld, regardless of whether they owned properties or not. To abandon the principle would have impaired imperial uniformity. The advantage of adhering to the ting as a taxable unit was that should the taxpayer be unable to pay he could be conscripted to perform the service in person. This is why only the three kinds of collection mentioned above

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retained some features of a poll tax. Yet none of these items could remain as a simple poll tax; much of the burden still had to be borne by agricultural land. The tax structure failed to achieve the desired simplicity because it served multiple principles and purposes. The retaining of kuan-mi as a fiscal item is another instance of the strong influence of tradition. In the sixteenth century public land in many provinces had been completely lost (3, n). This was acknowledged by a number of districts besides Shun-te.25 But there were also counties and prefectures which claimed that they had preserved such estates in their districts.26 The imperial government, unable to make any effective inquiry, simply had to take the position that as long as local districts continued to deliver the rents on public land in accordance with the established quotas it would not question the details. Yet in spite of this it never decided, as a general policy, to write off such public domains. The result was that most counties retained kuan-mi as a separate item in the accounts. In Kiangsi the government land had probably been lost before the mid sixteenth century.27 Yet the provincial accounts in 1610 still maintained that of its revenue derived from agricultural land, 657,274 piculs of grain was collected as kuan-mi and 1,871,519 piculs as min-mi.28 Thus it was not only Shun-te that observed the formality of preserving fictitious rents on nonexistent public land. It is interesting to observe, however, that through the ingenuity of local administrators the defunct fiscal term was actually utilized to serve certain practical ends. The intention was to connect it with the collection of the Gold Floral Silver. Ever since 1436 some 4 million piculs of grain of the land taxes had been permanently commuted to silver at the discount rate of 0.25 taels per picul, the proceeds becoming the emperor's privy purse (2, i). Shun-te was apportioned some 4,000 taels of this item, known as Gold Floral Silver. From 1585 the revenue collected as kuan-mi was delivered to Peking as payment towards this separate account.29 When the proceeds from this proved insufficient, a small portion of the income from min-mi was used to make up the balance. The commutation of kuan-mi, settled by local administrators at 0.2653 taels of silver per picul, in reality represented the basic rate for Gold Floral Silver plus a small surcharge of close to 6 per cent. The demand that the rents on the lost government properties should be made up by all taxpayers in the district might be unreasonable, but through this arrangement the arbitrariness of the order was mitigated by the favorable conversion rate. The magistrate could claim that a certain number of piculs of grain were still collected as kuanmi; at the same time by classifying this as a separate item of tax collection he assured himself of sufficient income to meet the demand for the Gold Floral Silver, which was handled separately when it reached the capital. For each taxpayer to be simultaneously assigned a separate kuan-mi and

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min-mi payment was also convenient for the apportionment of additional surcharges in the future, in that, as already pointed out, the kuan-rni assessment was based on acreage and the min-mi assessment on grain income. The reason why the tax structure of Shun-te county seems more complicated than that of other districts is because its gazetteer spells out the elaborate mathematical formulas behind the tax rates. Such details were in general omitted by official publications elsewhere. The omission of these formulas by no means implies a simpler tax structure, however. Just as a modern accountant in computing a client's income tax return appears to have simplified the tax procedure by keeping the technical details to himself, in the same way, the unpublished tax formulas of other counties and prefectures can be detected from the decimal digits in their tax rates. The criss-crossing supply lines that formed a monstrous web over the empire presented another substantial obstacle to tax reform. They were not only difficult to disentangle but also difficult to comprehend. The requirement for the submission of native goods to the capital alone significantly complicated the tax schedules in numerous districts, because in principle the costs had to be compensated for by collecting the exact amount from the tax-paying public. In 1590 Shanghai county in South Chihli was required to submit 12 taels of silver to the Imperial Academy of Medicine in lieu of locally-produced drugs. In theory this item, along with several others, was still apportioned to every taxpayer and to each mou of taxable land in the district.30 The situation of Shun-te ^was by comparison more favorable, since it had fewer items of supplies to be submitted to Peking than did the counties in Hukwang, Chekiang, and South Chihli. It was not called upon to make distant deliveries of its tax grain. Nor was it required to provide stabling services for government horses, as were the northern counties and prefectures (3, n). Apart from the matter of the lost public estates land tenure in Shun-te was rather simple, and never caused such problems as did land leases in Fukien and Kiangsi (4, n). While these additional complexities will still form the subject of some of the following sections and chapters, a general observation can be made here that most of them had long-established historic origins. The stabling service was ordered by the Hung-wu Emperor. The lack of centralized financing for the operations of the Grand Canal, which resulted in the differentiated and excessive surcharges on tax grain in transit, originated in the Yung-lo period. The first permanent commutation of tax grain to silver in 1436 was intended only to solve a temporary problem, and the rate was fixed without any thought to its effect on future administration. The lateral transference of tax revenues was the general policy of the

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dynastic founder. The improbable-seeming fact is that by the late sixteenth century the basic structure of land taxes under the Ming could no longer be radically simplified because it had already become too complicated. Any meaningful reform would undoubtedly have entailed a complete administrative upheaval. The taxation system as a whole could still, however, have been somewhat rationalized if silver had been formally declared the national fiscal standard and the remaining taxes in kind been altogether commuted. In 1572 in Ku'ai-chi county, Chekiang, the land taxes collected in silver comprised 82 per cent of the total tax revenue.31 By 1591, in Lin-feng county, Shansi, 95 per cent of the land taxes were paid in silver.32 In Shun-te county, Kwangtung, the commutation of land taxes and their associated surcharges was a hundred per cent complete by 1585. Even the tribute grain delivered to Peking in the late sixteenth century remained at the level of only approximately 2.5 million piculs, less than 10 per cent of the empire's land tax quota (7, i). Yet no step was taken to eliminate the picul of grain as the basic fiscal unit. There were many reasons for this failure to adopt a silver standard and effect a total commutation. The reform would have affected the vested interests of the eunuchs in charge of the palace warehouses. The court itself would moreover have been tightly restricted by a silver budget, whereas under the existing system it could still count on some of the grain quotas in the local districts as units contractible and expandable at will. It could assign to them lower or higher conversion rates as it liked and impose local procurement orders on them with little reference to current prices. Apart from all these there were problems resulting from disparities in local grain prices and silver supplies in the various regions of the country. Even if most of these problems could in time have been solved, any meaningful reconstruction of the system would have required a different concept of statecraft, for it would inevitably have affected the entire imperial organization. To declare the use of silver as a national standard would have been easy; but the establishment of regional treasuries in the provinces by the ministry of revenue would have called for the separation of imperial income from local income. The strengthening of logistical capacity at the provincial level would have required the augmentation of office personnel and an increase in the administrative budget. The total elimination of taxes in kind and in corvee labor would have demanded a higher level of formal taxation, an adjustable budget to replace the tax quota system, and more effective control of the rural areas. Needless to say, government in the late Ming had neither the capacity nor the ambition to initiate such a fundamental reform, which Ch'ing reformers were still unable to accomplish even in the late nineteenth century. Tax structure in the sixteenth century thus included many elements

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whose only rationale was earlier precedent. The ad hoc decisions of earlier emperors were honored as customary laws. As time went on it became increasingly difficult to make even minor readjustments to them. In the beginning the imperial government had arrogated to itself too wide an area of jurisdiction while developing too little capacity to maintain effective control. Now it was neither able to expand the latter nor willing to relinquish the former. Because the central government could not implement the necessary reforms, effort to simplify the tax procedures relied exclusively on the local officials, usually the county magistrates and prefects. Inevitably the scope of their reforms was narrow and their attempts uncoordinated. In the late sixteenth century, most of these officials served a three-year term in their posts. Owing to the 'law of avoidance' 33 they were often sent to districts where, in Ku Yen-wu's words, 'the native dialect was unintelligible and local customs foreign to them'. 34 By the time an official became acquainted with the exact situation in the district under his jurisdiction, all too often his term of office had already expired. Officials had varying degrees of success in carrying out local tax reforms but many of them endured lengthy discouragement and frustration. In 1547 the magistrate of Ku'ai-chi county, Chekiang, attempted to consolidate the district's sixty-four different grades of tax assessment into three major categories. His suggestions were submitted to his immediate superior, the prefect of Shao-hsing. The prefect then had to consult with his assistant prefect in charge of taxation (kuan-liang fung-p'ari) as to the feasibility of the new formula and its likely effects on prefectural administration and public opinion. At this point the prefect specifically pointed out that any reallocation of taxes should be limited to the surtaxes and surcharges, as the basic assessment was a matter of 'fundamental law' and thus beyond discussion. The scheme was then referred to the resident circuit intendant, who represented the provincial administration. On his direction a bulletin was posted in front of the offices of the prefect and the magistrate, inviting 'concerned elders and experienced persons' to express their opinions. The more influential persons in the district were canvassed separately. Since Ku'ai-chi was also a salt-producing district, portions of the land taxes collected from the registered saltern households had been designated as part of the salt revenue, and it was therefore necessary to obtain the consent of the imperial censor on salt administration to the suggested reform. Only after all the interested parties had been consulted and the proposal amended several times was the new tax legislation submitted, through the provincial administrative office to the governor for final approval. The district's tax rates were indeed subsequently reclassified into three major categories, but within each category there were so many exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions, that it is difficult to say how

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many grades of assessment were actually retained. As a result the essence of the original proposal was greatly diluted. Most obstruction of district reform was likely to come from the local gentry. They, as retired officials or holders of academic degrees, enjoyed limited tax reductions and exemptions on corvee labor, in theory applicable only to themselves and their families, and all based on complicated schedules. In general they took advantage of loopholes in the existing tax procedures to extend their privileges. Consequently they were liable to be affected by any tax reforms. When dissatisfied they could deliberately keep their payments in arrears, or else apply pressure on the local administrator via influential persons. Sometimes they approached a higher office to seek arbitration. Such approaches could be formal or informal. The formal legal proceedings which they initiated at higher offices were termed 'appeals', but in reality constituted civil suits against the magistrate. Yang Chieh, magistrate of Ku'ai-chi county, in 1572 recorded five cases in the district (one of them dating from the previous century), in which local influential landowners appealed to higher offices in order in overturn the magistrate's tax ruling. Yang simply referred to these cases as 'lawsuits'. In at least one case the magistrate's decision was overruled and on another occasion the case was brought to the attention of Peking.36 The most celebrated county magistrate whose tax legislation met strong local opposition was Pai Tung, who served in Tung-ao county of Shantung in 1574. Pai, in applying the Single Whip Reform in his district, collected the regular land tax at 0.011 taels per mou, plus a service levy charge of 0.0092 taels per mou. Every ting in the county was also assessed with an annual payment of 0.13 taels. These rates were not exceedingly low for north China, but the formula was simple. 'After the first year of application, 11,000 households which had previously absconded returned to their home areas': Pai's achievement was even recognized by Chang Chii-cheng. But on account of 'local dissatisfaction', he was impeached by a supervising secretary and only on Chang Chti-cheng's intervention was the case suspended.37 It is safe to assume that in the late Ming most local officials would secure some consensus from the elite group in their districts before proceeding to procedural revisions. In about 1609 the magistrate of Wenshang county, Shantung, explained the irrationality of the district's tax schedule by the following observations in the local gazetteer: 'But our silk-robed gentlemen all insisted on their own views; none was willing to compromise. Their quarrelsome arguments almost ended in lawsuits.'38 There were, of course, conscientious local officials who did not yield to gentry power and indeed fought it tenaciously. Yet such heroism was rarely rewarded and all too often demanded considerable self-sacrifice from such conscientious magistrates. The public image of the ideal official

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was one who could carry on his administration without a fight. It is understandable therefore that many local officials refrained from making innovations. Laissez-faire was the best policy to protect themselves and their career advancement.39 The complexities of the tax structure were thus the product of many divergent causes. They depended on methods of rice cultivation, the nature of the monetary system, differing principles of taxation, the efforts of the local government to make enactments conform to central legislation, the failure to apply banking techniques to the management of public funds, former ad hoc modifications which could not subsequently be done away with, the inability of the central government to introduce general reforms, and the limited authority of local officials and their restricted freedom of action. The land tax under the Ming, after undergoing so many conflicting compromises, was no longer simply afiscalsystem; it must simultaneously be regarded as a political and social institution. II REGIONAL VARIATIONS

The Yangtze delta Traditionally the Yangtze delta, comprising Soochow, Sung-chiang, Ch'ang-chou, and Cheng-chiang prefectures in South Chihli, and Chiahsing and Hu-chou prefectures in Chekiang, was a source of both profit and problems to the imperial administrators. Benefiting from the rich soil and high water-table around the T'ai lake, the region boasted an unrivalled level of agricultural production. Because of convenient transportation by water its food surpluses could be exported. Handicraft industries in the delta area were also extremely advanced. Successful exploitation of this rich region would have enabled the dynasty to solve most of its financial problems. Extracting more revenue from this territory was not a simple matter, however. Natural forces undoubtedly contributed to the difficulties. Contemporary writers reveal that in numerous cases taxable land in the Yangtze delta was washed away byflood,and new alluvial land was created after inundations.40 The situation was worsened by human errors. The traditional method of irrigation, as Shimizu has pointed out, was constantly working against the forces of nature. Dikes were constructed with no regard for the underlying water-table and streams were channeled against their natural direction. While profitable in the short term, waterworks in themselves increased both the frequency and intensity of flood disasters, which in turn periodically altered the local landscape.41 It has been generally assumed that once a fish-scale book (1, n) was compiled, all landed property was controlled by a permanently binding record. This was not the case because land surveys

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could not be frequently repeated and the features of the terrain were never in a fixed state. With local topography constantly changing, the administrators were compelled to adopt occasional piecemeal remedies, without an accurate set of land data to base them on. When taxable land was washed away, the lost revenue had to be made up from the property of the remaining landowners. Any new alluvial land was hard to discover and easily evaded taxation. Even the most alert and conscientious administrators could do no better than patch up the tax structure. No adequate solution to this perennial problem was ever found. Land-holding in this region was further complicated by legal ambiguities. These can be traced back to the Southern Sung which had, in order to relieve pressing financial problems, forcibly purchased cultivated land from owners in the delta area. From Ku Yen-wu's description we know that the policy was extremely unpopular and possibly created more problems than it solved; even at the Sung dynasty's fall the promised installments of the sale prices had not been paid off. The Yuan continued to hold the properties in question as government land and extended its acreage.42 When the Hung-wu Emperor took over the territory by military force he too, circumvented the legal problem. He simply declared that the populace in this area, especially in Soochow prefecture, had supported his political enemy and that their properties were thereby confiscated. No agency was ever established to administer the confiscated estates and the rents on them were merged with regular land taxes.43 This ambiguity, compounded by the problem of a changing topography, made the registration of deeds completely ineffective. The same problem also existed in Shun-te county; but the government properties in that district prior to the 1581 land survey comprised only 5 per cent of the cultivated acreage. In the delta area the confiscated land and other government estates had at the beginning of the dynasty been built up to such an extent as to make private property look insignificant by comparison. For example, Ch'ang-shu county registered 933,763 mou of government land in 1391, as opposed to 308,737 mou under private ownership.44 Land in the former category exceeded 70 per cent of the total acreage. There was no indication that at the outset the government had connived at the private sale of government properties. This practice nevertheless started in the earlyfifteenthcentury, as ownership could neither be identified on the ground nor checked against the survey records. The timehonored tradition of dividing up land for sale or mortgage intensified the confusion. Ku Yen-wu reports that sometimes the buyers had no idea what kind of property they had purchased.45 For more than a century the Ming government did nothing to eliminate the ambiguity. Only when the more substantial taxpayers constantly kept their taxes in arrears did provincial 4-2

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officials manipulate the tax schedule to give them covert reductions (see below). By the mid sixteenth century the cumulative effects of the confused situation in land tenure had become too troublesome to be ignored; at the same time the public estates in the registers brought no real financial benefit to the state. In 1547 the prefect of Chia-hsing, Chao Ying, suggested that all taxable land be recognized as privately owned. How the proposal wasfinallyapproved is unknown, as no official authorization can be traced. Local gazetteers indicate that the residual rents due on the lost government properties were apportioned among all landowners in the same way as was done in Shun-te county many years later.46 Several prefectures in the delta area immediately seized the opportunity to follow suit.47 This huge write-off of government properties was undoubtedly one of the most important milestones in Mingfinancialhistory. The circumstances suggest that the creation of public estates in the delta area, having commenced without formal legislation, was rescinded almost two centuries later, again without any general announcement. The merging of public land with private property created a special situation, however. It increased the average assessment on all taxpayers significantly, owing to the substantial acreage involved in the write-off. In Chia-ting county, Soochow prefecture, the 1547 reapportionment resulted in an overall average of 0.3 piculs of husked rice per mou in basic payment.48 The average in neighboring Ch'ang-chou county was 0.37 piculs per mou, and in T'ai-ts'ang subprefecture 0.29 piculs.49 These overall averages were about ten times the prevailing rates in most districts outside the delta area. Considering the higher productivity obtaining in the prefectures of this region the rates were by no means entirely unreasonable. The actual payment was further reduced by the partial conversion into Gold Floral Silver and other hidden advantages. But at a time when imperial impartiality was held to be thefirstprinciple in taxation these prejudicial rates presented the local landowners with a cause of grievance. Service charges on long-distance tax deliveries and ad hoc commutations were by no means unique to the delta area, but there their effects were more disturbing. The four prefectures in South Chihli were allocated a total payment of 1,206,950 piculs of tribute grain (ts'ao-liang) to be sent to Peking: that is, about one-third of the empire's annual quota. In general, surcharges of 55 per cent had to be added.50 With the creation of 'regular transmittance' and 'added transmittance' in 1471, the tribute grain was further split into two kinds, the added transmittance paying only half the surcharge rate (2, i). In addition there was a levy of 214,000 piculs of'white grain' (pei-liang), the highly-polished ordinary and glutinous rice destined for palace consumption, part of which went to the emperor's table and part to sacrificial services. It was collected exclusively from the delta area

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1. Financial burden to the taxpayer of tax grain delivered or commuted, for four prefectures in South Chihli, ca. 1585

TABLE

Form of tax payment for 1 picul of grain

Estimated cost in taels of silver

White grain Tribute grain, regular transmittance Tribute grain, added transmittance Southern grain Grain for local delivery Commuted to cotton cloth Commuted to Gold Floral Silver

1.91 1.30 0.90 0.75 0.63 0.44 0.26

and stringent standards were imposed; delivery was to be carried out by the taxpayers, not the army transportation corps. During its transit on the Grand Canal the delivery agents had to pay for all services required at rapids and sluices, not to mention the extra demands made by the eunuchs at the receiving depots.51 Part of the tax payments from the delta area, 64,391 piculs in all, was designated as 'southern grain' {nan-Hang), to be delivered by the taxpayers at Nanking, the southern capital. The delivery distance was short, however, and the surcharges much less.52 Other deliveries at local granaries involved even lower surcharges, as it was possible for most of the consignments to be transported by the taxpayers in person. Thus there were in all five kinds of grain delivery, each subject to a different rate of service charge. Since the central government recognized a picul of tax grain only when it was actually checked in at its designated granary, thefivekinds of delivery in reality created five classes of tax payment for the local district. Apart from this, the four prefectures were also required to pay 365,135 taels of Gold Floral Silver, 4 piculs of grain payment being converted to a tael. The payment was far below the local grain prices. Part of the grain payment was also commuted to cotton cloth, 322,774 rolls in all, at a rate of 1 or 2 piculs per roll depending upon the quality of the textiles. This commutation also represented a substantial saving to the taxpayers.53 Using the local gazetteer records of prices, surcharges and delivery costs in the late sixteenth century, the actual financial burden in silver to the taxpayers for each picul of grain in basic assessment is calculated in Table I.54 Obviously such a schedule was neither sufficiently logical nor suitable to be put into effect as it stood; it was necessary to contrive revisions without overtly contradicting imperial orders. A scheme for revision was indeed devised by Chou Sheng (governor of South Chihli from 1430 to 1450). He intended to use the inequalities in surcharges and commutation rates to

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counterbalance the inequalities in the basic assessments. It must be recalled that in the fifteenth century the institution of government land had not yet been abolished and most landed properties, after changing hands several times, ended up paying either extremely high or extremely low tax rates. Some of those rates were so astonishingly high, reaching as much as 2 piculs of grain per mou, that even the local officials confessed that they did not know their origin.55 Not wishing to disturb all these, Chou instead introduced a new element into the tax structure which he called t h e ' levelling grain' (p9 ing-mi). First he ordered that all basic assessments, regardless of whether the land tenure could be verified and whether the rates were high or low, should remain as they were. But instead of adding the various kinds of surcharges to these assessments, or converting them, he imposed another universal service charge to be paid by all taxpayers. In the first year of application he actually boosted the rates by 90 per cent. It was the basic assessment plus the 90 per cent horizontal service charge that was termed the levelling grain. Despite this, it was not paid entirely in grain. Payment in kind was made only by those taxpayers who already had low rates of basic assessment, 0.4 piculs per mou or less. Taxpayers who had assessments higher than this paid their taxes in cotton cloth or Gold Floral Silver, and actually benefited from the commutation. The ordinary surcharges and delivery obligations were subsequently waived entirely. The 90 per cent horizontal charge provided the local government with a sinking fund which enabled it to meet the cost of the various kinds of delivery. In other words, the taxpayers discharged their tax responsibility in their home districts by paying the levelling grain, and the local officials carried out the allocation after the collection. This created more centralized management at the county level and above. The 90 per cent universal service change was calculated to produce a surplus in the first year, and the surplus was carried forward to the next year so as to reduce the rate. The collection was therefore not totally limited by the quota system but exhibited some features of an annual budget. Throughout his tenure as governor, Chou's annually readjustable service charge was never less than 50 per cent, however.56 Chou Sheng was made to retire in 1450 following widespread criticism and threats of impeachment proceedings, firstly for abuse of his powers of taxation and later for his mismanagement of the sinking fund.57 The sinking fund system was then abolished in perpetuity; no local official was henceforth permitted to collect a horizontal service charge which was aimed at creating a surplus. But the levelling grain as an institution survived, being applied to all prefectures in the delta area and remaining in effect until the end of the dynasty. Unlike Chou Sheng's system of levelling grain the combined service charges in the sixteenth century were calculated and fixed at the minimum level and in reality

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merely confirmed the quota system. After the tax reallocation that followed the elimination of government land in 1547, the levelling grain no longer had to be calculated from the basic assessment but could now be assessed directly on taxable land in place of the basic assessment. After making a land survey in 1581 Shanghai county in Sung-chiang prefecture reported that it had registered 1,494,775 mou of taxable land. The district's tax liability was then assessed as 391,307 piculs of levelling grain.58 Likewise Wu-hsien in Soochow prefecture registered 714,129 mou of taxable land in 1589, on which 157,193 piculs of levelling grain was assessed.59 The levelling grain still differed from the tax quota in the national accounts in that it incorporated the several kinds of surcharges and commutations on a district-wide basis and distributed them evenly among all taxpayers. The national accounts were still based on the items actually received at the designated granaries, and commuted items were still counted in terms of grain rather than their converted values. Outwardly the collection of the levelling grain, especially after it was substituted for the basic assessment, represented the greatest possible simplification of the tax structure. Yet closer examination shows that the reform did not go far enough. The levelling grain was still an abstract tax unit, the greater part of which still remained to be converted to silver in the late sixteenth century. From now on every taxpayer had to submit his payment partially in grain and partially in silver, a portion of the latter being used to cover the cost of providing cotton cloth. Furthermore, since the levelling grain was permanently fixed at the minimum level possible, there was no room for further adjustments. This inhibited the local government from assuming fiscal responsibility in executing the transaction. It merely allocated the delivery of the materials and funds to civilian agents drafted from the local communities, thus reviving the tax captaincy. When the inevitable shortages occurred, the delivery agents had to make up the deficiencies personally. There is much evidence in local gazetteers that the surcharges and transportation costs authorized by the government scarcely covered the actual expenses, and that many delivery agents went bankrupt.60 The delivery was moreover a community service. There was no way to prevent a delivery agent, as an official appointee, from requisitioning materials, labor, and funds from the populace to subsidize his function. Such details will be discussed further under the heading of tax administration (4, i), but it should be noted here that the tax structure had not been made sufficiently broad to cover all the costs incurred. The collection of the levelling grain, started by Chou Sheng in the fifteenth century, embodied the same principle as the Single Whip Reform (3, in). The levelling grain consolidated the land tax proper, while the Single Whip Reform extended the consolidation to the collection of the service levy. Both combined the various kinds of tax denominations

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at the pre-collection stage and allocated the revenue afterwards, and both were subject to the same limitations. Even when local consolidation was accomplished, lack of integration on the upper levels remained. The various items of income, including the Gold Floral Silver, cotton cloth, glutinous rice, the southern grain and tribute grain, had already been permanently allocated as expended items in the national account. The lateral transactions and criss-crossing supply lines continued. Local officials were never authorized to obtain sufficient operating expenses to carry out expanded administrative functions, as is shown by the abolition of the sinking fund. The separate delivery system meant that these numerous items remained irreducible components of the tax structure. North China In North Chihli and parts of Shantung and Honan, the tax structure was complicated by the provision of stabling services for government horses in lieu of land taxes, by the fifteenth-century creation of palace estates and aristocratic estates, and by the existence of the government land and pastures that remained thereafter. The 'horse administration' (ma-cheng) started in the early years of the dynasty. Both Hung-wu and Yung-lo made persistent efforts to procure horses outside China proper. In the later fourteenth and early fifteenth century horses were purchased from or bartered with Korea, Manchuria, the regions along the northern frontier, Kokonor, and even Samarkand. Official records indicate that by 1424 the Ming government was already in possession of 1,736,618 horses and that the number of horses was still expanding at a compound rate of 10-15 per cent annually.61 Though both these figures seem to have been grossly exaggerated, it is clear that the number of mounts was too large to be maintained by government agencies and some of them had to be farmed out to civilian households for upkeep. Hung-wu started this by farming out government horses to several prefectures north of the Yangtze river. After Peking was chosen as the capital, north China became the major area for horse-raising. Stabling services were provided by the population in seven prefectures of North Chihli, three prefectures of Shantung, and three prefectures and one county of Honan. 62 Up to 1568 all the horses distributed to civilian households were used for breeding. Their total number was variously reported in the fifteenth century as 100,000 or 120,000.63 Every five studs were assigned as far as possible to a group of five households. These households had their land taxes and other service obligations either exempted or reduced, and instead fed the horses and provided veterinary attention at their own expense. Every year each group delivered a horse fit for military service to Peking. In addition the households were expected to produce a certain number of

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yearlings, which they had to maintain until they were required. From the later fifteenth century as a general rule each stud was expected to produce two yearlings every three years. The households were held responsible for making good any losses of horses or short-fall in the number of yearlings.64 From 1466 the provision of horses for military service was gradually commuted to silver payments.65 In 1468 the court of the imperial stud constructed a silver vault known as the Ch'ang-ying Treasury to handle these funds.66 By the early sixteenth century few horses were actually delivered. In 1528 for example a total of 25,000 horses should have been submitted, but only 3,000 were in fact provided, silver payments being substituted for the rest.67 The commutation rates varied widely, ranging from 12 to 30 taels per horse, depending on the date of commutation and the administrative district.68 At the same time horse-breeding on the local level continued. Imperial censors were dispatched to the prefectures to brand the new horses, to dispose of the surplus yearlings, and to supervise the collection of payments compensating for any losses.69 To simplify tax administration most counties separated their taxable land into two categories, termed na-liangti, or 'tax-paying land', and yang-ma-ti, or 'horse-maintenance land'. The division was necessary because the horse administration operated in threeyear cycles.70 In addition to their annual payment, the horse custodians had to guarantee the prescribed rate of fecundity (two yearlings every three years). The accounts could not be settled until the censors handed out their decisions. The amount of land assigned to the rearing of horses was generally large. For instance in around 1500, of the 355,999 mou of registered taxable land in Wan-p'ing county, North Chihli, 142,143 mou, or about 42 per cent of the total acreage, was set aside for this purpose. 71 This situation remained unchanged for the greater part of the sixteenth century. In 1568 as a major measure of tax reform the court ordered that all the studs, by then totalling 100,000, should be sold for cash. The sale was completed by 1581.72 The horse administration could have been terminated thereafter, had it not been for the special fiscal procedure obtaining in Peking. The court of the imperial stud, which was responsible for procuring combat horses for the army, required a budgetary income of its own and continued therefore to maintain the account. The annual payments from the local districts, still based on the previous quotas for horses, continued to be delivered to the Ch'ang-ying Treasury.73 The populace, now freed of the burden of raising horses, no longer risked having to pay for shortages in the triennial cycle. The horse payments, stabilized by the fixing of an annual quota for every district, could now be re-admitted as part of the land taxes. In these districts of north China the tax-paying land was thus merged again with the horse-maintenance land. The annual payment to the court of the imperial stud was apportioned among all taxpayers in the

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same way as was the Gold Floral Silver in south China. All this undoubtedly constituted a great improvement. In the tax ledgers the horse payments were still kept separate from the regular land taxes, which meant that basic land tax assessments in these particular districts always appeared unusually low when compared with the rates prevailing elsewhere. In some counties in North Chihli the stabling service continued after 1581. The horses assigned to them for upkeep were no longer studs however, but mounts purchased by the court of the imperial stud on the northern frontier. The upkeep was short term and the magistrates appointed custodians on an ad hoc basis. In 1590, both Wan-p'ing county and Hsiang-ho county were obliged to maintain one horse for every 650 mou of taxable land. The magistrate issued a certificate to the appointed custodian who made monthly collections directly from neighbouring households in a local community containing 650 mou of taxable land. Ku-an county in 1585 had a similar arrangement, but the average acreage assigned for the maintenance of each horse was 430 mou.74 The emergence of palace estates (huang-chuang) and aristocratic estates (chuang-fieri) was basically a development of the fifteenth century. The spread of these estates reached its high point by about 1500. Most of them were concentrated in four prefectures in North Chihli, namely Shun-t'ien, Ho-chien, Cheng-ting and Pao-ting. Princely estates also appeared in Shantung and Honan.75 Throughout the sixteenth century efforts were made to check their expansion and to bring them under control. Not until the early seventeenth century did the princely estates start to increase once more, by which time the most affected area was Hukwang province in the south. These estates also originated partly from the complexities and ambiguities of land tenure. In order to encourage reclamation in north China, Hung-wu in 1390, 1393, and 1395 repeatedly declared that all uncultivated land in the three northern provinces was open to occupation by the first comer. All landed properties developed after these dates were to be perpetually tax-exempt.76 By thefirstquarter of thefifteenthcentury these early decrees had already given rise to unmanageable confusion. Within the same prefecture or county, and sometimes in the same village, some landowners paid taxes and others did not. Disputes and lawsuits among the populace were frequent. Moreover in some regions there were still tracts of land which had at one time or another been utilized by the government as pastures. It was difficult to say whether the latter-day occupiers of these properties were rightful owners or merely squatters.77 The creation of palace estates started in 142578 when Hung-hsi appropriated some of the acreage in North Chihli as crown properties. Hsiian-te distributed some waste land, theoretically ownerless, to his senior army

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officers in 1431, thus creating the earliest aristocratic estates on record.79 With the support of these two precedents there was a great scramble for untaxed fields in the later fifteenth century. Princes, princesses, favorite eunuchs, and emperors' relatives by marriage went so far as to 'discover' untaxed land and then petitioned to the throne to have it granted to them as their private estates, usually specifying the acreage and location.80 In many cases they infringed the rights of the original occupiers and reduced them to the status of tenants.81 In 1489 Minister of Revenue Li Ming (in office, 1487-91) reported that in the vicinity of Peking there were 5 palace estates totalling 1,200,000 mou, plus 332 eunuch and aristocratic estates totalling 3,310,000 mou. 82 After Chia-ching's accession in 1521 vigorous efforts were made to register such properties. The aristocratic estates were drastically reduced and certain properties which had been seized from private owners were returned. The most notorious chuang-fien holder, Chang Yen-ling, Marquis of Shou-ning, was executed on the order of the emperor.83 In principle thereafter no chuang-fien holder could keep the same estates in his family for more than five generations. No holder was allowed to dispatch private managers to his estates; the rent was collected and remitted to him by the local magistrate.84 In the late sixteenth century these estates, together with the former pastures, could be classified into the following six categories (their acreages, locations, and incomes are included in appendix A): (a) palace estates, (b) princely estates, (c) other aristocratic estates, (d) pastures belonging to the capital garrison, (e) pastures belonging to the court of the imperial stud, and (/) land assigned to the imperial stable and imperial zoo. All these estates were excluded from the taxable acreage and their income separated from the regular land revenue. In reality, however, the rents from these properties bore a strong resemblance to land taxes. With few exceptions they were administered by local magistrates. Even the renting rates were on a par with regular land taxes. In Hsiang-ho county, North Chihli, the land tax rate after absorbing a part of the service levy came to 0.027 taels per mou, quite close to the renting rates which stood in general at 0.03 taels per mou.85 By the late sixteenth century most of the pastures and zoo land had already been converted to cultivation, at similar levels of rent. Since the aristocratic recipients of land grants, unless cultivating the land themselves, were not permitted to live on their estates, their permanent tenants differed little in fact from landowners. These estates imposed on the local administrators the further problem of rent collection, and another squad of agents had to be appointed for this purpose. The chuang-fien assigned to Prince Te in Tung-ch'ang prefecture, Shantung, covered 451,495 mou, scattered over six counties and two subprefectures. Consisting of waste land reclaimed after the flooding of the

108

The land tax—(i) Tax structure

Yellow river, its rental grossed only 6,552 taels. According to the local gazetteer, in 1600 the rents were still managed by the local magistrate.86 The problem of the ambiguity of land ownership did not end here. In 1529 the magistrate of Chi-hsien, Honan province, was said to have 'uncovered' 1,174,046 mou of untaxed land in his district. In order 'not to make further investigations', he simply reapportioned the district's tax quota so as to include the new acreage.87 A similar reapportionment in Hsin-hua county increased the taxable acreage to ten times that of the Hung-wu period, and in Yung-ch'eng county by over sixteen times. The reapportionment, while permitting general tax-rate reductions in these counties, widened regional disparities. Ku Yen-wu, who was not usually an advocate of tax increases, declared that these were cases 'where tax quotas should have been increased but were not'. 88 In 1556 Honan province reported that it had 14,080,975 mou of such land under its jurisdiction. The provincial gazetteer referred to it as 'land previously untaxed but now under government control'. 89 In the early seventeenth century Szu-shui county, Shantung, still registered some land of which the title was in question. It was called pei-ti, or 'untitled fields'.90 Such properties, along with the alluvial land in Hukwang, were coveted by the princes as potential chuang-fien. Other irregularities There were many other irregularities in the tax structure. The diverse standards of land measurement and classification have already been cited. Owing to regional peculiarities, these variations sometimes led to most unusual situations. One such example is found in Shun-an county of Chekiang, where forested land which yielded timber could be as profitable as rice paddies or even more so. Because of the technical difficulties involved, however, no adequate way of surveying the mountainous region was ever devised. In 1558 the conventional definition of one mou of such land was stated to be the area over which a man's shouting voice could be heard.91 The ting was a fiscal unit for the purposes of service levy and in most cases had nothing to do with the land tax proper. But in Yung-chou prefecture, Hukwang, from the Southern Sung onwards the pool of ting had paid a third of the district's land taxes, each ting being assessed 0.3 piculs of grain in basic payment. This practice, devised in order to accommodate local ethnic minorities in the prefecture's tax ledger, was not totally eliminated even as late as 1571.92 In the city of Hang-chou, Chekiang, the urban population paid a small tax based on the estimated number of rooms in their residences; the total acreage was included in the district's land data and the proceeds were counted towards the land taxes.93 This practice, the origin of which can be traced to the T'ang, was still in effect in that

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city in 1579, but nowhere else. In Fukien province most monastic properties had been tax-exempt from the early years of the dynasty. In the mid sixteenth century when the state decided to tax these estates it was discovered that the Buddhist abbots never controlled the land but only collected a nominal rent from it. Such properties had in fact been ostensibly donated to the temples by their owners in order to evade tax and service obligations; in practice the original owners still sold, mortgaged, and rented the land in question at will. When T'an Lun (1520-77) was governor of Fukien in 1564, he suggested confiscating 60 per cent of all the monastic estates, a move which could not in the event be carried out because every piece of land in this category involved several interested parties and even its original ownership was not clear. There is no evidence that the problem was ever solved. Though the principle of making such properties liable to taxation might be upheld in theory, its actual execution depended on the local magistrates who had to find the most feasible formula that they could. The extant sources thus reveal only numerous proposals and counter-proposals towards a settlement.94

Ill THE SERVICE LEVY AND ITS PARTIAL ABSORPTION BY THE LAND TAXES The divisions of the service levy up to 1500

At the beginning of the dynasty, the service levy (/) was clearly separated from the regular land taxes (fu). They were two different types of taxation, the former imposed on the able-bodied male (ting), the latter on each mou of land. Such a division could not be absolute, however, as it would have been unrealistic to impose service obligations on individual households, while ignoring completely their ability to perform them. In a predominantly agrarian society the major criterion for determining this ability was landholding. It was thus quite natural that the two types of taxation in the sixteenth century should gradually be merged. The service levy was imposed on the local communities, the li-chia. While it embodied the principle of progressive taxation, there was no fixed standard for its actual allotment. From the entries of the Shih-lu, the descriptions of the local gazetteers and many articles and monographs on the subject, one gains the impression that there was considerable variety in its actual administration at the local level. For instance, in most prefectures the government requisitions for raw materials were fulfilled by the chia whose turn it was to perform that year. Yet one entry in the Shih-lu reveals that in Chungking prefecture, Szechuan, the // chief of the year fulfilled 30 per cent of the order and the remaining 70 per cent was contributed by all the households in the /f.95 In Hu-chou prefecture, Chekiang, certain labor

110

The land tax—(i) Tax structure

services were assigned to those well-to-do landowners who had sufficient acreage to require 2.5 piculs of seed grain or more.96 On the other hand there is plenty of evidence that in many districts the issue was settled by the ad hoc decision of the // chief. Another entry in the Shih-lu declares that in practice 'the poor furnished the labor while the rich supplied the funds. All depended on what a person possessed.'97 The sources seem to agree, however, that during the early years of the dynasty both material and labor requisitions were light. It is equally clear that most of the requisitions from the general population were very narrow in scope. Heavy service obligations, such as servicing the postal stations, were as a rule required directly from the affluent landowners in the communities, outside the operation of the li-chia system. Under these circumstances it was possible for the system to function in an informal way. In the fifteenth century the demand for raw materials and labor services expanded significantly and since the land tax quota was not raised, extra government expenses at all levels had to be defrayed by li-chia contributions. It has already been mentioned that when the government could not pay official salaries even at the subsistence level, it permitted its officials to conscript personal attendants from the general population, and that the service of these attendants was then at once converted to silver payments. Understandably it was then necessary to conscript more personal attendants for actual service from the same li-chia communities but under a different name. In the fifteenth century tax increases were generally accomplished by these means. The li-chia system had been designed to augment a somewhat crude system of local government that was adapted to a simple agrarian society (1, n). The idea of allowing ten peasant families in a village under the direction of a // chief to decide among themselves who should pay what share of the operating expenses of the state was in itself somewhat fantastic. Clearly, the system could not survive unchanged at a time when the government was becoming more sophisticated and wealthy families were increasingly able to evade their fair share of the financial burden. A revision was obviously needed. The first major revision of nation-wide scope was the introduction of the chun-yao method in 1443, a date which has been fixed by both Yamane Yukio and Heinz Friese independently.98 The method did not replace the li-chia system: in fact it relied on the li-chia for its operation. Its major feature was the splitting of the previous ten-year service cycle into two five-year cycles. Until then individual households had been called on to fulfill the demand for raw materials and labor one year in every ten. After the introduction of the chiln-yao method they answered service calls twice in the same decennial period, in one year performing labor service which was also called chun-yao, and in the other year contributing materials and

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delivering tax payments, this also being known as li-chia. Here li-chia became a fiscal term, and is not to be confused with the li-chia organization which continued to administer both kinds of service levy. For the taxpayers the previous nine-year interval between service cycles was now reduced to a shorter respite of four years." In principle when the chiin-yao method was applied to a county the magistrate published a list of all the regular labor services required from the district and graded each item according to the weight of the burden it imposed. The individual households in the li-chia communities were also graded in three main categories (upper, middle and lower), each of which was in turn subdivided in three. The classification naturally placed considerable emphasis on property-holding. Those households which were incapable of providing regular services were listed together in a separate book called shu-wei-ts'e, literally' rats' tails'. They were expected to provide miscellaneous supplementary services. When it came to assigning individuals to specific services, the grade of the taxpayer was supposed to match the grade of the service assignment. In this way it was possible to check some of the abuses perpetuated by the li chiefs and also to eliminate the problem whereby some households were repeatedly called on to perform services while others were completely left out. But all this was only a general concept, and some of the practices also followed precedents set by the Sung. In general it can only be said that the chiin-yao method increased the frequency of service cycles, broadened the participation of the general population and effected an official listing of the labor services and prior classification of the service burden. It also laid more emphasis on property-holding, increased governmental supervision and minimized village autonomy, and as a result facilitated the commutation of services to silver payments. All these features were inter-related. The chiin-yao method was not entirely successful, in that it was at different times both accepted and repudiated by the Ming court. But the local districts nevertheless out of sheer necessity carried on with the reform. In 1488 the court finally ordered that all districts should compile the chiin-yao records,100 by which time many prefectures had in fact already done so. Another service levy, the min-chuang or militia service, started early in the 1430s,101 but was formally established as a national institution only in 1494. In that year the court directed that each // be required to provide two or three militiamen depending the size of the district.102 Because this was a new service and constituted only a part-time assignment, the min-chuang became a separate item. Similarly the i-chuan, the provision of logistical support for the postal stations (1, n), owing to its distinctive nature, was not merged with the other labor services either. By 1500 all districts thus had the following four kinds of service levy,

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The land tax—(i) Tax structure

listed here in the conventional order in which they appear in the local gazetteers: (a) li-chia: tax collection and supplying of raw materials, including the short-term labor service involved in making the delivery. (b) chiin-yao: full-time and year-round labor service. (c) i-chuan: equipping and servicing the postal stations. (d) min-chuang: militia service. From the chiin-yao method to Single Whip Reform After the turn of the century further reforms were needed. The demand for materials and labor services was still expanding, government expenses were increasing and officialdom steadily proliferating. The postal stations were busily engaged in providing hostel services in addition to sending on documents. The palace personnel had also increased. The court therefore continued the practice of adding hidden extras to the tax collection. To take only one example: Hui-chou prefecture in South Chihli had the reputation of being a rich district and had always been required to provide the ministry of works with fixed quantities of varnish and f ung oil. Up to 1493 these materials had been acquired through local procurement orders (tso-pari), that is, their costs were deductible from the district's land tax proceeds. The next year however the prefect received orders from Peking that henceforth the same supplies were to be treated as annual requisitions (sui-pari), which meant that the items would have to be contributed by the local population at no charge to the government. The total cost, 3,777 taels of silver, was allotted by the prefect to the five counties under his jurisdiction and the county magistrates in turn passed on the quotas to the li-chia communities.103 The grain quota which had previously been earmarked to pay for the order was therefore made available to pay for further new procurement orders. The increase in material requisitions as happened elsewhere inevitably brought about a concomitant rise in labor requirements because the extra supplies had to be delivered, and more receiving men had to be posted at the warehouses. Even though after the adoption of the chiin-yao method the villagers performed two one-year terms of government service, their tax-paying resources were limited. Rural administration once again fell into difficulties owing to the increased pressures on the li-chia system. Meanwhile the use of silver in tax payment, which started in the early fifteenth century, was slowly becoming more popular. In the sixteenth century, owing to the influx of silver from overseas, the amount of the previous metal in circulation greatly increased.104 It might be assumed that in these circumstances it would be simple to abolish the service levy and transfer the financial burden to agricultural land in a relatively short time.

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The measures actually adopted were, however, much more complicated than this. The four kinds of service levy represented very different types of income and even more ways of disbursing it. No Ming official would ever think of amalgamating them completely, and the process of merging them with the land tax therefore followed a definite sequence. In the following discussion they will be treated separately, item by item. Of the four the i-chuan was the quickest to undergo the transfer. In part this was because the obligation of equipping the postal stations always involved certain property qualifications. In addition each county usually serviced only one station and the i-chuan account was therefore simpler than the other items. Though the network of postal stations was a nationwide institution, the system of providing logistical support for each one was completely decentralized, so that it took scores of years for the effects of the reform to be felt. It should be noted that the service obligations of these stations were virtually unlimited. As long as an official presented a travel pass from the ministry of war he was entitled to free transportation, lodging, food and drink, and in the sixteenth century there were few restrictions on the issue of such passes. Local government, with its fixed and limited budget, was understandably reluctant to assume these financial responsibilities even after the payments were commuted to silver. A suggestion to this effect had already been made to, and approved by, the emperor in 1490 though it is uncertain how the order was transmitted.105 It took another recommendation from the minister of war in 1507 before a general order for the commutation was actually issued.106 In Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien, the transformation of i-chuan from a service levy to a surtax on the land taxes was recorded as having been accomplished in 1520. An additional assessment of 0.12 taels of silver on each picul of grain in basic payment provided the needed funds. The rate was high, being approximately 25 per cent of the basic payment. The tax burden was thus entirely transferred to agricultural land.107 Similar transfers with regard to i-chuan took place in North Chihli in 1524, and in Chao-chou prefecture, Kwangtung, in 1528. The expenses were likewise reapportioned to all landowners.108 By the second quarter of the sixteenth century the reform, while not complete, was quite widespread. Hang-chou prefecture continued to draft individual households to serve the postal stations until the 1550s, causing many of the draftees to go bankrupt. When finally the district decided to reapportion the service obligations to all taxpayers, the necessary funds were not entirely derived from the land but came in part from the ting collection.109 It should be noted here that in many districts the reform covered only the i-chuan account but did not completely finance all the operations of the postal stations. The actual expenses of many such stations could not be restricted by a fixed budget. Their deficits were usually borne by some

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of the attendants on duty, notably the warehouse receiving men, whose service obligations were included in the chiin-yao account.110 The transformation of the min-chuang, also a relatively simple account, took place somewhat later. It was undoubtedly speeded up by the campaign against the wo-k'ou pirates in the mid sixteenth century. In this type of fighting the military governors found that volunteers were more effective than the drafted militiamen and most districts were subsequently instructed to provide silver payments to pay recruits, rather than to continue supplying draftees. After the campaign ended these arrangements still continued.111 Unlike the i-chuan, however, which in most cases completely lost the characteristics of a service levy, the min-chuang, even after being commuted, still retained some features of a poll tax. Such a case, in Shun-te county, Kwangtung, was discussed in the opening section of this chapter. There were some exceptional cases, such as in Ning-kuo prefecture, South Chihli, and Hsin-hua county, Hukwang, where the whole financial burden was transferred to land.112 But most districts in south China apportioned the maintenance costs of the militia between agricultural land and able-bodied males, the ting. In many northern provinces which had not been affected by the wo-k'ou, the min-chuang did not remain a separate account. Some districts began to merge it with the chiin-yao after the middle of the century. Wen-shang county, Shantung, reported that the militia in this and neighboring districts existed only on paper.113 Chang-te prefecture in Honan paid its militiamen, who were only occasionally called to serve, with funds derived from other sources; there was no permanent appropriation for their maintenance.114 It was transformation of the two remaining types of service levy into land taxes that proved to be the most difficult. The li-chia and chiin-yao had been assessed on individual households for a great many years and were undoubtedly bona fide poll taxes. The li-chia service included not only material supplies but also their delivery, which, though seemingly a labor service, was under the Ming always inseparable from the material contributions. Since the government never attempted to develop its logistical capacity at the intermediate level, the county, prefectural and provincial offices had neither the manpower nor the funds to take over this delivery function. The only solution was to demand that the civilian agents handle the supplies and be accountable for the articles at the designated depots. Even though in the sixteenth century the court at Peking repeatedly authorized the commutation of the regular land taxes to silver payments, palace supplies were rarely included in this. Two separate estimates made by Ming ministerial officials show that around the year 1600 the annual deliveries of such miscellaneous supplies at the palace warehouses were worth between 4 and 5 million taels of silver. Part of the supplies came from the land taxes and part from li-chia requisitions.115 The eunuchs at the ware-

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houses, like the civil officials, were virtually unpaid by the government, nor did the warehouses have any budget to cover normal operating expenses. Customarily the eunuchs extracted from the delivery agents fees called 'cushion money' and 'courtesy money'. 116 If the supplies had been commuted to silver payments, the accounts would then have been controlled by the ministries and the extra income of the palace personnel cut off. Resistance by the eunuchs played a fundamental role in retarding the reform of the li-chia service. The chiin-yao service comprised a number of job assignments which were most resistant to commutation. The measurers in the government depots had to make the inventories of tax items and were personally responsible for making up any shortages, sometimes even accountable deficits.117 Jailers were financially responsible for their assignments because most of the prisoners in their custody could be freed upon paying a fine. Patrolmen were in the same category. As late as 1590 the patrolmen on the coast at Shanghai, South Chihli, were responsible for seizing a fixed quota of contraband salt. In Chinese leap years, which had one extra month, these quotas were increased by one-twelfth.118 The so-called doormen in the various offices were actually building-superintendents of a sort, and had to keep the buildings in good repair, paying minor maintenance costs themselves. In other words these assignments involved fiscal responsibilities for which certain individual taxpayers were held accountable. Such provisions reflect the true nature of Ming administration. Not merely corrupt practices, they were a direct result of the overtly low level of taxation, the small number of officials, tight budgetary control, and the relative self-sufficiency of the various offices, all of which were of long historic standing. Throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century many provincial and local officials sought ways of commuting the remaining service levy into silver payments. A more drastic and fundamental reform proved impossible; changes had to be introduced on a small scale and at the lower levels of administration. As a first step in reforming the supply procedure the operating budget of the local government had to be widened. The equalization silver payment introduced by P'an Chi-hsiin in Kwangtung (3, i) for instance, authorized the county magistrate to collect twice as much as the previous li-chia account had provided for, partly from taxable land and partly from the ting. As the account was small, even after this 100 per cent increase it produced less than 1,000 taels in a rich county.119 Once freed from li-chia service, taxpayers actually benefited by the procedural change, though nominally they paid altogether twice as much as before. Similar collections in other provinces were termed kang-yin (summarized payment) or li-chiayin (community payment).120

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All these payments had the following features in common: The decennial contributions by the villagers were replaced by an annual payment. Part of the financial burden was transferred to the land, the remainder being borne by the ting. A uniform rate of payment was declared, eliminating the former differentiated grading and allocation by the // chief. The collection was expected to provide the local government with a cash income sufficient to defray most of its operating expenses, and to permit it to purchase some of the supplies for Peking. The delivery agents drafted from local communities, while not totally eliminated, were more adequately subsidized. Certain small consignments of supplies were either delivered by the local government or consolidated at the prefectural level, with some official representative being appointed to accompany the civilian agents.121 All this was a slow process. The men who introduced these progressive changes were as a rule officials of considerable prestige122 and their revisions of the system were carefully timed to coincide with other contemporary developments. The suppression of the wo-k'ou provided a good opportunity for such reforms. During the state of emergency the provincial and local officials in the southern provinces gained some degree of fiscal autonomy, with the result that the reform definitely gained momentum during and after the mid sixteenth century. Nevertheless the reform was never a thorough one. In the Yangtze delta, for instance, the delivery of large quantities of supplies remained a communal obligation until the end of the dynasty. An equally patient and persistent effort was made to reform the chun-yao which until the wo-k'ou campaign was the largest service item in many districts. It represented the most difficult task of the entire reform movement. Commencing earlier than the other procedural changes, it took longer and in the end achieved less satisfactory results. By the beginning of the sixteenth century most districts had already divided these labor services into two categories. Those job assignments which entailed no fiscal responsibilities were called yin-cKai, literally 'silver service', and included such duties as those of sedan-chair bearers to the county magistrate, cooks in government schools, buglers in the prefectural government, and so on. The commutation of such services was a simple matter. As soon as payments were made the local government could always hire the needed substitutes. The other category included jailers, doormen, patrolmen, and some others, and was called li-ch'ai, literally 'labor service'. (Note the spelling of this term, which is not to be confused with li-chia.) The term in fact implied that thefiscalresponsibilities of the draftees were indissoluble. Substitutes, though acceptable, had to be hired by the draftees themselves so that they could continue to be held accountable.123 In general the approach of the reformers was to commute the yin-cKai right away and to reduce the U-cKai assignments, or sometimes to limit theirfiscalresponsi-

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bilities. Again, such reforms could not be thoroughly implemented. Even in the districts where the commutation of labor service was quite advanced, a number of U-cKai assignments usually still remained (6, i). Though they converted the yin-cWai into monetary payments, the provincial officials still did not call for abolition of the li-chia system. By imposing the financial burden partly on the land and partly on the ting, the local administrators still adhered to the system whereby the villagers were liable to answer service calls once every ten years. But in addition to the ting payment, an additional assessment was imposed on the taxable land belonging to the households which took their turn of duty that year. From this practice developed the famous shih-tuan-chin or 'ten-sectioned tapestry method', first put into operation in certain districts of South Chihli and later extended to Chekiang and Fukien.124 In its early stages the ten-sectioned tapestry method differed little from the operation of the li-chia system. Every year one section (chid) of households from each village community (//) answered the service call, but paid the obligation in cash. Soon the magistrates discovered that while each year the number of households on call was the same, some years the households included more ting and thus, understandably, often owned more land. In other years the situation was reversed, and there were fewer ting and less land. Since the service requirements were relatively stable, the process meant dividing a constant by a variable. When there were more taxable units the financial burden of each was comparatively light, but conversely, the burden on each unit might be considerably increased when there were too few of them on call. To avoid these annual fluctuations the officials then proceeded to allocate the total ten years' labor requirements uniformly, in advance, on all the ting and the entire taxable acreage in the district, although the ten-year service cycle was still retained. By collecting at uniform rates, the yin-cKai account would show a surplus in the years when more ting and more land were involved. This surplus was then carried forward to subsidize the service account of subsequent 'lean' years when the households on duty happened to be smaller and to own less land. It should be observed here that from this point on the li-chia organization, the ten-year service cycle, and the rotation system actually handicapped rather than facilitated the collection. The next logical step was to free the chiln-yao account from all of them. It was much simpler to divide the ten years' payment at uniform rates into ten equal parts, and assess them on the entire ting pool and the total taxable acreage on an annual basis. When the tax administration entered this final stage the district could be said to be well on the way to the Single Whip Reform. The various kinds of payment for the service levy, having all been settled at annual, uniform rates, could now be consolidated into a single payment

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for each individual taxpayer. The consolidated payment could further be combined with the commuted portions of the regular land taxes. The tax grain not so commuted and any remaining U-cKai assignments had of course to be omitted from this scheme. The Single Whip Reform and its limitations In the past half century Chinese and Japanese scholars have produced a score of articles and monographs on the Single Whip Reform or i-fiaopien-fa, devoting particular attention to the question of its origins. Most scholars now seem to agree that as a national institution it can be said to have been initiated in 1531, the year in which the term appeared in an official memorandum brought to the attention of the Chia-ching Emperor.125 This investigation, while satisfying our curiosity, does not substantially add to our knowledge, because the i-fiao-pien-fa itself has not been precisely defined. In the 1570s the statesman Yii Sheng-hsing (1545-1607), in attempting to show that the Single Whip was a general and not a specific term, argued that it could refer to any one or a combination of the following: (a) eliminating the household with property classification as a unit of taxation, (b) paying taxes in silver, (c) reapportionment of tax surcharges and transportation costs uniformly among all taxpayers, (d) combination of the service levy with the land taxes. It was not necessary for tax reform measures to fulfill all these conditions in order to qualify for the description i-fiaopien-fa™ Yii's opinion has recently been echoed by modern scholars. Liang Fang-chung observes that the i-fiao-pien-fa 'varied in refinement and depth', 127 while John K. Fairbank calls the Single Whip Reform 'no more than a combination of tendencies'.128 It is in fact easier to define the Single Whip Reform in a negative rather than a positive way. While it is difficult to prescribe a minimum level for the operations of the Single Whip, its upper limitations can be defined. We therefore venture to offer the following definition, based on the statements of the above scholars. The Single Whip represents the various efforts of Ming administrators in the sixteenth century to attain an ideal situation in which the service levy would be totally eliminated, and the li-chia system, in form or in spirit, cease to exist; where any remaining poll taxes would be combined with the land taxes and the taxpayer would discharge all his financial obligations to the state in the form of one single, consolidated silver payment which could however be spread over the year into several installments. Obviously no district ever carried out the Single Whip Reform to such an ideal level and even in its most advanced forms it only approximated to this goal. It is outwardly perplexing that such a reform movement, after

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so much painstaking preparation, was never brought to final fulfillment. The explanation of the problem however is simply that the Ming financial structure could not accommodate such a thorough reorganization. In the 1570s and 1590s when the Single Whip Reform reached its height, the central government established neither a regional treasury nor a general purchasing agency. The logistical capacity of provincial and local government, while slightly improved, was still quite inadequate to enable it to dispense with all the unpaid services of the populace. The budget was not expanded in the slightest. Delivery procedures, which required a specific revenue agency to correspond to each specific disbursing agency, remained virtually unchanged. In 1592, for instance, the magistrate of Wan-p'ing county, Peking, reported that he was required to make cash deliveries to twenty-seven different depots and agencies designated by the central government, yet the total amount involved in the transaction was less than 2,000 taels of silver.129 Under these conditions it was still necessary to rely on the services of the taxpayer. To absolve the populace of all service obligations would have created many logistical gaps which the existing fiscal machinery could never have bridged. All this means that the Single Whip Reform, though it was an important milestone in Chinese economic history and possessed many positive features, was destined to remain limited in scope. Its abortive outcome could have been foreseen. From this point of view, the descriptions of the i-fiao-pien-fa by a group of mainland Chinese scholars in the 1950s are clearly exaggerated and misleading.130 Even the pioneering work of Liang Fang-chung, which paved the way for all subsequent studies including the present one, is too optimistic in tone. Without removing the misconceptions derived from these earlier writings, further meaningful discussion of the land tax structure after its absorption of the service levy would be impossible. In the first place the palace in Peking persistently thwarted the move toward a total tax commutation. Aside from the remaining items of tax grain, cotton wadding, cotton cloth, and animal fodder that were still paid in kind, practically all districts up to the end of the dynasty still contributed lacquer, tea, wax, metals, bow and arrows, etc. Ni Yiian-lu, who was to become the last minister of revenue under the Ming, in 1635 argued unavailingly for the commutation of these supplies. In 1643, only a year before the end of the dynasty, he brought up the question again, this time in his capacity as minister of revenue. He listed fifty-eight selected items for commutation, but owing to eunuch opposition only eight of them were subsequently commuted.131 Secondly the li-cttai, which entailed service by the taxpayer in person, was reduced but not totally eliminated. Even two of the most vigorous promoters of the Single Whip Reform, Hai Jui (1514-87) and P'ang

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Shang-p'eng (fl. 1550-75) failed to dispense with the measurers drafted to serve in the government granaries that were directly under their supervision.132 In the 1570s when the reform was carried out to its furthest extent in the coastal prefectures of Chekiang, the regular conscripted patrolmen were actually eliminated. Their quota of contraband was compensated for by adding the amount to the chiin-yao account, which was paid by all the taxpayers. Yet the prefect of Shao-hsing doubted whether the same procedure could be applied in the case of the salt patrols and in the end an 'exception' was made of the salt patrolmen.133 It is confusing when local gazetteers sometimes mention wages for the conscripted H-cHai assignments. The wages listed for doormen, measurers, etc. known as pang-chii, or 'published standard', were simply the official rate, which provided a guideline for the draftees in hiring substitutes and also for the local officials in dividing the financial burden of one job assignment among several draftees.134 The 1566 edition of Hui-chou prefectural gazetteer indicates that when a taxpayer was assessed 1 tael of silver in U-cKai assignment he might end up paying 5 or 6 taels.135 In Chao-ch'ing prefecture, Kwangtung, the actual cost to the taxpayer could be as much as a hundred times the published standard.136 Some districts collected a U-cKai wage from the general population, paid it to the draftees and required them to undertake the fiscal responsibility of the job assignment.137 The collection of a H-cKai payment from all taxpayers cannot therefore be regarded as evidence that the service obligation had actually been commuted. In most cases it merely meant that the draftee was subsidized by the public according to the published standard. The basic problem was that the operating budget of the local government was so unrealistically small, and so rigid, that it was difficult for it to function without making some taxpayers responsible for its deficits. Chung-mou county in Honan adopted the Single Whip Reform in 1584 but up to 1626 the district still had 127 U-cKai assignments. Some of these labor services were performed at higher offices and were thus outside the magistrate's control.138 Hsiang-ho county in North Chihli in 1620 still retained 419 li-cKai assignments and its gazetteer deplored that the financial liabilities of the draftees and their substitutes were such as to lead to the 'dissolution of their properties and their own collapse'.139 The third point to be remembered is that in north China the reform was introduced later than in the southern provinces. When officials in the south applied the procedures already in effect in their home districts to the north, it caused uproar. The major issue was that of hu-yin, or 'household payments'. In the sixteenth century most northern districts, especially Shantung, had imposed this in addition to the ting. The household payments were also divided into three major grades and nine sub-grades, the highest possible rate being 40 taels of silver per year.140 It is possible that the

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higher the rate of household payment the less revenue would have to be raised from the ting; and the lower-grade ting would be assessed only a token payment. The application of the Single Whip Reform would have eliminated the hu-yin, which many local leaders defended as an instrument of progressive taxation. The advocates of the Single Whip Reform in their turn asserted that progressive taxation was never really achieved because most of the households which should have fallen into the upper tax-bracket were in any case tax-exempt.141 In the 1570s when the controversy was brought to Peking the court was unable to arbitrate (7, in). Later, when the Single Whip Reform was carried out in many of these districts, the household payment was generally dropped, but the differentiated ting payment was retained, a compromise formula which in 1590 received the emperor's approval.142 By about 1600 Lu-ch'eng county in Shansi, Huai-jou and Hsiang-ho counties in North Chihli, and Ts'ao-hsien and Tsou-hsien in Shantung had all declared their adoption of the Single Whip Reform, yet all of them still retained their graded ting payments.143 A few districts even stubbornly retained the household payments. The implication here was that the household grading had to be settled in the villages; by thus asserting the principle of tax apportionment by the community they omitted one of the main features of the reform, which was the standardization and integration of fiscal procedures. A fourth limitation was that the Single Whip Reform only revised the procedure of tax collection but by no means simplified the basic tax structure. On the contrary, it complicated it. The tax structure, as illustrated by the case of Shun-te, still comprised a great variety of components. The utmost the local government could do was to create a fiao-pien-yin or combined silver payment which consolidated the various kinds of payments into two categories, one applicable to land, the other to the ting. Because the numerous tax denominations were still retained, this measure did not simplify bookkeeping and may well conceivably have added to the volume of office work. In some districts, owing to technical difficulties, it was impossible to arrive at even these consolidated rates.144 The local government then merely totalled up the separate payments for each individual taxpayer; in effect it provided no more than an accounting service, though it did prevent distorted interpretations of tax regulations by village leaders. An example is to be found in the tax bill issued by the magistrate of Ku'ai-chi county, Chekiang, in the early Lung-ch'ing period (1567-72) which is cited by Liang Fang-chung as an instance of the Single Whip Reform. The bill, probably dated 1568, and preserved in a hand-copied rare book in the Harvard-Yenching Library, indicates that a typical taxpayer in this county was assessed fourteen different kinds of tax payment.145 Though it is difficult to say just when the reform came to a halt, it is

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probable that in the south, especially in the seaboard provinces, the consolidation had already reached its limits by 1590. The provincial officials had now done all that was in their power to do and could go no further. In north China the movement was probably carried on for another fifteen years. Shansi province, for instance, declared its adoption of the Single Whip Reform only in 1588.146 Tax reform virtually stopped in the early seventeenth century because of increased military expenditures and other governmental needs. This does not mean however that the portions of the service levy which had been absorbed into the land taxes reverted to the previous system. Rather, the need for additional taxation unavoidably led to further forms of communal contribution. This meant that the system evaded budgetary control, revived village apportionment and once more gave priority to services performed by the taxpayers in person. The Mingshih summarizes the situation thus: 'Less than a score of years after the general adoption of the Single Whip method, its guiding rules and principles were thrown into confusion. The li-chia services and the tax captaincy, though nominally abolished, in fact still existed.'147 Methods of absorbing the service levy into the land taxes To merge a part of the service levy with the land taxes the officials generally adopted one of three methods. One much used in Chekiang, Fukien and Kwangtung was to take as the taxable unit the number of piculs of grain in the regular land tax assessment and add a surcharge to it, similar to the surtax on personal income tax currently in effect in the United States. The second method was to assess the service levy payment directly on each mou of taxable land, creating in effect a general rate increase. This practice was widely adopted in north China. The third method was a combination of the above two. As practiced in Soochow and Sung-chiang prefectures in the Yangtze delta, it meant that the districts collected the li-chia and chiin-yao portions of the service levy from each mou of taxable land, while the i-chuan and min-chuang were derived from a surtax on each picul of levelling grain. In section I of this chapter it was observed that Shun-te county, Kwangtung, also adopted a slightly modified form of this mixed approach. The 'piggy back' or surtax approach was the most direct. Its major drawback was that the computation had to start on an infinitesimally small scale, as has already been explained in the case of Shun-te. When in the late sixteenth century Chia-ting county, South Chihli, adopted this method its chiin-yao account showed that 0.0147445814487 taels of silver had to be added to every picul of levelling grain in basic assessment.148 The thirteen digits after the decimal point were only a beginning; they had yet to be multiplied by the fractional piculs in the levelling grain assessments of the individual taxpayers.

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The assessment of the service levy directly on acreage was more popular in north China because the land grading within each district was more uniform. Otherwise, this type of assessment would have been just as complex as that of the basic payment, when every category of land, including rice paddies, dry fields, marshy land and hilly land, had to be assessed separately. Those districts which chose direct apportionment of the service levy by applying a flat rate to the mou usually ignored the productivity of the land. This was only justifiable when the service levy account was small and the economic injustice thus created was negligible. Even then, this tax formula was still criticized.149 The advantages of the mixed formula are hard to understand. Possibly the inconsistency was the result of the uncoordinated tax legislation in the past, so that when the different kinds of service levy were gradually added to the land, it resulted in one surtax on the basic land tax payment and another assessed directly on the acreage. Tax exemption may also have been a factor, in that in some districts one kind of service levy could be exempted while another could not. Tax exemption was always a matter of great complexity. The Ming system allowed service levy exemptions for officials both on active service and in retirement. It was also granted to persons who had acquired the status of imperial university students, by examination or purchase. The exemption table was complex in itself. The exemption rate was basically determined by rank; but differed for civil and military personnel, and for active and retired status. Capital officials were entitled to full exemption, but provincial officials only half.150 Exemption was applicable to both the ting and the taxable land. The exemption for land was not assessed by acreage, because a mou of land meant different things in different districts. It was based rather on the number of piculs of grain in the basic tax payment. For instance the 1545 schedule allowed an official of 3a or 3b rank serving in Peking an exemption of twenty ting payments plus 20 piculs of grain. This did not mean that the official could deduct 20 piculs of grain from his basic tax payment; the deductible amount was the portion of service levy that the local government imposed on 20 piculs of grain of the basic land tax payment. Grand-Secretary Sheng Shih-hsing (in office, 1578-91) estimated that such exemption was generally worth 6 taels of silver in all.151 The exemption table was published in 1531, revised in 1545 and modified in 1567. In principle, the ting exemption and the land exemption were not interchangeable. In other words no-one could claim that because he had fewer ting in his household than his exemption allowed for, he was therefore entitled to more land exemption. But as provincial officials kept revising their local rates of exemption the court likewise contradicted its own legislation by instructing them to be 'liberal' with the exemptions. The result was that each district interpreted the imperial

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regulations in its own way, and most permitted the interchanging of exemptions. In making the two kinds of exemption interchangeable, the local per unit rates on the ting and on the land had to be fixed in a simple mathematical ratio in order to facilitate their computation. This will be seen in the cases cited below. Since the imperial regulations on tax exemption took the picul of grain in the basic assessment as the taxable unit, this caused no problem to those districts which took the surtax approach to the service levy. But for those districts which had apportioned the service levy to each mou of land, readjustments had to be made. For instance Wu-chin county in South Chihli gave rank 3a an exemption of the service levy on 670 mou of land instead of on the 20 piculs of grain in basic payment.152 The number of exemptions could vary greatly in each district. Chi-chou prefecture in Shantung exempted only 910 ting out of the district's 62,832.153 Since the exemptions comprised no more than 1.5 per cent of the taxable total, it made no great difference how the matter was handled. But in Shanghai county, South Chihli, 12,789 ting were eligible for service levy exemption, that is 17.8 per cent of the 73,623 ting registered in the district, and great care was therefore called for.154 In addition to the officials and degreeholders, the county's exemptions also covered a large number of salt producing ting.155 The county's tax formula of 1586 granted exemptions from individual payments for the li-chia and chun-yao service levies, but the assessment of the i-chuan and min-chuang levies was totally on land, and no exemption was allowed.156 The extent of absorption It is at present impossible to publish complete and consistent statistics showing the extent of tax consolidation between 1570 and 1590. Using information from secondary sources, and from rare editions, reprints and microfilms of Ming gazetteers, the present investigation has covered 175 counties, that is about 16 per cent of the Ming total of 1,138. The sources seldom provide the necessary information, however. In the sixteenth century detailed tax accounts were compiled in the form of Shih-cheng-ts9e (actual collection records)157 which, as handbooks for local officials, are not known ever to have been published. The gazetteers only summarize essential information thought to be of permanent value, and thus the tax formulas which they present are either incomplete or else subject to distortions which make any accurate estimate impossible. Yet the search is not completely in vain, for there survive a handful of cases which permit us a glimpse of the way in which tax consolidation was actually carried out. In the Yangtze delta, the case of Shanghai county may be used for illustration. In 1590 that district, after making its tax exemptions, had

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1,210,007 mou of taxable land (including inferior land of which the acreage had been converted to fiscal mou) and 60,834 ting liable for service levy assessment. For the li-chia collection the rate was 0.0042 taels of silver per ting and 0.0021 taels per mou (note the 2:1 ratio). For the chim-yao account, the rate was 0.0148 taels both per mou and per ting (rate 1:1). This formula in effect allocated 94.2 per cent of the financial burden of these two items to the land, leaving only 5.8 per cent to the ting. The county gazetteer also disclosed that a surtax was assessed on all the district's agricultural land without any exemptions. Called fieh-i-yin, or 'money for subsidizing services', it produced 3,128 piculs of husked rice plus 10,010 taels of silver. This paid for the county's contributions to the militia service, postal stations, and many other miscellaneous services.158 Taking this factor into account, the share of the burden borne by the ting was further reduced to less than 4 per cent and very likely close to 3 per cent, depending upon the actual price of the husked grain. It seems to have been common in the Yangtze delta for a high percentage of service levy to be absorbed by the land taxes. Ping-ti Ho presents, for instance, a set of data for the Soochow prefecture's seven counties in 1617, showing that amounts of service levy absorbed by the land tax ranged from 65.5 per cent in Wu-hsien to 92.6 per cent in T'ai-ts'ang subprefecture.159 His sources furnished no information about the 'money for subsidizing services', which is known to have been collected in Soochow prefecture from 1538.160 If this payment were included, the percentage of the levy borne by the land would have been slightly higher. Nevertheless the high rate of absorption in the Yangtze delta was a special case. Its larger cultivated acreage, higher productivity and resulting higher land tax rates created larger tax accounts which made absorption to this extent a rather simple matter, as was pointed out by contemporaries.161 The total service levy obligation (including that paid in husked rice) borne by the taxable land in Shanghai county must have exceeded 30,000 taels in value. But when apportioned to the district's regular land taxes, which totalled 155,573 piculs of husked grain and 111,433 taels of silver, the extra payment probably amounted to only 15 per cent of the basic payment (assuming the localriceprice to be 0.55 taels per picul). No district outside the delta area can have enjoyed a situation so favorable to tax consolidation. Furthermore the size of the service levy accounts in the delta area can be misleading, as its prefectures had far more service obligations than actually appeared in the official accounts. An example is the cost of transporting white grain and cotton cloth to Peking, part of which was still borne by the delivery agents and not subsidized by the service levy (3, n). In the southeast provinces outside the delta area, there were a number of districts in which service levy accounts were significantly large in proportion

126

The land tax—(i) Tax structure

TABLE

2. Service levy collection in Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien, 1572 Collected from the ting Collected from land

Service levy account Li-chia Chiin-yao I-chuan Min-chuang Total service levy

Total collection (tls.)

tls.

/o

tls.

0/

3,004 11,786 0 14,335 29,125

43.4 53.5

3,910 10,255 15,955 12,384 42,504

56.6 46.5 100.0 46.5

6,914 22,041 15,955 26,719

59.4

71,629

53.5 40.6

/o

to their land taxes. Chang-chou prefecture in Fukien was one of these. In 1572 the total proceeds from the land taxes of the prefecture's ten counties had an estimated value of only 56,262 taels of silver.* On average each county's share was less than 3 per cent of that of Shanghai. But the prefecture's service levy accounts totalled 71,599 taels of silver. To transfer the service burden to taxable land, the prefecture adopted the surtax method, in other words taking the picul of grain in the basic land tax assessment as the fiscal unit. For the li-chia collection, the rates on the ting and on the picul were imposed in a 2:3 ratio whereas for both the chiin-yao and min-chuang accounts the rates on the two kinds of taxable unit were the same. The i-chuan was assessed only on the land, not on the ting. The distribution according to this tax formula can be calculated as shown in Table 2.162 The tax formula was generally described as ting-ssu-fien-liu, meaning that 40 per cent of the burden of service levy was borne by the ting and 60 per cent by the land and the actual apportionment approximated to this. It should be noted that the 42,504 taels of silver imposed as a surtax on the 56,262 taels of the regular land taxes meant a tax increase of 75.5 per cent. It was not unusual for a county's service levy to come close to or to exceed its regular land taxes. Though it was rare in north China there were many such cases in the southeastern provinces. One contributory factor was the expansion of the min-chuang account (which included military supplies, 3, iv) as a result of the wo-k'ou campaigns. In addition, for one reason or another the regular land taxes in certain districts had been fixed at very low levels in the early years of the dynasty, but the operating expenses of the local government could not be kept at proportionally low rates. The expenses of higher offices which were to be provided by the local districts were moreover requisitioned from them according to household * Part of the regular land taxes in the prefecture was still paid in kind. It has here been converted to silver at 0.5 taels per picul, which was the general conversion rate in the prefecture.

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TABLE 3. Service levy distribution in six counties in the southeastern provinces,

1572-1621™

Service levy

Year 1572 1582 1585 1612 1621 1621

District (county and province)

%

tls.

%

Total 1 vJlcLl service levy (c = a + b ) (tls.)

32.4 27.3 31.9 29.0 32.7 26.6 32.0

4,558 9,191 11,324 5,427 16,012 13,785 60,297

67.6 72.7 68.1 71.0 67.3 73.9 68.0

6,747 12,648 16,628 7,645 23,669 21,344 88,681

(a) borne by the, ting tls.

Chang-p'ing, Fukien 2,189 K'ai-hua, Chekiang 3,457 Shun-te, Kwantung 5,304 Sui-an, Chekiang 2,218 Hsi-hsien, S. Chihli 7,657 Hsiu-ning, S. Chihli 7,559 All six counties 28,384

(b) borne by the land

Land tax increase after Estimated absorption VdlUv Ul of service regular levy land taxes (d) (e - b/d) (tls.) (%) 3,185 9,808 17,952 9,528 24,940 16,010 81,423

143.1 93.7 92.1 58.6 64.2 86.1 74.1

numbers rather than their land tax quotas. In Table 3 are listed six such counties in which the service levy accounts appeared disproportionately large in comparison with the regular land taxes. Of these six, Shun-te has been discussed in section i of this chapter. Chang-p'ing county was in Chang-chou prefecture, described above. K'ai-hua county was situated in a mountainous region and had more timber-bearing land than arable acreage, while Sui-an county specialized in producing raw silk. Hsi-hsien and Hsiu-ning counties were located in Hui-chou prefecture, which, as the home of many wealthy merchants, was constantly required to send contributions of goods to Peking and thus accumulated large service levy accounts (6, i). It is clear that in those districts where the service levy accounts were disproportionately large, absorption of about 70 per cent of these accounts into the land taxes resulted in a significant increase in the latter, in some cases by as much as or more than the basic payment. This situation occurred here and there in all the southeast coastal provinces, though the data are too fragmentary to permit any complete assessment. For example in Fu-ning subprefecture, Fukien, after the adoption of the Single Whip Reform in 1578, each picul of grain of the basic assessment was in general converted to a payment of 1.37 taels of silver.164 In the early 1570s in Lung-hsi, Nan-ching, and P'ing-ho counties, also in Fukien after the absorption of the service levy, approximately every 0.963 piculs of grain of the basic assessment was converted to 1.2 taels of silver.165 Since local grain prices are unlikely to have exceeded 0.6 taels per picul, the actual payment in all these districts seems to have been double the basic assessment or even slightly more.

128

The land tax—(i) Tax structure

With tax rates at this level, the absorption of the service levy into the land taxes could be said to have reached saturation point. This does not mean that when in any district the actual combined tax payment came to twice the basic assessment, the tax-paying power of the agricultural land was automatically exhausted. Ming land tax rates after all were never fixed at very high levels (4, in), nor with great uniformity and precision. Because the level of taxation varied from one prefecture to another, there should have been considerable capacity for readjustment.166 Yet the regional rates, having been in effect in these districts for centuries, had become local institutions, to which the population had adapted themselves along with the terms of land tenure, leases, and rents, all wrapped together in one package. To effect significant tax increases was therefore extremely difficult. Admittedly in tax collection '1 picul of grain' might in fact be more than a picul, and often was, but when it involved 2 piculs popular opinion considered it excessive. The absorption of the service levy into land taxes was designed merely to convert one form of taxation to another; yet to some landowners it represented an outright tax increase. It is worth noting that at the high point of the tax reform, though efforts were made to restrict the number of ting and to minimize their significance (see below), no proposal was ever made to abolish the ting altogether. The principle that the service levy was basically a poll tax was always upheld. In districts where the land tax quotas were not usually low, the absorption of the service levy was not such a critical matter. In the southern provinces outside the delta area, 60 per cent of the service burden was usually apportioned to the land. A good case study can be made of the eight counties of the Hang-chou prefecture, Chekiang, in 1572.167 Here the payment consolidation resulted in increasing the regular land taxes by anything from 50 per cent to 60 per cent in four of the counties, and by 34 per cent to 47 per cent in the other four. The percentages were in general larger in the smaller counties and vice versa. In the prefecture as a whole the overall percentage increase was 38.1 per cent. In other words the prefecture's land tax, after absorbing 60 per cent of the service levy, was increased by nearly 40 per cent. The data are presented in Table 7 (p. 167). It is impossible to make this kind of survey for any districts in the interior southern provinces as the available information is either incomplete or thoroughly confused. Even though these provinces declared their adoption of the Single Whip Reform at an early stage, they did not carry it out as thoroughly as in the coastal provinces. When in 1566 the governor of Hukwang ordered all local units under his jurisdiction to proceed with the Single Whip Reform, the emphasis was in fact only on the chiin-yao account.168 The accounts of Yueh-chou prefecture in 1570 still showed

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many items of taxes in kind contributed by the li-chia communities.169 Yungchou prefecture in 1571 still adhered to the procedure whereby taxpayers took their turn at performing labor service every five years, despite the fact that the service had been largely replaced by silver payments.170 The assessment of the service levy on taxable land should not have created serious problems in these provinces however. In general the service levy accounts in their counties were noticeably small as compared to the land tax quotas. Kiangsi, a prosperous province, in 1610 had a regular land tax quota of 2,616,889 piculs of grain, whereas its service levy accounts are said to have totalled 687,660 taels of silver.171 The latter could not have been worth more than half of the former.* The 1582 accounts of P'eng-ts'e county, Kiangsi, show that its service levy was 6,502 taels of silver as opposed to the 13,277 piculs of grain of the district's regular land tax quota. 172 The service account was quite high in the interior provinces, but the ratio of service levy to basic land tax never reached the levels shown in Table 3. In north China the service levy accounts were usually noticeably smaller than in the southern provinces because the northern counties as a whole delivered far less raw materials to Peking. The demand for militia service was never so urgent as in the regions affected by the wo-k'ou campaigns. Probably the most significant reason was that these provinces, in particular North Chihli, retained many unlisted labor services that were still performed by the populace.173 It is rarely possible to reconstruct in detail the allocation of the service levy to the land taxes in the northern provinces. Some counties published the total numbers of ting but omitted the payments on individual ting. Others specified the various grades of ting payment but omitted the total number of ting in each category. Each county for convenience adopted one set of figures as the basis of its permanent tax legislation. Any other figures were regarded as variables to be periodically adjusted when necessary. Most local gazetteers therefore only printed the permanent data and omitted the variables. In the following three cases however, all dating from the early seventeenth century, both the ting numbers and the per unit rates are clearly enumerated in the sources, and the regular land taxes, including the surcharges, have been converted to silver. The distribution of the service levy is computed in Table 4.174 In general in the northern provinces it can be estimated that the land taxes absorbed 45 per cent to 50 per cent of the service levy. This sample is obviously extremely small but the service levy in the northern provinces * This is only a general estimate. The regular land tax in the process of collection was broken down into scores of different consignments, some commuted, some paid in kind. The surcharges and conversion rates differed from one consignment to another. 5

HTF

130

The land tax—(i) Tax structure

TABLE

4. Service levy distribution in three counties in north China, 1608-1620

Service levy

Year

(a) borne by (b) borne by the ting the land

District (county and province)

1608 Fei-hsien, Shantung 1608 T'an-clreng Shantung 1620 Hsiang-ho, N. Chihli All three counties

o/ /o

tls.

tls.

3,296 3,046 1,387 7,729

55.3 2,657 44.7 56.6 2,336 43.4 975 41.3 58.7 56.4 5,968 43.6

Total service levy

(c = a+b) (tls.)

5,953 5,382 2,362 13,697

Land tax increase Estimated after value of absorption regular of service land levy taxes (d) (e = b/d) (tls.) (%) 16,074 14,162 8,990 39,226

16.5 16.5 10.8 15.2

was likewise relatively small, so as to reduce the risk of error in estimating the total land taxes after the absorption. The tax accounts of 33 counties and subprefectures in Shansi, 21 in Shantung, 3 in Honan, and 3 in North Chihli, reveal clearly the relative smallness of their service levy in proportion to the regular land taxes; in most cases the former can be valued at between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of the latter. Only 5 counties had service levy accounts slightly in excess of 50 per cent of their regular land taxes. As far as can be ascertained only Wen-shang county in Shantung and Ho-ch'iu county and Pao-te subprefecture in Shansi actually derived more income from the service levy than from the regular land taxes. In Table 8 it is assumed that the 7 counties and 1 subprefecture of Fen-chou, Shansi, allowed 50 per cent of the service levy to be collected as a surtax on the land taxes; the tax increases resulting from the absorption fall into a rather narrow range, between 13 per cent (in P'ing-yao county) and 22 per cent (in Lin-shih county).175 Even if the assumed extent of the absorption were to err by 20 per cent (meaning that anything between 30 per cent and 70 per cent of the service obligation could have been transferred to the land), the estimated final tax payment would still involve a margin of error of only about 7 per cent, which may be regarded as permissible. Table 8 is presented in the following chapter because it also deals with the final rates per mou (p. 169). The consequences of tax consolidation It is difficult to generalize about the Single Whip Reform, consisting as it did of a great amount of complex and uncoordinated tax legislation. In the 1950s a group of mainland Chinese historians maintained unreservedly that it was beneficial to the poor and detrimental to the interests of the rich, and that anyone who criticised the reform must be a ' corrupt reactionary who spoke from the position of the landlord class'. 176 Such dogmatic arguments are more emotional than rational. It cannot be denied though

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131

that the Single Whip Reform had many positive features. The subscription of informal tax allocation within the villages by uniform published rates was a great improvement. The elimination of taxes in kind and of services personally performed by the taxpayers was indeed a step, albeit a restricted one, toward modernization of the tax structure. The reform at least clarified local tax accounts, but even so it is hard to see how it could unquestionably qualify as an act of economic justice. The above historians based their arguments on the oversimplified notion that prior to the reform the service levy had been assessed entirely on the ting and that the Single Whip transferred the major portion of this tax burden to landowners. They did not realize that the ting assessment was never a simple matter of counting heads but always involved some degree of property qualification. This principle of progressive taxation can be traced back to the middle of the T'ang dynasty and it was in fact the i-fiao-pien-fa which terminated it as D. C. Twitchett has pointed out.177 By the mid sixteenth century progressive taxation could no longer be maintained. Large landowners either divided their properties into smaller plots for which they secured separate registrations, or else by claiming exemption avoided the service obligation altogether. Heavy service obligations usually fell on men of lesser means. This term however in contemporary writings refers to medium-grade landowners, that is, households who owned roughly 100 mou of land or more, and not to the lowest income group. Heavy service obligations usually entailed considerable fiscal responsibilities and it would have been unwise of the officials to impose them on draftees who fell below this level, and would therefore have no hope of discharging them at all. In that it relieved the difficulties and uncertainties of these lesser landowners, the reform was a good one. From the administrative point of view it was also a practical solution to the problem. Yet it should be noted that the reform did not transfer most of thefinancialburden of the service levy to the large landowners but rather spread it over the majority of the taxpayers, including small-holders who might possess only five mou of land. The intention was that the allocation of the service levy to the entire population should result in a set of uniform rates so low that the wealthy households would find it hardly worthwhile to evade them, and the really poor would not be greatly harmed by them. The editor of a Shantung local gazetteer, in advocating the reform, declared that the annual payment could be met 'by taxpayers of meager means with one day's wages'.178 Even the reformers did not cite general economic justice as one of the major virtues of the Single Whip. In practice the impact of the reform varied from one region to another, depending on local conditions and the detailed legislation of each county. Some counties, unwilling to abandon the principle of progressive taxation 5-2

132

The land tax—(i) Tax structure

entirely, proceeded to modify the uniform rates. The creation of abstract ting in Shun-te county (3, i) was one example and the retention of graded ting in many northern districts was another. In 1607 Fei-hsien, in Shantung, collected 0.13 taels of silver each from 23,775 of the county's ting, but the remaining 4,320 ting who owned no land whatsoever were instructed to pay at one-third of the uniform rate.179 In 1606 the magistrate of Ts'aohsien, also in Shantung, insisted on maintaining a uniform payment of 1 ting on every forty mou of taxable land.180 The freezing of a district's ting quota at a permanent level apparently derived from the practice of proportional assessment, by which it was attempted to retain some property qualification with regard to the ting. Thefiscalaccounts of Huai-jou county, North Chihli, by 1604 already showed fractions of a ting, which were certainly not arrived at through counting heads.181 All these compromise devices were exceptional, and contrary to the spirit of the Single Whip Reform, which was on the whole aimed at universality and uniformity rather than simple economic justice. The motives of the reform's opponents seem to have been mixed. Defense of the gentry's economic privileges was very likely one of them; Ho T'ang (1474-1543) for instance criticized the reform on the grounds that it harmed the rich.182 A very different argument was put forward by Ko Shou-li (1505-78, minister of revenue for six months in 1567) who idealistically defended the principle of progressive taxation in the interests of the marginal landowners. It must be emphasized that when the Single Whip Reform was introduced in north China, it was not limited to changes in the service levy but also involved reapportionment of the regular land taxes. The levelling of the differential mou conversion rates and surcharge collections had been achieved in the southern provinces as much as a century earlier, but was still new in the north. Ko's evidence shows that the reform was carried out there with little preparation or prior investigation.183 It is therefore not difficult to imagine how much distress it caused to poor taxpayers who possessed inferior land and had considerable numbers of male adults in their households. The modifications introduced to try and remedy this situation constitute additional evidence that the reform was not always equitable. The entire reform could in fact be described as a modification designed to remedy an unsatisfactory situation. It was based on a concept of taxation alien to thefiscalstructure on which it was superimposed. When these underlying discrepancies were allowed to persist it meant that the declared uniform rates created equality only in the mathematical sense. Though ostensibly the basis of taxation was widened in reality its scope was narrowed because the level of taxation was thereafter increasingly restricted by the capacity of those taxpayers who were least able to pay. In other words the strength of the chain was determined by that of its weakest link.

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133

The reform's lack of thoroughness has already been mentioned. By the late sixteenth century, the service levy had grown to sizeable proportions. Even from the incomplete information available it can be shown that the listed items were rarely worth less than 3,000 taels of silver in any one county. In the southeastern provinces, with few exceptions, the service levy account was valued at a minimum of 7,000 taels, and not infrequently ran to over 20,000 taels. Even so these collections did not cover all the expenses they were actually supposed to, particularly those of local administration and tax collection. This will be discussed in connection with tax administration in the following chapter. The tax consolidation furthermore resulted in legislation in which the conflicting needs of imperial uniformity and regional autonomy were curiously combined. Despite the fact that the diverse methods adopted and the numerous tax formulas resulting from them did officially become law, all counties still meticulously preserved the standard tax denominations. The general scheme applicable to all regions had been created by the central government on the basis of the proclamations of the dynastic founder and of later decrees. No item of taxable income could be eliminated from it. In principle each had itsfixedquota, established either by explicit orders from Peking or through customary usage. The local officials merely had to work out the detailed procedures for collection. Though the various items could be consolidated in actual collection, in bookkeeping they had to be listed separately. Tax regulations, outwardly uniform, were thus extremely diversified in practice, a finding that is confirmed by the way in which the northern counties treated the ting payments. The restricting effects of centralized control on local officials were tremendous, in view of their struggles with decimal digits. Needless to say the tax structure all too often sacrificed rationality for the sake of outward conformity. The accounts of Shanghai county in 1590 (above, p. 125) showed that the district's ting payment was collected from 60,834 ting.18i A more rational approach would have been to waive the payment entirely and transfer the financial burden to the district's 1.2 million mou of taxable land, which would have entailed an increase of only 0.001 tael, or less than 1 copper cash per mou. Yet in order to maintain the principle of a poll tax, the collection of the ting payment continued in this county as elsewhere, apparently at the cost of a large volume of paper work and considerable administrative expense. The fact that the Single Whip Reform required all miscellaneous tax items to be clearly specified and committed to writing, while it undeniably curbed abuses by rural tax agents, nonetheless at the same time created many opportunities for lesser yamen functionaries to manipulate the accounts in the office. The tax system had simply accumulated too many complexities which might have been avoided but were not.

134

The land tax—(i) Tax structure

IV FURTHER MODIFICATIONS OF THE TAX STRUCTURE Military supplies All the tax revenues discussed in this chapter, including those in the present section, were permanent items. Once they appeared in the tax ledgers, they were expected to remain there. While minor readjustments were made from time to time, the general level of collection was considered to be fixed. The only exception to this was the item known asping-hsiang, or 'military supplies'. The 'military supplies' owed their inception to the wo-k'ou campaign. The pirates' marauding raids in the south-eastern provinces exposed the total inadequacy of the wei-so system (2, in), and volunteers had to be recruited to supplement the guard units. It was necessary to organize new fighting units and to procure equipment for them, and to hire or hastily construct ships, all of which needed money. In the 1550s Peking was itself threatened by Altan's invasion and the treasury in the capital had no funds to spare. The court merely authorized the military governors in the south to solve the financial problem as best they could. The emergency left little time for deliberation. The solution was the ping-hsiang, which took the form of a universal surcharge on all existing tax revenues from which extra collection was feasible, and could be made in a hurry. In some special cases portions of existing quota revenues were also diverted to meet the crisis. In addition dozens of new sources of revenue, usually minor nuisance taxes, were created for the same purpose. All were indiscriminately labelled 'military supplies'. Strictly speaking, the ping-hsiang was not an item of revenue but rather a general designation for a special expenditure. Its fuller implications will be discussed later (7, II). Here only its disruptive effects on the land tax structure will be described. There were many methods of imposing the ping-hsiang on the land tax. For instance hilly land in Ku'ai-chi county, Chekiang, was very lightly taxed; during the military campaigns its rates were therefore increased.185 Fukien province took to taxing monastic properties which had previously been exempt.186 In most districts the militia service was commuted and the resulting payments diverted to the ping-hsiang account. Additional impositions were also made directly on the regular land taxes, usually in the form of a surtax on each picul of grain in the basic assessment. The most ingenious device for increasing taxes however was the so-called fi-pien. There is no adequate English equivalent for this term. Of its two components, fi means to lift up, and pien to organize. In the 1550s taxpayers in most counties still answered calls for li-chia and chiln-yao service in rotation at five to ten year intervals, even though the service obligations had been largely commuted to silver payments. By the device of fi-pien the military

3, IV Further modifications of the tax structure

135

governors called those households who were scheduled to perform service the following year to active duty in the current year. In reality no raw materials or labor services were demanded of them, but their silver payments were surrendered to the war chest. The services required in the second year were then fulfilled by those households who should have been on call in the third year.187 The complication was that in many districts the ting payment had been partially reapportioned on the land, and the fi-pien payment thus represented a surtax on a surtax. The whole procedure was extremely cumbersome, and in addition necessitated several kinds of tax agents making collections in the rural areas, some for the regular service levy account for the local government, some for the fi-pien account for the military authorities, others for the li-chia and the chun-yao levies, quite apart from those who collected the regular land taxes. Ho Liang-chiin protested, with humorous exaggeration: 'When everyone in the village turned tax collector, who was left to cultivate the land?' 188 This absurd situation was one of the reasons which prompted many local administrators to proceed with the Single Whip Reform. The ping-hsiang was not intended to be permanent, but was expected to be removed as soon as the campaigns were over. Military action actually dragged on for years and even in the late sixteenth century when the threat from the pirates had diminished, demobilization was only partial. Because the services of the recruited army could not be dispensed with, the pinghsiang therefore had to remain. In the course of time its earlier ad hoc features were gradually eliminated and in most districts it was consolidated into a single surtax, with about 40 per cent being paid by the ting and 60 per cent by taxable land. In this way it differed little from the minchuang account. Yet in theory at least the ping-hsiang was collected for regional defense while the min-chuang continued to provide an auxiliary force. The former was adjustable, depending on the actual expenditures of the regional armed forces but the latter was part of the district's fixed tax quota. In 1572 the ping-hsiang account in Chang-p'ing county, Fukien, was reduced by half after coastal defences were lightened, while the min-chuang account remained fixed as before.189 In accounting the two items were almost always listed separately. Thus each taxpayer continued to contribute his share of militia service as well as his share of military supplies. In assessing the general level of collection in the previous section, however, the ping-hsiang figures have been merged with the min-chuang account in the interests of simplicity; it would have created unnecessary complications to introduce the question of the military supplies in the midst of describing the evolution of the service levy. In effect the item was a twolayer surtax on the regular land tax, as illustrated in Figure 3 on p. 83.

136

The land tax—(i) Tax structure Accessory surtaxes

Accessory surtaxes were really 'built-in' surtaxes, levied on taxable acreage and paid in agricultural products, which dated from the early years of the dynasty. Though separate from the basic assessments, they still differed from the other types of surtax which were created subsequently for administrative reasons. They were surprisingly few in number. There is a general misconception that the Ming government collected large quantities of cotton, cotton cloth, silk wadding and silk fabrics as surtaxes on the land taxes. The misunderstanding arises from entries in the Ming-shih and Shih-lu which indicate that the Hung-wu Emperor ordered all the landowners in the empire to set aside part of their land for producing hemp, cotton and silk; all land taxes were to include these products and landowners who failed to comply were to submit cotton cloth and silk fabrics at punitive rates. Such a decree was actually issued in 1365 (before the founding of the Ming empire) and again in 1368.190 By 1385 however the government realized that it could not enforce the compulsory production of these commodities and therefore rescinded the previous orders. 191 In the case of silk production, landowners who had already received the specified acreage for planting mulberry trees were to be taxed in accordance with the earlier decrees. The silk quotas of 1385 for each county subsequently became permanent. This collection, known as nung-sang ssuchuan, or 'farmland silk', was almost ubiquitous; but each county's quota was never too large, and might be infinitesimally small, owing to the government's inability to enforce mulberry cultivation. Apart from this small quota, landowners were free to plant whatever crops they wished. Cotton was not even mentioned. The silk and silk fabrics which appeared in large quantities in the tax ledgers came from areas which specialized in their production, and their regional quotas were clearly specified in the local gazetteers as basic assessments. These areas submitted silk as tax payments instead of grain, just as they had done in previous dynasties. This had nothing to do with the farmland silk. One such county, Sui-an, in Chekiang, had a total of 367,332 mou of taxable land but a grain tax quota of only 1,685 piculs, while its quota of silk wadding was 111,663 taels, or close to 10,000 pounds.192 The value of the latter item was approximately four times that of the former. Lin-an county in the same province had a grain quota of 11,362 piculs, while its silk wadding quota was 110,416 taels. Lin-an in addition had to provide its quota of farmland silk, which in 1572 was only 2,517 taels of silk wadding. Since each tael of silk wadding was worth approximately 0.04 taels of silver, the latter item was worth only about 100 taels in cash.193 In other regions, the revenues from farmland silk were either small or

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negligible. In 1608 Wen-shang county, Shantung, raised 419 taels of silver from this source.194 In 1620 Chung-mo county, Honan, thus collected 1,100 taels of silk wadding, its 33,320 mulberry trees apparently having survived from the time of the early Hung-wu decrees.195 The market value of the county's farmland silk was less than 50 taels of silver. The total proceeds in 1562 from farmland silk in Hui-chou prefecture, South Chihli, were only slightly in excess of 10 taels of silver, each of its counties providing 1 or 2 taels.196 Another surtax, also in silk, was called jen-ting ssu-chuan, or 'poll tax silk'. It was collected only in North Chihli, Honan, and Hui-chou prefecture in South Chihli, mentioned above. Its origins are unclear. Most likely it was inherited from the previous dynasty, which had permitted some districts to submit silk in partial discharge of their service obligations. The gazetteer editor of Hui-chou prefecture argued at some length that the collection was in fact the result of a misinterpretation of a tax-ruling dating from before the founding of the dynasty. He asserted that it was an unjust and mistaken enactment by the ministry of revenue that cost the prefecture 6,146 taels of silver a year.197 Cotton wadding and cotton cloth were never collected as surtaxes. Raw cotton, known as ti-mou mien-hua-jung, or 'cotton wadding assessed on acreage', was produced in certain areas of Szechuan, Shensi, Shantung and North Chihli that specialized in its cultivation. For the purposes of basic tax assessment, every 10 catties of cotton were equivalent to 1 picul of grain.198 To confuse matters, however, grain quotas in other regions could also at times be paid partially in cotton and cotton cloth. Shansi province, for instance, had no basic assessment in these two commodities, yet it constantly delivered them in lieu of grain payment. This constituted a kind of commutation, and eased problems of tax transportation. Several counties in the south did pay a surtax in hemp, but the quotas were unevenly distributed and their effect was negligible. More hemp was in fact derived from the proceeds of the fish duty (6, i). The only item in the list of accessory surtaxes which significantly affected the taxpayers was the ma-ts9ao, or 'horse fodder'. The rate was sixteen bundles of hay per 100 mou of taxable land, the collection being limited to Shantung, Shansi, Shensi, Honan, and North and South Chihli.199 At the official rate sixteen bundles of hay were worth approximately 1 picul of husked rice in south China during the late sixteenth century.200 The burden of this surtax was heavier than it appears however, because of the difficulties of transporting such a bulky commodity. As a percentage of the total it was fairly appreciable because the basic assessment was usually low; in certain counties this surtax might in fact add an extra 20 per cent to the basic payment. These accessory surtaxes were of importance to the ministry of revenue

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because even though unevenly distributed and raised in tiny amounts, they constituted increasingly indispensable items of ready cash (7, i). Commuted ma-ts'ao in fact yielded more silver to the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury than did the total proceeds from the inland customs duties. The absorption of miscellaneous and uncollectible items

All the items mentioned here will be discussed again in chapter 6, to which they really belong. It is necessary to refer to them at this point however because in practice many counties incorporated them into the land taxes. One reason for this was that they were very similar in nature to those items which had already been incorporated into the land taxes. Also they were so small that it was impractical to collect them separately. Their absorption was neither complete nor uniform, but those districts which carried it out simply appended these items to the land tax accounts as if the merging of the two had been properly authorized.201 Among these items were payments to the ministry of works, of two kinds. One was known as ssu-ssu liao-chia, or 'material supplies to the four bureaus', that is, the four branches of the ministry. Up to the mid sixteenth century the four bureaus of the ministry occasionally requisitioned funds from the counties to help cover their operating expenses. In 1566 it was decided to impose an annual payment of 500,000 taels of silver on the counties in perpetuity, to provide these offices with a fixed budget to finance their administration.202 Though this item might be considered a variant of the li-chia collection, its imposition did not relieve the counties of the responsibility of supplying raw materials to the ministry. The other type of payment was termed chiang-yin, or 'artisan payment'. Local registered artisans were initially required to perform unpaid services at the capital. In 1562 this statute labor was totally commuted and the ministry instead ordered the magistrates to deliver the payment in a lump sum.203 It might thus be considered as a variant of the chiin-yao levy. Some counties and prefectures were still able to collect the payments from households in the artisan category, but most chose to add them to the service levy accounts. With the adoption of the Single Whip Reform, these payments also became a kind of two-stage surtax in that while they were imposed on the service levy, the latter was in its turn partially imposed on the land tax. One rather curious item was the payment for rationed salt, or hu-k'ou shih-yen-chiao,firstlevied in 1404. Its original purpose was not to monopolize salt-retailing but to keep the government's paper currency in circulation. Each adult was allowed a ration of 1 catty of salt per month, the compulsory payment for which was 1 kuan of paper notes. For children the ration and the payment were half that.204 From the very beginning

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the plan was never carried out in full. Up to the late fifteenth century the actual distribution of salt under government auspices was effective only in certain parts of Kwangtung and Shansi, and thereafter even this came to a complete halt. In the early sixteenth century some counties still made the payment in paper currency, which was by then virtually worthless. In the late sixteenth century, however, it was everywhere converted into silver, and became a poll tax at very minimal rates. Some counties collected it at 0.018 taels per capita per annum, others at 0.0028 taels.205 It cannot be considered a regular item of the service levy because it was imposed not on the ting, but on the entire population, including women and children. Shun-te county, Kwangtung, for instance, converted the collection to a poll tax in 1584. While the county registered 26,011 ting, the tax was imposed on 41,656 persons, yet its total annual proceeds were only 717 taels of silver. Another strange feature of the payment was that relatives of government officials were not only unexempt but were required to pay at double the rate.206 Many other counties found the amounts involved too small to warrant this cumbersome procedure. For example Liao-ch'eng county, Shantung, was required to produce only 66 taels of silver from this source, and therefore covered the item from the land tax rather than by making a special collection.207 Other revenues similarly absorbed by the land taxes included store franchise fees, the excise on wine and vinegar, the stamp tax on real estate transfers, the fish duty, and even some of the local business taxes (see chapter 6). Most of those items had been created under the Southern Sung, and were sometimes referred to as ching-chih-ch'ien.208 The Ming reestablished them but never took them seriously. The quotas for these items werefixedin the early years of the dynasty in kuan of paper notes. When the paper currency failed, the logical thing would have been either to readjust the quotas or to abolish the items altogether. As neither of these alternatives was adopted, the only solution was to absorb them into the land taxes. Table 5 shows how their quotas were converted to silver.209 A reverse procedure was sometimes applied, in that several items of revenue that should have been integrated with the land taxes were instead accounted for under other headings. The fang-chia, literally 'marsh-land payment', was one of these. During the early years of the dynasty the registered saltern households were collectively allocated tracts of land in the coastal districts. Designated as 'grass land', these reservations were to be used to produce fuel for salt production. By the earlyfifteenthcentury some of the saltern households had already moved inland, and turned the grass land and the adjacent areas into rice paddies, on which they still enjoyed tax exemption. They thus gradually grew so affluent that the government finally decided to tax them on their cultivated land instead of demanding salt from them. But because both the land tax quota of each

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5. Quotas offish duty and local business tax, Yung-chou prefecture, Hukwang province, 1571

TABLE

County

Fish duty (tls.)

Local business tax (tls.)

Ling-ling Ch'i-yang Tung-an Tao-chou Ning-yuan Yung-ming Chiang-hua

32.87 12.83 5.54 8.10 4.98 1.78 3.57

Not listed 22.00 3.09 2.77 8.00 19.54 4.97

69.67

60.37

Total

county and the salt revenue of each productive area were already fixed, this extra tax income was not integrated with the regular land taxes but turned over to the offices of the salt administration to compensate for the remitted salt quota.210 In 1566 Shanghai county, South Chihli, for instance, delivered 4,647 taels of silver to the salt administration office on this account.211 Assessing the service levy on this group of landowners was a perennial administrative problem.212 As salt producers they were supposed to be exempted from service obligations but as bona fide landowners they had to be taxed. These complications also affected the registration of property transfers and the adjustment of tax rates. The fang-chia, found notably in Chekiang and South Chihli, was really a variant of the land taxes. Other such variants were the horse payment (3, n), rents on government pastures, and the reed tax (6, in).

4 The land tax—(ii) Tax administration

The operations of the tax system were considerably hindered by its rigidly predetermined nature and numerous inconsistencies. This was illustrated in the previous chapter. Despite the fact that in the late sixteenth century its collection was put on a much broader basis, the earlier practice of minutely-specified tax assessment continued. The general rates were complicated by the addition of fractional sums; in the assessment of each taxpayer's burden every item of state expenditure had to be considered separately. Such a scheme would be difficult to carry out even in a modern society, with all the benefits of computerized accounting. Local government in the Ming was hardly equipped for the task. Moreover, to maintain taxation on its broad and general basis, it was necessary to protect individual taxpayers from unfair practice and extortion, if their equality of treatment were not to remain purely theoretical. The Ming government made no such attempt and consequently the tax administration, while appearing fairly solid and well constructed at the top, remained in a rather ramshackle state on the lower levels. As in the rest of the power structure, responsibility in fiscal matters followed an upward direction, from the lower offices to the higher, and from the populace to the government. The higher offices were in no way accountable to their subordinates, nor were they even compelled to solve their technical problems. The impracticalities of the system thus accumulated at the lowest level, creating a wide gap between theory and practice. All this made it impossible to use the tax system to carry out coherent economic policies. Its operation was instead conditioned by prevailing social values, local gentry power, and customary usage. The administration of the land tax reflected many conflicting characteristics of traditional Chinese society. It was neither completely regular and consistent, nor yet totally irrational. Tax laws might be enforced with extreme rigidity and severity or with remarkable leniency, depending on circumstances. Modern critics of administrative corruption in the Ming have tended to create the impression that it resulted entirely from a gigantic conspiracy of officialdom against the common people. This is neither true nor fair. In [141]

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the following sections it will be seen that many Ming officials did do their best to uphold justice in their administration, and it is in fact through their writings that most of the abuses have come to light. Nonetheless their efforts could hardly make up for basic organizational inadequacy. I TAX ADMINISTRATION BY THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT Preparation for tax collection

No county ever collected an entire year's land taxes all at once. This would have imposed not only an intolerablefinancialburden on the taxpayers but also a severe strain on the local government's capacity to handle the materials and funds involved. The payment was always spread over several installments, usually not less than four.1 In the sixteenth century tax deadlines differed from one region to another, determined largely by local usage. But magistrates could also make minor readjustments for the sake of administrative convenience, mainly to enable them to meet their own deadlines in tax deliveries. A substantial part of the payment was usually made immediately after the harvest of the major crop, when the landowners were in the best position to raise the necessary cash. In most counties in the south the collection started at the end of the tenth lunar month, that is in November or early December. In certain areas of Shansi the collection started early in the lunar year, but the first two installments only partially covered the service levy payment, and the substantial portions of the land taxes were collected in the spring and autumn.2 In Shantung, payment for the service levy was collected in the fifth lunar month, sometime in June, when wheat and barley were harvested.3 In the Yangtze delta, where the collection schedule was extremely complex, each picul of levelling grain (3, n) simultaneously included silver payment, cotton cloth, and grain for both distant and local delivery. In Chia-ting county for instance, the collection started with an initial payment of 0.33 taels of silver for each picul of levelling grain, to be made by the end of autumn. Early in the lunar year the grain designated for distant delivery, including tribute grain to Peking, was collected. This was followed by collection of the remaining grain for local delivery, and in turn by that of the remainder of the silver payment, a very small amount. All this had to be completed between the third and fourth lunar month, some time in May, so that tax collection would not extend into the busiest season of farm work. Cotton cloth, or payment substituted for it, was collected after the harvest.4 To prevent the boats carrying tribute grain to Peking from being delayed by the springfloods,the court in 1564 and 1570 ordered that the loading of grain at the ports of embarkation be completed before the end of the lunar

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year.5 This caused considerable difficulty to local officials who had to revise their tax collection schedules accordingly. The payments of individual taxpayers were computed from the 'actual collection record' (Shih-cheng-ts'e) which, in theory at least, calculated the rates of payment with a precision that enabled the collection to meet the county's tax quota exactly.6 From 1583 all provinces and independent prefectures compiled a 'comprehensive book of taxation and service levy' (fu-i-cKuan-shu),1 which listed all service requirements, regular tax quotas, surcharges, and surtaxes down to the county level, and was intended to provide fixed annual budget over a period of ten years until its next revision. In practice, however, the fixed budget was still no more than a guideline and the actual collection had to be adjusted annually. Even though the quotas of tribute grain, southern grain, and grain for frontier and local deliveries were more or lessfixedfor each county, any of the items could be paid partially in silver. The amount to be commuted and the commutation rates were determined by the higher offices, and were sometimes subject to revision. Changes in delivery procedures and rates inevitably affected the collection at the local level, so that the account of every individual taxpayer had to be recalculated. In certain counties of Chekiang the magistrates classified the taxable acreage in some areas as being of inferior quality and commuted the payments on it permanently to silver. Only the taxable land in the centers of these counties still made partial payment in kind and was therefore still affected by changes in commutation rates.8 Local procurement orders and extra li-chia requisitions could affect tax allocation in the same way, because in principle every item of taxation had to be evenly apportioned to every taxpayer and to every mou of taxable land. Hui-chou prefecture in South Chihli was constantly burdened with such procurement orders which, while frequent, sometimes involved only very small payments. To save paper work the prefect paid some of the orders in advance, using the funds derived from the commutation of punishments to fines. Only after a dozen or so of these small orders had accumulated did he apportion the consolidated payments to the subordinate counties, at the same time collecting an extra amount to reimburse the prefectural treasury for the funds advanced. This was an irregular practice which in 1557 was discontinued on the orders of the governor. Thereafter each procurement order had to befilledas soon as it was received and the actual levying of the payment by the office of the prefect on the individual taxpayers usually took two months.9 Preparation for tax collection thus necessitated an immense amount of paper work, mainly at the county level. A regulation of 1558 stipulated that each taxpayer receive in advance from his county magistrate a tax bill (known as yu-?iehy or sometimes ch'ing-yu)910 the form of which was

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standardized by the ministry of revenue. Because internal tax regulations varied from one area to another, strict observation of this standard was impossible for many counties and it became necessary for the local officials to design their own tax bills.11 In addition it was often found that an extra assessment had to be made after the tax bills had already been distributed, in which case the magistrate handed out a second notice called hsiao-p'iao ('petty bill'), explaining the nature of the payment, its authorization and its rates.12 While an average county might have 20,000 tax-paying households, in a heavily populated county the number could exceed 100,000, yet the revenue section in a county administration was rarely staffed by more than half a dozen lesser functionaries. (In practice this clerical force was augmented by irregular help; see 4, v.) The county magistrate, occupied with such matters as settling the general rates of payment, corresponding with higher offices about delivery procedures, drafting civilian tax agents, allocating tax consignments, coordinating deadlines, and conducting tax hearings, was too busy to attend to the technical details. The preparation of the tax bills was usually left to the clerical workers, as a rule with little supervision. Many of these lesser functionaries had been handling the office routine for many years; their authority over tax apportionment was an outstanding feature of the administration and a major source of abuse.13 Chao Yung-hsien (1535-96) observed in about 1582 that in his native Ch'ang-shu county, South Chihli, no taxpayer could hope to have his payment reduced, even after part of his land was washed away byflood,until he had made a handsome payment to a particular lesser functionary in the county government who controlled the district's tax records, as had his forefathers for generations before him.14 Basically local government was under-staffed, tax procedures had become too complicated, and there was no effective way of checking the tax records against actual conditions in the rural areas. In the late sixteenth century many local administrators, while committed to reform, at the same time also strove to maintain the tax accounts in their districts at a stable level. They knew that any tax reapportionment, unless specifically designed as a part of a reform program and carried out under close supervision, always tended to open up an avenue for the clerical workers and rural collectors to profit themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. One aim of the Single Whip Reform was in fact to freeze the accounts permanently. After the tax payments were settled in the form of the consolidated Single Whip payment (i-fiao-pien-yiri), most local officials were averse to any further revision of the tax records lest it disturb the settlement. While some officials admitted that the reform did comprise many questionable features, they still felt that it was a great improvement on conditions before the reform.15 One district declared that harm would be caused not only by any future

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rate increases but even by rate reductions.16 In the last quarter of the century, the attempts of many counties to fix the number of ting (3, in), reflected in part this desire for stability, as did the publication of the fu-i ch'uan-shu and the inscribing of tax rules on stone tablets.17 As has already been observed, however, the desired stability could only be maintained for very short periods. Freezing the tax accounts might have been successful in areas where administration was simple and unsophisticated; but in the more developed regions of central and south China where taxation was complicated by numerous extraneous factors, the concept was completely impractical. Tax agents Several early works on the Single Whip Reform have created the impression that in the late sixteenth century the people paid their land taxes in an orderly fashion at the county magistrate's office, sealing up their silver payments themselves and depositing them in a wooden chest without any interference from official supervisors.18 This account of affairs is by no means completely untrue, and is described in several local gazetteers including those of Ku'ai-chi county, Chekiang, and Huai-an prefecture, South Chihli.19 The use of wooden chests also later spread to Shantung, Shansi, Honan, and North Chihli, besides the southern provinces. The orderly scene thus described was not the whole story however; these reports omit all reference to the coercion, brutality and craftiness invariably associated with tax collection in the Ming. Coercion was in fact essential to the attainment of even a moderate level of tax collection at this period. Some taxpayers suffered genuine hardship in meeting their payments, while many wealthy landowners resorted to procrastination in order to evade their obligations. It is quite likely that 100 per cent collection was never attained, for in the late sixteenth century even 80 per cent collection was considered an achievement.20 In the year 1570 alone the uncollected amount within the commuted payments was over 2 million taels of silver.21 Possibly this problem could have been mitigated by allowing tax exemptions for marginal landowners, but such a measure was quite impractical in the sixteenth century. If the tax delinquent were a commoner he could be arrested and flogged. Kuei Yu-kuang (1506-71) declared that many of them were flogged to death,22 and Ku Yen-wu reported cases in Shantung and Shensi of people committing suicide when they failed to meet the tax deadline.23 Most officials refrained from such extreme measures, however. When Chang Chii-cheng was in power in the 1570s tax delinquents were prosecuted with vigor (7, m), but Chang was severely criticized by his contemporaries, notably Wang Shih-cheng.24 One serious problem was that many chronic tax delinquents were wealthy landowners who had purchased degrees in

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order to obtain immunity to corporal punishment and arrest by the county magistrate. The magistrate could report them to the higher offices, but when such cases were numerous this had no effect except to expose the magistrate's own incompetence. A more effective remedy, often adopted in the Western world, would have been to confiscate the property of the tax delinquents, but this measure was eschewed as being contrary to the traditional concept of good government. These delinquents were moreover shrewd enough to avoid complete non-payment, but often made partial payments accompanied by promises that the remainder would be forthcoming. The local officials had to rely on their own resources to handle the problem. The best approach was usually felt to be moral exhortation. The magistrate personally persuaded the county's top gentry to pay their taxes on time, in the hope that the less prestigious would be induced to follow their example. One governor in South Chihli in the 1530s is said to have achieved his purpose by threatening to force any taxpayer who had an overdue payment of more than 50 piculs to handle its long distance delivery himself.25 In 1568 Sung-chiang prefecture experimented with the method of grouping together all taxpayers of official status and demanding that they settle their tax accounts as a group. The results of this are not recorded. The gazetteer of a subprefecture in Shansi contains a discussion of various ways of persuading the defaulters to pay, one of which was to deliberately leak the information that warrants of arrest had been prepared for them. The warrants were not actually used, in the hope that the offenders would be frightened into paying up. 26 When tax payments were in arrears, efforts to collect them were continued for a time but after two or three years there was clearly no hope of success. Some of the defaulters were of course actually unable to pay and, humanitarian considerations apart, flogging or imprisoning them was of little use. The accumulated arrears were a considerable hindrance to the current collection and had therefore to be written off, something that became quite frequent in the late Ming.27 The emperor might authorize such a remission of uncollected taxes up to a specific date, either for a particular district in response to a petition from its local officials, or for the entire empire. In addition customary remissions were provided for on such occasions as the birth of an imperial prince, the investiture of the heir apparent, and the accession of a new emperor. All this in fact encouraged tax delinquency. A law-abiding subject who rushed to pay his taxes and later discovered that the payment had been cancelled by a delayed order of remission got no refund, nor any credit towards his next payment.28 On the other hand a taxpayer who held out long enough could hope that imperial magnanimity would cancel his delinquent record. Tax default in these circumstances could be contagious.

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In one district cases were reported where the taxpayers in certain local communities collectively hired persons to befloggedby the magistrate on their behalf so that they could keep their own payments in arrears.29 Evidently in the early days of the Single Whip Reform many of its promoters had hopes of putting the entire tax-paying population under the direct control of the civil government, eliminating the village intermediaries entirely. Had this ambitious goal been accomplished, its effects might have been profound. In practically every case, however, the intermediaries were either retained or revived, for they were one source from which to make up the county's fiscal deficit and were also indispensable as agents of tax collection. The principle applied here was group responsibility. Though the magistrate was helpless to deal personally with 20,000 potential tax defaulters, he could always make 200 drafted agents responsible for rural tax administration and let them pass on the pressure to the villages. Wu-chin county in South Chihli, one of the most advanced districts in experimenting with tax reforms, started using wooden chests for personal tax delivery as early as 1542, and was felt to have completed its Single Whip Reform by combining the chiin-yao account with the regular land taxes in 1573. Even so it never abolished all its tax agents and by 1603 some of those eliminated earlier had already been reinstated.30 Distribution and function of tax agents Taxation in the late Ming thus involved a kind of dyarchy, with the local government handling the paper work and civilian agents carrying out the actual operations. In Shanghai county in 1584 it was organized on the following lines. The county was divided intofifty-sixtax zones (ch'u), each on average comprising about a dozen li-chia communities. Every tax zone had a general tax expediter (tsung-ts'ui) whose responsibility it was to see that all taxpayers under his supervision paid their taxes on time.31 Once every ten days he reported to the magistrate, to account for the taxes in his zone and was flogged if the payment was behind schedule. On the other days he visited the local communities and individual tax-paying households. He rarely handled the tax payments in person, however. Forty-four of thefifty-sixzones had to provide tribute grain for Peking. After the preliminary collection was completed by the local communities the grain checker (shou-tui), conscripted from each zone, assembled the consignments of rice, transported them to the port of embarkation and delivered them to the representatives of the army transportation corps. Granaries for interim storage and boats for short-distance haulage were made available by the local government, but their repair and maintenance rested with the grain checker who also hired and paid his own bookkeeper.

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On average each grain checker handled 1,300 to 1,400 piculs of tribute grain and had personally to make up any arrears in payment from the local communities. Only after he secured written receipts from the army transportation corps were his responsibilities finally discharged and it was not unusual for the army personnel to withhold the receipts to ensure satisfaction of their own demands.32 In addition thirty-three tax deliverers (fing-chieh) were also conscripted from the population to handle more distant deliveries and the collection of silver payments. Eight of them were stationed with the county government to take charge of the silver chests, and were known as chest heads (kueifou) or silver heads (yin-fou).33 It must be emphasized that the personal submission of silver payments by individual taxpayers at the county yamen cannot be construed as 'direct collection by the government from the people'. 34 The procedure only enabled the county administration to exercise close control over it. The chunks and bits of silver submitted by the taxpayers had to be re-melted and cast into the oval-shaped ingots required for delivery, the standard differing from one kind of payment to another. At the higher-level offices some payments had to be supplemented by additional silver, termed 'extra drops' (ti-pu). The magistrate also usually extracted a payment termed the 'melting charges' (huo-hao) which will be described later.35 When the individual taxpayer delivered his silver to the chest, in almost every case his own responsibility to the government was then discharged. The bulk silver was subsequently transferred to the custody of the chest head who was responsible for re-melting it, casting ingots, and making up shortages. In many districts the chest heads were not released even after the silver was safely stored in the county treasury.36 As ' tax deliverers', their functions were completely fulfilled only after the bulk silver was dispatched, all the requirements of collection having been met. In Shanghai each chest head collected about 1,000 taels of silver and sustained a personal loss of rarely less than 50 taels in the course of his duty.37 Other tax deliverers besides the chest heads made personal trips to Nanking and Peking, to transport white grain and cotton cloth (as described in 3, n). The cloth was as a rule purchased by the tax-paying communities from officially designated weavers at regulated prices.38 All the positions mentioned above, 133 in all, were filled on the orders of the county magistrate; but the list of nominees was submitted by 'those who owned more land, and were both prudent and just'. Each position was if possible filled by one taxpayer, but often jointly by four or five households. The term of service was one year but appointments were made in advance for five years at a time and thus involved most of the medium-grade landowners in the district. The position of chest head, for instance, was usually filled by a taxpayer who owned 300 to 400 mou of land or by several landowners whose combined holding was at that level.39

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Apart from the abovementioned agents, the magistrate appointed a chief scribe for the county (tsung-shu, or hsien-tsung). Shanghai, along with two other counties, took it in turns to provide its superior prefecture with a prefectural chief scribe (fu-tsung). The chief scribe, unlike all other tax agents, had no fiscal responsibilities. His function was rather that of general coordination, he directed the tax expediters and grain checkers, and established the schedule for dispatching silver from the tax chests. The authority of this position enabled its holder to gain considerable irregular income, and it was accordingly much sought after. One passage in the county gazetteer indicates that some persons were willing 'to spend several hundred taels of silver' to secure the post of chief scribe.40 The comprehensive network of tax agents in Shanghai county described above, which consisted of civilian auxiliaries operating at a level above that of the li-chia communities, was by no means exceptional, and similar networks were found in the adjacent counties of Hua-t'ing and Ch'ing-p'u.41 The organization of these agents was perhaps most advanced in Wu-chin county, Ch'ang-chou prefecture, where the grain checkers were allowed to elect from amongst themselves tax deliverers to take the white grain to Peking.42 Nor was the extensive utilization of civilian agents limited to South Chihli. In the late sixteenth century Hai-yen county, Chekiang, had 161 rural tax agents.43 Shantung province, on its adoption of the Single Whip Reform, made an attempt to dispense with the drafted agents by recruiting merchants as substitutes, but the plan failed ignominiously, as can be seen from the experience of Ts'ao-hsien, Tung-ao, and Wen-shang counties, and Ch'ing-chou subprefecture.44 Tung-ch'ang prefecture adopted the Single Whip method in 1587, and the description of its civilian tax agents in the 1600 edition of the prefectural gazetteer shows that the situation there was not much different from that in Shanghai.45 About the turn of the century Wang Ying-chiao (died 1628, minister of revenue, 1621-22) reported that in North Chihli, a subprefecture could appoint as many as 300 to 400 persons as silver chest heads to carry out tax collection.46 Hsiang-ho county had about 50 rural tax expediters above the li-chia level.47 Although the chief scribe does not seem to have been universally appointed, such a position is known to have existed in Wu-chin county and Ning-kuo and Sung-chiang prefectures in South Chihli, Hang-chou prefecture in Chekiang, Hsiang-ho county in North Chihli, and in Shantung province during the period of general land survey in 1581.48 In the late sixteenth century there were remarkably few complaints against the various tax agents with the exception of the chief scribe. The sources seem to agree that before about 1570, tax abuses had been much more widespread, but that thereafter considerable improvement was made. The new tax agents are portrayed as representing predominantly the middle-class landowners, who were the victims rather than the villains of

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the system. This situation is partially explained by the local tax reforms carried out at this time (3, in). The elimination of many U-cKai service assignments must have released a considerable number of landowners in this category, who were now available to be drafted as auxiliaries in tax collection. Contemporary writers in fact manifested strong sympathy for the tax agents and deplored the fact that the tax expediters were repeatedly beaten with 'bloody bamboo sticks' through no fault of their own.49 A county magistrate wrote in 1609:' The more the flogging, the more the tax arrears.' 50 Influential and arrogant landowners deliberately made the tax expediters wait at their doorways. Some of them were still unable to clear their responsibilities four or five years after taking the assignment. Similar sympathy was expressed for the grain checkers, chest heads, and tax deliverers, many of whom were apparently bankrupted as a result of the unpaid assignments.51 The decrease in tax abuses was thus largely brought about by forcing the medium-grade landowners to cover the shortages. It is difficult to believe, however, that the general population was not adversely affected by this. In one document, clearly dated between 1570 and 1590, tax expediters are already called 'crafty and deceitful' and are accused of pocketing the payments of certain taxpayers.52 Despite the use of the wooden chests, some taxpayers continued to rely on the expediters or other intermediaries to hand over payments for them, showing that personal influence was still an important factor in tax collection.53 In Shanghai county as well as in many other districts tax expediters were also authorized to collect miscellaneous dues for the local government, such as contributions to local irrigation projects.54 In the last analysis the pressure exerted from above was absorbed by those on the lowest level, the least articulate and the least able to resist it. Chang Chii-cheng himself said in 1576: 'The powerful and influential households and the crafty and habitual swindlers are passed with no question asked. [Their taxes] are instead exacted from lesser households and poor people.'55 Clearly it would have been naive to expect the use of the wooden chests alone to afford legal protection to the taxpayers. The tax payment Whenever part of the land tax was ordered to be commuted to silver, it was in fact paid in silver. There is no indication that at the local level the payment could be made instead in copper coins as frequently happened under the Ch'ing. Ku Yen-wu's report of cases of suicide occurring before tax deadlines, was actually designed to back up his argument that in the underdeveloped provinces demanding tax payment in silver was unreasonable even in the seventeenth century.56 The only place he knew of where tax

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payments could be made partially in copper coins was Te-chou prefecture in Shantung. In the late sixteenth century silver must have been in even shorter supply. Some administrators manifested concern over the fact that paying taxes in silver could depress local grain prices. Ch'ung-te county in Chekiang, for example, produced an insufficient supply of grain to meet its needs. When the land taxes were collected after the harvest some taxpayers, in their anxiety not to sell their rice, preferred to raise the silver for the tax payment by depositing the grain with a pawnshop; the loan could be paid back with interest after the household had sent its production of silk to the market.57 It is not known for certain how accurately decimal fractions of silver payments were settled in the actual collection. When the Ch'ing government in 1661 prosecuted tax delinquents in the Yangtze delta area, however, taxpayers were officially listed as being in arrears by such trifling amounts as 0.001 or 0.0007 taels of silver.58 This would seem to indicate that the measurement was actually carried out to four places of decimals-a practice that had in all likelihood been started by the Ming. The origin of the huo-hao, or melting charges, its likewise unclear. Ku Yen-wu declared in the mid seventeenth century that he did not know when the collection started.59 It was undoubtedly necessitated by the fact that every higher office demanded full weight in silver payments, and the melting down and re-casting of the metal always involved a loss of around 2 per cent. Kuei Yu-kuang mentioned that in the 1550s Soochow prefecture collected a 3 per cent melting charge on all taxes paid in silver, still a reasonable rate.60 When Hai Jui was magistrate of Shun-an county, Chekiang, in 1562, local custom entitled him to impose a surcharge of 5 per cent but he reduced the rate to 2 per cent, on the grounds that the melting charges would result in a surplus on some payments but a deficit on others.61 Throughout the sixteenth century the irregular collection of surcharges was subject to criticism. In 1594 an imperial censor asserted that on a small payment of 0.1 tael of silver the melting charge could be as much as 0.05 taels, an increase of 50 per cent.62 But this was probably an exceptional case. When chest heads were appointed it was their responsibility to meet the losses resulting from melting and casting, and the local officials had no legitimate reason to demand melting charges in addition to the tax revenue. All local governments, however, derived insufficient funds from the li-chia service levy to provide them with an adequate operating budget. Previously they had had considerable freedom to use funds derived from the commutation of punishments to fines but by the mid sixteenth century this income was also being gradually surrendered to the central government (6, n). This was why officials now often resorted to imposing melting charges. In many counties though, the magistrates simply ordered the chest

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heads to pay for any extraordinary office purchases, the reception of visiting dignitaries, and their own tours of inspection.63 Thus during the last quarter of the sixteenth century the 'melting charge' was no longer an extra item of expenditure but became a source of income, and officials began to supplement their salaries with funds derived from this source. Those charges that were retained in the collecting offices of the county government were called cKang-li (customary payment), while those forwarded to superiors in higher offices, including the prefectural government, were called hsien-yii (declared surplus). Neither legal nor strictly illegal, they were accepted by officialdom as well as the general populace.64 Though the chest heads still assumed general responsibility for the funds, this extra silver had to be extracted from the taxpayers. It was not officially entered in their accounts, but added to the collection as a customary practice. There are some scattered indications that even in the early seventeenth century the funds thus raised by local officials were not enormously large. One provincial official in Chekiang described the prevailing practice as follows: When silver was cleared from the tax chests, it was deposited in the county treasury. It was not melted down and re-cast into ingots by the chest heads until it was time for it to be dispatched. When it was released the clerk in charge of the treasury automatically deducted 1 tael in every 50 for the magistrate.65 Ku Yen-wu writing in the mid seventeenth century claimed that melting charges had grown to 20-30 per cent on major tax payments and 70-80 per cent on minor ones.66 Tax delivery Up to the mid sixteenth century the delivery of most taxes, with the notable exception of the tribute grain, was carried out by the people. In the 1560s and 1570s, however, more and more tax consignments were taken over by the local government as part of the reform. On its adoption of the Single Whip Reform in 1568 Shao-hsing prefecture announced that henceforth tax consignments in excess of 500 taels of silver would be delivered by an official, and consignments of between 300 and 500 taels by a lesser administrative functionary.67 In the Yangtze delta the delivery of cotton cloth was also for a time taken over by the government. Wu-hsien in Soochow prefecture for this reason developed some public land, the income from which was earmarked to pay for the deliveries.68 Not all such reforms were successful as local government staffs were usually too small to carry out all the deliveries. A decree of 1573 further forbade the magistrates to dispatch auxiliary personnel such as medical officers and army officers as delivery agents.69 The cost of the delivery was also a problem. Even in the early seventeenth century the counties of

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Ch'ii-chou prefecture, Chekiang, still had no funds whatsoever to finance the delivery of tax revenues to the provincial capital, a distance of over 250 miles.70 Another substantial obstacle to the reform was the widespread corruption that prevailed in Peking. It was an open secret that all the personnel at the receiving depots in the capital exacted fees from the delivery agents.71 There were fewer complications with silver payments, the purity of which could be guaranteed by the silversmith accompanying the delivery agent. Taxes in kind, on the other hand, had to be checked in by the palace eunuchs, who were quite capable of rejecting the entire consignment on the grounds of inferior quality if any of them were dissatisfied with the size of their personal share of the proceeds. At the warehouses the transaction between deliverers and receivers was handled by professional intermediaries. Any delivery agent who dispensed with their services ran the risk of seeing his cargo declared sub-standard, but its acceptance was virtually guaranteed on the payment of a suitable fee. In the late sixteenth century the most notorious intermediary in tax delivery was Li Wei, Earl of Wu-ch'ing, the maternal grandfather of the reigning Wan-li Emperor.72 In his last years in office Chang Chli-cheng managed to eliminate this last obstacle, including the influence of Li Wei (7, in). The effect was only temporary, and the fate of the delivery agents was always uncertain. In 1600 the docket officer of Chia-ting county was imprisoned in Peking because the textiles brought by him were said to fall below official specification.73 In 1621 when the governor of Shantung ordered civilian agents to be replaced by official deliverers, one county expressed doubts as to whether the official deliverers could survive any better than the civilian ones had.74 Some officials actually felt that they showed themselves more considerate of the general population by drafting civilian agents for tax delivery. When a consignment of cotton goods was rejected in Peking, not only was the official deliverer arrested but at the same time the thousands of rolls of cotton cloth were returned to their district of origin, whose taxpayers then had to send a new consignment. If the deliverer was a draftee, he alone took the responsibility. The reform was relatively more successful in the northern provinces such as Shantung and Honan where the delivery distances were shorter.75 Official delivery was also more successful in handling the silver payments than the taxes in kind. In areas like Sung-chiang prefecture in South Chihli which had to dispatch bulky cargoes as palace supplies, the practice of delivery by the people was virtually unchanged. Many such districts, after taking over the handling of cotton goods from the drafted deliverers, soon found that the delivery was too troublesome and handed the responsibility back to the civilian draftees.76 In some coastal areas the draftees had yet another duty to perform. These

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counties were responsible for supplying the army units stationed on offshore islands, where cliffs made access difficult, and no grain supplies were available locally. Usually the magistrates turned over a certain amount of silver in lieu of so many piculs of grain to the drafted agents, and expected them to solve the supply problem.77 II FACTORS AFFECTING THE GENERAL ADMINISTRATION The grain quota and associate factors

In the late sixteenth century the imperial government could do little to reshape the tax administration. The major problem faced by the ministry of revenue was that it did not have a set of adequate land data, for the cultivated acreage was never systematically surveyed throughout the entire dynasty. The piecemeal land survey ordered by the Hung-wu Emperor (2, n) and the national land survey ordered by Chang Chii-cheng in 1581, which because of its complexities will be fully discussed later (7, m), were conducted without any uniform standards and had mixed results. The data thus obtained seem never to have been compiled at the national level and the ministry of revenue certainly did not use them for taxation purposes. The only land data available to the ministry in the late sixteenth century were those dated 1578, entered in the 1587 edition of Ta-Ming Hui-tien, and these were inaccurate.* The absence of adequate acreage records certainly facilitated tax evasion, yet this was not the most serious problem. The only places where it was reported that large tracts of land remained completely untaxed were Hukwang and certain coastal districts of Fukien,78 which could be considered as peripheral areas of the administration. In other regions unregistered landed property was found only in isolated cases. Tax evaders were continually dunned by conscientious local officials and though a few violators, because of their official status, managed to defeat these efforts, the magistrates might when frustrated publish their names along with their land-holdings in the local gazetteers, to show that laxity in law enforcement was by no means universal.79 A far more pressing problem was that of tax reapportionment. While the local officials always had records of one sort or another, the central govern* The data in the Ta-Ming Hui-tien were reproduced from the preliminary draft of the Wan-li Kifai-chi-lu. The latter work was compiled in 1582 and published immediately. It is now available in microfilm, but with chapters 3 and 6 missing, at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. As Chang Hsiieh-yen's preface indicates, the results of the land survey of 1581 are not included. Its sources were mainly official files and earlier publications collected from various quarters, including some personal papers. While the work contains some useful information, its land data were acknowledged even by its own editors to be inadequate. (See for instance 4/99-100 and 9/87.)

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ment lacked the overall statistics essential to any large-scale tax readjustment. The regional quotas, little revised since the late fourteenth century, therefore had to remain as the basis of current taxation. The basic land tax assessment, in piculs of grain, varied widely from one region to another. The three counties of Sung-chiang prefecture in South Chihli had a combined tax quota approximately equivalent to that of the whole of Kwangtung province, which had seventy-five counties plus one subprefecture. In the previous chapter it was also observed that Shanghai county alone had a tax quota three times larger than that of Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien, which comprised ten counties. An extreme example is provided by Tzu-yang county, in Shensi, one of the poorest regions, the annual tax return of which was 341 piculs of grain, less than one-thousandth of Shanghai's.80 By the sixteenth century there were of course increasing regional imbalances in population density, agrarian productivity, and general economic development. On the other hand regional quotas, that had been established some 200 years earlier, obviously could neither reflect these imbalances nor be used to readjust them. The taxation system had long since lost its dynamic capacity to regulate the state of the economy or even to correspond to it. Each county's land taxes became fixed and compartmentalized, and since the local officials never stayed in their posts very long, local landlords always had the upper hand over the tax administration. The unsatisfactory monetary system certainly made central planning difficult, if not impossible. Under the Sung dynasty the copper cash was established as the universalfiscalstandard and even in the early years of the Yuan, land taxes were at first assessed in copper coins. When taxes in kind were needed, the required commodities were computed on the basis of the cash assessment, as some local gazetteers indicate.81 This way the tax accounts could easily be integrated. The Ming system, which calculated most of the basic assessments in grain, represented a step backwards and caused a great deal of confusion in accounting in the sixteenth century when land taxes were largely paid in silver. Regional grain prices in silver varied widely and were also subject to seasonalfluctuations.Some of the confusion resulted from tax commutations in the fifteenth century which were made for the sake of temporary convenience with no regard to grain prices. In the sixteenth century when the multiplicity of surcharges, surtaxes, and the service levy were partially absorbed into land taxes, it was difficult to say which was thefiscalstandard, the tael of silver or the picul of grain. In 1578 Hukwang province was supposed to deliver a subsidy of 102,400 piculs of grain to Kweichow, but the actual payment was made with 30,720 taels of silver.82 In 1591 when Lin-fen county collected 48,449 piculs of autumn grain, the collection target was actually 49,769 taels.83 In the late sixteenth century offices of various levels ordered further

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commutation of grain quotas, fixing rates themselves. In general, any office that had authority over both the collecting agency and the disbursing agency also had the power to issue commutation orders. For instance, only the imperial government could order that a consignment of tribute grain be commuted, since the recipients of the tribute grain were always under its direct jurisdiction. But a provincial governor, who controlled both the army units in his territory and the tax-collecting counties, could commute the tax payments passing from the latter to the former.84 Even though commutation rates in the late sixteenth century were generally close to local grain prices, the proliferation of these rates, some permanent, some temporary, some ordered by the central government, and others by provincial officials, perplexed even the administrators themselves. Sometimes the same tax consignment was divided into two parts, each with a separate rate of commutation. In some cases the local administration offered the taxpayers the option of paying the taxes either in grain or in silver at specified rates.85 Understandably, the central government could not maintain a complete record of all these confusing details for some 1,200fiscalunits. It is impossible to find any national accounts consolidating the total amount of silver paid as land taxes. Thus as long as the grain quota remained the only fiscal standard by which to integrate the national accounts, the picul of grain had no absolute value. The tael of silver did have a general value but no general accounts were kept in it. At the same time there was still a lack of accurate information on cultivated acreage. The court at Peking therefore had no knowledge of the real tax-paying power of the individual districts, nor even an adequate measurement of the current level of tax collection. This made it extremely difficult to increase the regular tax rates. Often the increases had to be made in the form of additional li-chia requisitions or surcharge readjustments. These measures complicated the tax structure still further, and produced only small and scattered incomes. Complications caused by land tenure, land leases, and farm prices

There is virtually no documentation of land tenure in the late sixteenth century. The Yangtze delta, regarded as the area with the greatest concentration of land ownership in the late Ming, has been studied by many modern scholars, as well as contemporary writers, yet even so the exact nature of conditions there in the sixteenth century remains to this day a highly debatable issue. As even less is known about other regions, the present discussion will focus mainly on this area. Mainland Chinese scholars, reconstructing the situation from the random notes left by contemporaries, tend to argue that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, one or two individuals in the lower Yangtze

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could own an amount of land comparable to the entire acreage of a sizeable county. Such a situation would indeed have been appalling.* Nonetheless thesefindingsare inconsistent with what we know about the general social and economic conditions of the times and also with the tax regulations published before the turn of the century. The following facts should also be taken into consideration: (a) In the exchange of letters between Chang Chii-cheng and the governor of South Chihli in the 1570s it was indicated that the largest landowner in the delta region probably was in possession of 70,000 mou of land (see note * below). Persons with such immense fortunes were already under the governor's surveillance.86 (b) In Ch'ang-chou prefecture, the wealthiest landowner was said to own 20,000 or more mou of land.87 (c) In 1610, the most affluent and powerful households in Hua-t'ing county were mentioned as being those who owned 2,000 mou of land or more.88 * Most of these assertions are based on statements in contemporary writings which repeat such cliches as kao-yii wan-cKing (1 million mou of rich soil) and Vien-lien chiin-hsien (land-holding extending over more than one county and prefecture), both are classical expressions and do not have to be taken literally. In these studies Hsu Chieh (1503-83) is said to have owned either 240,000 mou (Wang Fang-chung in Ming CWing She-hui hsing-Vai ti Yen-chiu, p. 132), or 400,000

mou of land (Wu Han, Hai Jui chi, p. 7). Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1556-1637) is said to have owned 1 million mou of land (Wang Fang-chung, p. 132). Another often-quoted statement is taken from Chang Chii-cheng's letter to the governor of South Chihli. In this letter Chang mentioned that a certain large landowner (or several of them) in the Soochow-Sung-chiang region were in possession of 7 million mou of land, which carried a basic tax assessment of 20,000 piculs of grain {Huang-Ming Ching-shih Wenpien, 327/12). Hsu Chieh was indeed a large landowner. A great part of his holdings came to him through some form of 'contract of commendation'. The actual landowners handed their titles over to him, paid him a nominal rent, and relied on his influence in Peking to help them evade service obligations to the government. The abovementioned acreages, corresponding to the amount of cultivated land in a medium and a small county, were taken from the statements of his accusers whose figures could easily have been exaggerated. Chao-ying Fang, who has written Hsii's biography for the Ming Biographical History Project, chooses to put the figures in parentheses. In discussing the matter with the present writer, Professor Fang has given it as his opinion that since the act was illegal it is impossible to ascertain the actual conditions. Tung Ch'i-ch'ang's family was notorious in Sung-chiang prefecture. His son became involved in unfair financial deals with persons of lower status and extorted money from them. This precipitated a public riot during which Tung's house was burned down. The incident became folklore and the acreage in question comes from such tales. The story is retold by Hsueh Kuo-chen, in Ming-Ctiing chih-chi Tang-she Yun-tung-k'ao (Shanghai, 1935), pp. 270-3. Chang chii-cheng's statement clearly involved a technical error. In Soochow and Sung-chiang prefectures, an acreage that was assessed with 20,000 piculs of grain in tax payment would have been 70,000 mou, not 7 million mou. It seems that Chang misplaced the character cKing (100 mou) for the character mou. The error has been noted by the editors of Huang-Ming Ching-shih Wen-pien, and by Wang Fang-chung, p. 132. Fu I-ling, however, did not notice the discrepancy: see Ming-Ch'ing Nungts"un She-huei Ching-chU p. 82.

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(d) In 1611 when the magistrate of Ch'ing-p'u county made a rigorous investigation into land ownership in his district he discovered that practically all the large estates had previously been split up into smaller units and registered separately, involving altogether 160,088 mou of land. On publication of the results of the inquiry, he classified these holdings into groups ranging from 250 mou to 2,500 mou in size.89 (e) In 1636, Grand Secretary Ch'ien Shih-sheng (in office, 1633-6) testified that in the entire delta region many affluent landowners possessed holdings which could be counted in hundreds of mou only. Households with holdings counted in thousands of mou comprised no more than 40 per cent of the group (which presumably included all owners of 200 mou or more). Those who owned more than 10,000 mou were exceedingly rare.90 (/) Yeh Meng-chu, writing in the 1660s, stated that until the mid seventeenth century no person in Hua-t'ing, Shanghai, and Ch'ing-p'u counties owned more than 10,000 mou of land. Thereafter larger holdings than this did emerge.91 (g) In 1661 when the Ch'ing prosecuted gentry landowners in the delta area for violation of tax laws, the list of offenders contained 13,517 names.92 The above facts, and many other descriptive statements in local gazetteers, do seem to show that the degree of land concentration in the sixteenth century, while phenomenal, has been exaggerated in recent years. There is no evidence that any single household in the four prefectures of South Chihli owned more than 70,000 mou of land. Owners possessing landed properties larger than 10,000 mou were numbered merely in dozens or scores throughout the whole region. Most large owners, however, had holdings of between 500 and 2,000 mou. The combined holdings of those who owned 500 mou or more could very well have exceeded 25 per cent of the arable land in the counties. They represented a rather small segment of the population, unlikely to be more than 1,000 households in each county, and perhaps closer to 500 households. Aside from those large landowners, there was also a substantial number of medium-grade landowners whose holdings were less than 500 but more than 100 mou. In Shanghai county alone it seems that no fewer than 1,000 of them were drafted as rural tax agents in a five-year period (4, i). Marginal landowners were numerous. Soochow prefecture registered 597,019 tax-paying households and Ch'ang-chou prefecture 234,355 households, though it is unknown how many of these households owned no land whatsoever.93 Circumstances nevertheless suggest that many tenant farmers also had small pieces of land of their own, as was the case in more recent times. Even in the 1660s when the concentration of land ownership was further advanced, there were still many households owning a meager 3 to 5 mou.94 From an administrative point of view, the presence of a few extremely

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wealthy landowners was a fairly simple matter for they could easily be identified and isolated. When Hai Jui was governor of South Chihli in 1570, he could demand forcibly that the largest landowner in his territory, Hsu Chieh, reduce his land-holdings by a half. The exchange of letters between the two, though no figures are listed, shows that the governor's goal was at least partially realized.95 When Wang Ssu-jen, a fearless official, was magistrate of Ch'ing-p'u county in 1610, he threatened to confiscate the properties of those large landowners who had falsely registered their land under the names of others to evade the obligation of serving as tax agents. The threat brought results.96 Officials found that the most difficult problem was to handle the group immediately below the extremely wealthy, namely the men whose landholdings were counted in hundreds and thousands of mou. Powerful enough to obstruct justice, they were also too numerous to be dealt with easily. Not only did they keep their own payments in arrears, they also often provided a protective umbrella for their friends and relatives. It was not the few powerful landlord-officials in the locality that were the most serious obstacle to tax administration, according to Feng Ch'i (1558-1603). But he went on to say that 'when the common people sought the intervention of the gentry, the governor supervising the Soochow district would be in trouble'. 47 The presence of marginal landowners made rate readjustments very difficult, especially in the case of an upward revision. Though tax rates were generally low (4, HI), a slight increase or decrease could significantly affect the marginal landowners who relied on the after-tax income for their livelihood. In 1583 the tribute grain of Chia-ting county, Soochow prefecture, was permanently commuted to silver payments. The tax benefit to the landowners can be estimated to have been worth, on paper, less than 0.05 taels of silver per mou. Since local handling of the grain consignment was also eliminated, the actual benefit was slightly more. Such a minor difference could cause land prices in the district to rise and as a result landowners who had previously sold their land rushed to 'redeem' their properties. Disputes ensued and there were numerous lawsuits. Some marginal landowners were undoubtedly involved, since the sources indicate that some of the buyers were illiterates.98 It is not difficult to imagine the social consequences of a tax-rate increase of a similar magnitude. Another difficulty connected with marginal landowners was that they had little capacity to endure fluctuations in farm prices. T'ang Shun-chih (1507-60), writing in the mid century, disclosed that the price of each picul of husked rice had by then climbed from 0.7 taels of silver to 0.9 taels, apparently because of the disturbance caused by the wo-k'ou campaigns. He also said that in the region south of the Yangtze the 'normal price'was 0.5 taels per picul; this is quite consistent with other sources and applies to

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most of the sixteenth century. T'ang was in fact arguing that the conversion rates should be restricted to a range of between 0.5 taels and 0.7 taels." For most items of commutation in the late sixteenth century this standard was maintained. The so-called normal price did not, however, exclude regional, seasonal, and annualfluctuations.It has already been mentioned that immediately after the harvest grain prices usually dropped. About 1580, it was reported that in South Chihli each picul of husked rice was worth only 0.3 taels.100 Grand-secretary Sheng Shih-hsing confirmed the report with the words: 'Recently prices of husked rice have fallen considerably; and 1 tael of silver can now buy 3 piculs.'101 When a landowner had to sell his crop at depressed prices in order to pay his taxes, he could end up paying twice as much as he expected. When a tax increase coincided with a serious fall in farm prices, the price of farmland also declined significantly. Marginal landowners were then reduced to such desperation that they sold their properties for less than an average year's income. All this sounds impossible, but Ko Shou-li reported that it happened in Shantung in the 1570s.102 About a century later Yeh Meng-chu also reported that a similar situation occurred in the lower Yangtze region. In 1663 landed properties which previously had been sold for 5 taels per mou were said to be worth only 0.5 taels per mou. By then the minimum price of each picul of husked rice was about 0.6 taels.103 Statements such as these have to be accepted with caution, as they could involve an element of exaggeration. Yet it is clear that farm credit was difficult to secure and marginal landowners could not cope with the double squeeze of falling farm prices and rising tax rates. Tenancy rates in the delta area have generally been regarded as high, but again there are no adequate data. The often quoted statement of Ku Yenwu, referring to the situation in Soochow prefecture in the seventeenth century, is fairly vague, to the effect that' only one person out often owned his land, while the other nine were tenant farmers'.104 Yet there is no doubt that land tax collection always took the landlord's return into consideration, as is explicitly pointed out in the Shun-te county gazetteer (3, i). The 1643 edition of the county gazetteer of Wu-hsien, Soochow prefecture, contains the following statement: 'The annual income from top-quality rice paddies is no more than 1.2 piculs per mou. After paying the regular land taxes and surcharges, in silver and in kind, the remaining portion is slightly over 0.7 piculs.'105 The picul in the first figure must have been in husked rice, otherwise it would not have corresponded to the prevailing rate of collection and the usual tax procedure. The statement also indicates that the actual yield per mou was some 2.4 piculs, which is consistent with other observations from the same area.106 After the usualfifty-fiftysharing of the crop with the tenant, the landlord had a pre-tax return of 1.2 piculs. In sum, the land taxes, somewhere between 0.4 piculs and 0.5 piculs per

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mou, took only about 20 per cent of the yield, but from the landlord's point of view represented 40 per cent of his income. For those marginal landowners who also happened to be landlords, tax rates at this level were quite high and any further increase would have been unbearable. Tax rates in Soochow were universally regarded as among the highest in the empire. The year 1643, the eve of the dynasty's collapse, also marked the high point of its taxation. The above case nevertheless shows that land taxes under the Ming could not have been increased by much. Taxpayers sometimes devised extraordinary methods to defeat the administration. In some districts of Fukien and Kiangsi, a strange type of land lease became popular in the sixteenth century, generally referred to as i-fien-san-chu, or 'one field with three owners'. It originated from the practice whereby the absentee landlord, in order to relieve himself of the obligation of paying taxes and performing the accompanying service obligations, nominally 'sold' his land to a second person at a reduced price but still retained for himself afixedamount of grain income from the same property. The so-called buyer therefore had to carry out all the obligations to the government as the effective landowner yet at the same time provide the original proprietor with a tax-free payment. This second party did not cultivate thefieldshimself, but permanently leased the property to a tenant. When the contract had remained in force for several generations, none of the parties could be released from the linked arrangement. The first party was called yeh-chu, or 'property owner' and the second ta-tsu-chu, or 'major tax-paying owner'. The tenant was occasionally referred to as fen-chu or 'fertilizer owner'. Because of the part he played in developing the land, for example by applying 'nightsoiP to the fields, or because he paid an extra deposit to the owner, he also had a claim to the property in perpetuity. The grain income over and above a certain specific amount was his share and the land could not be transferred to another owner without his consent.107 The practice of contracting for someone else to pay one's taxes, once started, could be extended even beyond this tripartite relationship. In Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien, in the 1560s and 1570s even the major tax-paying owner, though a tax agent himself, secured yet another tax agent. The latter received afixedamount of grain payment, barely sufficient to cover the taxes plus a minimal managerial fee. He became a constant problem to the local authorities, as his payment was rarely made in time or in full, and was amusingly termed pei-tui, literally 'the empty-handed taxpayer'.108 About 1572 the prefect of Chang-chou worked out a formula to reconstitute the diffused land ownership. The principle was that there should be only one owner on each piece of taxable land and that this strange partnership or tax management system must be dissolved, either by one

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party buying out the rights of the others or through the partitioning of the property. The plan was not realized, however. After the land survey of 1581, the provincial officials merely attempted to register all the parties involved so that the tax payment could be apportioned to each of them. In 1612 it was reported that even the second plan was not carried out anywhere.109 In Fukien province this type of land tenure, with certain variations, is known to have existed in Cheng-ho, Nan-p'ing, Sha-hsien, Yung-an, Shao-wu, Lung-hsi, Chang-p'u, Ch'ang-t'ai, Nan-ch'ing, P'ing-ho and Ch'eng-hai counties. Fu I-ling has published a number of old contracts found in Yung-an county, Yen-p'ing prefecture, which confirm that this tenure system not only survived the Ming dynasty, but actually lasted until the late nineteenth century at least.110 The i-fien-san-chu system fully exposed the ineffectiveness of the tax administration. The three-year term of office of provincial and local officials was not long enough to permit them to build up sufficient experience of the district to cope with native customs which could survive for centuries. In reality the taxpayers were playing a game of hide and seek with the collectors and there was very little hope that the level of taxation could be readjusted to reflect the land-users' actual ability to pay. This depended not on the productivity of land, nor in this case the landlord's grain income, but on his assistant manager's stipend. One further practice that seriously obstructed tax administration was that whereby taxpayers detached their tax liability in the course of property transactions. A wealthy landowner might select a small acreage from his holding for sale. The price was set unusually low on the understanding that the buyer would take over the greater portion of the seller's tax liability. Conversely, this affluent person might also offer to purchase a large part of his neighbor's land at premium prices but accept only a lesser portion of the tax assessment. Through carrying out a series of such transactions a large landowner could make only a token payment on his huge estates, while dozens of lesser owners were paying excessive rates. When the taxpaying power of the general public was undercut by such shrewd maneuvers, tax arrears steadily accumulated and the level of taxation was restricted. This evil was recognized and often discussed by bureaucrats throughout the sixteenth century.111 The practice seems to have spread all over the empire but was clearly more common in south than in north China, owing to the greater complexities of tenure and taxation in the ricegrowing region. Some of the abuses may have been corrected by the land survey of 1581, but its effects could only have been temporary. The author can testify from personal experience that the practice of separating tax assessment from acreage in property transactions was still practiced in certain parts of China right up to World War II.

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III THE LEVEL OF COLLECTION Provincial tax quotas in piculs of grain

The provincial tax quotas can be found in the Ta-Ming Hui-tien, along with the registered taxable acreages. The rates per mou for each province are thus easily calculated, as shown in Table 6. The tabulation of course has its limitations. The acreage figures are known in some cases to be fallacious and the basic assessment in piculs of grain was not an accurate index of actual payment, as has already been explained. Even so the listing is not completely meaningless. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the administrators in Peking actually relied on these data in making fiscal readjustments and so from the quality of the statistics one can visualize the quality of the administration. The ministry of revenue was fully aware of the nature of these statistics. Its policy was to utilize the tabulation as a general reference but not to be absolutely bound by it. This attitude is illustrated by the additional tax apportionment carried out in 1619. In order to finance the Manchurian campaign, Minister of Revenue Li Nu-hua, with the Wan-li Emperor's approval, added a surtax to the land taxes of the whole empire with the single exception of Kweichow province. Since the value of the picul of grain varied considerably in the national accounts the grain quota was not taken as the basis for the apportionment. The financial burden was distributed in accordance with each province's registered acreage. The land data, however, besides containing numerous inaccuracies and inconsistencies were fifty years out of date. The ministry subsequently imposed a universal increase at the rate of 0.0035 taels of silver per mou, a rather small amount. This was not apportioned directly on each landowner, but on the provinces and metropolitan areas, whose governors were authorized to make whatever internal readjustments they wished.112 Since the acreages of Hukwang province and of Huai-an prefecture in South Chihli were known to have been significantly inflated in the tabulation, the general apportionment formula made an exception in the case of these two areas. As a compromise, Hukwang was assessed 333,420 taels of silver, corresponding to some 95 million mou of land instead of the 221 million given in the Hui-tien tabulation. Huai-an prefecture was likewise assigned a quota of 35,977 taels, corresponding proportionately to slightly more than 10 million mou of taxable land, instead of the 13,082,636 mou listed in the national accounts.113 No exceptions were allowed for other districts as it was understood that the general rate of increase was small and the minor inequalities resulting from it were not a matter for serious concern. Because the extra tax was apportioned on acreage rather 6-2

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TABLE 6. Provincial tax quotas in piculs of grain based on the tabulation of 1578

Province Chekiang Kiangsi Hukwang Fukien Shantung Shansi Honan Shensi Szechuan Kwangtung Kwangsi Yunnan Kweichow South Chihli North Chihli Total

Registered acreage (mou) 46,696,982 40,115,127 221,619,940 13,422,500 61,749,899 36,803,927 74,157,951 29,292,385 13,482,767 25,686,513 9,402,074 1,799,358 516,686 77,394,662 49,256,836 701,397,607

Total basic assessment (piculs of grain) 2,522,627 2,616,341 2,162,183 851,153 2,850,936 2,314,802 2,380,759 1,735,690 1,028,544 999,946 371,696 142,690 50,807 6,011,846 598,622 26,638,642

Indicated average (piculs per mou) 0.054 0.065 0.009 0.063 0.046 0.032 0.032 0.059 0.076 0.039 0.039 0.079 0.096 0.078 0.012 0.038

than on the grain quota, it also avoided over-burdening those regions which already had high tax rates, such as South Chihli. From Table 6 it can be observed further that the average grain assessment, at 0.038 piculs per mou, was not significantly different from Hungwu's ideal of 0.0335 piculs per mou (1, n). Regional distribution varied widely, nevertheless. Rather strangely, the tabulation suggests that the highest assessments were on Kweichow and Yunnan, two underdeveloped areas, while the lowest were on Honan, North Chihli, and Hukwang. These surprising facts are explained by inconsistencies in the original data. Land tax collection in Kweichow and Yunnan, and in certain districts of Hukwang and Kwangsi, had never followed normal procedures. From the days of the Hung-wu Emperor land taxes in Yunnan had been collected in a variety of commodities including cinnabar and vermilion.114 Portions of the payments were made by the aborigine chiefs in lump sums, and bore little resemblance to ordinary taxation. Up to the very end of the Ming dynasty certain tax payments in Teng-ch'uan subprefecture were still made in cowrie shells.115 In Kweichow no Yellow Book was ever compiled.116 A seventeenth-century memorial to the last emperor, Ch'ungchen, summarized the situation as follows: Most of the territory of Kweichow originally belonged to the native tribes. Our taxation enables us to exercise some measure of control over them. By paying taxes the tribesmen are also able to learn something about Han customs. But for all practical purposes the cultivated land is in the hands of the aboriginal officials.

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Acreage which pays regular taxes to the magistrates and prefects comprises no more than 10 per cent of the total.117 Obviously neither the reported acreage nor the quoted assessments could be taken seriously. Because of the small volume of revenue derived from these two provinces, taxation in Yunnan and Kweichow seldom became an important issue. Both territories in fact regularly received subsidies from other provinces. The low level of taxation apparently prevailing in North Chihli was unreal, in that the local horse payment (3, n), having been directly assessed in silver, was excluded from the grain quota tabulation. There was also a deliberate policy of keeping the level of formal taxation low in the counties and prefectures adjacent to the capital, so that the populace could be called upon to perform the numerous kinds of services required in Peking.118 In 1623, when substantial land tax increases were imposed to meet the Manchurian crisis, all the prefectures of North Chihli except one were exempted from the collection. The exempted prefecture, Shun-t'ien, contributed only 1,227 taels of silver. But for a period the population of North Chihli was intensely involved in servicing the military units in transit and making contributions to army supplies.119 This policy of waiving formal taxation in exchange for unpaid services was consistent with the dynasty's regular practice. It affected North Chihli more because the requisitions came directly from the imperial government. The lower per mou rate of Honan was part real and part illusory. In the late sixteenth century the province had absorbed a substantial amount of hitherto untaxed acreage (3, n), enabling many districts to reduce the per mou collection by means of tax reapportionment. On the other hand the counties and prefectures along the Yellow river were assessed a heavy additional payment known as ho-kung (river-control expenses).120 Undoubtedly a great portion of this financial burden was carried by the landowners. Conditions in Hukwang, made more confusing by its unreliable acreage figure, cannot be ascertained. The fundamental difficulty was caused by the peculiar topographical features of the great lake region. In 1582, Minister of Revenue Chang Hsiieh-yen (in office, 1578-83) observed that while most of the agricultural production in the province was concentrated on the lake shores, the area was often inundated.121 The lack of accurate land data for the area around the Tung-t'ing lake has remained a problem even in the present century. Without going into further details, this brief evaluation gives one an idea of the picture that the minister of revenue saw from his desk in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Any additional information available to the ministry only confirmed and enlarged this basically rather diffuse picture. The fiscal administration had to be carried out in an

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impressionistic and artistic manner. The modern scholar who wants to ascertain the real level of land tax collection has to gather his information elsewhere. Local accounts do provide one major source, but a great deal of reconstruction is still necessary. The level of collection indicated in local accounts

Most of the Mingfiscalaccounts cannot be used statistically. It is possible to make a rough estimate of the level of formal taxation by scanning the data, connecting seemingly unrelated factors and guessing the missing links, but as a rule thefigurescannot easily be handled mathematically. An accurate estimate of the level of land tax collection must take into account the nature of the land data, conversion rates, farm prices, and accounting methods, and there is never a case in which all these factors are absolutely clear. In Table 7 the 1572 accounts of Hang-chou prefecture, Chekiang, are selected for a case study.122 The prefecture comprised nine counties grouped around the prefectural capital, a city which still bears the name of the district today. This prefecture was one of the few in whichfiguresfor land data approximated to actual measurements.123 Even though several of its counties were situated in moutainous regions, such as Yii-ch'ien and Ch'ang-hua, their land taxes were remarkably small. On the other hand the taxable acreage of those counties which yielded larger revenue, such as Jen-ho and Hai-ning, comprised only negligible amounts of hilly and marshy land. Under the direct supervision of P'ang Shang-p'eng, one of the most enthusiastic promoters of the Single Whip Reform, Hang-chou prefecture compiled quite a detailed service levy account. It is assumed that 60 per cent of the service levy was borne by taxable acreage, in accordance with the general practice in Chekiang (3, m). In 1572 portions of the land taxes in Hang-chou were still paid in kind, and these have here been converted to silver, at a rate of 0.6 taels per picul of grain and 0.04375 taels of silver per tael of silk wadding. These were the standard rates of tax commutation in Hang-chou prefecture at the time. The level of farm income here is not all clear. I-wu county in neighbouring Ching-hua prefecture reported in 1592, however, that one mou of mediumquality land yielded 4 piculs of unhusked rice.124 Around the same time one mou of top-quality land in Chia-hsing and Hu-chou prefectures, also in Chekiang, yielded 3 piculs of husked rice as well as other crops.125 Shang-yii county in Shao-hsing prefecture reported in the early seventeenth century that one mou of top-quality land yielded 5 piculs of unhusked rice.126 Hang-chou prefecture was surrounded by these districts and the productivity of its soil was not considered to be inferior to theirs. It is safe

4, III The level of collection TABLE

County

167

7. Estimated land tax rates of Hang-chou prefecture in 1572

(a) Taxable acreage (mou)

805,238 Jen-ho 592,745 Ch'ien-t'ang 932,706 Hai-ning 686,565 Fu-yang 614,898 Yu-hang 184,806 Lin-an 127,998 Hsing-ch'en 147,259 Yu-ch'ien 90,199 Ch'ang-hua 4,182,414 Total prefecture

(b) Land taxes assessed in grain t (piculs)

(c) Value of land taxes* (tls.)

104,980 44,770 109,243 17,231 28,244 11,362 6,709 5,099 3,680 331,318

64,948 27,753 57,061 14,904 19,771 7,953 4,696 3,569 3,031 203,686

(e = d/c) (f = c + d ) (d) ProTotal 50% of portion land service of service taxes levy levy to after borne land absorpby land taxes tion (tls.) (tls.) (%) 21,942 12,187 19,461 7,512 6,430 4,015 2,217 2,028 1,820 77,612

34 43 34 50 36 50 47 57 60 38.1

86,890 39,940 76,522 22,416 28,201 11,968 6,913 5,597 4,851 281,298

(g = f/a) Per mou payment after absorption (tls.) 0.108 0.067 0.082 0.033 0.043 0.065 0.054 0.038 0.054 0.067

t The grain assessment includes the basic assessment and surcharges. * The value is arrived at by adding the commuted amount and the estimated value of taxes still paid in grain. NOTE: One item from each of the service levy accounts of Hai-ning and Fu-yang counties is missing in the original. Estimates of these two items have been added to the respective accounts.

therefore to assume that medium-quality land in Hang-chou yielded 2 piculs of husked rice per mou. When husked rice was sold at 0.6 taels of silver per picul, such medium-quality land would thus produce an annual income of 1.2 taels per mou. Hang-chou was also a silk-producing district. According to Mou K'un (1512-1601), before the turn of the century the income from silk-producing land around T'ai lake was as high as 5 taels of silver or more per mou. Even inferior land planted with mulberry trees could produce an annual income of between 1 and 2 taels per mou.127 Though these income estimates seem rather high, when applied to Hang-chou prefecture they suggest that 1 tael of silver per mou would be a conservative estimate for the average farm income of the district's taxable acreage. Thefinaltax rates thus represent 10.8 per cent of estimated farm income in Jen-ho county, where the collection was the highest, and 3.3 per cent in Fu-yang county, where it was lowest. The overall tax rate in the prefecture is estimated to have been 6.7 per cent of the district's total grain and silk production. One more factor yet to be considered is that in the 1570s grain prices in Chekiang and South Chihli were below their normal level. Hang-chou

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prefecture in 1579 permitted some taxpayers to submit 0.4 taels of silver in lieu of one picul of grain in actual payment, this rate being applicable to several small items still collected in kind. The offer was optional,128 and even though its application was limited, the rate of cash payment must have been close to local grain prices. If the price depression was general the above estimate of farm income should be reduced by 50 per cent, or else the tax percentage increased by 50 per cent. This would put the overall collection at 10.05 per cent of agricultural output. It is difficult to make any similar estimate for the northwest of the country, mainly because the nature of the land data is unclear. Following the lead of Ping-ti Ho who has pointed out that Fen-chou prefecture in Shansi provided substantial information about its fiscal mou conversion system, the level of tax collection in this prefecture has been worked out as shown in Table 8.129 Fen-chou prefecture was situated to the south of the provincial capital, T'ai-yiian. Its territory covered a large part of the Fen river valley, the most productive area of the province. Both rice and wheat were staple crops. The accounts of Fen-yang county indicate that, from the early years of the dynasty up to 1577, its land taxes were assessed in rice and wheat, in general maintaining a 2:1 ratio.130 The irrigation dams on the Fen river tributaries, described at some length in the prefectural gazetteer, must have been a considerable benefit to local agriculture. The prefecture also comprised some territory on which there was very little possibility of improvement. Yung-ning subprefecture and Ning-hsiang county, which was subordinate to it, both belonged to this category. The former, in the northwest corner of the prefecture and remote from the central alluvial basin, encompassed miles of barren mountains stretching all the way to the Yellow river.131 In Ning-hsiang county, agricultural land was traditionally classified intofivegrades for tax purposes. After the land survey of 1581 these grades were eliminated, but acreage which originally had fallen into the two lowest grades was converted by counting 4 actual mou as 1fiscalmou. The total cultivated land in the county was actually 748,137 mou, but after fiscal mou conversion it was re-stated as 236,982 mou.132 This information is important because it suggests that in order to arrive at thisfiscalacreage, 681,540 mou of land, more than 90 per cent of the county's total, had been classified as being of inferior quality; only 66,597 mou, or less than 10 per cent, fell into the upper class and was not converted. For the territory directly under the administration of Yung-ning subprefecture, a different conversion formula was adopted. For dry fields every standard mou on level ground, every 4 mou on slopes, and every 7 mou in the mountains, were counted equally as 1fiscalmou. Rice paddies in the valleys had a reverse conversion rate, with every 0.8 mou of actual measurement being counted as a fiscal mou; in other words each actual

4, III The level of collection TABLE

County

169

8. Estimated land tax rates of Fen-chouprefecture in 1608

(a) Taxable acreage (mou)

1,007,172 Fen-yang P'ing-yao 1,014,313 602,032 Chieh-hsiu 905,417 Hsiao-i 316,044 Lin-hsien 223,111 Ling-shih Yung-ning (S]) 469,821 Ning-hsiang 236,982 4,774,892 Total prefecture

(b) Land taxes assessed in grainf (piculs)

(c) Value of land taxes* (tls.)

48,617 52,493 27,491 26,406 14,491 12,920 27,075 10,615 220,108

42,090 49,340 26,289 25,795 13,397 13,139 23,491 9,072 202,613

(e = d/c) (f=c+d) (d) ProTotal (g = f/a) Per mou 50% of portion land payment service of service taxes after levy levy to after borne land absorp- absorpby land taxes tion tion (tls.) (tls.) (%) (tls.) 8,661 6,160 4,719 3,768 2,088 2,918 4,682 1,935 34,931

21 13 18 15 16 22 20 21 17

50,751 55,500 31,008 29,563 15,485 16,057 28,173 11,007 237,544

0.050 0.055 0.051 0.033 0.049 0.072 0.060 0.046 0.050

t The grain assessment includes the basic assessment and surcharges. * The value is arrived at by adding the commuted amount and the estimated value of taxes still paid in grain. (S) = subprefecture. NOTE: Of the prefecture's total grain quota including surcharges, all but 7,210 piculs or less than 3.3 per cent, had already been commuted to silver. The remaining amount has been converted here at a rate of 1 tael per picul, to cover the price of the grain and the service charges.

mou counted as 1.25 fiscal mou.133 These conversion rates permit the conclusion that the productivity of a fiscal mou in the prefecture was supposed to equal approximately 1 picul of wheat or its equivalent, such as 1.2 piculs of barley. It could not have been much smaller as it represented the return from 7 mou of standard measurement on the mountains as well as 0.8 mou in the valleys. If 7 mou of land could not yield a return at this level it could not have been economically cultivated, or at least such land would not have been so widely cultivated as to constitute a general category for purposes of taxation. Conversely, the estimated return could not have been much larger, since it also represented the harvest from less than 1 standard mou of irrigated land in the northwest of the country. Though other counties in the prefecture reported their acreage without disclosing the nature of the land data, it seems that they too used fiscal mou conversion. Ling-shih county, for instance, acknowledged that its acreage had been arrived at through 'flexible readjustments'.134 Grain prices in Shansi were about 30 per cent higher than in the southern provinces, according to Hsu Cheng-ming, writing in the late sixteenth century. The conversion rates of 0.8 taels of silver per picul for husked rice and 0.6 taels per picul for wheat probably reflect, fairly accurately, the market

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value of those commodities.135 In these estimates it is therefore assumed that every fiscal mou in Fen-chou prefecture produced 1 picul of wheat, and thus an average income of 0.6 taels. This level of return is perhaps rather low for Fen-yang and P'ing-yao counties in the alluvial basin, but could likewise be slightly too high for the mountainous districts where transportation costs were higher and grain prices lower. On the assumption that farm income was 0.6 taels per mou, these rates show that taxation was highest in Ling-shih county, at 12 per cent of total output and lowest in Hsiao-i county at 5.5 per cent. The average over the whole prefecture was 8.3 per cent. This was a period when inflationary tendencies were becoming evident (2, iv); the rise in grain prices would lower rather than raise these percentages. The level of collection estimated from miscellaneous sources Casual observations by contemporary writers and summary statements in local gazetteers sometimes offer leads to estimating the level of taxation in the sixteenth century, but again there is never any direct attempt to assess tax payments as a proportion of farm income. Even statements that specify total payment in taels per mou are hard to find. In the main the late sixteenth century was a period of readjustment when the situation was so fluid and the tax schedule so complicated that even some local officials were unaware of the exact level of taxation. It usually came to light only when it became an issue of debate. The following ten cases represent reports from many regions over a period of a hundred years or so. The normal scholarly approach would be to tabulate the findings, but they are so meager and scattered that it would be unwise to treat them as statistics which could conceivably inhibit further research. A more methodical arrangement of the data would of course be possible, but it would reduce or obscure the background information vital to understanding them. Though taxation in the late Ming undoubtedly promises to be a useful key to the further understanding of traditional China, the topic is at present extremely under-researched and likely to remain so for a long time. It is therefore essential at this early stage that all the factors relevant to the inquiry be presented in full. The cases are therefore discussed individually, as follows: (a) In 1543 An-hua county, Hukwang, imposed a basic payment of 0.02675 piculs of grain on each mou of privately owned land. This assessment was in turn converted to 0.4432658 taels of silver per picul, which was sufficient to cover all the surcharges and surtaxes.136 Neither the productivity nor the nature of the mou was mentioned. In 1623, however, a Hukwang surveillance commissioner estimated that all grades of land in the province produced on average a yield of 3 piculs of

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unhusked rice.137 Recently a Japanese scholar has estimated 2 piculs of husked rice as the average yield per mou in Hukwang in the late Ming.138 A conservative estimate for the yield in mid sixteenth century An-hua, not far from the major area of rice cultivation, would therefore be at least 1 picul of husked rice per mou. Grain prices in Changsha prefecture, in which the county was located, were traditionally low.139 If the price were 0.3 taels of silver per picul, the above tax formula, which actually amounted to 0.01184 taels per mou, would mean that tax collection took 3.9 per cent of farm income. The price of husked rice subsequently declined further to 0.2 taels per picul at the turn of the century,140 in which case the figure would have been 5.9 per cent. (b) In 1569 Li-yang county in South Chihli divided its land taxes into several different categories. The converted silver payments, which ranged from 0.04 taels to 0.0065 taels per mou, included all surcharges, surtaxes, and the portions of the service levy collectible from the land.141 Li-yang was on the edge of the Yangtze delta area, and contained many lakes and rivers, so that it would be reasonable to expect an average yield of 1.5 piculs of husked rice per mou.142 At the normal grain price of 0.5 taels per picul, the highest rate represented less than 5.4 per cent of the value of the crop, and the lowest less than 1 per cent. These unusually low rates were due not to poor productivity, but to historical circumstances. Nor were the differences in rates closely related to relative productivity within the district, all of which was pointed out by the county gazetteer. The payment of less than 1 per cent is the lowest ever found so far. (c) In about 1570 Ko Shou-li wrote to the governor of Shantung to say that in order to promote the Single Whip Reform the provincial administration office had decided to convert all the province's basic grain payments to consolidated Single Whip payments. Three grades of payment, at 0.9 taels, 0.8 taels and 0.6 taels, were to replace the picul of grain.143 It was the general practice in Shantung to convert three or more standard mou of land to one fiscal mou,144 from which the minimum yield was considered to be 1 picul of wheat. On such a fiscal mou the basic payment was 0.05 piculs of grain. The price of wheat was quoted in Wen-shang county in 1576 as 0.52 taels of silver per picul, but immediately after the harvest it fell to 0.37 taels.145 These prices would mean that the highest payment expected by the provincial authorities fluctuated between 8.6 per cent and 12.2 per cent of crop yield, and the lowest between 5.8 per cent and 8.1 per cent. (d) In about 1573, the prefect of Chang-chou, Fukien, disclosed that the actual payment on every ten mou of taxable land in his district, including all the extra assessments, amounted to around 1.2 taels of silver.146 The rent rates in Nan-ch'ing and P'ing-ho counties show that the average productivity of each mou of taxable land here was approximately 2 piculs

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of husked rice.147 At the prevailing price of 0.5 taels per picul, the consolidated tax payment took 12 per cent of the grain income. The high level of collection was in part due to the wo-k'ou campaigns, during which surtaxes were increased. (e) Around 1580, Ts'ao-chou in Shantung devised the following tax formula: in the territory directly administered by the subprefecture, every 2.7 standard mou was converted to a fiscal mou, on which a Single Whip payment of 0.042 taels of silver was levied. In Ts'ao-hsien county, the fiscal mou comprised 4.8 standard mou, and the consolidated payment was 0.071 taels. In Ting-t'ao county, thefiscalmou contained 3.6 standard mou and the payment wasfixedat 0.052 taels.148 Assuming the same grain prices and estimated per mou yield as above, it can be estimated that taxpayers in these districts spent 9.1 per cent, 8.7 per cent and 8.5 per cent of their income respectively in paying taxes. When the price of wheat was 0.37 taels, those percentages would have to be revised to 12.6 per cent, 12 per cent and 11.7 per cent. (/) In 1584 land taxes in Shun-te county, Kwangtung, took on average 3.5 per cent of agrarian output. When the price of rice fell to 0.3 taels per picul the figure would be 6.1 per cent (3, i). (g) In K'ai-hua county, Chekiang, in 1620, every 34.428 mou of topquality rice paddy was consolidated for tax purposes into a single acreage unit on which a basic payment of one picul of grain was assessed. This payment, which included all the assorted taxes apart from the Manchurian supplies, was converted to 1.614673 taels of silver, a significantly high level.149 K'ai-hua was basically a timber-producing district, and its productivity and grain prices cannot be ascertained. It can be assumed, however, that the crop yield on one mou of top-quality land was unlikely to have been less than 0.8 taels, since there are indications that the return from other such land in the same province could be as high as 1.5 taels per mou. The tax payment, simplified to 0.047 taels per mou, is therefore estimated not to have exceeded 6 per cent of farm income, and could have been much lower. (h) As was noted earlier (4, n), in Wu-hsien, Soochow prefecture, South Chihli, taxes were so heavy that its gazetteer in 1643 complained that about 0.4 piculs of grain had to be set aside as tax payment on each mou of land. Even though this statement was made in the mid seventeenth century, conditions in Soochow were not then significantly different from what they had been in the late sixteenth century. The tax increases apportioned to acreage in the seventeenth century represented only a very small increase on the existing assessment, which was already considered high. Basic assessments in the delta area always seem to have been about five or six times as high as the prevailing rates elsewhere, but the tax burden on

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the general population was much reduced by the commutations to Gold Floral Silver and cotton cloth. The collection of service levy payments in this area was, moreover, not proportionate to its regular land taxes. Productivity in the delta area was generally regarded as the highest in the empire. Of the four prefectures of South Chihli and two prefectures of Chekiang, only the coastal area of Sung-chiang prefecture was considerably disadvantaged by reason of its akaline soil, but there the landowners were amply recompensed by generous fiscal mou conversion.150 The above statement in the Wu-hsien gazetteer appears to mean that while taxation took 40 per cent of the landlord's pre-tax income, it actually constituted no more than 20 per cent of agrarian production. The accounts of Shanghai county in 1584 show that conditions were quite similar there. On average the rate on each mou of taxable land was about 0.1 piculs of grain in kind plus 0.08 taels of silver.151 The total payment is estimated to have been close to 15 per cent of the yield. In 1621 the governor of South Chihli pointed out that the four prefectures under his jurisdiction paid higher taxes than any other district. After enumerating all the payments in the tax register, he described a set of complicated rates, including payments both in kind and in silver.152 The rates apparently did not exceed 20 per cent of farm output, however. Tax payment in the delta area was thus still two or three times that in other districts, but definitely notfiveor six times higher. So far no evidence has been found to indicate that tax collection in any district outside the delta area was anywhere near this level. (i) In 1643 Minister of Revenue Ni Yiian-lu, reported to the Ch'ungchen Emperor that land tax collection rates varied widely over the empire, from 0.13 taels per mou to slightly over 0.2 taels, and warned that these figures must conceal 'unauthorized extras'.153 Ni's statement is not altogether clear. The crucial question is how widely these rates were applied. If they were only isolated cases there would have been little cause for alarm. Seventy years earlier Chang-chou prefecture in Fukien was already collecting at the rate of 0.12 taels per mou and at the same time the level of collection in the Yangtze delta was close to 0.2 taels per mou. From 1619 onwards the imperial government ordered further tax increases on seven occasions until the additional surtaxes reached the level of 0.0268 taels per mou. In addition there was a 10 per cent increment on all taxes that exceeded 1 tael of silver in total amount.154 It is probable therefore that the tax rates in some areas did reach the levels described by by Ni Yiian-lu, even without the unauthorized extras to which he referred. It is therefore likely that Ni was warning the emperor that most districts had raised their taxes to this level during the period of confusion, which means in turn that normal, authorized tax collection before the seventeenth century was probably appreciably below the range of between 0.1 and 0.17

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taels per mou (the rates quoted by Ni, minus the new surtaxes). This is consistent with most of the late sixteenth-century accounts and reports.155 With the single exception of the Yangtze delta, no district had a collection close to 0.17 taels per mou and even payments in excess of 0.1 tael per mou were unusual. (j) The prefectural gazetteer of P'ing-liang, Shensi, dating from about 1600, contains a nostalgic description of taxation in the past. The writer pictured a husband and wife team working 200 mou of land and producing 300 piculs of assorted grain, less than 30 of which were paid as taxes in kind. One-tenth of the grain output, he continued, should be 'amply sufficient' to pay all taxes.156 It is apparent that the rate of collection had since exceeded this level, but unfortunately the author did not specify the current proportion of the tax outlay. Increase in new local government offices, the proliferation of imperial clansmen, heavier demands for services and a decrease in the amount of taxable land were among the factors cited here as the causes of tax increases. Significantly the gazetteer writer also held that commutation of taxes to silver payments was responsible for much distress to the general population. The taxpayer had to sell his crop at disadvantageous prices and in addition the collection of melting charges made the actual rates higher than they seemed. An overall estimate of the collection

Any attempt to establish the general level of collection at present involves considerable degree of uncertainty, and it will take many years to accumulate enough new types of source material to add significantly to the information currently available. On the other hand it is still possible to make certain general observations in the light of the current state of knowledge. Formal taxation, that is, the total payment including the regular land taxes, surcharges, surtaxes, portions of the service levy collected on the land, and uncollectible items absorbed into it, was in general until the turn of the century less than 10 per cent of the estimated farm output at the normal local grain prices. In many districts the collection was far below this level. Though in a few places it was exceeded, the only significant case was that of the Yangtze delta, where the collection approached 20 per cent of farm income. These estimates do not take into account unpaid services, unauthorized collections and melting charges, nor supplementary income from other than staple crops. The average level of collection over the whole empire does not seem to have exceeded 10 per cent of agrarian output either, an estimate which is unaffected by the unusual case of the Yangtze delta. Though nominally the

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four prefectures' total basic assessment comprised about 10 per cent of the empire's land tax quota, it was greatly reduced by the commutation of tax payments and the absorption of the service levy. Only a general conjecture can be made as to the monetary value of the taxation. Of the 26.6 million piculs of grain in basic assessment (Table 6), more than 80 per cent seems to have been commuted to silver payments before 1600. Only some 4 million piculs are definitely known to have been commuted at the rate of 0.25 taels per picul (Gold Floral Silver). The rest of the commutation rates varied widely. In South China however, most commutations fell within the range of between 0.5 and 0.7 taels per picul. In north China 0.8 taels to 1 tael per picul could be accepted as the normal range. The surcharges, surtaxes, and the absorption of other revenues could raise the average value of the * picul' but the Gold Floral Silver, commutation to cotton cloth, and the low commutation rate prevailing in Hukwang of 0.3 taels per picul, would all tend to lower the average. If one then assumes that the average value of all 'piculs', in kind and in silver, was 0.8 taels, the total value of the regular land taxes would be slightly more than 21 million taels.157 An assessment of the service levy accounts of thirty-five counties in seven different provinces shows that on average they each collected 9,724.26 taels on this item. (The counties appear in Tables 2, 3,4,7 and 8.) The total collection of service levy throughout the empire was therefore probably in the vicinity of 10 million taels. Even if it was only partially absorbed by the land taxes, the service levy should at least have raised the total revenue from agricultural land to 25 million taels, or even close to 30 million taels. It is difficult to arrive at a more precise estimate because of variations in local prices, readjustment of surcharges, etc. Not only are the extant data incomplete, but the accounting methods cannot be fully ascertained. One highly significant fact that must also be taken into account is that the amount actually collected rarely exceeded 80 per cent of the projected revenue, and sometimes fell much below this. IV DISBURSEMENT OF TAX INCOME Principles governing the distribution

Since most administrative expenses were met by the service levy, income from the regular land taxes was allocated for the following uses only: rations and pay for the army, the support of imperial princes and imperial clansmen, official salaries and the stipends of government students. From the beginning of the dynasty the concept was established that the regular land taxes meant food, that is their proceeds were expected to be consumed by individuals or issued to them. From time to time tax revenue was also

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diverted to finance large-scale public works but the appropriation was basically to feed the laborers. Local reserves were maintained to meet famine needs, another food requirement. Tribute grain and southern grain were simply large tax consignments geographically redistributed. The only occasions when the proceeds of the land taxes were treated as disposable cash was when they were used to pay for local procurement orders of the central government. As late as 1578 the imperial university in Nanking still received 3,500 piculs of husked rice from Ch'ang-chou prefecture, 100 piculs of wheat from Ning-kuo prefecture and 100 piculs of green lentils from Ying-t'ien prefecture, all in South Chihli, and also over 20,000 catties of dried fish from Hukwang province, all these items being charged to the tax quotas of the respective districts.158 Such arrangements as these were based largely on past usage rather than careful planning. The commutation of taxes to silver did eliminate some cumbersome aspects of the supply procedure but it was still impossible to make a fundamental break with the old system. For one thing, the distribution of tax proceeds could no longer be readjusted ; few of the commuted items could be either discontinued or reduced. Worse still, the accounts were hopelessly complicated by the diverse nature of fiscal units, regional prices, surcharges, and accounting methods. The ministry of revenue allowed the lesser functionaries to keep detailed records but none of this general information reached the higher levels of government. Though ministerial officials did occasionally cite national figures in their reports, in most cases these were general estimates rather than valid statistics. It is worth noting that the ministry of revenue continued to be organized in territorial bureaus, a system that was in turn adopted by the Ch'ing.159 In the late sixteenth century the ministry of revenue could barely be considered as an operating agency. The funds under its direct control were very small, consisting only of a few miscellaneous items from the land taxes. This income was spent largely on the northern frontier, which will be considered in the course of the general discussion of the empire's fiscal administration (7, i). The ministry supervised the administration of the land taxes but rarely made innovations, preferring always to maintain the status quo. Though the categories of 'transferred revenue' and 'retained revenue' remained in effect (l,i), the government published detailed accounts relating to the former only, paying little attention to the latter. The preoccupation with transferred revenue was a practical one in that it was principally used for the maintenance of Nanking and Peking and for supplying the army posts on the northern frontier, for which items of expenditure the ministry of revenue was directly responsible. As for retained revenue, in many provinces the income in this category was no longer adequate to finance the expenditures for which it was earmarked

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(see below). Furthermore, since the imperial government exerted constant pressure on provincial and local officials to provide it with transferred revenue, all shortages resulting from uncollectibles, tax arrears and tax remissions had to be met from the retained revenue. When funds were insufficient, the shortages in the latter were simply never made up. The grain quota was allocated on a more or less permanent basis, as shown in Table 9.160 Although this table is reconstructed from the detailed accounts in the Ta-Ming Hui-tien of 1578, its findings are almost identical to those in a summary prepared by the ministry of revenue in 1502, and also to an account left by Han Wen (minister of revenue 1506-8).161 It appears therefore that the basic quotas, once established, were never revised. The ministry could of course transfer certain tax funds if necessary, but such readjustments were temporary and did not necessitate any permanent alterations to the system. In any case most of the readjustments made in the sixteenth century were achieved by modifying the commutation rates and surcharges, and thus did not affect the grain quota. 9. Estimated land tax collection and disbursement in piculs of grain, ca. 1578

TABLE

Collection

Disbursement

Summer tax 4,600,000 Retained funds and supplies 11,700,000 Autumn grain 22,000,000 Delivered to frontier posts by taxpayers 3,300,000 Delivered to Nanking 1,500,000 Delivered to Peking 9,534,000 In grain at imperial granaries (4,000,000) As * white grain' (214,000) In cotton cloth and other supplies (900,000) In Gold Floral Silver (4,050,000) Otherwise permanently commuted (370,000) Miscellaneous and unaccounted for 566,000 Total 26,600,000 26,600,000

In order to discuss the distribution of tax revenue in more detail it is necessary to examine some local accounts. Distribution of tax revenue: the case of Lin-fen The 1591 accounts of Lin-fen county, Shansi, have been selected to illustrate the distribution of tax revenue in the northwest. Even in 1591 the county still retained such categories as summer tax and autumn grain. In the case of the summer tax, the transferred revenue was delivered to five different receiving agencies and the retained revenue to seven. In the case of the autumn grain the transferred revenue was delivered to seven receiving

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10. Distribution of land tax revenue from Lin-fen county 1591: in grain

TABLE

Expenditure

Piculs

%

Transferred; subsidies to army frontier posts Retained; subsidies to local army units Retained; payments to princes and imperial clansmen Retained; stipends of government students Retained; salaries, forwarded to prefecture, etc. Total

21,044 1,102 27,551 1,044 6,060 56,801

37.1 1.9 48.5 1.8 10.7 100.0

11. Distribution of land tax revenue from Lin-fen county 1591. in silver

TABLE

Expenditure

Tls.

%

Transferred; subsidies to army frontier posts Retained; subsidies to local army units Retained; payments to princes and imperial clansmen Retained; stipends of government students Retained; salaries, forwarded to prefecture, etc. Miscellaneous and unaccounted for Total

20,013 889 21,678 835 4,646 7,282 55,343

36.2 1.6 39.2 1.6 8.3 13.1 100.0

agencies and the retained revenue to sixteen. 95 per cent of the county's land taxes were, however, paid and delivered in silver, which eliminated most of the technical difficulties in handling diverse fiscal units. In the above two tables those taxes that were still paid in kind have been converted at 1 tael of silver per picul, in accordance with the prevailing rate in the county. The fact that the gazetteer designates precisely the name and location of each receiving agency enables one to identify the nature of each item of expenditure in the delivery schedule. The gazetteer also lists the original distribution in terms of piculs of grain so that it could be checked against the national accounts and the initial delivery orders. The accounts are summarized in Table 10.162 The same payments, when converted to silver, result in slightly different percentages, as shown in Table 11. Since the original was more a delivery schedule than a real disbursement ledger, it is impossible to ascertain the distribution in any more detail. Even so, certain features are clear. The northern army posts, unsurprisingly, received a large share of the tax revenue. The smallness of the amount left to cover administrative costs can be explained by the nominal nature of Ming official salaries and by the collection of service levy, the proceeds from which were kept separate from the regular land taxes. The most unexpected finding is perhaps that the largest share of the revenue went to the princes and imperial clansmen resident in the area.

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This state of affairs was not unusual, however. While the percentage varied from one prefecture to another, there is no doubt that in many districts of north China, especially in Honan and Shansi, grants to the princes and imperial clansmen remained the largest single item to be met from the retained revenue. At about the same time as the Lin-fen county gazetteer was published, K'ai-feng prefecture in Honan and the counties adjacent to it were faced with the same problem of meeting this enormous item of expenditure. One writer estimated that these forty-three counties and subprefectures had a total tax quota of close to 800,000 piculs. Some 300,000 piculs of this was delivered as transferred revenue, leaving 500,000 piculs or so as retained revenue. Grants to princes and imperial clansmen took 300,000 piculs of the latter. In other words, in these forty-three districts such grants accounted for approximately 60 per cent of the retained revenue and close to 40 per cent of all income from the regular land taxes. By contrast the salaries paid to officials and lesser functionaries and the stipends of government students in the same districts when added together did not exceed 50,000 piculs, about 6 per cent of the revenue.163 It must be pointed out, however, that these grants constituted the 'fictitious' portion of the expenditure budget and that in the late sixteenth century no district made the appropriation in full. Though the grants to high-ranking princes were usually delivered according to schedule, those to lower-grade imperial clansmen were reduced, left in arrears, or else simply embezzled by government officials. As early as 1502 payments to the imperial clansmen in Honan and Shansi, if made strictly in accordance with the official schedule, would have exceeded the total retained revenue of these two provinces.164 Ever since 1498 the government had in fact been officially reducing the payments.165 Even at reduced rates the grants were still a serious drain on government income, and at the same time the imperial clansmen continued to proliferate at a great rate. In 1529 it was reported that there were 8,203 names in the 'jade genealogy';166 exactly forty years later the number had swelled to 28,492.167 It has been estimated that by the end of the Ming period the direct male descendants of the dynastic founder numbered close to 100,000.168 There is no adequate estimate of how much revenue was actually delivered to meet these requirements in any one year. A censorial official indicated in 1562 that the total payment on paper exceeded 8 million piculs.169 The problem would have been insoluble even if the local officials had delivered the specified payments in full, yet no magistrate could even accomplish a 100 per cent tax collection.170 The grants to the lower class of imperial clansmen therefore came to depend on negotiations between local officials and the resident princes, who had jurisdiction over the imperial clansmen in the local districts. In the late sixteenth century there were frequent reports of lower-ranking imperial clansmen refusing to have their children

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registered in the jade genealogy, being reduced to paupers, resorting to armed robbery, or even conspiring with Mongolian invaders on the frontier; some of them had not been paid for a great many years.171 Even though the enormous grants listed in the gazetteer were in part fictitious, the administrative problems they created were all too real. They still cut away a significant portion of the total tax revenue, wiped out any surplus revenue in the county and prevented it being disbursed in more constructive ways. They were also an undoubted disincentive to tax increases, for no righteous official could think of flogging taxpayers to death to extort extra revenue that would in the end benefit only the non-productive imperial clansmen.

Distribution of tax revenue: the case of Wu-hsien The accounts of Wu-hsien in Soochow prefecture, South Chihli, for the year 1575 are presented here to illustrate the distribution of revenue in the southern counties where no princes or imperial clansmen were in residence. Tax revenues in this county were delivered to forty different receiving agencies, the fiscal unit being the picul of grain. Some but not all of the delivered items were commuted to silver payments. The value of some items was distorted by conversion rates and surcharges but since each large item listed below was subject to both higher and lower rates, the distorting effects probably cancelled each other out. Table 12172 thus probably gives a fairly accurate picture of the revenue distribution. The high percentage of transferred revenue, 78.3 per cent of the total was peculiar to the Yangtze delta, but the breakdown of the retained revenue

12. Distribution of land tax revenue from Wu-hsien county, 1575: in grain

TABLE

Transferred revenue:

piculs

to Peking, in tribute grain and silver (inc. Gold Floral Silver) 64,238 1,404 to princes not in residence to office of the imperial govern2,594 ment in Peking to office of the imperial government in Nanking 523 to governor's offices, etc. 1,280 Total transferred

Retained revenue:

piculs

to guards units in South Chihli 47,624 4,544 to prefectural granary stipends of government students in Soochow prefecture 735 stipends of government students in the county 367 salaries of county government personnel, local charities 1,334

122,980 Total retained Grand total 177,584 piculs

54,604

4, IV Disbursement of tax income

181

was quite typical of most southern counties. The percentages of the retained items were as follows: Maintenance of the army Prefectural granary Stipends of government students Salaries and local charities Total retained revenue

piculs 47,624 4,544 1,102 1,334 54,604

% 87.2 8.4 2.0 2.4 100.0

The percentage distribution of the retained revenue shows that the contribution to the maintenance of army units dwarfed all other items of expenditure. Though in other districts the amount was not always as high as 87.2 per cent, it was rarely less than 50 per cent. The situation was evidently of long standing for even in the late fifteenth century, of Chekiang's total retained revenue of 1.3 million piculs, about 840,000 piculs were earmarked as rations and pay for the armed forces.173 That this continued in the sixteenth century is shown by a personal letter written by Huo Yii-hsia who indicated that, in 1561 when he was magistrate of Tz'u-hsi county, 30,000 piculs of its total tax quota of 37,000 were consigned to the army.174 In 1572 in Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien, there were complaints that while only 7,000 piculs of grain were delivered to the prefectural granary, subsidies to the Cheng-hai Guard alone cost the district 9,000 piculs.175 In around 1582, Chao Yung-hsien, a member of the Hanlin Academy, in a memorial to the emperor declared that even so many years after the wo-k'ou campaign Soochow prefecture was still required to deliver 55,000 piculs of grain plus 18,000 taels of silver to three local army posts, which left 10,040 piculs of grain or the equivalent to pay the stipends of 'all the officials, lesser functionaries, instructors, and students' of the six counties and one subprefecture. 'If there is a famine', he added, 'the prefect and the magistrates will be helpless.'176 Nonetheless it is doubtful whether the grain or other funds assigned to the army were always delivered in full as specified. As early as 1480 the retained revenue in Chekiang was already insufficient to pay the army units in that province.177 By the time the wo-k'ou campaigns began, the guards units in the southern provinces had been reduced to skeleton organizations (2, m) and could not have consumed the large quantities of supplies and funds listed in the gazetteers. It was common knowledge that tax delinquency was a much more serious problem in south than in north China, and the repeated tax remission orders must have created local budgetary deficits. The enormous local procurement orders that Peking sent to the southern provinces, over which their governors haggled with ministerial officials, must also have eaten into the retained revenue. In short, the maintenance of the army was another appropriation in which it might not be necessary to make up shortages. The collection of the military supplies surtax (ping-hsiang, 3, iv) from

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A typical northern district: Most of the retained revenue paid to the princes and imperial clansmen in residence

iy post

A typical southern district: Most of the retained revenue paid to the army posts in the territory

FIG. 4. Diagram showing distribution of tax revenue.

the mid sixteenth century onwards was intended to close this gap. In theory, the local districts made their regular, scheduled deliveries to the guards units from the revenue from the ordinary land taxes, and the pinghsiang was then forwarded to the provincial military authorities.178 But in some districts, including Wu-hsien, as was mentioned above, the two kinds of appropriation were soon merged into one.179 V A FINAL ANALYSIS OF THE LAND TAX SYSTEM Were the tax rates too high ? In the sixteenth century the general consensus was that tax rates were too high. Contemporary writers, memorialists, and local gazetteers all shared the same opinion, even though they might be speaking of conditions in different regions where the rates varied widely. One fundamental difficulty is of course the lack of a rigid yardstick by which to measure the level of taxation, which depended to a considerable extent on the overall state of economic development, the aims of the ad-

4, V A final analysis of the land tax system

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ministration, and the extent of service that it was expected to provide, not to mention the prevailing social values, such as concern for the protection of the private landowner. When all these factors are taken into account it is hard to agree with contemporary opinion. In fact, for a huge empire which relied mainly on revenues from land, an overall tax level of 10 per cent of agrarian output seems rather low. The initial responsibility for this state of affairs rested with the dynastic founder. A self-sufficient army and a system of village self-government meant that Hung-wu had no need of a high level of taxation. He was also able to defray his expenses by printing huge quantities of government notes. Several gazetteer writers commented on the low level of taxation on landed property in the early years of the dynasty.180 Once the quota system was put into effect no fundamental revisions were ever made to it, though extra taxes and service levies were added in a totally unplanned and insidious manner. The central government knew nothing of regional conditions and provincial officials had no power to act on their own authority. The demand for uniformity in financial administration therefore continued. Even if the Single Whip Reform did not abolish progressive taxation, it was an acknowledgement that the principle of progressive taxation could not be sustained. In this situation there was no possibility of imposing a high level of taxation. Contemporary opinion viewed taxation purely as a revenueproducing instrument, rather than as a regulating device. When it was not used as such, the prevailing local conditions of land tenure, land leases, tenancy, and interest rates combined to restrict taxation within its current range, until any tax increase became unbearable to taxpayers at the lower end of the scale. The level of taxation was therefore always regarded as high. Ming fiscal administration was also severely handicapped by the fact that there was no clear division between the emperor's privy purse and public funds. In 1590 Minister of Revenue Sung Hsiin (in office from 1586) before handing over to his successor Shih Hsing (in office until 1591) advised the latter never to transfer any tax surpluses from the provinces to the capital for fear that the mere knowledge of these surpluses might stimulate the Wan-li Emperor to even greater personal extravagance.181 In Shansi and Honan, as was shown above, any tax increase was likely to end up in the princely coffers. Many bureaucrats were so convinced that any extra tax burden they might impose on the populace would soon be transformed into imperial extravagance that they took a completely negative attitude towards taxation. The Confucian tenet that the nation's wealth should be 'preserved within the people' was taken to its literal extreme, interpreting it to mean that any financial gain to the government was bound to be a loss to the governed. In 1537 Minister of Works Lin T'ing-ang was forced to retire merely because he had suggested a general tax increase.182 Clearly, the supervising secretaries who censured him failed

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to realize that an inadequate level of taxation could be just as injurious to people as over-collection. The operating expenses of the local government: informal taxation One direct result of the low level of taxation was that all local government offices were under-staffed, their personnel under-paid, and their administrative functions inadequately carried out. An unofficial count estimated that in the sixteenth century the Ming government employed a total of 20,400 officials and 51,000 lesser functionaries.183 But since the latter also served with the army, it is assumed that only about 30 per cent of them were employed by county and prefectural governments. This number of personnel, spread over 1,138 county offices, meant that even the largest county would have no more than thirty salaried positions, and a smaller one far fewer than that. This limited manpower, which was responsible for all local administrative functions, including taxation, justice, local security, transportation, education, public works and public welfare, was unable to carry out any of them in other than a superficial way. It should also be remembered that Ming officials were in addition required to perform numerous ceremonial functions, and that by the late sixteenth century the volume of paper work they handled was heavy even by modern standards. No county, as has been noted, set aside more than 300 taels of silver to cover all its annual salaries. The salary scale can also be checked from the 1578 schedule.184 The annual allowance of a prefect, who might exercise civil jurisdiction over a million people, was 62.05 taels of silver, on which it would have been difficult to support a small family. A county magistrate received annually 27.49 taels which was considerably less than the sum of 36 taels collected to provide one day's rations for the emperor. In contrast, by the end of the sixteenth century paupers hired as day laborers were earning 0.03 taels a day185 and some mercenary soldiers were paid 18 taels a year.186 The operating expenses of the local government were met from the service levy which amounted to about 3,000 taels in an average county and 7,000 taels in a southern county. A few counties collected as much as 30,000 taels under this heading. Though it might be thought that these amounts would have been ample for the purpose, in fact not all the funds collected from the county were actually spent within the county. The i-chuan for instance was largely used to meet the expenses of travelling officials. Su T'ung-ping's study of the accounts of seventy-two counties shows that on average each county spent close to 2,000 taels on this item,187 although the more impoverished districts were usually subsidized by others. Nor was the min-chuang, or militia account, used to finance the normal

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185

functions of civil administration. All that could be utilized for this purpose were the li-chia and chiin-yao accounts, yet part of even these collections had to be sent to the imperial and provincial governments. In fact after paying the wages of its official attendants an average county might have only 100 to 200 taels left over to meet office expenses. Ch'i-men county in South Chihli, admittedly an extreme case, budgeted only 27.74 taels of silver for this purpose.188 Ch'ii-chou prefecture in Chekiang did not have sufficient funds even to provide for the upkeep of the prefect's official residence.189 These circumstances were simply an encouragement to unauthorized taxation, and in the late sixteenth century such informal measures of taxation actually became institutionalized in many districts. Hai Jui was able to publish a list of the 'customary payments' (ch'ang-li, 4, i) collectible in Shun-an county, Chekiang, until he himself abolished them in 1561190 (see Appendix B). The magistrate added on extra to every item of revenue that passed through his office; a small transit tax was even imposed on the official salt that merchants shipped in and out of the county. Gratuities were offered to the prefect, and the magistrate's assistants and all the lesser functionaries in the office also took a regular share of the spoils. In addition, the li chiefs in the county who served the magistrate in rotation could be made to pay extra office expenses. It was the prevailing custom at the time for every // chief to pay the magistrate a fee on appointment.191 Likewise persons hired as auxiliaries to the lesser functionaries paid a fee for the privilege. Both Ni Yuan-lu and Ku Yen-wu reported in the early seventeenth century that there were in each province several thousand such auxiliaries who relied for a living on their quasiofficial status with the local government.192 The collection of melting charges and the commissioning of tax agents have been described earlier. The low level of taxation was, therefore, only illusory. Even European travellers had observed that though the Chinese paid less in taxes than all others, they were required to give much 'extraordinary and personal service'.193 Undoubtedly most of this financial burden, plus the squeeze exacted by officials and their henchmen at all levels, had to be passed on to the general populace. There were objections to increasing formal taxation on the grounds that small and marginal landowners would be unable to pay, yet the informal type of taxation, inconsistently administered, imposed the greatest burden on precisely these lesser landowners since they had least capacity to resist it. Thus their tax-paying power was further undercut, and the vicious cycle went on. It would be erroneous to assume that all Ming bureaucrats were unaware of this situation. One military circuit intendant wrote: 'If we must add a hidden charge, why not make it a formal one?' 194 The magistrate of Huai-jou county in North Chihli accused those who advocated keeping the local administrative budget small of being 'most unkind', and 'doing

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a serious wrong to our people'.195 In 1586, Chang Tung, a supervising secretary, made the same contention in a memorial to the emperor.196 The fallacy of'*preserving the wealth within the people''

Because of the inadequate level of its revenue, the Ming government could provide few services for its people. Even in water control, over which Chinese governments were supposed to be actively concerned, its record in the sixteenth century (7, i) was actually far less substantial than it appeared. In general, water-control projects on a large scale were carried out only after major flood disasters. The main purpose of such projects was to keep the Grand Canal open to traffic, rather than to improve irrigation. Hsiieh Shang-chih revealed that in his native Ch'ang-shu county in the Yangtze delta, there were seldom as many as three good harvests in a decade. The problem, he argued, could be solved simply by making a small tax increase197 in order tofinanceimproved irrigation. This solution would have met with the approval of Kuei Yu-kuang who, in a work on water control in Soochow prefecture, quoted appreciatively the views of an earlier writer who had questioned the wisdom of the government's 'go easy' policies. Failure to raise tax revenues to launch constructive projects, he maintained, amounted to denying people the opportunity to improve their livelihood and to enrich themselves. Thus the supposedly 'benevolent' administrators would end up handing out charity to their starving subjects.198 The government also adopted a passive attitude to the matter of supporting farm prices, which had the effect of artificially increasing tax rates. While the transportation commissioners under the T'ang and Sung (2, i) had utilized tax revenues to trade, the Ming policy of tax collection effectively withdrew a significant portion of hard currency from circulation, the deflationary effects of which greatly intensified the hardships of small taxpayers. Wen-shang county in Shantung reported in 1576 that when the tax deadline came immediately after the harvest, the price of wheat dropped from its normal level of 0.52 taels per picul to 0.37 taels per picul, and barley from 0.4 taels per picul to 0.25 taels per picul. It took three months for the prices to return to their normal levels. It so happened that the county had a service levy account that could be held in the treasury for several months. The magistrate, by effecting a commutation in reverse, collected the payment in grain at a conversion ratio designed to increase grain prices by 10 per cent; the benefit went to the taxpayers. By disbursing the same account after the prices had recovered, he was able to pay the hired laborers draining the Grand Canal ahead of time without charging them interest on the advance payment. From these maneuvers he made a profit of 210 taels of silver for the treasury.199 This device was by no means new and had in fact been widely used under the Sung. But as illus-

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trated in this case, it was only feasible when the administrator had some fiscal surplus at his disposal, which could only come from taxation. The county magistrate could undertake such a venture because the service levy account, 3,400 taels of silver in all, could be temporarily put aside. Owing to the tax quota system and its failure to control money and credit, the court in Peking denied itself the opportunity to provide such a public service. Its policies benefited only the moneylenders and the pawnshops. More significantly, the only positive effect of the low level of taxation was to guarantee the income of the landowners; its benefits were not passed on to the primary producers. This was pointed out by Supervising Secretary Nien Fu in thefifteenthcentury200 and the same observation was made by Ku Yen-wu in the seventeenth century.201 Modern scholars, when discussing 'agrarian exploitation' in the late Ming, often point to a few large landowners, ignoring the fact that the taxation system made exploitation feasible at all levels. The land leases and contracts that have survived confirm that rent amounting to 50-60 per cent of the main crop was collected from very small properties, five mou or less, by landlords whose economic and social status was not greatly different from that of their tenants. Some household slaves were also able to invest their savings in land, thus gradually emerging as marginal landowners.202 Above this latter group there were innumerable small landowners. Hai Jui, who is regarded by many modern scholars as a champion of the peasantry, disclosed in his letters that he himself owned property consisting of ninetythree small pieces of land scattered over an area of several miles, on which a total basic tax payment of 1.28 piculs was assessed. The total acreage of the property can be worked out from the general rate of assessment on Hai-nan island, to have been about forty mou. This kind of land tenure, as he himself admitted, made tax administration difficult.203 Though sixteenth-century writers always showed strong sympathy for such small and marginal landowners, little was ever said about their tenants. The biographies of Ming bureaucrats show that a great many of them came themselves from such small, landowning families, who in a sense personified all the traditional Confucian virtues. Undoubtedly, they were often able to take full advantage of the traditional channels of social mobility, since the low level of taxation left them with farm surpluses that could easily be further built up through frugal management.204 When their contemporaries spoke of taxation, their sense of justice was usually tempered by this special sense of the social value of the landowning class; they were not concerned purely over economic justice in the modern sense. Though in China these small and marginal landowners were never dispossessed by enclosure acts and turned into an urban proletariat, their survival was bought at a heavy economic cost. The large quantity of unused labor in these households certainly represented a more substantial

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loss to the economy than did that of the large landowners, who were far fewer in number. It was indeed basically because of the former that the land tax rates could not be adequately readjusted upwards. The administration was undoubtedly handicapped not only by its inability to impose progressive taxation on the large landowners, but also by great concern for the interests of small-scale proprietors. Regardless of misappropriation, taxation in traditional China simply did not generate sufficient revenue to enable the government to carry out all its functions properly, let alone to stimulate any economic breakthrough.

5 The salt monopoly

It was perhaps in its management of the salt monopoly that the Ming government demonstrated most clearly its ineptitude in business administration. The monopoly system was not expandable and for most of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century its projected income stagnated at a fixed level. Even the price schedule, settled in 1535, was rarely revised thereafter. The administrators of the monopoly never knew how much of its revenue was derived from the excise tax and how much from governmental control over production. The major weakness of the monopoly was that it applied the methods and principles suitable for governing a crude agrarian society to the management of an ambitious business enterprise. Owing to the incompetence of its administrators the system proliferated into numerous subsystems with the result that the single commodity involved, salt, was divided for administrative purposes into seven or eight different categories. Even in the sixteenth century the periodic failures of the monopoly's operations appeared in some respects to resemble modern business cycles. The incompetence was not entirely due to ignorance, however. In the sixteenth century, and even in the late fifteenth century, several Ming statesmen had pointed out the inadequacies of the system and suggested possible remedies. These suggestions were entirely ignored, for the salt administration was only one element in the fiscal system which continued, according to Liang Fang-chung, to be patterned on 'the Hung-wu model'. 1 Its limited capacity and lack of adaptability made any general reform virtually impossible.

I THE MECHANISM OF THE SALT MONOPOLY Organization at the national level The salt monopoly had no general director. It was supervised by the minister of revenue but no specialized central office was ever set up to take charge of its operations. Only in 1575 did Minister of Revenue Wang [189]

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Kuo-kuang order that all the accounts submitted by the regional operating agencies be processed by the Shantung bureau in the ministry; until then reports had been handled by whichever regional bureau was appropriate to their place of origin.2 This procedural change, nonetheless, affected only the bookkeeping. Though the Shantung bureau from now on handled all the paper work, its director did not become a salt administrator and overall responsibility for the system still rested with the minister of revenue. It was moreover still essential that the emperor's approval be obtained for all decisions. The operating agencies in the provinces consisted of six salt-distribution commissions and eight distribution superintendencies (see Table 13). A commission controlled a major productive center and a superintendency a minor one. These offices in general did not operate across provincial boundaries; the only exception was the Liang-Che commission whose jurisdiction extended over Chekiang and areas of South Chihli. There were two superintendencies in Kwangtung and four in Yunnan.3 The lack of integration in the salt administration can in part be explained by diverse production methods, the variable quality of the salt, regional prices, and transportation conditions. For instance, one of the superintendencies in Kwangtung was on the mainland and the other on Hai-nan island; the distance between them made coordination difficult. In the northern sector of the Liang-Huai region, salt production was carried out by means of the sun-drying process which required little capital investment but yielded lower-quality cheaper salt. In the southern sector salt was obtained by boiling the brine, a process which yielded large quantities of betterquality salt but involved higher costs. In certain areas of Shantung, brine was obtained in thefirstplace by washing salt-saturated soil; it then had to be carried over twenty miles inland to be boiled, apparently because of a shortage of fuel near the beaches. The whole process was most uneconomical. In the Ho-tung region of Shansi, salt was obtained from a lake twenty miles long and two and a half miles wide, the waters of which were so saturated with salt that in the summer months it crystallized naturally, and could literally befishedout by the workers.4 In Szechuan and Yunnan where salt was obtained by mining, the development of new wells required heavy investment and involved considerable financial risk.5 Salt being a bulky commodity, its price was largely determined by transportation costs. Those areas of production which were linked by water transport to major population centers thus had an advantage over the others. It would have been impossible for the Ming government to work out a uniform price structure applicable to the whole empire and to coordinate salt production accordingly. Instead it imitated the practice of previous dynasties and assigned to each production center its own exclusive area of distribution, the borders of which, in general, corresponded to provincial

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boundaries.6 Carrying salt across the border became a felony. There was thus not one uniform salt monopoly but several, operating on a noncompetitive basis. Their administration inevitably became somewhat compartmentalized. In theory all the salt distribution offices were subordinate to the provincial administration and in the Ta-Ming Hui-tien they are listed under the provincial administrative commissions.7 In practice, however, it was the office that received the proceeds from a productive center that always came to exercise effective control over it. In the sixteenth century the central government had considerable direct control over the Liang-Huai, LiangChe, Shantung, and Ch'ang-lu commissions. The Ho-tung commission was under the joint control of the central and the provincial government. Central government supervision over other productive centers was only nominal. The Kwangtung superintendency was apparently subordinate to the local prefects,8 and the Ling-chou superintendency in Shensi was actually managed by army officers.9 The central government exercised its control by issuing official regulations, either as general orders to all agencies or as specific instructions to one only, by appointing personnel to administer the agencies, and by dispatching salt-control censors periodically to tour the areas of production. 10 The Liang-Huai region, which produced by far the largest revenue for Peking, was always under close scrutiny. A residential office for the saltcontrol censor was established at its major center, Yang-chou. The censor served only a one-year term but it was rare for the appointment not to be filled.11 Special censors were also appointed, though less regularly, to the Liang-Che, Ho-tung, and Ch'ang-lu commissions. In the other centers of production this surveillance was carried out by the censors in charge of the tea and horse trade, water control, military operations and coastal defense. It was exceptional for one official to be appointed to take charge of several commissions. In 1560 Yen Mou-ch'ing was ordered to supervise all the distribution commissions apart from that in Fukien and in 1568 P'ang Shang-p'eng was put in charge of the Liang-Huai, Shantung and Ch'ang-lu commissions.12 Their functions will be described later, but it should be noted that they served short terms and that their offices were eliminated after they left. Despite the interim nature of their appointments, the censors still played a significant role in the salt administration, for it was they who devised its standard operating procedures. On important matters they made recommendations to the emperor and on minor matters they gave orders directly to the agencies operating under their surveillance. Other saltcontrol legislation was frequently proposed by the supervising secretaries in Peking. The executive officers of the operating agencies were by comparison rather insignificant, they simply carried out the routine without making an)'

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notable innovations to it. Their lack of influence and prestige was felt by Ming officials to be one of the fundamental weaknesses of the salt administration, another being the fact that the salt censors' terms of office were too short and few ofthem had any intimate knowledge ofthe administration.13 The distribution commission A salt distribution commission had three or four branch offices, each of which controlled a number of production fields (yen-cttang), not more than twelve, but seldom less than five. The salt fields on the coast occupied a narrow strip of territory usually less than ten miles in width.14 In the Liang-Huai region, they were cut off from the general populace by canals and creeks and virtually formed a restricted zone. The branch office of the commission maintained law and order in this territory, kept the waterways open to traffic, carried out water-control projects and handed out relief to destitute salt producers. In other words it acted as a kind of local government. Its lowest level agency, the field office, collected salt from the saltern households and stored it until it was dispatched. The commission also ran a number of checking stations (p'i-yen-so), strategically located on the major waterways leading away from the productive center. The Shantung commission had only one of these, however.15 All the salt shipped from the center of production had to be unloaded at one of these stations for official weighing and inspection. The commission office was well staffed by Ming standards, though it still had too few administrative personnel for its highly dispersed organization. The Liang-Huai commission, the largest regional office, employed about sixty officials and slightly over a hundred lesser functionaries and runners. Nonetheless when spread out over three branch offices, thirty field offices, and two checking stations, the result was only one official at each place.16 The Shantung commission had no lesser functionaries in its branch offices and clerical duties thus devolved on the administrative officials.17 The monopoly's operations hinged on the control of productive labor. Saltern households, once officially registered, remained so in perpetuity, and in theory were not allowed to change their profession or residence. Each able-bodied male in such a household was assessed as a ting, and was required in the early years of the dynasty to turn in 3,200 catties of salt per annum; the government awarded him 1 picul of husked rice for every 400 catties.18 Saltern households were exempted from the ordinary service levy, and were allowed to gather fuel from specially reserved 'grass land'. It was thus expected that the salt-producing ting would expand accordingly. This planned development did not take place in practice. In most areas the salt-producing ting at first remained at their prescribed level and then later declined. Production by a distribution commission or superintendency was

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bound by a fixed quota. Even in the sixteenth century the internal organization of a typical distribution commission still remained basically unchanged from that of the early years. Saltern households were registered once every five years and their number of ting re-assessed. About 100 or 120 households formed one group (t'uari). The administrators appointed several village collectors (tsung-ts'ui) from these households to serve in annual rotation, rather like the rural tax expediters in the land tax administration (4, i). The fuan in fact bore a striking resemblance to the ordinary li-chia.19 Occasionally imperial decrees were issued that vacancies in the ranks of the salt-producing ting be filled with criminals released from prisons. There were also proposals that ordinary households be drafted as salt producers.20 Nonetheless there is no evidence that the composition of the labor force was ever appreciably affected by such measures. The distribution procedure Despite their title, the operating agencies had no transportation facilities for salt distribution. Their stocks were either sold to wholesale dealers or bartered for grain delivered by the salt merchants to frontier army posts. In either case the merchants had to come to the salt fields to receive the salt. The barter system, known as k'ai-chung, was originally developed under the Sung. The ministry of revenue authorized the frontier military governors to accept grain or animal fodder from the merchants in exchange for a granary receipt or ts'ang-chiao, in the form of a stub-book. The merchants presented this receipt at the salt distribution office for repayment in salt. But the granary receipt was not directly cashable; salt could only be handed over on the presentation of a salt license. The distribution commission had to wait until it had received the stubs from the frontier and until most of the merchants had checked in before it could proceed to prepare the licenses.21 The license, called yin, was also a unit of weight. In other words, a license of one yin authorized the bearer to transport 1 yin of salt. The standard yin was 400 catties, but even in the Hung-wu reign lesser yin of 200 catties were issued. The weight of the yin thereafter varied from one region to another, and at different times. It was thus another expandable and contractible fiscal unit. For a greater part of the sixteenth century the yin issued in the Liang-Huai region was 550 catties, but was reduced to 430 catties in 1616. In the Liang-Che region the yin varied from 350 to 300 catties. Only in the area under the jurisdiction of the Ho-tung commission did the yin remain at 200 catties.22 Official salt had at all times to be accompanied by the yin license otherwise it automatically became contraband. The distribution commission had no authority to issue its own yin

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licenses. All the plates for printing licenses were kept in the office of the Nanking ministry of revenue. For each sale therefore the commission had to dispatch an agent to the southern capital to present the granary receipts and the stubs to the ministerial officials so that the exact number of licenses could be printed.23 No office was allowed to keep licenses in reserve for future use. Most commissions distributed licenses only once a year though the Liang-Huai commission, because of its large salt production, printed licenses more often. From 1568 there were several proposals that the licenses be printed in advance,24 a measure that seems to have been put into effect in the Liang-Che region in 1574.25 Even so, the records of the LiangHuai region for 1616 indicate that licenses were still printed only when the granary receipts were on hand.26 Once the licenses had been obtained from Nanking, the distribution commission filled in the holders' names on the blanks and directed them to one of its subordinate salt fields to encash them for salt. All salt fields were classified in one of three categories, upper, middle, or lower. The lower fields produced less good-quality salt and were further from the checking stations, thus involving extra transportation costs.27 One of the salt fields of the Shantung commission is said to have been 600 miles from its only checking station, which presented considerable difficulty to the salt merchants.28 In principle, no merchant was to receive his stock entirely from upper or lower fields.29 The field office, when it released salt on presentation of the yin, cut off a corner of the license. The merchant then transported the stock to the checking station and reported to the distribution commission that he had completed the delivery, whereupon the commission office cut off a second corner of the license. The salt having been impounded, the merchant had to wait until the total salt collected at the checking station reached the prescribed level before the official inspection could be conducted. In the Liang-Huai region in the sixteenth century the prescribed level was 85,000 yin, which by then was 45.75 million catties, or approximately 31,200 short tons.30 When this level was reached, the distribution commission requested the salt-control censor to authorize the inspection and weighing. The weighing was necessary because in the sixteenth century the license holder was also authorized to purchase directly from the salt producers a certain amount of salt over and above the official issue (5, m). The inspectors were usually local prefectural judges and assistant magistrates, temporarily drafted by the salt censors. When the bags of salt were eventually weighed and the additional duties paid, the third corner of the license was cut off and the merchant could proceed to ship the salt to a designated port, decided by the commission office, not the salt dealer. The overall distribution followed a master plan which prescribed exactly how many yin of salt should be consumed by the population of each prefecture.31 On arrival

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at the designated port the merchant reported to the local officials. On the completion of his sale the license, with three of its corners already cut off, was surrendered to the nearest prefectural or county government, whose officials cut off the remaining corner and returned it to the ministry of revenue to be checked against the original issue.32 Even under the most ideal conditions it must have taken approximately two years for a merchant to complete a transaction, and the records indicate that it could takefive,six or even more. II GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL AND MANIPULATION Registered salt producers

In a society characterized by a certain degree of social mobility it was difficult to keep the saltern households as salt producers for generation after generation. The government aggravated the problem by defrauding the saltern households of the grain payments due to them. On its adoption of paper currency in the fourteenth century the payments were converted into government notes, and thus effectively dwindled to nothing as the value of the notes fell. By the fifteenth century the government was thus no longer able to finance the manufacture of salt, and instead permitted the producers to sell their surplus salt directly to the licensed merchants. At the same time the saltern households were encouraged to reclaim public land, the taxes on it being either exempted or reduced. By then, however, many saltern households had already left the coast, while others had converted their grass land allocation into rice paddies. In contrast to its attitude to the hereditary military families, the Ming government never made any attempt to force those households now living outside the salt fields to return to their homesteads or compel them to resume the trade in which they were legally registered. The emigration of salt producers occurred most notably in the LiangChe commission, where the fertile land attracted reclamation efforts. Accepting the situation, the government continued to register these households as salt producers but required them to pay 6 piculs of grain for each ting instead of 3,200 catties of salt. This grain was used to subsidize the remaining producers on the coast who in their turn incurred extra obligations in making up the totalfieldquota. Even this latter arrangement was not carried out. The remaining salt producers were effectively self-supporting and the grain subsidies, apparently not generally distributed even in the earlyfifteenthcentury, were gradually cut off altogether in subsequent years. The grain collection in fact became a poll tax and the remaining land taxes levied on the grass land were then designated as fang-chia (marshland payment, 3, iv). The income from both was credited towards the com7-2

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mission's salt revenue. Once this trend was established it was never to be reversed.33 In the sixteenth century, as will be seen, only a small fraction of the income from the Liang-Che region was actually produced from the sale of government salt. Another development was the attrition of the ting, which took place in all production centers except Liang-Che. In 1529 the Liang-Huai commission registered some 23,100 ting, in contrast to some 36,000 ting in the fourteenth century.34 The Shantung commission reported in 1581 that it had about 20,000 salt-producing ting as opposed to 45,220 ting in the early years of the dynasty.35 The lower number of ting cannot be interpreted as an actual shrinkage in the labor force. Throughout the Ming period there was never any manpower shortage in salt production. The lower number, the result of under-reporting, merely meant less salt under government control. The actual labor force engaged in production must have increased significantly, if contemporary reports that manufacturing capacity was steadily expanding are to be believed. Several Ming officials surmised that the amount of salt produced in the Liang-Huai region in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries might have been three or four times that produced in the Hung-wu period.36 Those registered salt producers that still remained in the sixteenth century were not only fewer in number but also generally impoverished; contemporary sources depict them as struggling for mere subsistence. A handful of them, however, were growing affluent. Known as hao-tsao, or 'powerful saltern households',37 they hired help and induced other registered producers to work for them. Ever since the sale of surplus salt had been permitted, such producers had learned that through efficient management, involving both legitimate and illegitimate transactions, they could turn the manufacture of salt into a lucrative business despite the government take. It was not unusual in the late sixteenth century for a saltern household to register 30 or more ting; very likely as many again of its workers were never registered at all. The social evolution of the salt-producing population can be detected from the periodic ting assessments of the Shantung commission. The 45,220 ting registered in the early years of the dynasty had been drawn from 13,570 saltern households, an average of slightly more than 3 ting per household. The 1581 report registered some 20,000 ting belonging to 2,700 households, an average of more than 7 per household.38 From the founding of the dynasty up to 1486, only one individual from all the saltern households registered in Shantung managed to pass the provincial civil service examination; from that date up to the end of the Ming, seventeen persons from the same family background achieved this distinction. Furthermore, from 1496 onwards, though saltern households were now fewer in number, twelve of their members succeeded in qualifying for the chin-shih degree at

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the metropolitan examinations; one of these was Kao Hung-t'u (d. 1645), who served as minister of revenue and grand-secretary under the Southern Ming.39 It was clearly impossible for all the registered salt producers to remain manual laborers. There is thus some evidence that a new 'gentry class' was rising among the mass of the saltern households. This social mobility, though desirable in itself, was nevertheless a serious handicap to the salt administration, because the monopoly system was entirely dependent on the direct exploitation of statutory labor. The emergence of a new entrepreneurial group among the registered producers themselves tended to cut potential government income. It also provided stiff competition for the independent producers in that the latter also had to sell their surplus salt for a living. The government, in collecting salt from the ting, had to fix the flat rate payment according to the capacity of the independent producers, who were by now largely destitute. The payment, partially converted to silver, was thus steadily reduced throughout the sixteenth century. Though the rates varied from one center of production to another, and sometimes even from one field to another, they were never anywhere near the 3,200 catties of salt that had been assessed in the early years of the dynasty.* In 1581 the ting assessment in the salt fields of Shanghai county, subordinate to the Liang-Che commission, was 1.6 taels of silver.40 In most of the Shantung salt fields, it was 0.6 taels. In both the Ch'ang-lu and Shantung centers, some of the registered producers actually paid in cotton cloth and peas,41 though in the official records the payments were re-stated as so many yin of salt so that they could be integrated into the general accounts. The same thing happened with the grain payments exacted from the former producers who had turned landowners. In Jen-ho county, under the Liang-Che commission, the ting payment dwindled from the original 6 piculs of grainf to 1.44 taels of silver, and finally settled at 0.333 taels.42 Thus the land tax exemptions of the nominal saltern households far exceeded their ting payments, which aroused the indignation of many local gazetteer writers, some of whom asserted that the rents which these nominal salt producers collected from the grass land were by themselves sufficient to cover the ting assessments. This explains the unusual increase in the number of ting in the Liang-Che region. The 74,446 ting registered here in the Hung-wu period expanded to 165,574 by the late sixteenth century: more than the total ting of all the other commissions combined.43 A high percentage of these ting was claimed by the non-producers who had found * In the southern sector of the Liang-Huai region in the late sixteenth century 3,200 catties of salt would have been worth about 5 or 6 taels of silver, when sold directly by the producers to the licensed merchants. t 6 piculs of husked rice was normally worth 3.6 taels of silver in Chekiang in the late sixteenth century.

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that the advantage of being assessed with more ting was that the accompanying poll-tax entitled them to a large land tax exemption.44 The amount of salt submitted by each ting actually working in the field is not accurately known. A state paper dated 1567 indicates that in the Liang-Huai region where the ting were graded, their payments ranged from 600 catties to 4,600 catties of salt.45 There is much evidence that actual collection fell a long way short of this desired standard. The takeover of the salt-producing labor force by commercial interests was a later development; Ping-ti Ho has dated the emergence of 'factory merchants' in the Liang-Huai region to the mid-Ch'ing period.46 There is, however, some evidence that even before 1600, salt merchants were making inroads into the actual manufacturing process by making loans to the salt producers. 47 Even the official records of the Shantung commission suggest that some merchants, apparently using the registered producers as a cover actually hired outside workers and engaged in production themselves.48 In the Ho-tung commission, where the gathering of the partially crystallized salt from the lake water required little capital investment, the administrators likewise found that the use of a statutory labor force was inefficient. There the operation was seasonal. The salt dissolved once the warm weather was over and rain, an unpredictable factor, could also cause complications. The 17,548 ting had to be called from twelve different subprefectures and counties49 and it was difficult to assemble all of them in time for the annual 'harvest'. Moreover they worked so inefficiently that one salt-control censor asserted that one hired worker was 'worth more than 10 ting9.50 Control over production In the regions where salt was produced by the sun-drying process the only way to control production was to police the beaches. The drafted salt patrols, however, frequently conspired with the producers in manufacturing contraband salt and sharing the profit.51 In the late Ming most of them were required to seize a fixed quota of contraband (3, m), an irrational regulation which reveals how ineffective the control must have been. In the areas where salt was obtained by boiling and evaporating the brine, the government attempted to exercise control over the equipment needed. Iron plates were officially issued for this purpose. Those used in the Liang-Huai region were huge; in 1527 they were said to weigh 3,000 catties and to cost 26 taels of silver a piece. They seem to have been widely used in the early years of the dynasty, as the 1527 report indicated that by that time 321 of them had been damaged.52 These plates probably measured anything from 200 to 400 square feet and were inconvenient to use, easily-cracked and too costly to replace. The salt obtained in this way was said to be black in color and inferior to that

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produced in smaller caldrons. It seems that after 1552 few salt plates were actually replaced as the registered saltern households had by then prevailed on the authorities to bring in several caldron manufactures from the south of the Yangtze; these operated shops at Pei-t'a-ho, a riverside town next to the salt fields. P'ang Shang-p'eng, who in 1568 was in charge of three salt commissions, argued that the presence of caldron manufacturers in a salt-producing district encouraged the production of contraband salt, as they made the necessary equipment available to everyone. In a memorial to the emperor, P'ang revealed that some saltern households possessed as many as ten caldrons, each of which could produce 200 catties of salt in twenty-four hours. Such a manufacturer was thus capable of producing 400 short tons annually, bringing in an income of approximately 1,200 taels of silver. It was these large households, P'ang concluded, who were the major source of contraband salt. He then proposed to close the caldron shops, impose controls on the manufacturers of salt-producing equipment, mark all existing caldrons and register all the masonry tanks constructed to store brine. Unauthorized tanks were to be sealed off.53 This proposal, even if carried out, apparently did not have much effect, as later writings indicate that conditions in the salt fields were much the same as those described by P'ang. The use of large iron plates was never revived. The whole episode does show, however, that officialdom would not hesitate to resort to the most restrictive means in order to protect the monopoly. In the Ch'ang-lu region, the authorities issued the saltern households with caldrons of several different sizes, though their actual dimensions are not disclosed in the sources. A suggestion was made at one time that the required salt payment be assessed in accordance with the size of the caldrons,54 but there is no evidence that it was ever put into effect. Proposals of this kind were impractical because the government salt was collected from individual ting. If the necessary level of revenue was to be maintained it was therefore essential to support the small-scale, independent producers. In the late sixteenth century these small producers evaporated their brine using bamboo trays pasted over with paper, and fireproofed with alkalis, a crude means of production that illustrates the extent of their destitution.55 The government failed to aid them. Nor did it make any attempt to limit manufacturing by the larger households. Even though these households produced contraband salt, they were always assessed a fixed number of ting and thus contributed to government revenues. To restrict their production would have narrowed down the source of income even further. Yet assessment on the basis of productivity was quite a different concept, and one that would have required new legislation and organizational changes. The government in the late Ming was in no position to take such a drastic step. Even rights to the official grass land, which the authorities were obliged to protect for the sake of the smaller producers,

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were by this time monopolized by the large households. They converted some of these weed-grown properties into agricultural land and simply took possession of the remainder, denying others the right of entry.56 Salt manufacture was basically a rural industry and since the government exercised so little control in the countryside it was unable to exploit all possible sources of revenue. The salt commissions, treating large and small producers alike, were not doing any better than the local officials collecting land taxes, who had to deal with both large and small landowners. Only the Ho-tung commission seems to have exercised any effective control over production. The salt lake there, ever since Sung times, had been surrounded by a wall, which in 1474 was rebuilt by one of the saltcontrol censors. It was 13 feet high, over 45 miles in circumference and broken only by well-guarded gates. In 1476 another censor increased the height of the wall to 21 feet. When the Ch'ing took over they found it still intact.57 The role of the salt merchants In principle the salt revenue was to be used only to subsidize the frontier army posts. To overcome the problem of transporting such a large amount of revenue from the interior to the frontier regions the government devised the barter system, whose operations necessitated enlisting the services of merchants. The Ming government never proclaimed any general policy in its dealings with the salt merchants, nor did the salt offices publish any guidelines. Most of the detailed procedures were established by individual officials on the basis of current needs and circumstances. Their general practices did fall into established patterns. Though officials conducted business with merchants, they never felt that the government was committed to any contractual relationship with them. Underlying the relationship was the concept that the state was supreme and that individual subjects were obliged to perform services to it. Businessmen were expected to make a profit, and their voluntary participation in government activity was most desirable. Nonetheless, when there were no profits to be made and no volunteers to handle the salt, officials felt completely justified in drafting merchants to perform the duty, just as they called for services from the general population. On certain occasions merchants were actually expected to sustain a loss in doing business with the government; they probably viewed such losses in a sense as fees for the privilege of staying in business. Prices, delivery procedures, deadlines, and penalties for non-fulfillment of obligations were all unilaterally determined by the government. All matters of any significance were decided in Peking with the emperor's approval, though regional administrators and censorial officials usually

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made recommendations. Sometimes the salt merchants were consulted before these recommendations were submitted, but they never had any opportunity to bargain with government offices. Tenders from merchants to purchase government salt at specified prices were frowned on. In 1518 and 1526, groups of salt merchants did contrive to have such offers accepted by the court, large transactions being involved on both occasions.58 It seems, however, that they were influential financiers who had powerful connections in Peking and were thus able to win imperial favor for their proposals, to the chagrin of the bureaucrats. On both occasions the ministry of revenue in fact protested, demanding that such merchants be arrested and punished. The government was under no obligation to pay indemnities to the merchants when it failed to carry out its promises, though it did on rare occasions distribute small consolation payments to salt dealers who had suffered serious losses. When the terms of the transaction were too favorable to the merchants, the salt officials used this as a pretext to tax their profits later. In 1527, for instance, one frontier governor, considering that the rate of barter decided in Peking was too favorable to the merchants, imposed a 'fine' on them. In this particular case nevertheless the salt merchants (aided by censorial officials), appealed successfully to the court so that the fine was subsequently refunded.59 In short, the treatment that the merchants received depended on the sense of fair play of the officials. Though merchants might at times befloggedby the frontier governors and forced into business transactions with the government60 there were also occasions when they found the terms offered quite lucrative, and competed for the opportunity. It is true that when merchants were ill-treated the censorial officials were obliged to protest but they did so more out of a feeling that harsh treatment of imperial subjects conflicted with the ideal of governmental benevolence, rather than out of a concern for individual injustice. It would be a mistake to assume that merchants were discouraged by such arbitrariness on the part of the government or that all of them suffered from it. Like the saltern households, the salt dealers were also from a wide range of backgrounds. Some of them had little capital and could undoubtedly be easily forced into bankruptcy. But there were many others who built up considerablefinancialstrength through continuous operation. The very unpredictability of governmental regulations in itself created numerous opportunities for making quick profits. Corruptible officials could always be bribed; honest competition was in fact the exception rather than the rule. Frequent alterations in procedure inevitably resulted in many loopholes of which shrewd merchants were quick to take advantage. While Confucian bureaucrats were generally prejudiced against mercantile interests, they also realized that it would be injudicious to ignore the

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interests of the salt dealers completely, because without them the monopoly system would be unworkable. The salt administration throughout the sixteenth century was tending to become a sort of oligopoly in which a few salt merchants benefited at the expense of the rest. By the end of the century this was quite clear. In 1616 the ministry of revenue dispatched an official to investigate the administration of the Liang-Huai commission. The investigator reported back to the minister, Li Nii-hua, that within each group of salt traders there were always' several' operators who had amassed large fortunes by manipulating governmental regulations to their own advantage. 'If we were to subject them to the full vigors of the law', he said, 'they would have no defense.' Yet in his final analysis he concluded that to weed out these few merchants would mean the ruin of the salt monopoly.61 Delivery priorities and deficit financing up to 1500 Ming writers give the impression that the salt administration reached perfection in the early years of the dynasty and that decline set in during its middle period. This generalization is not entirely invalid but it does not reveal the whole story. During the early period the regulating powers of the central government were more effective and the organizational weaknesses of the system, though steadily worsening, had not yet come to light. Nonetheless all the unsound features of the salt monopoly system existed from the beginning. These consisted basically of lack of support for the salt workers, inefficient and widely dispersed administrative offices, inadequate distribution facilities, and the compulsory services demanded of the merchants. In essence the operation was inadequately financed and serviced by the government. Defaulting on salt payments to the merchants in these barter transactions started early. As early as 1429, there existed salt licenses issued twenty-seven years earlier which had not yet been cashed.62 Thereafter the government habitually failed to honor its promissory notes. In the fifteenth century delays of over thirty years were common.63 An imperial decree of 1488, admitting that some salt merchants had died by the time the transaction was to take place, pronounced: 'If the salt license holder is deceased the salt payment may be received by his parents, brothers living in the same household and sharing a common kitchen, his wife (providing she has not remarried), or his sons or grandsons (providing they are not adopted) upon verification by the authorities. Uncles, nephews, and concubines are not to be admitted as beneficiary payees.'64 This ruling is an indication of the tone of the administration. Some of this constant delay was due to the fact that the salt monopoly was burdened with deficit financing. Since the government had no regular

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means of obtaining credit, the disposal of official salt became a convenient device for receiving advance payments, though the fact of advance sale was never explicitly admitted. It was accomplished by postponing current delivery obligations, offering the currently available stock for sale at a higher price, giving new buyers priority over previous purchasers in cashing their promissory notes and delaying the delivery dates of earlier buyers. These procedures were first adopted in 1440. The annual salt production was classified into two categories, 80 per cent being designated a s ' regular stock' (cKang-ku yen), and the remaining 20 per cent a s ' reserve stock' (ts'un-chiyeri).65 The former was for normal circulation and the latter ostensibly to be stockpiled for emergency use, such as urgent military requirements. But no sooner had this classification been created than the reserve stock was also made available for bartering. Because its delivery involved no waiting, the reserve stock appeared more attractive to the dealers and its sale was an immediate success. In 1449 the court increased the reserve stock to 60 per cent and reduced the regular stock to 40 per cent.66 What the government in Peking failed to realize was that the adverse effects of these actions on later operations far exceeded their immediate benefits. The merchants, who had to take into account the loss of interest on the funds thus tied up, could no longer absorb the regular stock at normal prices or at the regular barter rate. Moreover when the reserve stock came to constitute a large percentage of the annual production, its buyers soon discovered that there was little advantage in it. There were still delays at the production centers because the distribution offices could rarely collect sufficient salt from the producers to fulfill their quotas; the saltern households remained unpaid and the number of ting dwindled. Theoretically, there was no market price for government salt. As long as all the salt was produced under the monopoly system its administrators could name their own prices. But in reality the higher the price the greater the trade in contraband salt. In the end the officials were compelled to lower the price of government salt, which resulted in a reduction of revenue. Lack of coordination between different offices created further unnecessary difficulties for the salt merchants. It often happened that merchants holding granary receipts for regular stock would be told at the production center that only reserve stock was available. Sometimes the situation was reversed; though the dealer might be entitled to high-priority reserve stock the salt field had received instructions to release its salt only as low-priority regular stock and not to convert it to the other kind.67 In 1471 a salt-control censor touring the Liang-Che region reported that there was a waiting period of over ten years even for reserve stock.68 While the salt dealers were waiting, it frequently happened that the salt stocks began to decompose, to the advantage of contraband dealers.69

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Throughout the greater part of the fifteenth century, in theory all the government salt was collected from saltern households and released by the distribution agencies to the merchants under the terms of the barter agreement. Actual practice was different, however. The salt field seldom had as much salt on hand as it claimed. Many salt merchants were not in the least annoyed to hear that their granary receipts could not be honored. What they wanted were the salt licenses. Armed with these papers they could make purchases directly from the producers. Though strictly speaking it was a kind of contraband, this salt was legitimized by the licenses. The extra payment was still less than the interest accumulated over such a long waiting period. The distribution centers of course welcomed such action by the merchants as it meant they would have more deliveries to their credit on the official record. Sometimes they induced the merchants to pay a small fee in the name of charity to the saltern households and secured a portion of official salt for them.70 Another practice that salt dealers frequently resorted to was to bribe the officials to keep the salt licenses intact so that they could be re-used. The court was fully aware of such abuses and an edict issued by the Hung-chich Emperor in 1488 enumerated them all in detail.71 In the late fifteenth century bartering for government salt remained profitable only for those merchants who had the capital, patience, connections, and ingenuity to maneuver the situation to their advantage. When a transaction was announced at a frontier army post, some merchants were willing to pay a fee to the intermediary agents, usually friends and relatives of the governor, to secure the trading privilege.72 Eventually all these extra costs were passed back to the government, which had to reduce the price of salt. In 1476 on the nothern frontier a standard yin of salt had a barter value of only 0.15 taels of silver.73 In 1474 a 200-catty yin from the Ho-tung commission had a barter value of only 0.05 taels, clearly less than the cost of producing it.74 In 1489 it was decreed that the barter system be temporarily suspended and that all salt be sold for cash at the salt fields. When the distribution center was unable to supply the authorized amount, the merchants were allowed to make it up by purchasing directly from the producers. In subsequent years when Yeh Ch'i was minister of revenue (1491-96), he followed the same policies.75 Under his administration the average price of the 200-catty yin of salt was raised to 0.4 taels. The salt administration therefore entered the sixteenth century in reasonably good order.

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III ADMINISTRATIVE CYCLES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The blocking of the yin The stability achieved by the end of the fifteenth century was largely illusory. The fundamental problems of the salt administration, involving organization, finance, production control, policing of contraband activities, and the registration of saltern households remained unchanged. The structure of the monopoly system was fragile, it was exceedingly vulnerable to abuse and its maladies were recurrent. Its operations throughout the sixteenth century fell into recurrent administrative cycles. In the more serious cases of failure, as occurred in the 1520s, 1560s and around 1600, the whole system was near to complete breakdown.76 At such times official salt was in short supply in the remoter provinces yet over-stocked in the salt fields and as a result revenues were completely cut off. Contemporary writers describing the situation declared that 'the yin was blocked', and attributed the crises to moral decay and the machinations of evil men; a remedy could only be provided by virtuous officials. From an objective standpoint, though it may be true that the crises were triggered off by unethical conduct, the moral issues were always of far less importance than the basic institutional weaknesses. The major weakness was in the financing of the system. It was generally recognized by its administrators that production in the salt fields actually exceeded the official quota and that part of it was circulated as contraband. Yet there was no way to put all this salt under governmental control other than by financing its manufacture directly. At times the salt officials were tempted to create a new category of salt outside the regular quota, to be financed by other methods. Dividing up officially-marketable salt into different categories inevitably produced disparities in the system. The financial backing for the new category enabled it to compete for supplies and markets on more favorable terms than the regular quota, which tended to be driven out of existence. The wider profit margins of the new category also made it extremely attractive to influential persons. All this led to greater and greater abuse of the system and the breakdown of the monopoly. In the sixteenth century the market for quota salt, that is, the salt which was distributed through the yin licenses, was considerably narrowed. Increased dealing in contraband salt went on in districts adjacent to the areas of production, in mountainous regions where government salt could not compete with it, and in the border areas between the distribution territories assigned to two different centers of production. In recognition of this situation the government institutionalized the so-called 'ticket salt' (p'iao-yeri), which was to be circulated exclusively in these districts. A ticket

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was no more than an informal license issued by a commission or a superintendency on an ad hoc basis for a fee, bypassing all the normal procedures. It is not known how early this system started but it was definitely recognized by the court from 1529.77 Though it was a limited operation designed to combat the contraband salt and to produce only a small income, the ticket salt nevertheless represented more competition for the licensed salt and further reduced its outlet. Bottlenecks at the checking stations were another serious handicap to the system. From the administrators' point of view it was necessary to release the wholesale salt en bloc to prevent the salt merchants competing with each other and causing price fluctuations. It was impossible, however, to speed up this procedure in an effort to meet supply and demand conditions. The ways in which the merchants reacted to it make this clear. Only twenty years or so after Yeh Ch'i left office in 1496, the barter system was revived. Its proponents argued that the system stimulated agricultural production in the frontier regions. As long as the merchants had to transport grain to the frontier army posts in order to obtain salt from the interior, they maintained farms in the remote north, the production of which helped to stabilize local grain prices. There is no actual evidence that the policy was ever effective, but the arguments sounded convincing enough to keep the barter system alive until the end of the dynasty. The salt merchants therefore adopted various measures to cope with it, their basic solution being trade specialization.78 From the late fifteenth century two kinds of salt merchants emerged. The frontier trader supplied grain to the army depots and subsequently sold his granary receipts to the residential merchants at the center of production. The latter applied for the yin license and obtained the salt. This division of function was necessitated by the fact that even in the sixteenth century, when the service of government agencies had improved, the waiting period for the salt was still normally at least three years and often nearer eight or nine years. The frontier trader certainly could not make regular deliveries of grain and at the same time wait for the salt to be issued. The residential merchant took on in effect the dual function of a financier and an export agent. Eventually the residential merchants also ceased to distribute salt to the inland market. As soon as their stock was released from the checking station they sold it to another group of merchants known as inland dealers.79 The government's efforts to regulate the trading between these different kinds of salt merchants were unavailing. Any disputes among them over the splitting of the profits could deadlock the entire operation which could only work with all its components intact.80 Official delays created uncertainties which enabled one group of merchants to gain at the expense of the others. The residential merchants enjoyed an advantage here because of theirfinancialstrength. As the only available buyers, they could dictate the

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price of granary receipts to the frontier traders; as the only suppliers of salt they had a similar hold over the distributing merchants, or inland dealers. In the sixteenth century, strangely enough, the merchants instead of complaining about the incessant delays in the issue of government salt, sometimes actually sought to prolong them further. The inland dealers, in particular, were anxious to wait for retail prices to increase. There were reports that they bribed the administrative officials to slow down the processing of the salt, and that they even paid interest to the residential merchants for the delay, expecting to recoup it through selling the salt at higher prices.81 The crisis of the 1520s The crisis of the 1520s can be traced back to the decision made in 1489 to allow producers to sell salt privately to the merchants. Ostensibly this did not harm the monopoly system but merely made up for the government's defaulting on official salt payments. In practice, however, it meant that the merchants paid twice over for the same stock, once to the government and again to the salt producers. The authorization was intended merely to recognize the existence of an established practice but actually once private sale received imperial approval it began to be greatly extended in scope. Soon the salt dealers were overloading their carriers with surplus salt (yu-yeri) over and above the licensed limit. The officials at the checking stations simply collected a payment on it known as 'surplus salt money' (yii-yen yiri), which possibly originated in the fifteenth century as a fine, but in the sixteenth century became an excise tax.82 Theoretically the surplus salt was the amount that the registered saltern households produced extra to official requirements and it was sold after they had submitted their regular payments to the field offices in fulfillment of their service obligations. In practice, as might have been expected, much of the total production began to be siphoned off through this new outlet. The fact that the salt was in this way obtained by purchase made it much more efficient than the official system, in which the salt was collected as a poll tax. Because the surplus salt was now competing with the quota salt it meant that the stability attained by the system in 1500 was precarious indeed. In 1503, the emperor's in-laws came into the picture with a request that they be allowed to finance the manufacture of salt. They undertook, if granted salt licenses, to purchase surplus salt from the producers in order to make up the accumulated arrears in government salt payments. This, they claimed, would be no burden to public finance as they would actually be paying the state for the privilege. The emperor, perhaps unaware of the implications of the proposal, readily approved it.83 Under his successor, the Cheng-te Emperor, such authorization was made frequently. The emperor himself, realizing that the sale of salt licenses was a lucrative

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source of revenue, used them tofinancehis own personal projects, such as the manufacture of imperial satins and the dispatching of a eunuch mission to Tibet in search of the living Buddha. It appears that once the licenses were secured, their influential bearers could use the authorization over and over again, sometimes using the same license over many years.84 The difference between official salt and contraband thus became blurred. In 1508 and 1514 the government made unsuccessful attempts to attract legitimate merchants by steadily lowering the price of official salt.85 This led to the 'blocking of the yin' in the 1520s. After the crisis the government tightened up the control of licenses and also established rigid rules to govern the purchase of surplus salt. On each yin license was now entered a fixed amount of both official and surplus salt. The salt merchant was to obtain the former by purchase or barter from the government and then to secure the latter from the producers on his own initiative. No-one was allowed to make private purchases without first trading with the government, but on the other hand no-one who traded with the government could ship the official salt away without making a private purchase. The two kinds of salt actually had to be packed in the same bag in order to be cleared at the checking station.86 The compulsory inclusion of the surplus salt was designed to give the saltern households a legitimate outlet for their extra production and to prevent it falling into the hands of contraband dealers. The complication was that the salt merchant had to make three kinds of payment. First he had to obtain the granary receipt by barter or purchase in order to acquire the license and the official salt. Next he had to make the additional purchase of surplus salt, and thirdly he had to pay in the surplus salt money, essentially an excise tax, at the checking station. This procedure remained in force right up to the end of the dynasty. The crises of the 1560s and 1600s The man generally held responsible for the crisis of the 1560s was Yen Mou-ch'ing, an associate of the notorious Grand-Secretary Yen Sung (in office, 1542-62), and described as extravagant and corrupt.87 In the official documents on his mismanagement of the salt monopoly there is, however, no mention of his personal integrity, or lack of it, with respect to pecuniary matters.88 When Yen Mou-ch'ing was salt-control censor in charge of five distribution commissions, from 1560 to 1562, the Ming court was still in desperate need of funds to cope with the raids of Altan Khan on the northern frontier and the piracy problem in the south. Yen therefore made unprecedented demands on the monopoly system. The saltern households were dunned for their payments, the salt patrols were required to produce

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fixed quotas of contraband, and the merchants were pressed to make compulsory purchases. Yen thus produced an unusually large amount of salt without making price readjustments, and in one year was able to squeeze 2 million taels of silver from the five salt commissions under his supervision. After he left the whole system was paralyzed. When P'ang Shangp'eng took over in 1568 he found that over 5 million yin of salt were still impounded awaiting final clearance by the Liang-Huai commission, a process that was expected to take four years.89 Yen's critics also held him responsible for the introduction of the socalled 'cost-paid salt' (kung-peng yen), which had actually been created in 1553, seven years before he took office. Under this system the Liang-Huai commission allocated 82,000 taels of silver to purchase additional salt from the saltern households, at an average price of 0.2 taels per yin. This salt was then sold publicly, surplus salt and excise tax being added to each yin. A gross profit of 300,000 taels was anticipated on this transaction. After Yen left office, the cost-paid salt was condemned as another of his oppressive measures and was eliminated in 1565.90 Yen's failure cannot be attributed to any single cause. Over-production was certainly not the only reason for it. In 1550 the ministry of revenue estimated that the government in fact took only 40 per cent of the total Liang-Huai production and that the other 60 per cent had fallen into the hands of contraband dealers. In 1558 the governor of Kiangsi reported that in three prefectures in his province the only salt available was contraband.91 Even P'ang Shang-p'eng, on taking over, complained that the major problem was illegal sale. If the government wanted to widen the circulation of official salt, there should thus have been a large market for it. P'ang's own writings do hint at the true explanation for this. It was not that there was no scope for expanding the monopoly but that expansion was prevented by the nature of its management. Most of its services were already operating under extreme pressure and had reached their limit. Every additional pressure exerted from the top was thus passed on downwards to be absorbed ultimately by the weakest element in the whole system, the poor saltern households. In a memorial to the emperor, P'ang admitted that even in regular salt collection the village collectors (tsungts'ui) were extracting extras from the producers.92 There is no evidence either that the payments allocated for the cost-paid salt were ever entirely distributed to them. The salt merchants who purchased surplus salt from the salterns sometimes also victimized the producers.93 On the other hand when the merchants were weak, they too fell victims to the village collectors.94 The nature of the taxation system thus made it impossible to have any regular market for legitimate salt in the rural areas. P'ang further revealed in a letter that the local officials appointed as salt inspectors at the checking stations sometimes took as long as two months

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to report for duty and that he was attempting to cut this delay to three days.95 To speed up the issuing of salt from the production centers, he secured the emperor's permission to have some consignments of salt inspected on the boats bypassing the checking stations. Yet all these measures had only limited effects. Issuing too much salt from the production centers could depress its retail price, which the government was obliged to protect. Any fall in prices moreover affected its future revenue by causing further 'blocking of the yin\9Q The price of official salt was determined by the barter rates, the purchase price of the surplus salt, and the excise tax known as surplus salt money, the last item being a substantial one. None of these could be reduced. The barter rates and excise tax were already being counted as budgetary items and therefore appropriated in advance. The price paid for the surplus salt constituted the only legitimate income of the primary producers. Its reduction would therefore compel the saltern households to enter the contraband trade and cause a scarcity of legal salt. Though P'ang did not mention the interest lost during the period of waiting for the issue of government salt, these too obviously affected the final price of the salt. As P'eng Hsin-wei has shown, under the Ming the minimum monthly interest charged was 2 per cent.97 There was little hope of the official salt cutting into the contraband market because its price could not compete. By the late sixteenth century the contraband trade was firmly established in certain regions and the contraband quotas assigned to the salt patrols were in reality a rather haphazardly administered variety of excise tax. Under these conditions the salt administration could no longer force the merchants to trade in these areas.98 It should be noted that even when P'ang was making vigorous efforts to clear the existing stockpile, in general salt was still issued from the production areas in accordance with the established annual quotas. Minor readjustments were made only when these would not affect the desired level of retail prices in the consuming districts. It was therefore necessary to limit the new system of inspecting the salt aboard the barges because the more tonnage went through this channel the longer the salt impounded at the checking station had to wait to be released. P'ang feared that some of this stock might have to wait eight years instead of the originally estimated four.99 The salt merchants made advance payment in grain for the government salt, that is, for the 5 million yin impounded at the checking station and the other million yin on its way to the station from the salt fields. Before the stock was released from the checking station they had to pay the excise. Some salt merchants could raise the additional funds needed to pay the tax immediately, while others had to wait for the completion of one transaction and the release of their capital before the excise on the next con-

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signment could be paid. Considerable amounts of mercantile capital were tied up in the salt held at the checking stations.100 It is also evident that money supply was a problem. All excise payments had to be made in cash. Demanding that the small merchants pay the excise immediately would force them to borrow at exorbitant interest rates, which might ruin them completely. The government never financed the distribution of the salt and never contemplated doing so. It could not raise the necessary capital and had no effective way of obtaining credit. One frontier governor and some salt merchants did suggest that the government enlarge the quota of salt that it released, but P'ang Shangp'eng objected to this on the grounds that it would lower the retail price of salt.101 The increased production quota would then become a permanent burden to the distribution commission and lead to the recurrence of all the problems of production and procurement that have already been described. In short, the monopoly system, hampered as it was by inadequate government investment, and by continual mismanagement, was quite unable to utilize effectively all the resources available to it. Although these were so abundant as to create the illusion of unlimited development potential, the system had little capacity to exploit them. Inexperienced administrators, tempted by the seeming possibilities, sometimes tried to force the system to yield larger revenues, but these attempts were only successful in the short term and always led to a complete breakdown of the system in the long run. This was the basic reason for the salt monopoly's administrative cycles. It was also necessary to treat government salt as a single category. Any attempt to classify it into different categories and to establish priorities among them tended to create imbalances which gradually impaired the workings of the entire system. Even P'ang Shang-p'eng, in most respects a brilliant administrator, erred on this last count. In order to expedite the process of inspection he allowed certain consignments of salt to clear the checking station without the usual formalities, a practice which became customary after his departure. The new category of salt, known as 'river salt' {ho-yeri), subsequently provided stiff competition for the usual 'dockyard salt' (tui-yeri).102 By the 1570s merchants dealing in the latter were in such financial straits as to bring about a minor crisis in the salt administration. The situation was serious enough to be reported to the emperor, and in consequence the river salt was apparently discontinued after 1578.103 The basic principle underlying the salt administration, that the more efficient elements in the system should give way to the less efficient in the interests of parity, applied in fact to the entire fiscal administration of the Ming. The last sixteenth-century salt administrator to act in defiance of this principle was a eunuch, Lu Pao, who in 1598 was commissioned by the

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Wan-li Emperor to take charge of the Liang-Haui commission. Lu was quite successful in the early years of his appointment; by reviving the category of high-priority reserve stock and raising the regular quota, he managed to increase the salt revenues considerably.104 By 1606, however, the over-worked machinery once again ground to a halt, resulting in a sharp rise in retail prices in the remoter provinces, excessive stockpiling of salt at the centers of production, and a severe curtailment of revenue (see the following section).

IV REVENUES, SALT PRICES, AND THEIR EFFECTS ON CONSUMERS Barter rates and excise schedules An important turning point in the history of the salt administration came in 1535, when it was decreed that the official salt, disposed of under the barter system, and the surplus salt, on which an excise duty was collected, should both be packed together in the same bag, in order to prevent the latter from competing with the former. The grain thus obtained by barter was permanently allocated to the army posts on the frontier, as part of the annual payments due to them from the imperial government. The proceeds from the excise duty were also delivered to these army posts. But as the ministry of revenue wished to retain control over them in the interests of flexibility and as a source of emergency funds, they went through to Peking. This formula persisted thereafter. The complex nature of the salt allocation can be illustrated from the case of the Liang-Huai region.105 Each yin license entitled its holder to the following: 250 catties of government salt, to be issued to the merchant at the production center. Payment in grain to the value of 0.5 taels of silver was to be made by the merchant at an army post. No further financing was required at the salt field. 265 catties of surplus salt, to be purchased by the merchant directly from the producers. The government authorized the sale but did not guarantee the delivery. An excise duty of 0.65 taels of silver was collected at the checking station. 35 catties extra allowance for packing and crating. Each bag of salt when cleared at the checking station therefore weighed 550 catties, from which the government collected a total income of 1.15 taels of silver, including both the value of the barter and the excise duty. This basic formula, with variations, was carried out in the four commissions under the direct control of the central government. In practice readjustments were made to suit the nature of the regional production and market conditions. The overall weight of the yin, the proportion of official to surplus salt and the barter and excise rates, all differed from one com-

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mission to another. There were even price differentials within the territory of a single commission. These details are included in Appendix C. The rates in general remained stable. In the Liang-Huai region for instance the schedule remained in force for the greater part of the sixteenth century. When P'ang Shang-p'eng was in charge in 1568, he temporarily reduced the weight of each bag to 485 catties. The excise on the surplus salt was also proportionately reduced, so that merchants who had already made the initial payment to the government for the impounded stock needed to raise less cash to pay the excise tax. This was one of the measures devised to clear the congestion at the checking stations;106 as soon as the situation returned to normal the permanent schedule was restored. In 1616 the weight of the bag was increased to 570 catties but the estimated value of the grain bartered for it was still 0.5 taels of silver, and the excise on the surplus salt was increased only to 0.7 taels.107 The modification was thus a minor one. Projected income from the salt monopoly and its allocation Under normal conditions the salt monopoly produced a fixed income. The extras created by Yen Mou-ch'ing and Lu Pao, along with other additional income such as the profit from the cost-paid salt, were always listed as separate items. The total cash income, excluding the grain delivered to the frontier under the barter system, is summarized in Table 13.108 One striking feature of the account in Table 13 is that the proceeds from the four commissions directly controlled by the central government were all stated in round figures, that is as fixed quotas that their administrators had to meet. In other agencies the income and allocation of funds were less regular. Fixed quotas were laid down for these four commissions in the late sixteenth century when their administration began to deviate from established procedures and their accounts could no longer be precisely audited. The most drastic departure from standard practice took place in the Liang-Che commission, which had very little official salt at its disposal. One Ch'ing source indicates that by 1566 the production center had completely ceased to collect salt from the registered producers and that all collections had been converted to silver payments.109 Few of the registered saltern households still actually produced salt and conversely, few of those who did were officially registered as such (5, n). Most of the commuted salt payments were undoubtedly derived from agricultural land. In the 1560s the San-chiang salt field had on its registers 4,530 salt-producing ting who owned a total of 155,550 mou of cultivated land.110 In Hai-yen county there were complaints that the burden of salt revenue cost the district over 3,500 taels a year and that this really should be counted towards the land

214 TABLE

The salt monopoly 13. Cash income from salt monopoly, as of 1578

Agency

Annual income (tls.)

Liang-Huai SDC Liang-Che SDC Ch'ang-lu SDC Shantung SDC Fukien SDC

600,000 140,000 120,000 50,000 24,545

Ho-tung SDC

198,565

Ling-chou SDS Two SDSs, Kwangtung Szechuan SDS Four SDS, Yunnan Total, all agencies

36,135 15,968 71,464 35,547 1,292,224

Allocation M/R M/R M/R M/R 2,344 tls. retained for local defense, 22,201 tls. M/R 76,778 tls. to Hsuan-fu Command; 74,259 tls. to other army posts but credited towards the land taxes of Shansi; 43,133 tls. as subsidies to imperial clansmen in the province; 4,395 tls. M/R to three adjacent army posts 4,790 tls. retained for local defense; 11,178 tls. M/R to Shensi M/R 308,903 tls. retained for local defense, delivered directly to the army posts, or allocated for other expenses. 983,321 tls. M/R

SDC = salt distribution commission SDS = salt distribution superintendency M/R = delivered to the ministry of revenue

taxes.111 By contrast, the salt producers in these two fields submitted only 1,250 taels as salt payments. The Liang-Che commission's production quota of 444,769 yin of salt was all available for barter. When a frontier trader produced his granary receipt, the commission simply paid him 0.2 taels of silver for every 200 catties of official salt to which it entitled him. The frontier trader then sold the license with its remaining rights to a residential merchant, who went to the salt field to make the actual purchase of salt. The commission office eventually collected the excise tax from this second dealer.112 As a result it took two or three years to complete what should have been annual transactions. In Liang-Che and elsewhere the accounting was further complicated by such matters as the sale of salt tickets, extra collections from merchants for canal dredging and poor relief, advance payments against the excise duty, confiscation of salt in excess of the yin allowance, delivery of a compulsory quota of contraband by the salt patrols and arrears of the ting payments. As the central government could not be expected to keep track of all these details it demanded instead that each agency submit a fixed

5, IV Revenues, salt prices, and effects on consumers

215

annual payment. Up to 1600 these payments were in general delivered to Peking and the few shortages that occurred were always reported to the emperor. In 1562 the total was reported as 1,323,811 taels; 113 in 1568 as 1,268,435 taels;114 and, as late as 1602, as 1,151,519 taels.115 It was thus always close to the total shown in Table 13. When a distribution commission was unable to meet its quota the easiest way to make up the short-fall was to exact loans from the salt merchants, or else to stiffen the penalties to which they were subject (see below). The contributions made by the other agencies outside the control of the central government were less dependable. During and after the wo-k'ou campaigns, provincial officials in these areas came to rely on the salt revenue to finance the increased military expenditure they entailed. Once they had intercepted the funds the central government had little means of finding out how they administered them. In 1568 the ministry of revenue reported that Kwangtung province had not applied for yin licenses for three years.116 In an informal source dating from the early seventeenth century it is estimated that a superintendent in one year of office could make a personal income of 30,000 taels, though admittedly it might cost him 3,000 taels to get the appointment in the first place.117 In Fukien many of the official salt fields had either ceased to produce salt or else produced it at uncompetitive prices. The actual manufacturing now went on outside the original monopoly system under regulations devised by the provincial officials.118 This regional autonomy apparently spread to Yunnan and Szechuan. After 1590 these southwestern provinces were engaged in suppressing internal rebellions and fighting frontier wars with the Burmese and thus had to turn to the salt monopoly for extra funds. There is no evidence that they could at the same time make any contributions to the imperial treasury.119 Nonetheless the income produced by these agencies had never been large according to the official records; and its loss did not seriously affect the total projected revenue. Technically speaking, as the income intercepted by the provinces was still spent on military defense, there was no conflict with established practice. Because the accounting system never required that the expenditures of the central government be kept completely separate from those of the provinces there was no need to deduct these omitted deliveries from the total proceeds of the salt monopoly. Only from occasional figures can it be sensed that the allocations of the total income were arbitrary and not determined by general guidelines. The salt administrators of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century often referred to the total revenue as being worth 2 million taels. No accurate accounts are available as they merely gave the income in roundfigure estimates. After comparing the various reports these are summarized in Table 14.120

216

The salt monopoly

TABLE

14. Estimated annual income of the salt monopoly, ca. 1575-1600 tls.

Delivered to the ministry of revenue, in silver Delivered to army posts in kind, valued in silver Delivered directly to army posts by salt-administration agencies, in silver Intercepted by the southern provinces, in silver Total

1,000,000 500,000 220,000 280,000 2,000,000

Higher salt prices and lower state revenues According to the production quota of 1578 the total amount of salt under the control of all the distribution agencies, including both official and surplus salt, was over 846 million catties, or around 560,000 short tons. 121 If the total revenue was about 2 million taels, the income from each short ton of government salt would be 3.54 taels. This is quite close to the 1535 rate in the Liang-Huai region, where every 515 catties of salt yielded an income of 1.15 taels, that is, 3.345 taels per short ton. These rates were high but not excessive. In Ming China, per capita annual consumption of salt was usually reckoned as 10 catties.122 Each consumer thus had to pay the government 0.024 taels for his annual salt supply. Not all of this amount was indirect taxation, for it included the cost of manufacturing the salt, which the government passed on to the consumers. Some Ming officials were surprised to read in the histories that under the T'ang the Liang-Huai region alone produced an annual income from salt of over 6 million strings of copper cash.123 The Ming salt monopoly produced far less revenue but still caused serious distress to the people, especially during its periodic administrative crises. In 1527 the retail price of salt in Nanking was somewhere between 25-30 taels per short ton.124 In Hukwang during the crisis of the 1610s a small package of salt weighing a mere 8 catties sold for 0.3 taels, that is, about 56 taels per short ton. As this rise coincided with a fall in grain prices in the province, the cost of salt to the average consumer was about half the amount he spent on husked rice. In some districts this essential commodity disappeared entirely. 'Filial sons were unable to provide their parents' dishes with even a little savor of salt.'125 The immediate cause of the salt shortage was an attempt at price control by the governor, who had set an upper limit of 0.09 taels per package and had this officially engraved on stone to confirm it.126 The fundamental reason for the scarcity nevertheless still rested in the nature of the monopoly operation. Much of the detailed information about the salt administration in the

5, IV Revenues, salt prices, and effects on consumers

217

late Ming comes from a single document, written by Yuan Shih-cheng, a vice-director of the ministry of revenue. Yuan was assigned in 1616-17 to investigate and find solutions to the problems of the Liang-Huai region. His subsequent report to the throne, divided into ten parts andfillingover 200 pages in the modern reprint, exposed numerous types of mismanagement127 and offered many explanations for the high prices. The report also established that while the consumers paid exorbitant prices, the state's revenue actually declined. Though Yuan was referring to conditions in his own time, when the effects of Lu Pao's mistakes were still felt, the situation he described must have developed over a longer period. The decrease in revenue appeared first in the grain supplies bartered at the frontier army posts. When the granary receipts became no longer immediately convertible into salt payments, their trading value dropped. This had happened even during P'ang Shang-p'eng's administration. P'ang mentioned that in about 1570 a granary receipt for 1 yin, which cost the merchant the equivalent of 0.5 taels of silver on the northern frontier, fetched only 0.54 taels in Yang-chou. This meant that when operating costs were taken into account the frontier trader actually sustained a loss. P'ang also revealed that the frontier governors, in recognition of this hardship to the merchants, were lowering the official barter rates. While each yin had a prescribed value of 0.5 taels, they accepted a grain payment valued at 0.42 taels. They were forced to make this concession because otherwise they could not press enough merchants to take part in the system.128 By 1616 when Yuan conducted his investigation, the barter system had deteriorated beyond recognition. The granary receipts sometimes had no market value at all. Many of the frontier merchants turned in the unsold receipts to the ministry of revenue and begged to be excused from further service.129 Some frontier governors, instead of calling on the merchants to provide grain, simply issued the granary receipts as pay to the soldiers. Even the army granaries were in ruins. In the border region a granary receipt for 1 yin might be sold for 0.07 taels, or about 12 per cent of its official value. This, as Yuan put it, was only' slightly better than using them to cover jars'.130 At Yang-chou there were still 'several hundred' residential merchants engaged in the salt trade but only 'a few' substantial households were speculating on the granary receipts. The value of the receipts, rather like bond issues, increased sharply when they 'matured'. But not everyone could take part in the business as it tied up capital and involved a certain amount of risk. Yuan reported that these speculators were buying the receipts at 0.2 taels per yin and selling them at 1 tael apiece.131 The latter price was of course absorbed in the minimum price that the inland dealers passed on to the consuming public. The former price of 0.2 taels, on the

218

The salt monopoly

other hand, represented the maximum that the frontier army posts actually received as supplies. The operations of the Liang-Huai region were about three years behind schedule, but it was always difficult to tell which year's backlog was currently being handled. In some cases the frontier posts neglected to send in their stub-books and in others merchants who had secured the granary receipts and registered with the commission subsequently deserted because they were unable to pay the excise duty in advance as required by the administrative office. When it came to allocating the quota for the current year's delivery the salt officials devised a complicated scheme, designed to uphold the principle that granary receipts issued over several years must be honored simultaneously so that those traders who had already paid the excise duty in advance could all receive their stock. At the same time the commission had to go on absorbing new issues of granary receipts so as to maintain the income from the excise duty at the desired level. As the proceeds from the current year's excise duty were never sufficient to cover the remittance to Peking, it was necessary to demand further advances from the merchants. The commission thus bore some resemblance to a modern treasury office, redeeming some of its old bond issues at the same time as floating new loans. But the scheme worked in a rather irregular fashion. Some merchants even after paying the advance taxes three times had still not received any salt.132 At the time of Yiian's investigation, the commission was in debt to the residential merchants to the tune of over 4 million taels.133 All these extra expenses incurred by the merchant, including bribes made to the clerks and officials to advance their priorities, were simply passed on to the consumer in the form of higher salt prices.134 Though the Liang-Huai region nominally produced 175 million catties of official salt the actual collection from the saltern households was only half that. The officials at the salt fields therefore reduced each merchant's share while the merchants made up the short-fall through extra purchases.135 Contraband dealing had always been profitable on account of the high price of official salt, and the contraband dealers could now outbid the merchants by offering higher prices to the producers.136 This, combined with the fact that the merchants also had to pay numerous 'extras' to obtain clearance by the checking station,137 pushed up the price of salt still higher. The final packing of the salt, meticulously done according to official specifications, was quite costly, and the penalties for overweight were stiff. It appears from one source that if the sack was overweight by as little as 5 catties the fine was calculated on its total weight and not just the extra amount.138 When the salt was sold by the residential merchant to the inland dealers at the dockyard, however, the large sacks had to be undone and repacked into smaller bags to meet the requirement of the retailers. The inland dealers who carried the salt to markets in Hukwang and

5, IV Revenues, salt prices, and effects on consumers

219

Kiangsi had to surmount yet one more obstacle in the shape of a checking station situated on the north bank of the Yangtze opposite Nanking. This may originally have been established to prevent some of the inland dealers arriving at their destination earlier than others which could affect local salt prices, but in effect it was simply another bottleneck that could impose delays of several months.139 Official salt, when accompanied by yin licenses, was supposed to clear all inland customs stations duty-free but there was actually no guarantee that it would not be taxed again. The officials in charge of the customs stations could always impose duties on the carriers, exact personal 'contributions' from the merchants and collect other kinds of service charges. The list of customary payments {ctiang-li, 4, v and Appendix B) for Shun-an county in 1561 indicates that the magistrate levied 0.1 tael of silver on every 100 yin of official salt passing through the county, and 1 tael on every 100 yin actually sold in the county. Similar payments were made to the assistant magistrate, the prefectural officials, and the lesser official functionaries.140 Though the total transit taxes thus imposed were low, amounting to only about 0.012 taels per short ton, they were repeated in every county. In 1600, when the eunuch Lu Pao was in charge of the Liang-Huai commission he complained to the emperor that another eunuch, Ch'en Feng in Hukwang, was taxing the salt that he had already released.141 The cost of manufacturing salt was always negligible. In Fukien, where the sun-drying process was used, salt in around the year 1600 could be produced at a cost of 0.25 taels of silver per short ton and was made available to the nearby towns at 0.5 taels per short ton.142 Yuan Shih-cheng reported that in Liang-Huai the producers were selling surplus salt to the merchants at 0.3 taels for a 150-catty barrel, or 3 taels per short ton. 143 By the time the residential merchants handed over the same stock to the inland dealers, the price was rarely less than 9 taels per short ton. In the cities of the interior the normal price was generally around 15 taels per short ton. 144 At this level a laborer's annual requirement of salt would cost him four days' wages. When the price soared three or four times higher than this, as happened in Hukwang in the 1610s, it is clear that salt was no longer within the reach of the common people. In sum, while the monopoly benefited a few unscrupulous merchants and corruptible officials, and caused hardship to millions, it provided only very small revenues for the state, and these revenues were actually even smaller than they appeared in the official accounts. It also made the common people shoulder the major burden of the government's deficit financing. The fact that the government froze large amounts of funds in salt transactions actually fostered generally high interest rates elsewhere, as it made capital more scarce.

220

The salt monopoly The settlement of 1617

The settlement of 1617, carried out on the recommendation of Salt-Control Censor Lung Yii-ch'i and master-minded by Yuan Shih-cheng, has been described as the most radical change in the salt monopoly since its creation during the Former Han dynasty.145 The basic problem was that it was impossible, for reasons already described, to readjust the barter rates, excise duty, total number of yin and quantity of salt in annual circulation. The solution devised by Lung and Yuan was to grant a franchise to those salt merchants who had already paid the excise duty in advance so that they could themselves recoup the debt that the government owed them.146 In the southern sector of the Liang-Huai region by this time, merchants were said to have paid excise duty in advance on 2,600,000 yin of salt. After weeding out a number of merchants on the grounds that they had 'insufficient capital', the commission recognized its indebtedness on 2,000,000 yin. The accredited merchants were organized into ten syndicates (kang), each representing a claim of 200,000 yin. Every year thereafter nine of the syndicates were entitled to trade with the government for the current production of salt, while the remaining syndicate received the payment of salt already owed to it. This rotating schedule was to clear the total debt in ten years. The payment on previous commitments was, however, obtained not by increasing production but by taking out 36 catties of salt from each sack in the current issue. Nor was the payment made in full. According to the preliminary proposal the amount was set at a mere 142 catties of salt per yin instead of 570 catties. But the merchants by this arrangement secured exclusive rights to trade with the government, each with a permanent quota in proportion to his claim. The cancelled debt might be a small price to pay for the privilege of the franchise. For the government it meant an almost instantaneous cancellation of its debt to the merchants. Within ten years even the nominal debt was also eliminated. A similar formula applied in the northern sector of the Liang-Huai commission, where the rotating syndicate system took fourteen years to eliminate the old yin. The barter system continued so that merchants were still required to buy granary receipts from the frontier traders, but with the return to the practice of handing over salt immediately in exchange for the receipts the value of the latter was stabilized. The government accordingly announced that the trade value of a granary receipt at Yang-chou was 0.55 taels. The drastic move of granting franchise to the merchants was in fact not entirely unprecedented. In 1591 the Shantung commission had listed the names of more than a hundred residential merchants as being 'good traders' who paid their excise dues on time. Some fifty merchants were

5, V Responsibility for the failure

221

blacklisted as 'bad traders' and banished forever from the production center. The residential merchants took turns in reporting daily to the commission office,147 apparently to comply with its demands for miscellaneous services. Attempts by the distribution agencies to regulate the conduct of salt merchants had an even earlier origin, for the Liang-Huai commission had issued a set of rules concerning their housing and clothing as early as 1529.148 The late Ming system whereby a group of salt merchants was granted exclusive rights to trade provided a useful precedent for the operations of the Co-hang at Canton under the Ch'ing.

V RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FAILURE Official corruption While no historian writing on the late Ming can possibly overlook the question of official corruption, it is doubtful whether its further investigation would add a great deal to our understanding of the reasons for the failure of the monopoly. This study has already demonstrated clearly that the salt monopoly in the sixteenth century cannot be regarded as a rational institution, the operation of which had been perverted by dishonest administrators. The inherent lack of integrity of the system was itself sufficient to breed dishonesty. In the sixteenth century a man's name was tainted immediately by the fact of his appointment as a salt official.149 When in about 1580, a local vice-prefect was promoted to be acting commissioner in the Ch'ang-lu commission, a friend of his sent him a letter of condolence.150 In 1616 all six commissioners were indicted for irregularity.151 In 1623 it was claimed in a memorial to the throne that the salt administration offices were simply refuges for 'degraded officials and those on probation'. 152 In other words corruption was not only clearly in evidence but was expected as a matter of course. Fundamental causes of the failure The fundamental causes of the monopoly's failure must be traced to the beginning of the dynasty. Indeed the basic organization of the salt fields under the Ming was quite similar to that under previous dynasties, but the style of administration showed marked differences. As was shown earlier, fiscal administration under the Ming in all its aspects never evolved away from the rigid model set up by Hung-wu. The emphasis was always on restraint rather than on expansion. The entire fiscal establishment was strongly influenced by the economic thought of the dynasty's founder, that is, by a strong sense of frugality and the conviction that profit was in itself evil. Mercantile interests were thus

222

The salt monopoly

inherently in conflict with those of society and the state and had to be curbed as far as possible. At the same time the state had to refrain from 'enriching itself, because any gain to the government automatically meant a loss to the people. Though this orthodox sense of economy was respected by the emperors and statesmen of previous dynasties, it seems never to have been so faithfully followed as by the Ming. Hung-wu emphasized repeatedly the need to reduce state expenditures for the benefit of taxpayers and condemned the financial experts of previous dynasties like Sang Hung-yang of the Han, Yang Yen of the Tang, and Wang Anshih of the Sung, who had introduced fiscal reforms with a view to increasing state income.153 It was not simply a coincidence that the Ming never produced a reformer of comparable stature. Though the Hung-wu Emperor was undoubtedly sincere in his concern for the welfare of his subjects it is clear that the long-term effects of his policies in many ways turned out contrary to his intentions. The salt administration in the sixteenth century still retained all the basic features of the fourteenth-century system, such as the registration of saltern households, collection of ting payments, control of grass land, establishment of restricted areas, the barter system, and strict control of the yin licenses. A fact often overlooked by the historians is that the salt officials were never provided with the resources to do the job. From the very beginning of the dynasty the government failed to develop its potential economic power and resorted instead to political control as its basis of governing. It thus persistently neglected to build up the minimum financial strength required to operate its fiscal machinery, an attitude which might be described as'doing business empty-handed'.In this situation the extensive commandeering of services from the general population was unavoidable. The salt administration therefore never became a public service but remained merely a source of revenue. In the later years of the dynasty the officials could not command sufficient unpaid service to meet even the needs of its chain of revenue offices. The failure to provide the monopoly system with adequate capital investment and service facilities has already been mentioned. Though its administrative offices controlled huge resources and manpower and dominated a vital sector of inter-provincial commerce, they had no significant operating budget. Their office expenses were derived from local requisitions in conformity with the usual practice. Right from the beginning these revenues were always allocated even before they were collected, and though they were internally-generated it was never permitted to use them for investment. The only possible exception is the creation of the category of cost-paid salt from 1553 to 1565 (5, m), yet the capital that financed the purchase of the cost-paid salt was still not derived from regular income, but from fines levied on merchants whose consignments were found to be

5, V Responsibility for the failure

223

overweight at the checking stations.154 The imposition of this system required the lower-level salt officials to forcibly produce the desired amount, thus leading only to more irregularity. The administrative offices had no ships of their own and could not provide any kind of transportation. To obtain funds for poor relief and the dredging of canals and rivers they had to resort to pressurizing the merchants.155 In the early seventeenth century Yuan Shih-cheng reported that some salt fields in the Liang-Huai region were no longer profitable because the canals were not properly dredged. The merchants found that the cost of transporting the salt from these fields actually exceeded its purchase price.156 It is uncertain at what point the generally low level of state income made it necessary to burden the salt monopoly with the task of deficit financing. But with forced loans and delay in discharging governmental obligations, a public debt was created without being recognized as such. Still devoid of means to pay it, the court simply put pressure on the salt administrators, who transmitted it to the merchants; the latter in turn passed the burden to the consumers in the form of higher salt prices. Inevitably the effects of mismanagement were cumulative. Unnoticed proposals for reform It is clear that by 1500 or so the monopoly system was already showing signs of decay. The fundamental problem was that there was a persistent short-fall in salt payments by the ting, or registered producers. Once the government decided to allow the surplus salt to be sold privately, it would have been sensible to abandon the ting assessment altogether. Rather than maintain the fiction of a government monopoly it might have been better simply to impose an excise duty on all salt production. One grand-secretary, Ch'iu Ch'iin (in office, 1491-5), actually put forward such a proposal in his Ta-hsiieh Yen-i-pu, a work which is said to have been read by the Hungchih Emperor,157 but there is no evidence that Ch'iu ever argued the case publicly in his official capacity. The barter system ran into similar difficulties, and was proving unprofitable and unworkable by the fifteenth century. Because Yeh Ch'i had the courage to suspend it he was condemned thereafter as an evil minister. Some of his critics wilfully distorted the facts in order to accuse him of advancing the interest of the Huai-an merchants.158 The outcry was such that the barter system was revived. Three-quarters of a century later P'ang Shang-p'eng also realized that making cash payments for salt was far better than the inefficient and wasteful barter system, but though he revealed his opinion in a private letter he withheld it from the emperor.159 Though it is easy to criticize the Ming government's ineptitude in busi-

224

The salt monopoly

ness administration, it must be admitted that fiscal reform in the sixteenth century was not a simple matter. The tax regulations andfiscalprocedures established by the founding emperor were backed up by considerable military and political power, but by the middle of the dynasty this was already in decline. Any drastic revision offiscalprocedures might speed up this process, resulting in complete loss of control rather than improved efficiency. The government's lack offinancialstrength was also in itself an obstacle to any major reform. Ch'iu Ch'un's proposal, while rational, would have had the disadvantage of eliminating the service obligations of the salt-producing ting entirely, and the collection of a universal excise duty would have been easier on paper than in practice. By the sixteenth century landlords were registered as saltern households while many actual salt-processers remained unregistered; the contraband market had become unassailable, granary receipts simply represented opportunities for commercial speculation, and the administrators of the southern salt commissions used the revenues just as they liked. It is thus extremely doubtful whether the central government would still have been capable of introducing a major reform. The need to maintain administrative uniformity was another restraining factor. The ting was a universalfiscalunit of direct taxation, applied to all sections of the population including the hereditary military families. The possible consequences of emancipating only the salt-producing ting were manifold; it was quite likely for instance that many of the population would have claimed to be salt manufacturers in order to take advantage of the exemption. The granary receipts, until they became completely worthless, still provided the frontier governors with the privilege of issuing their own letters of credit. The numerous reports of mismanagement indicate the existence of strong vested interests in the frontier region, interests which undoubtedly resented the abolition of the barter system, In short, the government's reluctance to undertake any significant reform was determined by a variety of motives, both rational and irrational, concealed and overt. The only way for officials in the late Ming to reach a consensus was thus in the end to agree to abide by the 'fundamental laws of the dynasty', the original regulations of the Hung-wu Emperor.

6 Miscellaneous incomes

The miscellaneous incomes described in this chapter and in Table 15 comprise all state revenues other than the land taxes and the salt revenue. Though in describing any other fiscal system it might seem absurd to group together such items as the maritime tariff and the incense fees collected from the worshippers at national shrines, the revenue from government mining and the kitchen expenses account of the court of imperial entertainments, this curious sort of classification does reflect the style of the Ming fiscal administration. Governmental finance in the sixteenth century did not come to terms with the general economic trends of the times. The fiscal apparatus was too rigidly constructed to be able to exploit effectively the possibility of generating staple revenues from industry and commerce; it merely clung instead to a number of administrative incomes and what might be termed 'nuisance taxes'. It was easier to continue to collect revenues from these sources because they were closely connected with the existing governmental organization. Though the income produced from such sources was limited, or even marginal, it was assured, and therefore played a larger part in state finances than did revenues from the more modern sector of the economy. As these anomalies are matters of historical fact they leave the financial historian little choice in his ordering of the subject. Though it might in theory be possible in the interests of simplification to eliminate some of the less essential items and to reclassify the rest, it is likely that the disadvantages of this would outweigh the possible benefits. It would obscure the nature of each item of income, create discrepancies in fiscal terminology and, more significantly, obscure the workings of the administration. The historian would thus in effect be taking on the role of a fiscal reformer. One of the basic characteristics of the Ming system was that it derived numerous small incomes from very diverse sources. These accounts were never integrated and a number of revenues were actually disbursed before auditing. In order to preserve accuracy it is necessary therefore to cite the miscellaneous incomes item by item, even though some of them can be described only very briefly. 8

[225]

HTF

226

Miscellaneous incomes

The list presented here is not absolutely complete, because the lack of standardization in accounting methods made it possible for some items to be split up under different names, but it nonetheless covers all the incomes worth mentioning. Several of the items have been referred to earlier in connection with the land tax. As they were so small some counties simply discontinued their collection and allowed them to be covered by the land taxes (3, iv). But this was not a universal practice, and the fact that they never completely disappeared as separate items justifies their listing in this chapter. I REVENUES FROM COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY

(a) The inland customs duty Under the Ming there were three kinds of taxation that could be imposed on commercial traffic on inland waterways. The tonnage (cWuan-chiao) was levied on the carrier, paid by the shipowner, and collected by the ministry of revenue, the assessment being based on the width of the ship. The local business tax (shang-shui), levied on all merchandise transported on land or water, was paid by the merchant and administered by provincial officials. The forest produce levy (chou-mo cKou-fen) was levied only on shipbuilding materials, and was controlled by the ministry of works. Originally it was paid in kind and levied simply on bamboo and timber but in the later part of the dynasty the collection was extended to cover every item that might conceivably be useful to government dockyards, including hemp, nails, lime, charcoal, and fung oil. The actual payment was, however, converted to silver. The origin of the inland customs houses can be traced to the four tonnage stations established in 1429 to collect toll payments on the Grand Canal.1 By the sixteenth century there were seven of them, located at Pei-hsin-kuan near Hang-chou, Hsii-yeh near Soochow, Yang-chou, Huai-an, Lin-ch'ing, Ho-hsi-wu, and Chiu-chiang. Each was run by a secretary seconded for a year from the ministry of revenue. It was only gradually that the tonnage stations started to take over the administration of the local business tax at the ports as well. This happened at Pei-hsin-kuan in 1511,2 and at Lin-ch'ing shortly thereafter, but up to 1530 the stations at all the other ports still handled only the tonnage.3 By 1569, however, the takeover was complete and all the stations were put under the joint control of the ministry of revenue and the provincial government. The ministry's officials made the assessments and handed the tax bills to the shipowners and merchants, while the provincial officials received the payments and delivered the tax proceeds.4 Since the collection covered both the ship and its cargo the stations effectively functioned as

6,1 Revenues from commerce and industry TABLE

227

15. Miscellaneous incomes, ca. 1570-90 Under the jurisdiction of:

C*ntP0csT\f o f

income

Ministry of revenue Ministry of works Ministry of war Ministry of rites

Revenue from (a) Inland customs (g) Forest produce duty commerce and levy industry (b) Local business (h) Government tax mining (c) Maritime tariff W) Store franchise fees (e) Excise on wine and vinegar (/) Stamp tax on real estate transfers (0 Fish duty Administrative incomes

0') Sale of rank (*) Ecclesiastical

(o) 'Common post money'

license fees

(/) Payment for

(p) Incense fees at national shrines

* rationed salt' (rri) Commutation of punishments («) Profits from minting money

(«) Horse (y) Calendar payment paper (v) Commuta(z) Kitchen tion of service capital fees due guard to the duty court of (w) Commutaimperial tion of entertainpersonal ments attendance (x) Savings from postal service Non-cash incomes: (ad) income from tea and horse trade; (bb) other items not listed. Commutation of services and supplies

(?) ' Speed- the-

delivery money'

(r) Artisan payment (s) Reeds tax (0 Material supplies to the four bureaus

customs houses and were formally recognized as such. In reality matters were far more complicated than this terse description implies. The Pei-hsin-kuan office, for example, after taking over the administration of the local business tax virtually came to constitute a taxation authority in itself. It controlled a network of toll stations on both land and water extending over several counties around the city of Hang-chou. Its revenues included the tonnage, local business taxes, registration fees on boats some 8-2

228

Miscellaneous incomes

of which might never even have to pass through the stations, and even regular payments from the residential merchants in the cities. Its jurisdiction extended to both wholesale and retail trade. Toward the end of the sixteenth century its total annual income was 34,975 taels of silver, only 6,318 taels of which was derived from the tonnage. 5 The situation at other stations was similar. The total proceeds from these seven stations, augmented by the collection made at the Ch'ung-wen gate at Peking, formed a separate 'system' for accounting purposes. The revenue was generally referred to as ch'uan-chiao, thus creating the false impression that it was all derived from the inland customs duties. In reality it constituted that portion of the business tax the management of which was directly supervised by the ministry of revenue. The station at the Ch'ung-wen gate was not of course situated at a port. In the late sixteenth century the general practice was that the northbound cargo destined for the capital paid part of the business taxes at Lin-ch'ing and Ho-hsi-wu, and the remainder at the gate on arriving at Peking. Incorporating the Ch'ung-wen gate station into the system was thus not illogical, though its revenues did also include a substantial amount of petty cash collected on goods transported overland by mules and carts.6 The duties collected by these stations were in general very light but the published schedule needless to say did not cover all the extras that the administrators could impose on the merchants, and its management was far from uniform. Despite widespread reports of corruption,7 there were some honest officials whose integrity on occasion even impressed European observers.8 One major cause of mismanagement was administrative inconsistency. The operation of the stations entailed both the publication of collection schedules and the fixing of a tax quota at each port. While the former implied fixed collection rates applicable to a variable volume of commerce, the latter required the station officials to guarantee a fixed level of tax income. This inconsistency originated in the early years of the dynasty.9 As no collection schedule appears to have survived, it is only from scattered entries in several sources that one can get any idea of the official rates. These were remarkably comprehensive. One Ch'ing gazetteer indicates that the schedule published by the Lin-ch'ing station under the Ming covered 105 double pages and incorporated 1,900 articles.10 The rates were also surprisingly reasonable. At Huai-an in the early seventeenth century, boats in transit were divided into two classes for the purpose of collecting the tonnage dues. Neither class is clearly defined in the sources, but one paid 0.058 taels and the other 0.029 taels.11 As the width of the boat in either case was 5 feet, implying a capacity of no less than 15 tons, the payment was negligible. It seems however that the toll was repeated at each passage of the customs station and that unladen vessels were probably not

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exempted from it. At Pei-hsin-kuan in the late sixteenth century the customs duties, which in reality constituted a part of the local business tax, were said to range from 0.2 to 3 per cent ad valorem. The lowest rates were on straw mats and tin-foil, and the highest on brass.12 The main disadvantage from the merchants' point of view was that cargoes in transit over long distances were taxed repeatedly. Officials could also impose unscheduled collections under the guise of 'voluntary contributions'. In 1583 it was pointed out by a censor that northbound cargo, after paying 60 per cent of the business tax at Lin-ch'ing and the other 40 per cent at Ho-hsi-wu, then had to pay the entire scheduled tax all over again at the Ch'ung-wen gate, where the collectors simply disregarded the receipts from the other stations.13 At some ports the collectors imposed a duty on the merchandise unloaded from the carrier while on its way to the warehouse and then repeated the same duty when the same cargo was reloaded onto another carrier. This practice gradually became customary, so that eventually the double payment was assessed on all cargo in transit, including that which never left the original carrier.14 In the late sixteenth century a shipload of about 500 piculs of white grain en route from Chekiang to Peking was required to pay duties, taxes, and fees at twelve different places. The total amount came to 70 taels of silver, roughly 20 per cent ad valorem, which was still not prohibitive. Nonetheless white grain was a primary commodity delivered by taxpayers at the service of the emperor.15 Up to the mid sixteenth century the annual quota for each station was fixed on the basis of the actual level of collection in some previous year -not necessarily the highest, but whichever was considered the most reasonable. Normally the collectors had no difficulty in meeting the quota. Though in theory it might be expected that an official whose collection consistently exceeded the prescribed quota would have a better chance of promotion, in practice this was not so. In an age when virtue was regarded as more important than efficiency, an official who broke earlier collection records was liable to be criticized for being self-seeking, abusing the taxpayers, and creating unnecessary difficulties for his successors. Throughout the Ming period no official ever won public esteem for attempting to increase tax revenue. From the contemporary sources it can be seen that most of the bureaucrats assigned to the customs houses were content merely to fulfill their quotas. It is actually asserted that one minister of revenue, Chou Ching (in office, 1496-1500) gave lower ratings in his personnel evaluation to those secretaries who had delivered more customs duties than they should.16 When in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries state expenditures rose enormously, the quotas of the customs stations were increased, in general by an arbitrary amount. This resulted in dislocation, increasing malpractice and short-falls in collection.

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Miscellaneous incomes

The low efficiency of the customs stations was not surprising. Their operations were quite uncoordinated and no director general was ever appointed to organize them systematically. There was thus no official with any professional interest in their long-term development. The ministerial officials carried out their duties merely as interim assignments while the provincial officials regarded the collection of the duties as a financial burden to their districts. The prevailing anti-commercial ideology prevented the bureaucrats from promoting the interests of the merchants and the expansion of their business activities. No attempt was ever made to facilitate the circulation of goods, whether daily necessities or luxuries, within the network of inland ports. In the collection of dues no distinction was made between staple goods transported in large volume and minor items, simply because the concept of a local business tax was never discarded. The contemporary sources on the customs houses reflect the same attitude. In their descriptions of articles in transit, the emphasis is always on farm products transported over short distances, such as hogs, straw mats, bean cake, pickled vegetables, and preserved fruits, and less attention is paid to staple goods such as textiles and porcelain.17 In 1526 it was actually necessary to issue an imperial edict forbidding the customs houses to levy duty on the food and fuel stored aboard the carriers.18 In 1643 Minister of Revenue Ni Yiian-lu reported that a customs declaration made at the Ch'ung-wen gate might include as many as 3,000 items belonging to scores of different merchants. 'If a single piece of gauze or a skirt was omitted from the declaration, a fine was imposed on the entire list.' Ni also declared that in front of a customs house ' somewhere in the south' he had seen a stone tablet on which was engraved the warning that the penalty for omitting even one item of merchandise from the declaration was the confiscation of half the ship's cargo.19 The customs houses were well staffed. The Huai-an station in the late Ming, according to one Ch'ing account, had a full-time staff of 12 officials and 14 lesser functionaries, plus 11 associated officials and lesser functionaries, and 121 scribes.20 The office was thus almost comparable in size to the ministry of revenue. But from the assignment of duties it can be seen that most of the personnel were engaged in working out and recording the assessment of dues in minute detail. Like all Ming government offices the customs houses were supported by local requisitions. The records of the Pei-hsin-kuan station indicate that many of its scribes were unpaid. Its operations also required the posting of unpaid patrolmen in the rural areas and the appointment of civilian tax agents to make quarterly collections from the 1,200 ships and 3,500 residential merchants in the district.21 In short, the operations of the customs stations were limited by the essentially agrarian nature of the economy, and they were ill-adapted to the performance of more sophisticated financial tasks.

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TABLE 16. Collection quotas of eight inland customs stations, 1599-1625 (tls. of silver) Station Pei-hsin-kuan Hsii-yeh Yang-chou Huai-an Lin-ch'ing Ho-hsi-wu Ch'ung-wen gate Chiu-chiang Total

1599

1621

1625

40,000 45,000 13,000 22,000 83,800 46,000 68,929 25,000 343,729

60,000 67,500 15,600 29,600 63,800 32,000 68,929 37,500 374,929

80,000 87,500 25,600 45,600 63,800 32,000 88,929 57,500 480,929

The collection quotas of the customs stations in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are listed in Table 16.22 There appears to be no information available on the volume of staple goods in transit. The late sixteenth-century quota figure of 340,000 taels or so was only a guideline. The Pei-hsin-kuan station in 1600 reported that its actual collection was over 42,000 taels, and in 1611 that its quota had been increased to 49,700 taels.23 Sometimes the collection fell below the target figure. Chao Shih-ch'ing, who was minister of revenue from 1602 to 1610, reported that the total collected from the eight stations in 1597 was actually 325,500 taels. In 1601 the total income fell to 266,800 taels, some 76,900 taels short of the quota.24 The revenue could be disbursed for a variety of purposes, such as subsidizing the army units near the collecting stations, minting copper coins, and providing famine relief and the expenses of palace construction. Sometimes one station made its funds available to one particular agency while the others sent their collections elsewhere. At times the court also instructed the stations to collect part of the revenue in copper coins, to be submitted to the Kuang-huei Treasury inside the Imperial City (1, i). In the 1570s it was decided that all the income should henceforth be delivered to the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, under the jurisdiction of the ministry of revenue, to become part of the supplies sent annually to the northern frontier army posts. Even after this date unscheduled deliveries made on an ad hoc basis still continued.25 The accounts of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury for the year 1580 show that it received only 162,299 taels from the customs houses, about half the projected quota. 26 (b) Local business tax (shang-shui) The local business tax in Ming times was in many respects a forerunner of the likin under the Ch'ing in that it was characterized by minimal rates,

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Miscellaneous incomes

broad coverage, and duplication of collection. In general, however, the income it provided was too small and too scattered for it to be regarded as a major source of revenue. After the stations established at major commercial centers to collect the tax were annexed by the inland customs houses, the shang-shui became even less important. In the early years of the dynasty there were more than 400 stations collecting local business taxes but by the early seventeenth century only 112 remained in operation. The rest had become unprofitable and had been closed.27 In 1568 the ministry of revenue reported that at one particular station labor costs amounted to about 400 taels a year while it netted only 110 taels in taxes.28 In the sixteenth century the remaining stations were run either by prefectural or county governments. The low rates of collection can be seen from the operations of Pei-hsin-kuan, described earlier, where they ranged from 3 per cent to less than 1 per cent ad valorem. The levy was universal, and not even peddlers or peasants who carried bales of produce to the cities for marketing were exempted from it. In general there was only one official at each station. As the drafted patrolmen and scribes were not only unpaid, but were obliged to produce a fixed quota of contraband, they were forced to rely for their living on bribes and extortion from passing merchants.29 When the quotas were increased these abuses all too easily got out of control. The fact that the quotas of the business tax stations had been initially fixed in paper currency and then converted to silver made the collection meaningless, except in a few districts where some readjustments had been made. For example in Fen-yang county, Shansi, the local business tax in 1609 still yielded 6,606 taels of silver, a worthwhile sum.30 But in Ching-hua county, Chekiang, a rather prosperous area, the quota was listed in 1578 as less than 7 taels, and it was frankly acknowledged in the local gazetteer that the collection had long since been suspended. The amount was more than made up with commuted payments from the patrolmen.31 Other districts filled their quotas with the proceeds of the land taxes. This does not mean that merchants in these districts were not taxed at all. Hui-chou prefecture in South Chihli was noted for its wealthy merchants. The local business taxes of the entire prefecture, fixed at 94,565 kuan of currency in 1482 and never revised thereafter, had a value of less than 30 taels of silver by the late sixteenth century. But because they paid hardly any business taxes the merchants of the prefecture were frequently asked to make substantial contributions towards the cost of construction work in Peking.32 After the wo-k'ou campaign the provincial authorities, particularly in Fukien and Kwangtung, established new collecting stations outside the existing shang-shui system, mainly located at bridgeheads and ferries. These stations prescribed their own rates of collection and delivered the proceeds

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directly to local defense units as military supplies. The central government exercised no effective control over them whatever.33 Similar stations were set up on the northern frontier. The one established in 1547 at Kuang-ning, beyond the Great Wall, and the one re-established at Shan-hai-kuan in 1550, were of considerable international significance as they controlled the trade route to Manchuria and Korea. They were run at first by army officers and later by eunuchs, but seem to have left no records.34 All that is known is that the annual income of the Shan-hai-kuan station around 1570 was 4,000 taels.35 The tolls collected at the city gates of Peking, other than the Ch'ung-wen gate, should also be included in the category of local business taxes. The gates were controlled by the eunuchs, who acted as collectors. The greater part of the toll was paid by villagers bringing in farm produce to the city. The eunuchs surrendered a fixed quota, usually paid in copper coins and worth 5,000 taels a year, to the court of imperial entertainments. The rest they pocketed for themselves.36 In brief, the local business tax during the sixteenth century steadily disintegrated. Part of the system fell into disuse; part survived under the control of provincial administration, and yet another part was transformed into a kind of tax farming. It is clear that the universal undifferentiated collection resulted in general inefficiency. The system was also handicapped by the fact that the operating budgets of the tax stations was quite inadequate. In 1576 the governor of Kiangsi reported that the annual collection quota of the station at Chang-shu-chen was 172 taels of silver. After he reorganized its operations the proceeds increased ten-fold.37 Evidently much of the tax potential within the system was being wasted. According to the Ta-Ming Hui-tien, as of 1578 the local business tax yielded a total of 150,000 taels of silver per year, on average slightly over 100 taels per county.38 These funds were combined with the proceeds of the land taxes and earmarked as a part of either the retained or the transferred revenue of their respective districts. (c) The maritime tariff (fan-p'o cWou-feri) Throughout the Ming period international trade was never regarded as a primary source of state income, a tradition that had been established from the beginning of the dynasty. Foreign trade was limited to the purchase and sale of goods by tributary missions during their periodic visits. Both Hung-wu and Yung-lo, in order to demonstrate their magnanimity to the peripheral states, repeatedly exempted the goods brought in by visiting embassies from the payment of tariffs, for instance in the case of the Korean embassy in 1370 and the embassy from Brunei in 1403.39 Though the Ming government reserved the right to purchase up to 60 per cent of

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Miscellaneous incomes

the embassy's goods, it did not often exercise it. When it did, the payment, termed 'awards', exceeded the value of the merchandise several times over, and was compounded by the cost of the entertainment lavished on the personnel of the embassay.40 In the late fifteenth century foreign trade did go on despite the tributary theory. The eunuchs in charge of the maritime trade superintendencies, some of the civil officials, and the army officers in charge of coastal defense must have made enormous profits from the tributary embassies, regardless of whether these were real or pretended. The court in Peking knew little of their dealings. When in 1493 the governor-general at Canton reported that the reception of frequent tributary missions was becoming burdensome to counties under his jurisdiction, the ministry of rites, after checking its own records, replied that the only tributary missions sent in the past six years had been one each from Siam and Champa. 41 After this the ministry of rites suggested that in future it should not insist on the arrival of foreign tributary missions in pre-arranged years, a proposal with which the emperor concurred. In any case the central government had already given de facto recognition to the limited trading privileges of the tributary states at Canton, since their missions had no other business there but trade. Trade was formally opened in 1509, when the provincial officials had worked out a set of regulations to control it.42 The privilege of trade was granted to persons from the tributary states, even when they were not accompanied by an embassy. The tariff was set at 30 per cent, to be paid in kind and collected by the provincial officials under the supervision of the governor. Luxury items obtained in this way such as ivory and rhinoceros horn were delivered to the emperor, while staple goods like pepper and sapanwood were sold in the market. In 1510 the sale of the items collected in the two previous years grossed 11,200 taels of silver. With the emperor's approval, these funds were retained in the province as local military supplies.43 After 1517 the flat rate tariff was reduced to 20 per cent - still to be paid in kind.44 The liberalization of international trade was interrupted in the early sixteenth century by the clashes between Portuguese seafarers and Ming armed forces on the China coast, and in 1523 by the fighting at Ningpo between the Ouchi and Hosokawa factions from Japan, who both claimed to represent the Ashikaga Shogunate.45 In 1529, however, Canton was again thrown open to foreign traders, and 'barbarians' were even allowed to enter the city. In 1556 the trade was put under the supervision of a vice-circuit intendant on coastal defense (hai-tao fu-shih) who organized groups of Cantonese, Fukienese, and Hui-chou merchants to act as official agents for the foreign traders.46 The revenue must have been considerable because in 1529 Governor Lin Fu, on petitioning for the re-opening of the trade, declared: 'In less than a month, the foreign goods [collected] in the

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warehouses will be worth tens of thousands of taels of silver.'47 But the exact value of the tariff subsequently collected is unknown. From 1557 the Portuguese secured the right to reside in Macao. In 1564 P'ang Shang-p'eng reported that nearly 10,000 of them were living there, and that during the trading season there were more than twenty Portuguese ships at anchor. Every year the Portuguese paid the provincial authorities a lump sum of 20,000 taels to cover the tonnage and in addition, 500 taels to the magistrate of Hsiang-shan county to cover the rent of Macao.48 One contemporary source reveals that their customs payments were nominal: 'They offered customary payments (cKang-li) to the maritime trade superintendent and the county magistrate who made the inspections... Not more than 10 per cent or 20 per cent of their goods were declared and paid duties.'49 Even in the last decade of the sixteenth century the annual income from the maritime tariff at Canton remained at the general level of 40,000 taels.50 The profits made by the Portuguese, on the other hand, must have been enormous, for according to H. B. Morse: 'As late as 1612 it was categorically stated that the license of the viceroy at Goa authorizing a ship to trade at Macao was worth £25,000 to the ship for one voyage.'51 In 1567 the Ming court also authorized trade at Yiieh-kang in Fukien, near modern Amoy. Details of the license fees, poundage and tonnage levied at this port have survived,52 though as the main concern of this discussion is the general level of income, it is possible here to cite a few illustrative examples. The tariff was paid by Chinese merchants trading overseas, and on imports only. The total annual number of ships was fixed at eighty-eight on afirst-come-first-servedbasis. A ship sixteen feet wide, that sailed to Brunei and farther west, paid a tonnage tax of 5 taels of silver, plus a license fee of 3 taels. Sculptured ivory objects paid an import duty of 1 tael per 100 catties, and raw ivory half that amount. Pepper paid 0.25 taels of silver per 100 catties, roughly 1 per cent ad valorem.53 Since ships returning from the Philippines usually carried no imports, they paid a duty of 150 taels per vessel per voyage; this was later reduced to 120 taels. The revenues collected at Yiieh-kang amounted to 6,000 taels in the first year. This had increased to 29,000 taels per year by 1594, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea prompted the authorities to close the port. In 1615, when the port was re-opened, the projected annual income was 27,087 taels. In that year the rates were reduced, in general by about 15 per cent. All the proceeds were retained in Fukien as local military supplies. The customs duties were allocated to the army and the tonnage dues to the naval forces.54 This brief sketch covers the entire maritime tariff collected in the sixteenth century. The ministry of revenue never played an active part in the operation but the collection did lessen its difficulties in securing military

236

Miscellaneous incomes

funds. The low level of income provided by the tariff has never been explained, but it is likely that the authorities were afraid of imposing higher rates lest these induce sailors, shipowners, and traders to turn to contraband trade and join forces with the pirates. The officials also doubtless wished to leave plenty of scope for making irregular collections on their own accounts.55 (d) Store franchise fees (meng-fan shui), (e) Duties on wine and vinegar (chiu-ts'u shui), and (/) Stamp tax on real estate transfers (fang-ti cKi shui) These items were collected along with the business tax by the local tax stations, or else by the county government in areas where there were no tax stations. The franchise fees were levied on street stalls as well as permanent shops. The duties on wine and vinegar were inherited from the Sung, which had imposed a state monopoly on distilling. The stamp tax was fixed at 3 per cent of the purchase price of the real estate or of the mortgage payment. Every county had a quota for each of these items, fixed in terms of paper currency during the early years of the dynasty. In most districts the revenues virtually disappeared after the original quotas were converted to silver. Local gazetteers quite commonly listed the total annual revenue from the three items as 3, 4, or 5 taels of silver. The actual collection, however, might be a different matter. The duties on wine and vinegar were generally disregarded, as the Ming never managed to exercise any effective control over distilling, but the other two items were of some significance in the large cities. The collection from the shopkeepers of Peking, the administration of which was divided between Ta-hsing and Wan-p'ing counties, yielded 10,641 taels in 1579.56 The stamp tax in Wan-p'ing county alone exceeded 2,000 taels per year because property values in the capital were higher.57 In the late sixteenth century, according to the magistrate of Wan-p'ing, a house in Peking might be mortgaged for as much as 7,000 taels.58 In the city of Huai-an, in South Chihli, the franchise fees were paid quarterly in lump sums by the seven major trade guides. As the flour mills, distilleries, and noodle shops had no guild organizations the magistrates appointed collectors for them. There is no information on the total revenue collected. The management of the stamp tax in this prefecture also showed some variations. In the early seventeenth century mortgages were exempted from taxation, and on property sales the tax rate was fixed at 1.16 per cent of the purchase price.59 In Ch'ang-chou prefecture, South Chihli, it seems that the stamp tax had been discontinued for some time when the local officials in the late sixteenth century attempted to revive it. Apparently it had not been

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possible to carry out the collection effectively because of the 'protests and opposition' it aroused.60 These scattered cases seem to indicate that when paper currency fell into disuse in thefifteenthcentury the central government never made any clear attempt to readjust the revenues that had originally been fixed in terms of paper money. In some areas where the revenue from such items as these had become indispensable, the local officials evidently made some sort of readjustment on their own initiative, and their ad hoc arrangements in time became customary practice. Where no such readjustments were made the taxation was abandoned and the revenues made up from the land taxes. Some time before 1602 the ministry of revenue made a belated attempt to revive the stamp tax on real estate in the hopeful expectation that it could raise 100,000 taels of silver from this source.61 (g) The forest produce levy (chou-mo cKou-feri)

The Ming-shih lists 13 stations set up to collect the forest produce levy. There were 2 near Nanking, 5 near Peking, and 1 each at Cheng-ting in North Chihli, Wu-hu (T'ai-p'ing prefecture) in South Chihli, Sha-shih (Ching-chou prefecture) in Hukwang, Hang-chou in Chekiang, Lan-chou in Shensi (now Kansu), and Kuang-ning Wei in Manchuria.62 The list is not complete, for there was in fact another at Ch'ing-chiang-p'u near Huai-an, and another at Pao-ting in North Chihli.63 The stations were by no means of equal importance. Several of them, including those on the outskirts of Peking, collected only timber and bamboo for the manufacture of palace equipment and utensils. The Lanchou and Kuang-ning stations were located on the frontier and though their operations may have been of considerable importance they are unfortunately undocumented. The stations of most interest are thefivelocated on major water routes where there was a large volume of commercial traffic, including forest produce: namely those at Wu-hu, Sha-shih, Hangchou, Huai-an, and Lung-chiang, the last-named being close to Nanking. By the sixteenth century only this last station still continued to make its collection in kind in order to provide materials for the imperial furniture factory in the southern capital. The other four collected payments in silver which were used to finance shipbuilding in the government dockyards. Sometimes the funds were diverted tofinanceother projects undertaken by the ministry of works. The forest produce levy and its collecting stations arose from Hung-wu's attempts to make the ministry of works self-sufficient in the matter of supplies. The most essential items, timber and bamboo, were therefore kept separate from ordinary taxation. Though it is indicated in several early works that the collecting stations did not come under the control of the

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Miscellaneous incomes

ministry until 1471, what actually happened was that in that year Minister of Works Wang Fu obtained the emperor's permission to send ministerial officials to manage the Sha-shih, Wu-hu and Hang-chou stations on a oneyear basis.64 Until then the collection at these stations had been carried out by provincial officials on the ministry's behalf. The Huai-an station had always been supervised by the ministry of works official in charge of waterways in that region, and the Lung-chiang station had always been supervised by the Nanking ministry of works. When the payment was made in kind, the tax generally took 20 per cent of the timber in transit.65 Payments in silver were more reasonably assessed, taking into account such factors as the kind of timber, the size of the logs and their place of origin. The rates varied from approximately 5 to 10 per cent ad valorem,66 but that at Huai-an was always lower than the rates at other stations, partly because all the timber arriving there had already been taxed at least once before. The Huai-an office, which taxed all commercial traffic on the Grand Canal, imposed a flat rate of 3.33 per cent ad valorem on all shipbuilding materials.67 Though the rates were reasonable, the fact that collections were made repeatedly caused further hardship to the merchants. In 1608 timber coming from Szechuan had to pay transit taxes in three different provinces before reaching the lower Yangtze, in addition to the levies at Sha-shih, Wu-hu, and Nanking. The cost of cedar and pine wood sent to Peking from the southern provinces was increased at least 50 per cent by taxes imposed en route. The Lung-chiang station was notorious for holding up shipments of timber, owing to its rule that assessments could only be made on 100 rafts at a time. Another problem for timber merchants was compulsory forced purchase by government agencies, which usually took the best of the consignment.68 The price of timber in Peking was further increased by high transportation costs on the Grand Canal; sometimes it was so exorbitant that many shipowners found it was to their advantage to dismantle their vessels at the northern terminal of the canal rather than repair them. The masts in particular fetched very good prices.69 The imposition of the forest produce levy could also be fairly flexible. The stations which collected the tax in silver were assigned an annual tax quota, and in years when there was a large volume of commerce this was easilyfilled.This was the case when Ho Tsun was in charge of the Sha-shih station in the decade after 1510. Once the quota was met he offered the timber merchants a general reduction on the scheduled rates.70 Shao Chingpang, who was in charge of the same station in the 1520s, adopted an even more striking solution. After making up the annual quota in three months he apparently closed down the office and for the rest of the year allowed the timber merchants to pass through the station tax-free.71 In the 1560s Yang Shih-ch'iao established an honor system at the Hang-chou station,

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and based his tax assessments on the merchants' own declarations.72 Significantly, these three officials all won high praise from the traditional historians. The Huai-an station went to the opposite extreme. This office was the major supplier of funds for the Ch'ing-chiang-p'u dockyard and by the late sixteenth century was quite unable to meet its assigned tax quota. The solution adopted here was to extend the scope of the collection, first by widening its coverage to include all shipbuilding materials, and then by taxing shipping itself. The 3.33 per cent rate of collection was applied to all civilian ships in transit, being calculated on the original cost of the ship. There is no indication of when this started nor of how permission was obtained. Even before 1600, the tax assessment took into account the ship's hull, mast, anchor, and other fittings, and the process thus developed into a kind of inspection and registration of shipping. Whenever a ship was sold in the Huai-an area the buyer likewise had to pay the office 3.33 per cent of the purchase price.73 These practices evidently survived the dynasty, for the 1778 edition of the Huai-kuan Tung-chih indicates that even under the Ch'ing the forest produce levy at Huai-an, still managed by the ministry of works, was collected on shipping as before. After the payment was made the office branded the lintel of the main cabin of the vessel and gave the owner a certificate.74 The term' forest produce levy' therefore began to take on a wider meaning and came to compete with the tonnage dues which were still levied by the customs house in the same port, under the jurisdiction of the ministry of revenue. There is no unified account of the various forest produce levy stations, and never any mention of the actual level of the quotas imposed. The collection was further complicated in the late sixteenth century by the continual palace construction in Peking and the vast procurement of timber which it required. This certainly affected the operations of the stations. For instance when it was discovered by a ministerial official in 1596 that 44,000 logs were being shipped by merchants to Peking, instructions were issued to the stations to intercept and tax this cargo en route for the latest palace construction project. Payments were once more to be made in kind and in addition purchases were made from the shipment.75 It was even claimed that 'because of the enormous taxes, many timber merchants left the business'.76 Information on the income obtained from this source is scattered and fragmentary. In 1489, the Ch'ing-chiang-p'u dockyard was recorded as having received payments from four stations - Sha-shih, Wu-hu, Hangchou and Huai-an - totalling 28,670 taels.77 In 1484 Hang-chou had an annual income of 23,000 taels78 and in 1525, the Wu-hu station produced a revenue of more than 20,000 taels. One year the collection is said to have exceeded 37,000 taels.79 The revenue at Huai-an in 1608 is estimated to have

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been approximately 11,500 taels.80 Contemporary sources suggest that for most of the later sixteenth century the collection quotas remained largely unchanged.81 It is therefore probable that the projected income of the four stations was about 75,000 taels. The annual income of Lung-chiang station near Nanking, which collected its revenues in kind, must have been roughly equal to those of the other stations and was thus very likely worth 20,000 taels or more. (h) Government mining (k'uang-yiri) At the beginning of the dynasty mining was strictly monopolized by the state. Government iron production in the 1370s averaged 8 million catties a year, or approximately 5,300 short tons. In 1395, the year the monopoly was abolished, government reserves amounted to about 25,000 tons. Iron production thereafter carried on privately was to be taxed at one-fifteenth of the output, paid in kind,82 though there is no evidence that this scheme of taxation was actually put into effect. From the early fifteenth century the government concentrated its own iron production at Tseng-hua, a town on the Great Wall northeast of Peking. In 1509 the iron works there produced about 320 tons of pig iron, 140 tons of wrought iron, and 5 tons of steel. After 1529 production declined to about two-thirds of the previous level but it was still sufficient to meet the needs of the ministry of works. By 1581 the iron ores in the area were exhausted and production was suspended.83 In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the government collected each year between 300 and 450 tons of iron from Chekiang, Fukien, and Kwangtung, though very little from other provinces. From time to time it also purchased iron from private producers.84 It seems that three provinces which supplied the government did not exercise any control over production. In Ch'ao-chou prefecture, Kwangtung, there were approximately sixty iron furnaces. Their tax payments, collected in silver and amounting to only slightly more than 1,000 taels, were allocated in advance as provincial military supplies.85 In Fukien, which made the largest deliveries to Peking, the situation was much the same. In Ch'iian-chou prefecture, Fukien, the iron quota was filled by means of an extra collection on the land taxes. Chang-chou prefecture made an annual collection of 290 taels or so from the district's thirty privately-owned iron furnaces. This revenue was likewise allocated to the provincial military authorities. 86 Undoubtedly the iron that these provinces delivered to Peking was purchased with funds derived from other sources. The government did not control the supply of copper either. As it was uneconomical to transport the copper mined in Yunnan to the coastal areas, most of the copper sold in the southeastern provinces came from imports, mainly from Japan.87 In addition the government each year

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obtained about 4 tons of copper from the fish duty (see below, (/)). The ministry of works is known to have purchased up to 24 tons annually on the market.88 More important to the government was silver mining. In the late Ming there was considerable controversy over the wisdom of promoting this, ostensibly for reasons connected with traditional geomantic practices. In the seventeenth century when Adam Schall von Bell, the court's Jesuit adviser, proposed to improve the government's shaky finances by reviving silver mining, his suggestion was opposed by several influential officials including Minister of Revenue Ni Yuan-lu. They argued that mining would raze houses and disturb graves, and 'damage other geomantic features'. 89 One problem that the Ming never solved was that of security, in particular the control of the mining labor force. This arose basically from the nature of government mining which, from the Yung-lo period onwards, was never run on business lines. The government was never willing to allocate sufficient funds to develop it systematically and instead resorted to a practice known as chia-pan, whereby the officials and workers at each mine had to meet a fixed production quota. 90 The government's demand for metal increased rapidly, even before the mines had been fully opened, and it therefore did not permit the output to be used for re-investment. When the output failed to meet the prescribed quota the latter could not be reduced without the emperor's permission. Frequently the shortages had to be made up by the local administration with funds derived from other sources. Government mining thus in effect led to a new form of taxation. All of this was noted in the seventeenth century by Sung Ying-hsing, the author of the celebrated technological treatise, Tien-kung K'ai-wu.91 The miners themselves were hastily recruited from migrant laborers. It was therefore difficult to control them by the principle of group responsibility, the only effective means of control that the government exercised over the local population, because they had no roots in the locality. Such a large labor force assembled in a rural area was always felt to represent a threat to security. Even the mobilization of corvee labor to carry out huge water-control projects caused some concern to officialdom. With mining labor the risks were greater. The miners got very low wages and were given no severance pay if the project failed. Being displaced persons with some skill in manufacturing weapons, they were apt to take to banditry. The reason why the Ming government had some success in operating the iron works at Tseng-hua was because they were partially under military control. The problem could not be solved by granting mining rights to the general populace. While limited numbers of iron works could be operated by private enterprise under governmental supervision, to permit the private working of silver mines was incompatible with the ideological principle

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that forebade excessive exploitation of natural resources by private individuals. Most of the silver mines, moreover, were situated in desolate areas, such as the border region between Kiangsi and Chekiang. To organize industrial labor in such isolated regions and to provide it with adequate services and support, particularly in view of the poor transport facilities of the time, was likewise beyond the capacity of the Ming entrepreneurs. In the fifteenth century silver mining was on occasion undertaken by dubious characters who had neither the capital nor the organizing ability to carry it out properly. These projects usually ended in armed rebellion by the miners. One historic lesson that the Ming government never forgot was provided in the mid fifteenth century by the case of Yeh Tsung-liu who, after failing as a mining entrepreneur, became a brigand leader in the border region between Kiangsi and Chekiang. It took the government five years, from 1444 to 1449, to put down the rebellion.92 Silver mining was banned in the area thereafter. In one of the areas affected by Yeh's rebellion, Shang-jao county, Kiangsi, the whole mining area was subsequently closed and all the mines sealed off. The inhabitants were resettled elsewhere and their farmland abandoned. The small amount of land taxes thus lost was made up by extra collections elsewhere. Stone and brick walls were built to cut off the roads leading to the area.93 Fears of a recurrence of this kind of disorder proved a constant hindrance to the government's efforts at silver mining in the sixteenth century. Several attempts were made during this period to increase the revenue from silver mining; each was short-lived and had undesirable repercussions. In the 1500s the eunuch official Liu Chin94 assigned quotas for silver production to Fukien, Szechuan, and Yunnan. When the authorities in Chekiang pleaded that the province's silver deposits were exhausted, they were then ordered to hand over 20,000 taels of silver from the funds derived from fines and commutation of punishments (see (m)) instead.95 After Liu's downfall in 1510 all the quotas were ended. Only the Yunnan silver mines apparently went on being worked; they were closed on government orders in 1521.96 In the 1550s the Chia-ching Emperor sanctioned further efforts to promote silver mining, in order to provide funds for palace construction. New mines in addition to those in Szechuan and Yunnan were opened up in Shantung, Honan, Shansi, and North Chihli. Early in 1559 it was decided that all mineral resources should be thrown open to private exploitation, on payment of 40 per cent of the production to the government.97 Before this policy had time to show results the miners in the Chekiang-Kiangsi border again turned to large-scale banditry, and in 1566 attacked and seized the city of Wu-yiian in South Chihli.98 The court therefore in 1568 renewed the previous prohibition and also placed the whole mining area under stringent surveillance. In the three provinces of Chekiang, Kiangsi,

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and South Chihli, orders were issued, and engraved on stone, prohibiting anyone from entering the area. To aid the provincial security forces to maintain the blockade, the government issued a publication containing maps showing details of pathways and mountain passes, and other strategic information." Shantung province similarly published a list of all its gold, silver, copper and tin mines, noting that all of them had been 'firmly sealed off', and that some were guarded by troops.100 The situation remained largely unchanged until the Wan-li Emperor gave permission to resume mining in the 1590s (7, m). Although there are no adequate statistics to show the government's income from mining, its upper limits can be estimated with some accuracy. In 1548 Minister of Works Wen Ming (in office, 1547-9) reported that the total income from mining in that year was 62,030 taels, a figure which may have reflected a general quota.101 Even in 1557, when mining was being encouraged, the total amount of silver made over to the government by Shantung, Shansi, Honan, Szechuan, and Yunnan provinces, and by Pao-ting prefecture in North Chihli was only 48,271 taels.102 Though the figures for the southeastern provinces are unknown they are unlikely to have exceeded this sum. In 1601 Wan-li's eunuch supervisors made sixteen deliveries of 'revenues from mining', which totalled 110,210 taels.103 The only area where government mining activities showed some signs of expansion was Yunnan. Its governor reported that whereas up to 1594 the annual income from mining was 52,722 taels it increased thereafter to 83,600 taels. In the last decade of the century when the province was engaged in a border war with the Burmese leader Nanda Bayin, most of this revenue was intercepted by provincial officials to pay for military supplies,104 and little of it was ever delivered to Peking.105 Taking this into account it is probable that the total annual revenue from government mining in the sixteenth century was less than 150,000 taels, and that for many years it was well below this. The revenues from mining were delivered to the Chieh-sheng Treasury which was controlled by the ministry of works. It was thus not subject to auditing by the ministry of revenue. (0 Fish duty (yu-k'o) In theory the fish duty was paid by fishermen. In areas where fishing was of considerable importance fish-duty stations (ho-p'o so) were established under the jurisdiction of the prefectural or county government.106 In all other areas the prefects and county magistrates collected the payments, which could be made either in grain, by-products of fishing such as glue, shipbuilding materials, or silver. In 1382 when the system was first organized 252 stations were established. In 1578 there were still 139 stations, about

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half of which were in Hukwang province; the others were located in South Chihli, Chekiang, Kiangsi, Fukien, Kwangtung, and Yunnan.107 Even in the fourteenth century the system was impractical. The fishermen, who moved about from place to place, found it easy to evade the duties and the local authorities could do little about it.108 By the late sixteenth century the fish duty was collected in a great variety of ways. In Yung-chou prefecture, Hukwang, for instance, there were six counties and one subprefecture. By 1571 only three of the counties continued to collect the duty from fishermen while the other four made it up from the land taxes.109 In general it seems certain that more counties adopted the latter approach than the former. The fish-duty stations collected fish-glue, hemp, iron, copper, varnish, fung oil, and vermilion.110 Shipbuilding materials were included on the grounds that they were essential to fishermen. The stations thus functioned rather like customs houses in the minor inland ports. Items in kind could be commuted when the ministry of works had an abundant stock of them. The accounts sometimes confused even the officials appointed to administer them. The fish-duty quota for 1578 is given in chapters 25, 36, and 200 of the Ta-Ming Hui-tien. The payments were so fragmented and the deliveries so scattered that the local officials had to be reminded to follow in detail the instructions of Hui-tien.111 The total revenue and its allocation are summarized in Table 17. On the assumption that each picul of grain on delivery was worth 0.5 taels, the total revenue from the fish duty must have been just over 58,000 taels per annum. It was thus a sizeable item, comparable to the revenue from the maritime tariff.

II ADMINISTRATIVE INCOME (j) Sale of rank (k'ai-na shih-li) The Ming sources are usually reticent concerning revenues derived from administrative incomes because of their unethical nature. Sale of official rank, for instance, was referred to ask'ai-nashih-li, literally'contributions according to precedent'. These irregular revenues were nonetheless substantial, and in the sixteenth century the government could not easily have done without them. Though the sale of official rank was frequent it was never formally institutionalized. The general practice was to grant the contributor an honorary title, such as that of imperial university student or army officer. He was thus exempted from the service levy and the exemption was sometimes extended to more than one member of his household. He usually also received the cap and belt appropriate to the purchased rank, but under

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TABLE 17. Collection offish duty, 1578 Collected in grain, combined with the land tax account, and administered by the ministry of revenue Collected in silver, delivered to the Nanking ministry of revenue Collected in silver, in lieu of shipbuilding materials, and delivered to the ministry of works Collected in paper currency and copper coins and delivered to Kuang-huei Treasury, to the value of Collected in materials useful to the ministry of works, to the value of

31,966 piculs 11,000 tls. 18,900 tls. 6,000 tls. 7,000 tls.

normal circumstances was not entitled either to a salary or an actual official post. There were exceptions to this general rule, and it was on occasion possible for clerks to obtain promotion without examination, civilians to become unpaid clerks in certain offices, qualified students to be given priority for appointment, and suspended officers to be reinstated, all on payment of a fee.112 The sale of rank was supervised either by the ministry of revenue or by the ministry of works, some co-ordination being exercised by the ministry of personnel. The revenues were used by provincial officials, frontier governors, or ministerial officials in charge of construction projects to provide emergency famine relief, obtain urgent military supplies, and more often by the late sixteenth century, to finance the building of mausoleums and palaces. The contributions were usually made in cash, but at times payment in kind in such items as horses and bricks was also accepted. The amounts varied widely. For a lesser rank 20 taels might be sufficient. Some late sixteenth-century tomb inscriptions of wealthy merchants strongly suggest that they had been forced to purchase the ranks of battalion and guard commanders,113 presumably for substantial sums. Hsu Cheng-ming in 1575 stated that the title of imperial university student cost 350 taels.114 In 1596 the contributions solicited to finance a major palace construction project were set in the range of 500 to 1,000 taels.115 There is no extant official account of the sale of rank, and it is unlikely that any was ever published. But the level of the income was occasionally revealed in both official and private papers. In 1508 it definitely exceeded 430,000 taels,116 and in 1565 Minister of Revenue Kao Yao (in office, 1560-7) reported that that year it amounted to 510,000 taels.117 Chang Chii-cheng revealed in a personal letter that between 1570 and 1580 the state obtained some 400,000 taels a year from this source. Evidently this level was maintained continuously and the proceeds counted as a regular budgetary item. Though Chang personally loathed the practice, he stressed that the revenue it yielded was indispensable.118 The total amount of

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400,000 taels a year was in fact larger than any of the revenues derived from industry and commerce. These benefits were obtained at a price. Few of the so-called imperial university students actually attended the university. They merely took advantage of their official status to obstruct justice and evade taxes in their home areas (3, i). Towards the end of the dynasty there might be as many as 1,000 of these imperial university students in a prosperous county, and local administration was considerably hampered by them.119 By this time it was common for unqualified persons to purchase official posts, clerkships, etc. in provincial and local governments. They obtained these sinecures, such as that of 'honorary seal custodian' (chih-yiri), or 'unpaid supernumerary' (cWen-cKai), purely for the sake of the opportunities of illicit income. (k) Ecclesiastical license fees (seng-tao tu-fieh) In the early years of the dynasty the collection of registration fees from Buddhist monks and Taoist priests was not regarded primarily as a source of government revenue. In the Hung-wu period, registration took place once every three years, between 300 and 500 clerics being licensed on each occasion. During the Yung-lo period, licenses were granted once every five years to as many as 10,000 persons at a time. Thereafter, up to the mid fifteenth century the interval was set at ten years,120 but, after the 1460s, the proceeding became irregular and was generally resorted to by the government to provide emergency funds for famine relief. The ministry of rites prepared blank certificates and distributed them to the provinces and prefectures. Purchase of these, usually for a fee of 12 taels of silver, entitled the applicant to registration as a cleric without taking the usual religious examinations. In the year 1485 alone it is said that 70,000 certificates were offered for sale,121 though the revenue obtained thereby is unknown. When the government was particularly pressed for funds, the price of each certificate was reduced to 7 or 8 taels. On the other hand the prospective purchaser might pay as much as 100 taels to the intermediaries in the transaction,122 in his anxiety to acquire the ecclesiastical status that automatically entitled him to exemption from the service levy.123 There are practically no records of the sale of ecclesiastical license certificates in the sixteenth century, but Chang Chii-cheng in a memorial of 1578 confirms that the practice continued.124 In 1508 the certificates were twice offered for sale and on one of these occasions the sale of 15,000 certificates brought in 130,000 taels.125 If this was typical then the practice probably contributed at least 200,000 taels a year to state finances. It seems that the only time it was ever suspended was in 1585 when there were genuine fears that Buddhist influence was becoming too strong for

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comfort. The move was made by Minister of Revenue Wang Ling (in office, 1583-5) who obtained the cooperation of the ministry of rites in checking the expansion of religious establishments.126 The license fees and the revenues they yielded came mainly under the jurisdiction of the ministry of revenue, though the revenue was occasionally used by the ministry of rites for its own administrative expenses.127 (/) Payment for 'rationed salt' (hu-k'ou shih-yen-chiao) This item has already been described (3, iv). In the sixteenth century the category of 'rationed salt' was abolished and the collection became a poll tax or a surtax on the land taxes. The revenue was in general shared between the central and local government.128 Many Ming officials had qualms of conscience about collecting this item, but in 1509 a proposal by the eunuch Liu Chin that it should be eliminated altogether was defeated by the ministry of revenue.129 The accounts of 1578 show that the imperial government still in theory derived 80,555 taels of silver from it, though in practice only about half that amount was actually delivered in silver to the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury,130 while the rest was paid to the Kuang-huei Treasury in copper coins and paper currency. The accounts of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury for 1580 indicate that in that year it received 46,897 taels of silver from this source.131 Taking into consideration the fact that some of this revenue was appropriated by the provincial governments, the total annual value of this item in the late sixteenth century was probably something like 160,000 taels. (m) Fines and commutation ofpunishments (tsang-fa) The term tsang-fa in the sixteenth century carried a great variety of meanings and touched on many aspects of Ming administration and jurisprudence. Tsang literally means booty or stolen goods, while fa means a fine or an act of forfeiture. The term can be better understood through illustration. When a man in the sixteenth century was indicted for embezzling public funds, the amount he had stolen and had to make up was not necessarily assessed on the basis of the evidence, but by an administrative decision, and the recovery of the funds might well entail confiscation of his property. The concepts of tsang and fa were thus both involved. When for instance it was discovered that a clerk who had been in charge of a treasury for four or five years had on one occasion stolen 20 taels of silver, it was held to be quite justifiable, according to contemporary legal practice, to force him to return a sum of 1,000 taels, as it was likely that his thefts had been going on throughout his period of duty. If the amount could not be made up by confiscation of his personal property, the assets

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of his relatives and close friends might also be seized, on the theory that the embezzler had transferred the stolen goods to his associates. An outstanding sixteenth-century case was the confiscation in 1565 of the property of Grand-Secretary Yen Sung, which, as was pointed out by a censor-in-chief twenty years later, 'poisoned the whole of Kiangsi province'.132 Even in ordinary cases the fine had many implications. It naturally covered commutation of punishment, but not quite in the conventional Western sense of the term. One point to be noted is that the government made little distinction between civil and criminal cases. All cases coming to trial involved some possibility of criminal proceedings. Private suits for damages, when sustained, usually ended with public proceedings against the defendant. Even in what might be considered strictly criminal cases, proceedings were sometimes initiated by a plaintiff who in effect assumed the modern role of public prosecutor. If he lost the case he was given the same type of punishment that would otherwise have been meted out to the defendant. For instance, a man who unjustly accused someone else of a crime that carried the death penalty and failed to sustain the charge was to be exiled over 3,000 li from his home district.133 Under this system a formal complaint, once lodged, could not be withdrawn, and in theory no case could be settled out of court. The only way for the plaintiff to stop the proceedings was to come forward himself and confess that the charge was false. Whether the punishment was given to the defendant or to the plaintiff, it could in most cases be commuted to a fine.134 For minor offences the fines were light enough to appear more like court expenses in the Western system. One of the major purposes was to discourage lawsuits of any kind. Strictly speaking the fines resulting from lawsuits should be called shu-huan (redeeming payments), but they were also covered by the general term tsang-fa. Another practice established during the early years of the dynasty was that the stationery required by government offices was supplied by persons involved in court cases. By the sixteenth century, the stationery was actually procured with funds derived from other sources, but the collection from prisoners, defendants, and plaintiffs in pending cases was never completely discontinued. The payment, known as chih-shu (paper redemption), became another component of tsang-fa.135 Fines also included penalties for administrative shortcomings and failures. The compilation of the Yellow Book always led to penalties of this kind. Though deliberate falsehood in the population data was not easily detected by the higher offices, statistical inconsistencies were constantly being uncovered. As the entire set of books for the county or prefecture was invalidated by this kind of technical error a new set had to be submitted at considerable expense (2, n). Penalties were imposed on the offices or the districts guilty of negligence in order to pay the extra costs, yet the funds

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thus collected were not actually used to pay for the preparation of the second set of books but delivered instead to the higher offices and added to the tsang-fa accounts.136 In the late sixteenth century the local officials applied the same method in collecting fines. In some districts fines were collected in advance even before any penalty was announced. It was quite common for a village community or a tax agent to be 'fined' two reams of paper though no error had been committed.137 In brief, the fiscal term tsang-fa covered many different types of incomes, both regular and irregular, judicial and executive, payments by individuals and by groups, and both huge and trifling sums. In the sixteenth century practically all officials with any financial responsibility, including governors, prefects, county magistrates, surveillance commissioners, and some army officers could impose such fines. In 1593 Minister of Justice Sun P'i-yang (in office, 1592-3) revealed that there were twenty-eight methods of collecting fines, some legal and some illegal, but all justified by one precedent or another.138 Since it was impossible to audit the accounts properly the matter of legality was only relative. The real issue was whether the collection was excessive or moderate. Even in the early years of the century the central government required provincial officials to surrender some of the revenue derived from this source. The demands made by the eunuch Liu Chin in Chekiang in 1509 (see above, (/*)) are an example. In 1564 an imperial decree further ordered that all offices deliver 40 per cent of the tsang-fa funds to the ministry of revenue and 40 per cent to the ministry of works, and that the remaining 20 per cent be kept by the local government to provide for famine relief.139 Apparently there was a quota system. In 1567 the tsang-fa funds previously administered by the ministry of justice were likewise turned over to the ministry of revenue.140 The accounts of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury for 1580 show that it received 128,617 taels of silver from various agencies.141 The total collection across the empire should thus have exceeded 300,000 taels. In 1569 Ho Liang-chiin estimated that the entire revenue would purchase 700,000 piculs of unhusked rice,142 which would also put it at between 200,000 and 300,000 taels. The 20 per cent of the revenue retained locally was not in fact used to provide for famine relief, as was admitted in a conversation between Chang Chii-cheng and the Wan-li Emperor in 1581.143 Until the imposition of melting charges on tax payments provided local officials with a new source of personal income, tsang-fa undoubtedly remained essential to their support. Even so, not all these funds were pocketed by the officials. Some utilized the surplus to cover any fiscal deficits of their offices, while others used it to finance projects of public benefit, such as the publication of educational materials.144

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Miscellaneous incomes (n) Profits from minting {chu-cKien li-yuri)

The question of minting has already been discussed at some length (2, iv). In the late sixteenth century it was continually asserted that the purpose of the operation was to make a profit, and that when this failed to materialize it was suspended. The data are by no means complete but on the basis of several different descriptions, the general situation can be summarized as follows: The production of 10,000 copper coins was reckoned to cost between 14.4 and 14.9 taels of silver. This did not include labor costs because the workers were not specially hired but were permanently on payroll. The market value of the coins in Peking fluctuated between 450 and 700 to the tael. The latter rate approximated to the production cost. Government-minted coins were released at the rate of 500 or 550 to the tael, making a profit of between 25 and 40 per cent of the original investment. This profit was not converted to silver. Instead the copper cash were used immediately to pay government construction-workers and some official salaries, thus directly reducing the government's financial obligations.145 Little is known about the ministry operation of 1576, in which 100 million coins were produced, and the copper-silver exchange rate cannot be ascertained.146 The records of the 1596 operation are more complete. On this occasion the mint produced 82,800,000 coins at a profit of approximately 30,000 taels of silver but as the rate of exchange became unfavorable thereafter, no further production was undertaken.147 Conditions in the provinces, as opposed to those at the capital, varied widely. The profit margins were determined by local copper prices and the market-acceptability of the coins minted. The Huai-an prefectural mint in South Chihli made a 40 per cent profit in the early seventeenth century,148 and the Shansi provincial mint is reported to have made an annual profit of about 100 per cent in the 1620s. Its total profit over a decade was 117,090 taels of silver.149 Some of the large profits of provincial mints were obtained by squeezing the merchants. In a memorial written about 1580 it was revealed that the officials forced the local merchants to supply them with materials at below cost-price and subsequently forced another group of merchants to accept the minted coins at a rate higher than the market exchange rate.150 (o) The ' common post money' (chuang-p'eng yin) The common post money originated from the principle that army personnel should accept financial responsibility for the equipment loaned to them. Frontier soldiers had to keep their horses fit for service over a period of fifteen years. If a horse died before this, unless killed in battle, its rider and his officers were responsible for making good the loss on the basis of the

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number of years it had yet to serve. Since individual soldiers were unlikely to have sufficient savings to pay for the losses, the army units deducted part of their pay in advance to provide a sinking fund, rather like collecting group insurance premiums. Sometimes the officers also made contributions to the fund. This in the fifteenth century gradually evolved into the institution known as the common post money.151 Around 1477 it was officially recognized by the government and soon fixed rates were prescribed for its collection.152 In 1492 a censorial official reported that the general practice was now for each cavalryman to contribute 0.3 taels of silver half-yearly.153 By the end of the fifteenth century it was said that the common post money was being mismanaged and was used only to provide extra funds for the senior officers. In 1506 the ministry of war secured the emperor's permission to transfer the collected funds to the Ch'ang-yin Treasury. It thus came under the control of the court of imperial stud, which was responsible for replacing the horses.154 Thereafter the common post money became a regular income of the ministry.155 In the sixteenth century this revenue was derived from another source besides the original one, namely the income from small-scale farming projects developed by the various frontier commands.156 The central government was thus taxing the army posts while its main function was to see them properly supplied. The common post money was mixed with the other revenues of the ministry of war and no separate account has been formed for it. In 1568 the Shansi office of the court of imperial stud indicated that its annual collection was 19,060 taels.157 If the other commands collected similar amounts the total must have been in the region of 50,000 taels. Owing to increasing corruption in frontier-army administration in the late sixteenth century, it is unlikely that the actual collection ever came up to the desired level. One report reveals that even in 1595 at some army posts the cavalrymen were still required to pay for their lost mounts.158 (p) Incense fees at national shrines (hsiang-shui) Incense fees were always included in the accounts of the central government, presumably because the income, though small, was reliable and therefore valued. The two major shrines constantly mentioned in the sources, namely T'ai-shan in Shantung and T'ai-ho-shan in Hukwang, were nominally under the control of the ministry of rites, which was responsible for the maintenance of the temples there. In practice the fees were collected by the eunuchs residing at the shrines. At T'ai-ho-shan the eunuch custodians delegated the collection to the army officers on guard at the shrine. From contemporary descriptions it seems that the collection from worshippers at these two places must have exceeded 40,000 taels a year.

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The collectors at T'ai-ho-shan, who in effect operated under a tax-farming system, delivered 'several thousand taels' a year to the nearby Chiin-chou battalion as pay for the soldiers. This amount was said to constitute only 40 per cent of the total collection.159 The collectors at T'ai-shan, even after delivering an unspecified amount to the provincial government, still offered to make an annual payment to the ministry of revenue's T'ai-ts'ang Treasury. Throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries this was always listed as 20,000 taels.160

Ill CASH INCOME FROM COMMUTATION OF SERVICES AND SUPPLIES (q) 'Speed-the-delivery money9 (cWing-chi yiri) The commutation of services and supplies has already been discussed at some length and needs no elaborate explanation here. From the distribution of funds it has been shown how the various government agencies retained their earlier sources of income, originally paid in kind, and simply converted them into separate cash accounts. This system of departmental management of revenues lasted throughout the dynasty. Another significant item handled by the ministry of revenue, besides the commuted portions of the regular land taxes and the service levy, was the ctting-chi yin. The term cKing-chi literally means 'lightly handed-over'. That portion of the land taxes designated as tribute grain bore heavy surcharges, partly in order to pay the cost of transporting it through locks on its way to Peking. In the early fifteenth century these surcharges, as well as the tax payments proper, were paid exclusively in grain. From 1477 part of the surcharges was commuted to silver, the total collection from the entire consignment of tribute grain being 450,000 taels which was still used to pay for the transfers.161 This arrangement accorded with the maxim: 'When the load is lightly handed-over, the goods will easily reach the destination.' But the silver payment, hereafter referred to as the 'speed-thedelivery money', was not handed over by the taxpayers to the soldiers on transportation duty, but was collected as a lump sum by the various counties and delivered to Huai-an, where the Grand Canal commissioner distributed it to the transportation corps as the grain boats came through the city. There were probably several reasons for this procedure. If the soldiers received silver payments directly from the taxpayers they might argue over the weight and quality of the silver and might also be tempted to spend the money before it was needed. Making the payment at Huai-an on the other hand would offer an additional incentive for the grain boats to arrive there early. As things actually turned out the procedure merely made it easy for the

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government to intercept the funds and use them for other purposes, for by the early sixteenth century the cash payments were beginning to be withheld from the soldiers. How this started is not at all clear. The official explanation was that because the Grand Canal had by then been immensely improved, the cumbersome procedure of transferring the grain through locks was no longer necessary and the funds thus saved could be used instead for the maintenance of the waterway.162 In practice the funds were very seldom spent on canal maintenance. One private account of around 1511-12 indicates that many senior army officers in command of the grain fleet were pocketing the speed-the-delivery money due to the soldiers and that influential persons in Peking were also involved in the scandal. Under the threat of investigation, one of the guilty officers surrendered some of the proceeds to the government, declaring them to be surplus funds. Others followed suit. Soon this practice of handing over the cash to the treasury became official.163 In 1522 the commander-in-chief of the transportation corps appealed on behalf of the soldiers for the payment to be distributed as before. As it had by now become customary procedure for the government to divert the funds to itself, the request was refused by the ministry of revenue.164 Throughout the sixteenth century the general practice was for 70 per cent of the speed-the-delivery money to be surrendered to the government and the remaining portions to be distributed to the soldiers.165 In 1558 when military expenditures reached a high point, half of the speed-the-delivery money was submitted to the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury.166 In the late sixteenth century when the situation was more settled, the greater portion of the funds was allocated to pay the administrative expenses of the granaries around Peking. The granary superintendent reported in 1579 that the six major depots under his jurisdiction had a combined expenses budget of 218,971 taels. Most of the money was spent on the short-distance haulage of grain beyond the terminal of the Grand Canal. In the same report he said that he expected an annual surplus of 119,088 taels from the speed-the-delivery money, which would be handed over to the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury.167 (r) Artisan payment (chiang-yin) The artisans working for the manufacturing and processing plants in the palace compound included carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, leatherworkers, etc. In accordance with the regulations laid down in the early years of the dynasty, these duties were performed without pay by persons registered as artisans in the respective trades, who in this way fulfilled their service obligations. Some of them reported for duty annually, and others at two, three, four, or five-year intervals. The service, performed in Nanking

254

Miscellaneous incomes

or Peking, usually lasted for three months. Travel expenses were provided by the workers themselves. Though the government paid them no wages, food allowances were provided. After 1562 they were not permitted to answer the service calls in person, and instead all their service obligations were commuted to silver in the form of one annual payment. According to the 1578 account there were 142,486 such statutory laborers throughout the empire.168 Their payments, termed 'artisan payments', were collected by the local officials and delivered in lump sums to the Chieh-sheng Treasury which was controlled by the ministry of works. The total revenue was fixed at 64,117 taels. Some districts, as has already been noted, simply added these payments to the general service levy accounts instead of collecting them from individual artisans (3, iv). The same procedure was applied to other government establishments outside the two capitals, such as the charcoal factory at I-chou and the shipyard at Ch'ing-chiang-p'u (2, i), except that in these cases the payments were delivered directly to the manufacturing establishments without being handled by the ministry.169 In theory at least the wages of the hired workers in government establishments were paid by the registered artisans in the same trades.

0) Reeds tax ilu-k'd) The reeds tax provided an annual income of 25,500 taels of silver. It was administered by the Nanking ministry of works and collected on agricultural land along the Yangtze river in Hukwang, Kiangsi, and South Chihli. In the fifteenth century the collection was made in kind, the reeds being used as fuel. In the sixteenth century the payments were commuted to silver and persons who took possession of the waste land on the river banks and islands thus became rate-payers. Though the collection was in effect another variant of the land taxes, the acreage and the revenues involved were not integrated with the regular land taxes. The ownership of the land was left ambiguous, being neither private nor public. Furthermore, owing to topographical changes the original assessment of acreage did not correspond to conditions in the late sixteenth century. As by that time large tracts of reed-growing land had already been converted to rice paddies there was a general feeling that the rate-payers were under-taxed.170 In 1597 the Wan-li Emperor arbitrarily ordered that the quota be raised to 200,000 taels.171 As it is unlikely that the payments of individual land holders could have been suddenly increased by eight times, it is probable the county magistrates had to raise the funds by reallocation of existing revenues.

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255

(t) Supplies to the four bureaus (ssu-ssu liao-chia) This item, which provided 500,000 taels a year, was the largest account administered by the ministry of works. The collection covered all the provinces and prefectures except Kwangsi, Yunnan, and Kweichow (3, iv). In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the ministry was authorized to make further collections in the name of 'river-control expenses' (ho-kung) and 'contributions to construction projects' (chukung).112 These two items were regarded as irregular. The former was assessed as a surtax on the land taxes in the northern provinces, while the latter was a percentage added to many existing revenues. (u) Horse payment (ma-chia) This item has already been described in some detail (3, n), and was the largest account administered by the ministry of war. A report of 1588 put it at approximately 370,000 taels,173 while in 1629 the collection quota was stated to be 429,537 taels.174 (v) Commutation oj'capitalguardduty (pan-chun che-yin); (w) Commutation of personal attendance (tsao-li che-yin); (x) Savings from postal service (i-cKuan yin). These three items, administered by the ministry of war, were all insignificant in the sixteenth century. The first two simply had little growth potential while the last item, though it could have been of some importance, was never integrated into any general account. Capital guard duty was performed by soldiers from Shantung and Honan. In theory they were to reinforce Peking's defenses in the spring and autumn when nomad incursions were most likely. In reality as soon as the soldiers reported for duty they were set to work on construction projects. Payment was sometimes accepted in lieu of personal service. In 1540, for instance, 46,000 soldiers failed to report for duty; they were ordered to pay a 'fine' of 1.2 taels each. The total payment should therefore have been 55,200 taels.175 Later in the century discipline seems to have been somewhat tightened up but the commuted payment remained a regular item in the ministry's accounts. Those subject to tsao-li, or personal attendance, were no longer required to serve in person from the fifteenth century onwards and the commuted payments were used to supplement official salaries in the capital (2, i). Since in 1487 the total tsao-li quota was already 7,342 men, it is probable that by the sixteenth century the number had reached at least 10,000.176 At 12 taels per man per year, the total revenue should have been no less than 120,000 taels. Most of it, however, was distributed directly to the officials. The only revenue of this type that

256

Miscellaneous incomes

actually accrued to the ministry of war was savings on salaries from unfilled official posts, which was a variable item and never a significantly large sum. Savings from the postal service, on the other hand, were quite substantial. When Chang Chii-cheng insisted on a reduction of postal services in the 1570s most districts complied, reporting that the saving on expenses would result in their postal-service collections being reduced (7, iv).177 All the evidence indicates that the reductions were never made and that in most places collection at the previous rate continued. These savings must have constituted the greater part of the treasury reserves in the provinces. In 1598 when the central government ordered the provinces to deliver their reserves to the capital, they were described as ' savings from postal services accumulated since the early Wan-li period'. 178 The actual amount cannot be ascertained. (y) Calendar paper (li-jih); (z) Kitchen service fees due to court of imperial entertainments (kuang-lu-ssu cKu-liao) Three special agencies subordinate to the ministry of rites maintained separate expense accounts which were never combined with other revenues. These were for the botanic and mineral drugs of the imperial academy of medicine, calendar paper for the imperial bureau of astronomy, and kitchen service expenses for the court of imperial entertainments. These items appeared in the regular fiscal reports, along with the revenues from the li-chia account in all the provinces and prefectures. Only a small quantity of the drugs levied from the general population was commuted to monetary payments in the sixteenth century. The drugs amounted in total to around 80 short tons, but their cash value was never worked out, though many local accounts listed the cost of their shares of contribution. Even in the fifteenth century the imperial calendar was printed in over a half million copies, but the cost of the paper could not have been very large either, compared with that of other supplies.179 The most significant item was the kitchen expenses. In the fifteenth century the court of imperial entertainments employed between 7,000 and 9,000 cooks (2, i). As it had to be able to serve daily banquets for 15,000 persons and also distribute wine and meat in large quantities,180 its expenses became a source of constant concern to the government. The court obtained rice, salt, wine, and utensils from government depots and its cooks were paid by the ministry of revenue, usually in grain. In addition it received a small amount of cash from the eunuchs in charge of the city gates of Peking (see above, (&)). Nonetheless its annual cash expenses were still enormous, between 260,000 and 400,000 taels in the late sixteenth century.181 These expenses were supplied by the provincial and local governments and remained a separate item of revenue. It was larger than that from mining and the maritime tariff combined.

6, IV Non-cash income

257

IV NON-CASH INCOME

(aa) Income from the tea and horse trade (ch'a-ma) Though the frontier trade whereby the Chinese obtained horses from the nomadic tribes in exchange for tea remains a topic of considerable interest, and its investigation will undoubtedly yield much useful information on sino-barbarian relations, it must be pointed out that the fiscal importance of the trade was small. Its contributions to the government's finances, while of some significance, was by no means crucial. There is no doubt that in the sixteenth century the trade was conducted almost entirely for the sake of the revenues it provided. As has recently been pointed out by Morris Rossabi, there is little substance to the claim that the Ming maintained control over the tea trade as a means of pacifying the nomads on their western borders.182 The trade was bound up with the Ming tea monopoly. At the founding of the dynasty, tea was put under strict government control on the same lines as the salt monopoly with a similar system of yin licenses and checking stations (p'i-yen-so) encircling the principal areas of production. The monopoly on tea was, however, much less effective than that on salt, because its production was too scattered to enable the government to exercise direct control. According to the system devised during the Hung-wu period tea was divided into two categories. That grown in all provinces other than Shensi and Szechuan was circulated for domestic consumption, but had to be accompanied by a yin license. In Shensi and Szechuan the government obtained tea from three sources. A certain number of tea plantations were government owned, and worked by army personnel. The authorities took 80 per cent of the tea produced while the other 20 per cent was used to pay the soldiers. On all private production of tea a 10 per cent tax was levied in kind. The government also purchased more tea from private growers, paying for it in paper currency. Any tea left over after this could be sold on the market on the purchase of a yin license as in other provinces. Furthermore, no household was allowed to store more than a month's supply of tea.183 The government by these means obtained 1 million catties of tea a year in Szechuan and 26,862 catties in Shensi. All of it was traded for horses with the nomadic peoples on the western frontier, generally referred to by Ming officials as 'fan tribes'. In the sixteenth centuryfifty-sevenof them were listed as participating in the trade. They seem to have represented many different ethnic groups184 but most of them were probably either Tibetans or Turkish-speaking peoples from Kokonor and the present Sinkiang. In the early years of the dynasty they were tributary vassals of the Ming and were issued with golden tokens to use as credentials at the 9

HTF

258

Miscellaneous incomes

trading posts. In theory, trade for the tribal chiefs was both a privilege and an obligation. The Ming government established four tea and horse-trading offices {cWa-ma-ssu) in Shensi and one in Szechuan, and at one time managed to obtain more than 13,000 horses annually through the system.185 The greatest difficulty in the early years of the system was transportation. While most of the tea was produced in Szechuan, the trade was carried on in north Shensi. In Ch'eng-tu 210,000 catties of tea had to be destroyed in 1425 as it had rotted while awaiting transportation to the frontier.186 After 1435 the government experimented with the so-called k'ai-chung method, which bore some resemblance to the barter system adopted by the salt monopoly (5, i). In this case the merchant was not required to invest any capital apart from the cost of transportation. At Ch'eng-tu he received 100 catties of tea from the government warehouse and on delivering it to one of the trading offices in Shensi was given a promissory note for about 2,000 catties of salt, cashable in the Liang-Huai or Liang-che region.187 This scheme appears to have had no great success. Sometimes the tea was transported northwards by the army188 but owing to the rapid decline of the wei-so system this solution was equally ineffective. The cost of transport over difficult mountainous terrain in any case made the whole operation uneconomical. In the late fifteenth century the government virtually lost control over the trade and its procurement of tea declined substantially. No attempt was made to tax the tea that was being grown in increasing quantities by the population of Shensi, and contraband trade flourished.189 In 1490, however, the government adopted a different approach to the tea and horse trade. There was thenceforth less emphasis on government production and procurement, and an attempt was made instead to tax the tea merchants in the frontier region. Private traders were encouraged to purchase tea from the producers, and the government issued them with road passes. On arriving at the trading offices the merchants surrendered 40 per cent of their stock to the government and kept the rest for private trade. This procedure, also somewhat confusingly known as k'ai-chung, was put into effect only sporadically. Owing to the lack of a capable administrator in Shensi and the general decline in leadership at Peking, the operations of the frontier trading-posts went on declining for at least another decade.190 The revival of the official tea and horse trade was said to be due to the efforts of Yang I-ch'ing (1454-1530, minister of revenue, 1510-11), who arrived in Shensi early in 1503 as vice-censor-in-chief and superintendent of horse administration. From that position he rose to be governor of the province and later governor-general. He remained in Shensi for eight years, being recalled to Peking in 1510. Yang put an end to the contraband trade, increased the taxes on the local tea plantations, and required the tribal leaders to resume the trade as before. Yet the basic policy as laid down in

6, IV Non-cash income

259

1490 was still to tax the merchants. In his report to the emperor in 1504 Yang described his plan as follows: Merchants were authorized to purchase tea from producers and then deliver their entire stock to the trading offices. From the government sale one-third of the proceeds was paid to the merchants while the other two-thirds were appropriated outright by the trading offices.191 This official tax rate of 66.6 per cent was the highest ever recorded in Ming times, and no doubt met with some resistance from the merchants. After 1506 the amount to be surrendered to the government was reduced to 50 per cent and the merchants were allowed to sell the other 50 per cent freely in the frontier region.192 The purpose of the high tax rate was not simply to accumulate more tea but, as Yang admitted in his memorials, to increase the value of the commodity as well. This could only be achieved by limiting the quantity for export and deliberately adding to the cost of the commodity. His solution essentially was to relax some of the restrictions on the domestic market and tighten the controls on the frontier. The trading offices operated rather like customs houses and the 50 per cent taxation was in reality an export duty, which took the form of a protective tariff in reverse. Nothing is known of the private trade of the tea merchants; presumably they too bartered tea for horses, as the sources insist that no other merchandise of any significance could be obtained from the barbarians,193 while constantly mentioning 'contraband horses'.194 Since they paid no duty on their imports the merchants should have been able to make a profit even after surrendering half of their stock to the government. Yang I-ch'ing's regulations, with few modifications, survived to the end of the century. In 1571 a scheme was initiated whereby each tea merchant divided his stock into two parts and the trading office drew lots for which part it would take.195 The tea and horse trade in the sixteenth century thus required hardly any investment by the government. In 1507 Yang revealed that he had accumulated some 450,000 catties of tea at the trading-posts, sufficient for two years' trade.196 Though the total tax levied on the tea plantations in Shensi had grown from 26,289 catties in 1503 to 37,195 catties in 1505, and 50,965 catties in 1506,197 the amount was small; it is clear that the great part of Yang's stock must have come from taxation on the tea merchants. Trade with the frontier tribesmen was conducted once every three years. The horses were valued in three different categories but the average rate of exchange remained about 70 catties of tea per horse, much the same as in the Hung-wu reign. In the early part of the sixteenth century the government obtained between 3,000 and 4,000 horses a year by these means.198 Despite the unsettled situation on the northwest frontier, the trade actually expanded in the late sixteenth century. The three-year trading cycle was abandoned in 1536 and thereafter official trading was conducted on an 9-2

260

Miscellaneous incomes

annual basis, starting in the sixth lunar month and going on over a period of about sixty days.199 Throughout most of the century there appears to have been no shortage of tea. Rather, there were constant complaints from officials that too much tea was being stockpiled. The volume of private trade also increased and contraband dealing was never totally eliminated. Nonetheless even at this time, according to a memorial of 1571, the trading offices still procured 6,500 horses a year.200 From an entry in a local gazetteer it appears that from 1588 the annual number was set at 12,000 horses. From about 1600, the level began to decline and in the seventeenth century the trade was drastically reduced to 3,040 horses each year.201 There were probably a number of reasons for this. Rossabi, who feels that the decline set in rather earlier, points out that in the early sixteenth century the horsetrading tribes received harsh treatment from the Mongol chief I-pu-la and the Moslem leader Mansur, and that their trading activities could have been permanently affected by this.202 The eunuch tax-collectors dispatched by Wan-li in the 1590s could also have affected the situation, as their excesses are known to have impeded inter-provincial commerce. The decline of the horse trade on the frontier undoubtedly contributed to the economic depression of Shensi in the early seventeenth century. The trade in its heyday was extremely complex, involving officials, merchants, tea growers, army officers and soldiers, and its importance cannot be measured simply by the figures in the official records. In 1589 the surveillance commissioner of Shensi stressed that it was essential to the province's local economy.203 From an overall view of trading policy in the sixteenth century it can be seen that the major problems were the over-supply of tea on the domestic market, the rather limited outlet on the frontier, the fixed rates for official trading, and much profiteering by officials at all levels. In the last quarter of the century, Hukwang replaced Shensi as the major supplier of tea. In 1577 Altan Khan's request that the northern frontier be opened for trading in tea was refused by the Ming court on the grounds that once the Mongols had direct access to Chinese tea they would use it as a means of exerting control over the western tribes. Such a link between northern and western barbarians would hardly be in Chinese interests. Over-production in a non-expandable market forced the ministry of revenue in 1585 to consent to reduce the tax rate at the trading offices to 30 percent.204 As late as 1595 the regional inspector in Shensi still requested that Hukwang tea be excluded from the frontier trade on the grounds that it was of inferior quality.205 The real reason for his request, however, was probably the widespread local resentment against the Hukwang product, the lower price of which gave it an advantage in an overcrowded market.206 In the end a compromise solution was adopted; Hukwang tea was not banned but an additional inspection station was set up to control its quality.

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261

In the 1570s and 1580s the government obtained some 10,000 horses each year through the trading stations. As each horse on average was valued at 10 taels of silver the annual revenue from the trade was worth 10,000 taels. This was a sizeable item yet its financial significance should not be exaggerated. The horses were delivered exclusively to four army posts, namely Ning-hsia, Ku-yun, Yen-sui, and Kan-su,* though some studs were retained at the pasturage office (Yuan-ma ssu) in Shensi for breeding purposes.207 In the late sixteenth century this office was reported to be extremely inefficient, and it apparently had not managed to increase the number of horses in its charge. At most it simply served as an intermediate collecting agency before the horses were assigned to the army commands. Its operations had no connection with the court of imperial stud in Peking. Nor should the tea and horse trade be confused with the 'horse markets' (ma-shih) on the northern frontier and in Manchuria. The latter were operated by the frontier governors-general with funds provided by the court of imperial stud. They purchased goods attractive to the local tribesmen and traded them for horses. This had nothing to do with taxation,208 and in the late sixteenth century the operation usually cost the government about 300,000 taels a year. In 1594, in preparation for a campaign against Hideyoshi in Korea, the central government sent 550,000 taels to the Liaotung command alone for purchasing horses.209 In other words this was simply an item of expenditure. As the tea grown in Szechuan was not traded on the north-western frontier, its contribution to governmental finance was of limited value. It was officially reported in 1542 that taxable tea in Szechuan amounted to more than 5,000,000 catties, quite apart from that produced in the remaining government plantations, yet in 1578 the provincial officials altogether collected less than 20,000 taels of silver in tea revenues. Of that amount 14,367 taels were delivered to the Nanking ministry of revenue and between 1,500 and 2,000 taels to Shensi province. The rest of the funds, together with 158,859 catties of tea collected in kind, was retained in the province to subsidise local administration.210 In the middle of the century, the governor of Szechuan admitted that there was much trade going on in contraband tea.211 In all other provinces taxation on tea became virtually a dead letter. Most of them still adhered to their regional tax quotas assessed in paper currency, and when these were converted into silver at the sixteenthcentury rate, the total collection was reduced to a derisory sum; in Yunnan 17 taels, and in Chekiang about 6 taels.212 One contemporary writer summarized the situation as follows: 'Tea growers in the interior are unaware * Kan-su here was the name of one of the northern army posts, not to be confused with the later Kansu province. Similarly, the Shan-si command was not identical with Shansi province.

262

Miscellaneous incomes

that the commodity is under governmental monopoly. Even some fiscal officials do not know that such a law exists.'213 (bb) Other items not listed The total value of goods delivered in kind to the imperial capital, as has already been mentioned, was between 4 and 5 million taels of silver per year (3, in). Essentially they represented different forms of tax payments. For instance items which usually came in large quantities, such as cotton cloth, silk fabrics and wax, were derived from diverse sources, partly from commutation of the regular land taxes, partly from li-chia requisitions, and partly from cash purchase by the government. These supplies should more appropriately be listed on the warehouse inventory rather than the tax ledger, for rather than increasing units of taxation, they actually used up some of them. They should in fact be regarded as expenditures but owing to the inconsistency of the accounting system were sometimes listed as revenues.

V SUMMARY OF MISCELLANEOUS INCOMES Estimated revenues

The estimated revenues from the miscellaneous incomes are presented in Table 18, with the figures rounded up to the nearest thousand taels of silver. Items from which the annual revenue is unknown are omitted, but this is unlikely to affect the overall picture significantly. In terms of the actual tax burden on the population, it is more likely that these figures are under-estimates. There was certainly a discrepancy between reportedfiguresand actual collection, owing to duplication of tax payments, unauthorized collections, and disbursement of tax funds by the collecting offices prior to official delivery and auditing. On the other hand, in terms of actual state income, the figures may well be over-estimates, especially in the case of revenues from industrial and commercial sources. It is known that the collection of inland customs duties at times did not come up to the specified quota, and government mining was actually suspended for a number of years. Only in the closing years of the sixteenth century did the ministry of revenue make a serious attempt to enforce the stamp tax on real estate transfers. The table is by no means statistically consistent in that it includes both general estimates and documented figures, funds retained by the provincial officials as well as those delivered to the imperial government. The grand total, however, represents an estimate of the maximum amount of revenue that the government expected to obtain from this wide variety of sources.

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263

18. Estimated annual proceeds from miscellaneous incomes, ca. 1570-90 (tls. of silver)

TABLE

Revenues from commerce and industry Inland customs duties 340,000 Local business tax 150,000 Maritime tariff 70,000 Stamp tax on real estate 100,000 transfers Forest produce levy 75,000 Government mining 150,000 Fish duty 58,000 943,000 Sub-total Commutation of services and Speed-the-delivery money Artisan payment Reeds tax Supplies to the four bureaus Horse payment Kitchen service fees Sub-total

Administrative incomes Sale of rank Ecclesiastical license fees Payment for * rationed salt' Commutation of punishment and fines Common post money Incense fees

400,000 200,000 160,000 300,000 50,000 40,000

Sub-total

1,150,000

Grand total

3,780,000

supplies 338,000 64,000 25,000 500,000 400,000 360,000

1,687,000

NOTE: the items under the land taxes, the service levy, and the salt revenue are not included.

Critical observations on miscellaneous sources of income The general feeling that when taxable items proliferate, the level of taxation must be high does not hold true for the collection of miscellaneous incomes under the Ming. Though the items were numerous the total revenue that they produced was comparatively small. The 3.78 million taels of silver, which was the maximum that could be collected even under the most ideal conditions, seems unrealistically low when considered in terms of the fiscal requirements of the empire. As an illustration, between 1570 and 1590 many army recruits were paid 18 taels of silver a year.214 The total revenue from the miscellaneous incomes, even if collected in full, was only sufficient to pay the basic wages of 210,000 such recruits, quite apart from their clothing and equipment and the operating expenses of military commands. Considering the immensely broad coverage of this category of taxation, its level might in fact be considered quite inadequate. The proliferation of taxes is not in itself a sign of 'backwardness'. The most backward feature of the Ming fiscal administration was its lack of organization and emphasis. The history of miscellaneous incomes shows that the taxation system had certain consistent and long-standing weaknesses. The initial mistake was to adopt the principle of universality in taxing industry and commerce. Modest rates of taxation were imposed on

264

Miscellaneous incomes

all manufacturing labor and commercial goods without exception. In imposing business taxes the administrators took practically no account of the capital investment of the merchants, their profit margins, the potential of their enterprises, the scale of their operations and their trade routes.215 A similar attitude was revealed in the management of government mining, in which the miners were expected to fulfill individual production quotas just as the salt producers were. The quota system led to the decline of all the revenues on which it was imposed. Having failed to obtain sufficient revenue from those sources the government attempted in the fifteenth century to generate revenue from its own operations, by selling official ranks and so on. This was a simple expedient but one that in the long run had undesirable consequences, for the numerous tax exemptions resulting from the sale of rank and the collection of license fees later led to the degeneration of fiscal administration. The withholding of soldiers' pay reduced the efficiency of the army and was in part responsible for the expansion of the military budget in the late sixteenth century. The extensive imposition offinesencouraged corruption and debased the quality of local government. To this list of blunders was added in the sixteenth century the ad hoc commutation of services and supplies, which led to further fragmentation offinancialresources. Though many writers have criticized the Ming for over-taxation they have done so largely on moralistic grounds. Their main concern has been to expose the greed of the tax collectors and the hardship caused to individuals, rather than to probe the basic causes inherent in the nature of the tax system. They have created the impression that the major problem was over-taxation whereas in fact the difficulties were more likely due to under-taxation. It should be pointed out that the 3.78 million taels of silver obtained from miscellaneous incomes represented 17 copper cash per capita if apportioned equally on the entire population, reckoned to be 150 million or so by the late sixteenth century.216 Naturally it cannot be claimed, in view of the general practices of Ming officialdom, that abundant tax revenues would automatically have guaranteed honest administration, but insufficient revenues did definitely worsen it. Though in practice over-taxation did occur in certain areas this was clearly not the case in others. In 1607 the governor of Honan objected to the fact that while food vendors in the streets were heavily taxed, pawnshops paid only nominal fees.217 Many cases have already been cited in which tax potential was either wasted or ignored. In short, it was beyond the capacity of the administrative system to impose a generally high level of taxation, and to accuse it of this is to give undue credit to the administrators. In accordance with acceptedfiscalprocedure, a large amount of the total revenue was retained by the provincial governments and other service agencies. This was clearly necessary, for it would have been impractical

6, V Summary of miscellaneous incomes

265

19. Reported annual revenues from miscellaneous sources of income of the Tai-ts'ang Treasury, ca. 1570-90 (tls. of silver)

TABLE

Item Inland customs duties Stamp tax Fish duty Payment for 'rationed salt' Commutation of punishment and fines Incense tax ' Speed-the-delivery' money Tea tax from Szechuan Total

Maximum

Minimum

340,000 100,000 11,000 80,000 170,000 20,000 119,000 14,000 854,000

160,000 — 11,000 45,000 128,000 20,000 — — 364,000

for the ministry of revenue to call in all the revenue and then send some of it back to its point of origin. But if the quantity of revenue under the direct control of the imperial government is an indication of its ability to impose fiscal policies, then its power to do so in the late sixteenth century was clearly limited. Table 19 shows the revenues that the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury actually obtained from miscellaneous sources of income. The accounts of the other ministries were little different from this. In 1569 a supervising secretary auditing the accounts of the Chieh-sheng Treasury of the ministry of works reported that its annual revenues fluctuated between 700,000 and 800,000 taels.218 These figures are consistent with those in Table 18, including the commuted payments of artisans, part of the fish duty, part of the commuted payments of punishments and fines, some mining funds, and the supplies of raw materials to the four bureaus. This last item alone amounted to 500,000 taels in all. In 1621 the total revenues of this treasury were actually only 567,400 taels.219 The only significant miscellaneous item in the revenues of the ministry of war was the horse payment - in reality a variant of the land taxes, which fluctuated between 370,000 and 430,000 taels. All the other items were negligible.

7 Financial management

Denis Twitchett in his study of financial administration under the T'ang describes three distinctive stages of development. In the first stage the administration remained fairly crude and unsophisticated, while the second was characterized by increasing functional specialization of the fiscal offices. During the third stage continuing institutional specialization gave rise to tensions between the new specialized authorities and the regular organs of the central government.1 Financial administration in the sixteenth century by contrast presents no such clear-cut divisions. The Ming administration as a whole was not dynamic enough to produce similar institutional changes. For the sake of convenience financial management during these 100 years can be periodized as follows: Phase one: 1501-21. At this time there was no effective leadership in Peking, a continuation of the situation prevailing in the late fifteenth century. Phase two: 1521-41. An initial improvement in financial affairs was followed by further deterioration. For a time the accession of the Chiaching Emperor seemed to have ushered in a new era. The new monarch, who came from a lateral branch of the imperial family, had little connection with vested interests in the capital. Palace supernumeraries were dismissed en masse, the eunuchs brought under control and restraints imposed on the growth of aristocratic estates. Yet no genuine institutional reforms were undertaken and Chia-ching's record of egocentric pursuits ultimately put him in the same class as his predecessors. Phase three: 1541-70. A prolonged series of financial crises occurred, mitigated only by uncoordinated readjustments by the provincial officials. The sequence of events was initially triggered off by military failure, starting with the loss of the Ordos to Jinong in 1541. The government, forced to take whatever ad hoc measures it could, was under constant and severe pressure. The millions poured into the military establishment proved unavailing. In the 1550s Altan Khan's horsemen raided the suburbs of Peking while the wo-k'ou pirates were marauding along the southeast [266]

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267

coast. The final disaster came in 1557 when three palace halls together with the ceremonial gates in Peking were burned to the ground. These buildings were of such enormous symbolic significance that their reconstruction had to be started immediately, despite all other pressing financial problems. Phase four: 1570-87. This period, the most successful of the century from the government's point of view, can be called the era of Chang Chiicheng. By 1570 Altan Khan had been pacified and the pirates were no longer a serious problem. When in 1572 this astute statesman became the chief decision-maker in Peking some order was at last imposed on financial affairs, and the government's treasuries began to fill up. Though Chang died in 1582 the benefits of his administration lasted for a few years longer. Phase five: 1587-1600. The achievements of the preceding period were once more wiped out by fiscal irresponsibility. The enormous expense of three major military campaigns in the 1590s emptied the state coffers. The chaotic situation was worsened by the Wan-li Emperor, who sent eunuchs to the provinces as tax-collectors, bypassing the civil officials. This outline shows a succession of administrative cycles rather than progressive growth and development. Crises were met by emergency measures and periodic financial pressures were followed by temporary relief. Though the administration was relaxed, tightened up, and then again relaxed, there was little attempt at innovation. The history of the period was made by personalities rather than by institutions. It cannot be denied, however, that the increased use of silver in taxation during the sixteenth century was an important development. Though in theory it should have made the government's financial resources more mobile and thus facilitated fiscal planning, in practice this did not happen. It has been demonstrated at considerable length in the foregoing chapters that the inflexibility of the Ming system prevented it from realizing many of the potential benefits of the change. The Single Whip Reform was not pushed to its logical extreme of a single land tax. The service obligations of the taxpayers were never totally abolished, nor were the tax accounts integrated. In the following sections it will be shown that this tendency to adhere to the earlier style of administration was even more pronounced at the top level of government. In view of this, there is little point in describing the events of the entire century with equal thoroughness. Such a chronological survey would only show the same story repeating itself. On the basis of the periodization given above the general features of the administration will first be examined, with the focus largely on the operations of the ministry of revenue. Thereafter detailed attention will be given to two specific topics: the effects of

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the enormously increased military expenditures in the years after 1550, and the financial reforms carried out by Chang Chii-cheng between 1572 and 1582. These fiscal measures in times of war and peace should be sufficient to illustrate developments in the century as a whole. The improvised nature of these adjustments, which fell short of rationalizing the system, may well explain the re-occurrence of the minor administrative cycles briefly mentioned above.

I THE MINISTRY OF REVENUE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The ministry as an operating agency At first sight, the operating capacity of the ministry of revenue seems to have expanded significantly in the sixteenth century. Before 1500 the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, which was under its direct supervision, had rarely handled more than 1 million taels of silver a year. Up to the mid sixteenth century the level was still said to be close to 2 million taels, but in the 1550s the record figure of 4 million taels was actually exceeded. Though the rate of expansion subsequently slowed down, a level of approximately 4 million taels was maintained. This seeming expansion is actually illusory. The treasury's revenues were simply increasing in proportion with the growing tendency to collect taxes in silver, and there is no evidence that the functions of the ministry were really being enlarged. The increased volume of revenue in the late sixteenth century, some 4 million taels a year, comprised only about 12 per cent of the empire's total tax proceeds. The treasury, moreover, actually retained little of its cash income; most of the revenues were immediately delivered to the frontier army posts. Smaller sums were used to pay for the salaries of general government officials, the wages of the capital garrison, and the maintenance expenses of several palace agencies, the most important of which were the imperial stable and imperial zoo. In addition the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury functioned as a receiving agency of the crown. As a rule the Gold Floral Silver and rents from the palace estates merely passed through its office. The limited financial resources under the ministry's control in fact revealed the weakness of the system, which was not a matter of choice. Once revenues were delivered in silver the government tried its best to prevent unnecessary movement of funds. To avoid a situation in which tax payments were delivered by the southern provinces to Peking and then sent all the way back to the south again, the ministry of revenue was repeatedly forced to authorize the southern governors to retain the tax revenue they themselves collected even though this resulted effectively in a loss of

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control.2 Without establishing regional branches in the provinces, the ministry simply put itself at the end of the supply line. In addition the fiscal practice whereby every item of income was shared out among many different disbursing agencies also hindered the ministry from expanding its operating capacity. Because in the early years of the dynasty it had served more as a general accounting office than as an operating agency, it had missed the opportunity to set aside a substantial portion of the tax revenues as its own reserves. By the sixteenth century there were budgetary deficits at all levels of the government's operations. When additional funds were required the ministry, instead of appropriating all the income from any single revenue office, usually drew small quantities of funds from diverse sources, effecting a general cutback of all existing allocations and diverting the amounts thus saved to meet the new fiscal need. Obviously it was not easy to build up huge sums by these means. At the same time other ministries retained their fiscal autonomy. This was confirmed by the institution of the collection of 'horse payments' by the ministry of war and that of the 'supplies to the four bureaus' by the ministry of works. In these circumstances the ministry of revenue held that its own fiscal responsibilities merely consisted in providing government personnel with food and clothing. Even when it came to supporting the army posts on the northern frontier the ministry regarded itself principally in the role of quartermaster general. Financing the procurement of war horses, firearms and armor was clearly beyond its jurisdiction. On other matters it also attempted to evade its responsibility as far as possible. In 1547 when the Hsiian-fu and Ta-tung military commands requested funds for building the Great Wall, the ministry argued that such construction work was the responsibility of the ministry of war which should therefore supply the funds. Only on the emperor's personal intervention was a compromise reached whereby the ministry of war paid two-thirds and the ministry of revenue one-third of the necessary funds.3 This method became general practice in the late sixteenth century. When in 1598 a naval force was mobilized in Chekiang, the ministry of war supplied funds for its banners, equipment, hiring of ships and bounties for the recruits while the ministry of revenue provided food and travel allowances. The soldiers' pay was also provided by the two ministries, the ministry of revenue paying 70 per cent and the ministry of war the rest.4 The revenues of the Vai-ts'ang Treasury In the primary sources the treasury revenues appear contradictory and confusing. For instance its annual income in 1549 is recorded in the Shih-lu as 2,125,355 taels5 and in 1558, it is again described as 'in the vicinity of

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TABLE 20. Reported disbursement of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, 1551-7 {tls. of silver) 1551 1552 1553 1554 1555 1556 1557

5,950,000 5,310,000 5,730,000 4,550,000 4,290,000 3,860,000 3,020,000

TABLE 21. Reported revenues of the Tai-ts'ang Treasury, 1567-92 (tls. of silver) 1567 1577 1583 1585 1587 1589

2,014,200 4,359,400 4,224,700 3,676,000 3,890,000 3,270,000

1591 1592

3,740,500 4,723,000

TABLE 22. Reported deficits of the Tai-ts'ang Treasury, 1583-90 (tls. of silver) 1583 1584 1585 1587 1589 1590

2,301,000 1,180,000 548,000 2,030,000 190,000 324,500

2 million taels'. Yet the same source indicates that in the preceding seven years the treasury actually disbursed the sums shown in Table 20.6 These figures of disbursement simply seem to be out of proportion with the reported revenues. Undoubtedly, during the middle years of the century revenues had increased, but deficits often occurred too. There is no systematic exposition of the data in the sources. Annual receivables over a number of years have been located in separate memorials to the emperor, and are presented in Table 21. 7 Quotations for deficits are even rarer; only in the 1580s were some cited in memorials. They are shown in Table 22.8 Thesefigures,by themselves, do not reveal the whole truth. The fact is that the Ming officials never developed a consistent accounting system. Often

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they confused receivable revenues with what was actually received. The tax arrears of a previous year collected in the current year might be included in either year's account or, sometimes, omitted by both accounts. In the same way, they made no distinction between a budgetary deficit and an actual one. The quoted deficit was as a rule calculated from the projected revenues, not from the received items. An example is the case of 1584. When the indicated deficit appeared, the court decided to commute into silver payments 1.5 million piculs of tribute grain, 102,410 rolls of cotton cloth and 45,522 rolls of silk fabrics, which otherwise would have been collected in kind.9 According to the commutation rates then in force these items should have been worth a total of some 1.7 million taels. Thus instead of incurring a deficit of 1.18 million taels as shown in Table 22, in that year the T'aits'ang Treasury should actually have produced a surplus of over 500,000 taels. In order to investigate the incoming funds actually handled by the treasury it is necessary to visualize the standing practice of the time. Firstly, ever since the early sixteenth century the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury had held a number of items from tax proceeds which in due course came to constitute its own permanent quota. These items, in theory neither reducible nor transferable, formed the central core of its revenues. They included the items shown in Table 23. 10 The revenues quoted in 1549, 1558, and 1567, of approximately 2 million taels, referred to these basic items. TABLE 23. Estimated basic revenues of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, ca. 1521-90 {Us. of silver) Commuted payments from regular land taxes Accessory surtaxes of the land taxes (3, iv): horse fodder 'farmland silk' 'poll tax silk' hemp cloth Cash payment derived from salt monopoly (5, iv) Minimum level of income from miscellaneous sources (6, iv) Total

250,000 340,000 90,000 10,000 38,000 1,000,000 364,000 2,092,000

Secondly, the treasury's revenues were not significantly affected by tax increases. Throughout the sixteenth century major land taxes increases were ordered only twice, and on each occasion for one year only. In 1514 1 million taels was added to the annual collection to finance the construction of the Ch'ien-ch'ing palace.11 In 1551, owing to the urgent need for military funds, the southern provinces were required to pay 1,157,340 taels as an emergency surtax.12 Other increases made in 1592, 1598, and 1599 were retained by the southern provinces (7, iv). When the increases affected

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the service levy, the proceeds were not allocated to the treasury. Any extra collections made from the salt revenue usually caused deficits in the following years (5, m). Any raising of the quotas of the various miscellaneous sources of income could increase the treasury's funds only fractionally. Thirdly, the government had no means for deficit financing. Occasionally local governments in an emergency were forced to collect taxes in advance, and the salt administrators could demand advance payment, but these measures in no way affected the operations of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury. Fourthly, any budgetary deficit of the treasury could be covered either by the delayed incoming items, that is, the revenues which were listed in the accounts as the quotas of previous years but actually arrived in the current fiscal year, or by further commutation of taxes delivered in kind in Peking, chief of which was the tribute grain. Any amount that was not covered by these means constituted an actual deficit that could only be eliminated by withdrawing treasury reserves, or sometimes by subsidies from the emperor, which were derived from his personal income. Viewed in the light of these procedures the accounts of the treasury, though complicated, are by no means incomprehensible. They developed in the following stages: (a) Up to about 1541 the annual income of the treasury was in fact no more than 2 million taels, and might even have been slightly less. The revenues comprised only the basic items. (b) In addition to these basic items, the treasury's income was later augmented with additional items. After Yang T'ing-ho eliminated large numbers of palace supernumeraries the annual quota of 4 million piculs of tribute grain produced a surplus of 1.5 million piculs (2, i). After 1541 this granary surplus was made available for conversion into silver payments, the commutation being ordered fairly regularly although not without interruptions. In 1541 1.2 million piculs were commuted; this apparently went on until 1546 when Chia-ching reversed his decision and called a halt.13 Subsequent records, though incomplete, suggest that the commutation was rarely suspended. The three sets of vital financial statistics appearing in the Shih-lu in the mid sixteenth century show that in 1542 the commuted tribute grain was 1,385,884 piculs, in 1552 it was 1,667,163 piculs and in 1562 it was 1,367,389 piculs.14 The annual conversion of around 1.5 million piculs of surplus grain into silver was expected to produce an additional income for the treasury of slightly over 1 million taels. It seems that after 1541 the actual income of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury was close to 3 million taels if not above that level. But most official documents counted the commuted income as a nonrecurring item and omitted it from the reported revenues. (c) The subsidizing of the treasury from the monarch's personal income

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started in 1543 under the pressure of Jinong's occupation of the Ordos. After a court conference the Chia-ching Emperor consented to give up the Gold Floral Silver and the rents of palace estates to the ministry of revenue for the duration of the emergency, which was originally expected to last for five years.15 The arrangement in fact continued until 1558.16 The landed properties designated for the support of the imperial stable and imperial zoo had been taken over by the ministry earlier, an arrangement that had since become permanent.17 These items altogether added some 1.3 million taels to the treasury's revenues, pushing its total income over the 4 million mark. In reality, however, the value of these items was considerably lessened by the fact that after taking them over, the ministry of revenue was also required to pay the army officers in Peking and to maintain the stable and the zoo. (d) In the 1550s the need for funds became acute. An emergency surcharge on the land taxes, mentioned earlier, was ordered in 1551, while the salt revenue was expected to provide another 300,000 taels annually (see 'cost-paid salt', 5, m). The sale of ranks, commutation of punishments, and collection of fines were all stepped up. The effectiveness of these fundraising measures was short-lived,18 the reasons being partially explicable by Table 20 as will be shown below. From 1553 onwards the southern provinces had to use the funds to finance their own local defense against the wo-k'ou pirates, and after 1557 the funds were partially retained by the provincial officials to provide materials for palace construction. The high point of the financial crisis came in 1558 when Minister of Revenue Fang Tun (in office, 1552-8) submitted a seven-point fund-raising program.19 A supervising secretary proposed a five-point program20 and another five-point program was put forward by the ministry of revenue in Nanking.21 A group of capital officials jointly recommended twenty-nine methods of raising funds, all of which were approved by the emperor.22 None of these proposals and programs envisioned any kind of master plan, but merely attempted to extract small transferable items from existing revenues, dispose of such government properties as could readily be converted to cash, and call for extraordinary contributions from the general population. The Ming-shih labelled all of them 'petty and disgraceful'.23 The nature of the recommendations only reflected the extent of the despair. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that in the early years of the decade, possibly up to 1553, the annual amount of silver received by the treasury actually exceeded 5 million taels. Without an income of this size it would not have been able to disburse the sums shown in Table 20. It is unlikely that the imperial government had any substantial reserves at the onset of the crisis,24 for in 1554 when a total of 889,000 taels was withdrawn from its reserve vault, the remaining deposit amounted to less than 1.2 million taels.25 The smaller sums disbursed after 1553 do not indicate that

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the crisis was over but simply that the treasury had no more funds to distribute. These observations seem to support the belief that during the 1550s the annual silver income of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury was initially pushed up to over 5 million taels and then declined to a level of less than 4 million taels. (e) After 1570 the main purpose of the financial administration was to return to normalcy. The personal income of the emperor reverted to the palace and the emergency fund-raising measures were largely terminated. Even so the average annual revenues remained at around 4 million taels (Table 21). Again this was not a sign that state income had expanded. From 1573 a number of tax consignments that had previously been delivered by the population in several northern provinces directly to the frontier posts were re-routed to go through the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury - a procedural change which gave the ministry of revenue some say in the annual distribution of these funds.26 The 1580 accounts show that 523,800 taels came from this item.27 An undated summary in the Ming-shih indicates that some years later the sum had increased to 853,000 taels.28 The commutation of the surplus tribute grain was no longer carried out every year without fail, but it was never suspended for long. In 1578 the entire quota of tribute grain from south of the Yangtze was commuted for a year29 while in 1584 a total of 1.5 million piculs was converted to silver payments.30 Demands for back taxes also boosted the total revenues to some extent. Thus it is quite plausible that with a basic income of 2 million taels the treasury could actually register an annual cash income of approximately 4 million taels. The essence of the story is that the income of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, the principal fiscal operating agency of the empire, was derived from local manipulations within a very rigid fiscal framework. For a century, whether in peace or war, the nature of the income had changed little and the total revenue ceiling remained virtually unadjustable. That the treasury came to handle larger sums was mainly owing to the switching of delivery procedures, the conversion of payments in kind to cash, and borrowing from the crown. The range for maneuver was always limited. Though outwardly the treasury revenues had quadrupled from 1 million to 4 million taels, the net increase was still only 3 million taels of silver, a rather small sum in view of the empire's enormous fiscal needs. In the foregoing chapters it was estimated that the land taxes, after absorbing a number of miscellaneous items, had a total value of some 21 million taels (4, in). The collection of the service levy should have produced around 10 million taels (4, in). The total proceeds from the salt revenue were officially reckoned to be worth 2 million taels (6, v). A few more items cannot be accounted for, such as the 'military supplies'

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collected by the southern governors and the internally generated funds of the northern army posts for which there are no adequate data. The foregoing is also an optimum estimate, for these figures include many uncollectible and some duplicated items. These 37 million taels might still have been insufficient to finance the administration of the empire, not to mention the lavish ceremonial expenditures that diverted a substantial amount of revenue to non-productive uses. For the ministry of revenue to control only 4 million taels of this amount might thus seem dangerously inadequate. Disbursement in Peking The amount of silver disbursed in Peking varied owing to a number of factors. Part of the salaries of capital officials and the entire pay of the Peking garrison was supposed to be paid with tribute grain. But in certain years the grain payments could be temporarily commuted to silver, causing the cash account to appear larger than usual. This definitely happened in 1578 and possibly also in 1567.31 After the Gold Floral Silver reverted to the crown the emperor resumed the obligation of paying the army officers in Peking.32 While these funds came from his privy purse, they were not noted in the accounts, which gave the impression that the payments came from treasury funds. From 1578 the Wan-li Emperor demanded that the ministry of revenue supplement his personal income with an additional 200,000 taels per annum known as 'purchasing money' (mai-pan fei)P This sum was regularly delivered by the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury but was not so listed in the accounts. In other words, the total disbursement was inflated by the pay of the army officers and deflated by the omission of the purchasing money. Apart from these distortions the accounts were simple and fairly stable. The Ming-shih contains a summary of the accounts, dated around 1580,34 given in Table 24. Both the total sum and some of the listed items are very close to the figures quoted in other sources for the period before 1580, and for the following years, even after 1600.35 In Table 24 an effort has been made to adhere to the form of the original summary. The inclusion of the pay of the army officers and the exclusion of the mai-pan fei can be considered to have cancelled each other out. These accounts basically constituted a payroll and a remarkably small one at that. With the exception of a few holders of aristocratic titles such as dukes and imperial princesses who each received somewhere between 600 and 1,000 taels a year, the so-called pay and salaries were no more than pocket money for their recipients. On average a civil official received about 10 taels, an army officer less than 5 taels, and a soldier less than 2 taels a year. The late Ming payments followed the criteria established in the early fifteenth century. Although they were partially supplemented by

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24. Cash disbursement in Peking by the T'ai-ts'ang ca. 1580 (tls. of silver)

TABLE

Stipends of holders of aristocratic titles Salaries of civil officials Pay of army officers Cash payments to soldiers and artisans Pay of metropolitan police Subsidies of soldiers called to capital duty from the provinces Winter uniforms for soldiers Supplies for imperial stable and imperial zoo Horse fodder for the capital garrison Cash payments to attendants at service agencies Total disbursement

Treasury,

16,000 44,000 268,000 206,000 50,000 50,000 84,000 148,000 16,000 13,000 895,000

the distribution of the tribute grain, the grain allowance was still a food ration and rarely exceeded 1 picul per man per month. The practice whereby officials received payments in lieu of the personal attendants allowed for their offices continued (tsao-li, 2, i and 6, m). Nonetheless the cash payment, 144 taels a year for an official of ministerial rank, was clearly inadequate in terms of the standard of living in the late Ming. In the sixteenth century most central government officials relied for their living expenses on the 'gifts' of provincial officials. This explains why Hai Jui called the year when the provincial officials finished their three-year terms of appointment and reported to the capital 'the year that officials in Peking collected their rents'. 36 The ministry of revenue was not required to provide the administrative expenses of the various offices. For this the imperial government in Peking relied on the districts round about, in the same way as a county government did. All stationery used in the offices at the capital was provided by Shun-t'ien prefecture.37 Unpaid attendants were called from Honan, Shantung and North Chihli. During the metropolitan civil service examination of 1592 the county magistrates of Wan-p'ing and Ta-hsing not only supplied all the materials and labor required but also rented additional utensils and furniture for the occasion at their own expense.38 Some of the horses used in the capital were actually provided by distant provinces. As late as 1610 Kiangsi province still provided the college of translators {Hui-fung kuan) with eight-two horses.39 When the service obligations were commuted to silver the payments were made directly to the recipient bureau or agency without going through the treasury. After deducting the 895,000 taels of silver disbursed in Peking the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury should have been left with slightly more than 3 million taels of its annual revenues (assuming a total income of 4 million taels as

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in the late sixteenth century). This sum was appropriated by the northern army posts and will be discussed under military expenditures in section m of this chapter.

II INTER-PROVINCIAL AND INTER-MINISTERIAL ADMINISTRATION Direction and supervision of provincial management Because it was primarily occupied with the maintenance of the capital and the northern army posts, the ministry of revenue exercised only superficial control over other areas. By the sixteenth century strict observance of all fiscal procedures was likewise no longer feasible for many other offices. It is difficult to say whether fiscal operations in the provinces were budgeted or not. Because of fixed tax quotas, delivery procedures, rates of pay and salaries and numerous customary precedents, every office was restricted by some kind of semi-permanent budget. Though some provincial officials continued to try to follow these guidelines, not all the earlier procedures still corresponded to conditions in the sixteenth century, as is shown by the fact that in many districts the scheduled payments already exceeded their total retained revenues (4, iv). Part of the problem was created by the imperial government. Tax remissions, sometimes arbitrarily ordered by the emperors, caused further difficulties to provincial and local officials. In 1534 the Chia-ching Emperor ordered that all the land taxes collectible in that year be reduced by half. When the ministry of revenue argued that the order would only result in an enormous deficit, the well-meaning sovereign simply directed the ministry to find the best remedy it could.40 In 1582 the Wan-li Emperor reduced the stamp tax in Peking by half. Petitions by the local magistrates several years later requesting a reversion to the earlier rates were not approved.41 There were also cases where tax payments, having been explicitly remitted, were actually collected. In a memorial dated 1502, the ministry of revenue itself admitted that this did occur.42 When in 1523 Sung-chiang prefecture in South Chihli suffered serious flood damage, its local officials secured the emperor's permission for a 50 per cent remission of the land taxes in the disaster-stricken areas. Subsequent instructions from Peking, however, interpreted the previous rescript to mean that the tax remission applied only to the prefecture's retained revenue and that the transferred revenue was still to be delivered in full. Since the transferred revenue in Sungchiang amounted to 1.38 million piculs and the retained revenue to only 60,000 piculs, the second order in effect cancelled the tax remission.43 In the late sixteenth century similar cases were frequent. As was mentioned earlier, taking small sums from tax revenues which

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had already been appropriated for other uses was a convenient way for the imperial government to meet urgent fiscal need. Such diversion of funds was frequent and inevitably caused shortages elsewhere. At times the imperial government instructed the local officials to make up the lost revenues at their own discretion. In reality it means that the existing budget was not binding, and expenditures of lesser priority either cut back or suspended. For example, in the 1530s the proceeds from the inland customs houses were already allocated by standing orders for a number of uses, including subsidies to nearby army units. In 1536 the tonnages collected at Huai-an and Yang-chou were diverted to Peking for a year to provide funds to repair the imperial mausoleums.44 This was only one of the numerous occasions on which existing appropriations were cut back to make way for new expenditures. In its directions to the provincial governments the ministry of revenue naturally stressed the delivery of transferred revenue and paid far less attention to the revenue retained in the provinces. Personnel evaluation in the late Ming confirms this emphasis. An official who delivered transferred revenues promptly and in full gained public recognition but his handling of retained revenues was an insignificant matter. Minister of Revenue Liang Ts'ai (in office, 1528-31) tried to reverse this trend but without success, as it simply reflected the ministry's own priorities. Some twenty years later Minister P'an Huang (in office, 1549-50) had to admit that his primary concern was still the transferred revenue; the retained revenue was mentioned only once in unspecific terms in his memorial.45 This sense of priorities, coupled with revenue shortages, undoubtedly gave rise to the situation that a number of appropriations within the permanent budget were largely fictitious (4, iv). The auditing of fiscal accounts was never relaxed throughout the entire dynasty. It was essential to the administration precisely because the budget was not integrated; the officials collected the taxes and disbursed the funds themselves. Considering the physical difficulties, the auditing cannot be dismissed as ineffective. In the mid sixteenth century several high-ranking and influential officials were repeatedly censured by censorial officials after their misappropriations and embezzlement of public funds were brought to light. They included Chang Ching, previously governor-general of Kwangtung, Hu Tsung-hsien, governor-general of three provinces, and Chao Wen-hua, minister of works and a special representative of the crown.46 The periodic check of fiscal records by the regional inspectors was conducted with such vigor and thoroughness that European observers made special note of it in their journals.47 Yet, it would be unrealistic to expect this vigorous investigation to maintain the fiscal integrity of the government personnel. At best, it checked the more blatant forms of larceny. In the sixteenth century the

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nature of some fiscal operations, such as the management of the salt monopoly and the collection of palace supplies, made auditing virtually impossible. Moreover, official auditing covered only the recorded items; whereas most of the corrupt practices involved unscheduled collections, extortion from the civilian tax agents and bribery of all kinds. The censorial officials followed the standards of the times in exposing only those cases which were considered excessive; no attempt was made to judge every act according to the letter of the law. For instance, during this century the handing out and receiving of'gifts' by the officials were no longer regarded as misdemeanors. Relatively few persons were punished strictly on bribery charges. Usually when an official was accused of such an offense it was only because his donor or recipient had already been condemned for more serious crimes. In other words, bribery charges were used mainly for exposing political association rather than financial irregularity per se. It is clear that towards the end of the century official corruption worsened. This is shown not merely by the larger sums involved in the exposed cases but by their wider extent and the general decline of moral standards. Some of the sums mentioned in these cases were impressive, such as the personal income of 30,000 taels enjoyed by a salt-distribution superintendent in Kwangtung in the early seventeenth century, referred to earlier (4, iv). At the same time the positions of the warehouse-receiving men in Peking, nominally unpaid, became so profitable that they were bought and sold at 4,000 taels each.48 By the end of the dynasty their sale was being formalized by written deeds. Similar posts, less lucrative but also offered for sale, were reported to exist in all provinces and in all commissions.49 Their holders, usually lesser functionaries, formed a kind of sub-bureaucracy within the regular administration. They became indispensable because the officials relied on them to provide their own illicit personal incomes; worse still, by then actual administrative practice deviated so far from the existing and still unrevised fiscal regulations that the government simply could not do without their irregular services.50 Execution of large-scale water-control projects In the sixteenth century the building of the Great Wall was carried out by the frontier governors-general, its cost being merged with military expenditures. The water-control projects in the Yangtze delta, as well as the sea walls on the Chekiang coast, were maintained by provincial and local officials.51 The two major public works that constantly occupied the attention of the imperial government were the restitution of the Yellow river and the maintenance of the Grand Canal. Usually the two were combined into one project and in the sixteenth century the work went on almost incessantly, rarely being interrupted for more than five years. The

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enormous and burdensome sums involved, coupled with the unpredictable disposition of the Yellow river, definitely contributed to the general financial uncertainty. Major construction works were carried out in 1528, 1565, 1578, 1587, and 1595.52 After the Grand Canal had been repeatedly silted-up and inundated by the Yellow river it was decided in 1593 to construct a new channel in its middle section so as to avoid the Yellow river. This project was suspended several times owing to shortage of funds. Only in 1609, sixteen years after the initiation of the project, was the 110-mile channel opened to traffic.63 The management of all these construction projects had several features in common. No detailed budget was ever compiled but a rough estimate of the cost was made beforehand. This included only the basic sum provided by the imperial government which was to be agumented by local contributions and requisitions. Normally such projects came under the jurisdiction of the ministry of works but the ministry of revenue was heavily involved in the raising of funds. The final allocation of the funds was left to the project director, who as a rule was given a dual appointment both as censor-in-chief and imperial commissioner responsible directly to the emperor. Sometimes he was also made supernumerary minister of works but this title was honorific only; it did not compromise his autonomous position as a field director, nor did it give him more influence with the ministry. The financing of the 1578 project under the direction of P'an Chi-hsiin is more satisfactorily documented than other cases and will be summarized here for the purposes of illustration. It started in the summer of 1578 after P'an's predecessor had died in office, and was carried on until early 1580. Initially 50,000 laborers were mobilized though the project as a whole seems to have involved at least 100,000 men for a little over a year. Altogether 139 breaks in the dikes were repaired and over thirty miles of new dikes were constructed, complete with tunnels, glacises, and stone embankments. In addition 830,000 new willow trees were planted. Had all the materials and labor been paid for in full, a conservative estimate would have put the total cost at more than 2.5 million taels. In his final report P'an indicated, however, that only 560,637 taels of government funds were actually disbursed.54 In preparation for the project the tribute grain from all the southern provinces was commuted to silver for a year. The basic payment covering the value of the grain was delivered to Peking to defray routine expenditures in the capital; only the surcharges and the'speed-the-delivery money' were handed over to the project director. Additional funds in small amounts came from the sale of ranks, contributions by salt merchants, and horse payments deposited at Nanking. 55 P'an used the prefectural treasury of Huai-an as his bursar's office.56

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While the standard pay for each laborer was set at 0.03 taels of silver per day, the records indicate that their wages were actually provided by the local districts with funds derived from the service levy collections. Those who were unable to pay the latter answered the service call instead.57 No detailed accounts survive but it can safely be concluded that the funds under centralized control in reality constituted a grant-in-aid and that most of the financial burden was carried by the local districts. The construction work therefore involved all fiscal agencies from the imperial government down to the village communities, the only integrating factor being thefinancialauthority of the project director. In one of his memorials to the emperor, P'an suggested that all prefects and county magistrates be ordered to stay in their offices for the duration of the project so that they could be held personally responsible for the execution of procurement orders; their deputies were to be assigned as field supervisors, and any negligence promptly reported by the surveillance officials.58 P'an himself held the concurrent assignment of censor-in-chief of the right. Another feature of thefinanceprogram was that the small contribution from the central government was again derived from many different sources. Early in 1580, when the project was completed, P'an suggested that maintenance work and secondary construction be continued for several years, and that the necessary funds be provided by the salt distribution agencies, the inland customs houses, and the local business tax stations in the Hsii-chou-Huai-an-Yang-chou region. Yet his estimate of the annual requirement was less than 30,000 taels.59 Though we know less about the construction project in other years, it is safe to assume that the methods of raising funds and conscripting service for them were similar. The 1528 project involved 300,000 laborers and went on for two years, the total cost to the state being estimated as only 200,000 taels.60 The 1565 project again enlisted 300,000 workers and cost 700,000 taels.61 The actual costs must have exceeded the quoted sums several times over. In 1584 for one minor construction project the commissioner of the Grand Canal proposed a budget of 216,000 taels. A secretary from the ministry of rites challenged this on the grounds that it would not pay even a tenth of the actual cost. This official reported from his own personal experience that in the affected districts a single household could be required to pay the wages offiveworkers. The recruited laborers were subjected to extortion and harsh treatment by the foremen, and when they absconded their home districts had to replace them with new recruits.62 Understandably, such construction projects imposed extra strains on central as well as local government. The enormous cost was only one aspect of the problem; the other was that both the central and local authorities lacked the organizational capacity to execute these projects satisfactorily.

282

Financial management Palace construction

Palace construction went on incessantly from the time that Yung-lo moved the capital to Peking up to the end of the T'ien-ch'i period. In the sixteenth century the palace residences and ceremonial halls, all built of wood, were repeatedly destroyed by fire. This happened in 1514,1525,1541,1557,1584, 1596 and 1597. The mere replacement of these buildings necessitated construction work in the capital almost every decade. The most disastrous blaze was that of 1557 which lasted over twenty hours and destroyed two ceremonial gates and three major buildings. Their reconstruction, completed in the autumn of 1562, took five years in all.63 Even in other cases the work rarely took less than two years. Clearly these building expenses were too substantial to be dismissed merely as incidental items. Building came under the jurisdiction of the ministry of works but other ministries were also involved. For instance in 1557 and 1596 the ministries of revenue and war were both ordered to deliver 300,000 taels each from their treasury funds to assist in starting the work.64 In addition the ministry of works was authorized to obtain funds from the commutation of punishment, sale of rank and minting, and to retain some of the revenue from local business taxes, stamp taxes, and the land taxes. The financial pinch therefore affected all other governmental agencies and some of the provinces. The complexities in fiscal transactions and supply procedures make it difficult to assess the actual cost of each project. Some of the frequently mentioned sums are evidently exaggerated. The T'ai-su Hall, constructed in 1515, is said to have cost 20 million taels, though it is doubtful whether such an enormous sum could have been raised in the early sixteenth century. Lien-sheng Yang has shown however that the actual cost was 200,000 taels and that a careless copyist of the Shih-lu must have replaced the character 'ten' with 'thousand', the two characters differing merely by one stroke.65 Nonetheless the official figures do not represent the true cost either. The 200,000 taels for the T'ai-su Hall in 1515, the 150,000 taels for the Tz'uning Palace in 1585,66 and the 720,000 taels for the Ch'ien-ch'ing and K'un-ning Palaces in 159867 were calculated from the amount of cash disbursed in Peking, largely omitting building materials and labor supplied by the provinces. The most costly item on the list of supplies was timber, which came from Shansi, Szechuan, Kweichow, and Hukwang. In 1558, Kweichow alone claimed to have provided timber worth a total of 1.38 million taels.68 This sum may have been somewhat exaggerated since it was estimated by provincial officials who had good reason for emphasizing the fiscal difficulties caused by these procurement orders. In 1584 Szechuan was authorized to retain 700,000 taels in taxes to pay for the cost of timber and

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283

its transportation,69 a sum which was probably close to the actual expenditure. Hui-chou prefecture in South Chihli, not a timber-producing district, in 1557 was ordered by Peking to provide 86,766 logs at a cost of 129,314 taels, plus transportation costs of 41,640 taels. The estimate was made by the ministry of works and was deductible from the district's taxes. After the supply was delivered, however, the prefecture was instructed by the ministry to pay its back taxes totalling 138,000 taels, plus a new assessment of 30,000 taels to finance the construction work. The purchase thus appears to have turned into an outright requisition.70 A more accurate estimate of the cost of timber can be arrived at with the aid of other contemporary accounts. One sixteenth-century account indicates that timber from Szechuan was fastened into rafts of 604 logs each. The cost of each raft was only 148 taels but it required the labor of forty persons over a three-year period to bring it to Peking. The transportation cost was another 2,160 taels, making the average value of each log about 4 taels by the time it reached the capital.71 For the 1596 project 160,000 logs were used, each of which was estimated to be worth slightly less than 2 taels in the south.72 It can therefore be assumed that while a minor project might require some 500,000 taels' worth of timber, the expense for a major one could easily exceed 3 million taels. Sixteenthcentury travellers on the Grand Canal often mentioned that the waterway was congested with imperial timber shipments.73 Matteo Ricci noted in 1598 that these rafts were hauled by thousands of laborers who trudged for five to six miles a day.74 The transport costs must therefore have been enormous, although the government seldom paid the conscripted labor anything more than a food ration. The glazed tiles and bricks used in the construction work were baked in Soochow, South Chihli. No permanent factory was established but the labor and manufacturing facilities were provided by six prefectures on the lower Yangtze as required.75 For the 1596-8 project 1,700,000 tiles and bricks were produced. The ministry of works subsidized this with 20,000 taels of silver, a mere fraction of the manufacturing cost.76 Transportation costs were economized by ordering each boat hauling tribute grain to Peking to carry an additional load of bricks and tiles, though it was again observed by Ricci that special barges were provided to transport bricks on the Grand Canal.77 The stone used on the frontage of ceremonial buildings was cut into monolithic slabs each 30 feet long, 10 feet wide and 5 feet thick. In 1596 special sixteen-wheeled carts pulled by 1,800 donkeys were built to transport them. Though the details are unclear, the project director's report indicates that the stone took twenty-two days to arrive at the building site at a total cost of less than 7,000 taels.78 Undoubtedly a major portion of the cost was absorbed by the general population.

284

Financial management

The wages paid to labor in Peking were an insignificant item. The construction workers were drawn principally from the capital garrison and the artisans on the regular payroll. It was also necessary to purchase additional building materials in Peking, quite apart from what was made available by the palace warehouses. These were supplied by designated merchants at officially prescribed prices. An imperial order of 1588 acknowledged that the prices were often set below the standard market rate and that the payments were in arrears. A supervising secretary estimated that the government was by then indebted to the merchants to the tune of over a half million taels. Even though the emperor instructed the ministry of revenue to use the funds of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury to clear its debts, it is uncertain whether this order was ever carried out in full.79 Owing to the numerous uncertainties affecting the data it is unfortunately impossible to make any accurate estimate of total building costs. Failing that, it is still worth noting that the overall estimate in the Ming-shih, of between 2 and 3 million taels of silver each year at the high point of construction in the late 1550s and early 1560s,80 is consistent with other verifiable administrative factors. The estimate undoubtedly covers only the accountable funds disbursed by the central and provincial governments, and cannot include extraordinary requisitions of materials and labor. It would be erroneous to assume that these extra requisitions represented a net gain to the government. In the late Ming the operating capacity of the government was so limited that taxation had virtually reached saturation point and any additional imposition in one area generally led to short payments in others. In 1592 a vice-minister of revenue in charge of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury reported that the total arrears of the various provinces over the previous six years amounted to 7,641,100 taels.81 This was the period when the Tz'u-ning Palace was being rebuilt, a major watercontrol project was under way, and when the Wan-li Emperor had in addition ordered the construction of his own mausoleum (7, iv).

Ill APPROPRIATION OF MILITARY SUPPLIES Rising military expenditures The traditional historians attributed the increase in the defense budget in the late Ming entirely to the decline of military farming. What is now known of developments in the sixteenth century shows clearly that this view is no longer tenable and that many other factors have to be taken into accounts. Up to the late fifteenth century the soldiers' pay consisted only of a food ration and some winter clothing. Army service was the duty of the hereditary military families whose soldiers were expected to provide even their

7, III Appropriation of military supplies

285

own basic equipment. This system became increasingly impractical in the sixteenth century, and by around 1500 it had become a standard practice to fill vacancies in the northern army commands with hired recruits.82 Initially each recruit was offered a bounty of 5 taels of silver and was provided with a horse and clothing. These mercenaries of course had to be paid regularly. In the mid sixteenth century 6 taels per man per year was still adequate, but it went up steadily thereafter as a result of the wider use of silver and the intensified recruiting program in the southern provinces during the wo-k'ou campaign. When the southern troops were transferred to the north in the 1570s the increased rates of pay were generally adopted by all frontier army posts. By the end of the century many recruits received 18 taels per year, which became the standard rate in the early seventeenth century.83 The number of army posts on the northern frontier increased. Before the sixteenth century there were only seven such commands but in 1507 Otfsai's invasion of Ning-hsia led to the establishment of the Ku-yiian command.84 In 1541 the Shan-si command was set up to check the threat from Jinong.85 In the late sixteenth century five more minor posts were elevated to the same status as the nine major posts with regard to fiscal matters.86 All this added to the administrative costs (Fig. 5, p. 289). The construction of the Great Wall entailed vast expenditure. It was first started systematically by Yii Tzu-chiin, governor-general of Yen-sui in 1472.87 At the outset it was intended only to build up embankments and dig deep trenches, connecting the existing strongholds with pounded earthwork, but the construction gradually became more elaborate. Soon it involved the building of massive brick structures with crenelated walls and gun-emplacements. The process of fortification went on for over a century throughout the Ch'eng-hua, Hung-Chih, Cheng-te, and Chiaching eras into the early years of Wan-li, that is, into the 1580s. By the mid sixteenth century the construction costs were already extremely high. In 1546 the construction of the wall in Hsiian-fu and Ta-tung districts, where labor was conscripted and unpaid, cost the government about 6,000 taels a mile.88 For the building of the Chi-cheng section in 1558, the hired labor cost 6,357 taels a mile. The accusation was made that when the labor was conscripted the local population actually paid seven times that amount, and that mismanagement could inflate labor costs to 44,500 taels per mile.89 Another reason for the expansion of the military budget was the use of firearms. Although the Ming armies are known to have used firearms in the early fifteenth century they seem to have come into general use only at a later date, notably in the later sixteenth century when Portuguese-made cannons were extensively copied. A standing order of 1498 attempted to restrict the manufacture of firearms to the ministry of works; frontier posts were not allowed to make them. In the Chia-ching period this restriction

286

Financial management

was gradually removed.90 As late as the 1560s the standard cannonballs used by the Peking garrison were still covered with clay; from 1564 they were made of lead and after 1568 they were cast in iron.91 In 1586 the ministry of war sent a mission of inspection to the four frontier posts in Shensi. Its subsequent report listed all their stocks of supplies and equipment, some of which were connected with the use of firearms. Unfortunately the inventory listed iron and lead together with rocks, making it impossible to calculate their cost, but one post alone had a stockpile of over 2,000 tons of them. The so-called firearms obviously included chemical-propelled arrows and pellets of which each post possessed 2 million or more. Evidently a more modern type of warfare had begun to change the cost picture.92 Wheeled vehicles with firearms mounted on them were introduced in the fifteenth century, but it was Yii Ta-yu (1503-79) and Ch'i Chi-kuang (1528-87) who promoted their use as a defensive weapon on a large scale in the late sixteenth century.93 The ministry of works recorded in 1609 that each of these vehicles cost 30 taels of silver to produce.94 This too was a new item of expenditure. Suffice it to say that army logistics in the sixteenth century were considerably different from what they had been 100 years earlier. Military farming in the sixteenth century There is much acreage farmed Shih-lu. Wang summarized as

information on this subject but few verifiable facts. The by the army and its annual returns are both listed in the Yii-ch'iian has tabulated the figures,95 which can be follows:

Between 1487 and 1504 the annual returns were always approximately 2.7 million piculs. From 1505 to 1518 production was stationary at exactly 1,040,158 piculs per year. After 1519 the figures were recorded only sporadically. From 1522 to 1571, a period of fifty years, annual production remained at approximately 3.7 million piculs, with the exception of 1567 when afigureof only 1.8 million piculs was reported. The reports ended in 1571. Though Wang considers that the figures for the later period are probably inflated,96 this is in fact an understatement. In 1549 Minister of Revenue P'an Huang revealed that for over ten years not a single frontier post had reported its farm production.97 When in 1570 P'ang Shang-p'eng was commissioned to investigate the farming program he discovered that in many places there were production quotas on the books but no cultivators in the fields.98 Though administrative discipline was later considerably tightened-up by Chang Chii-cheng, even he admitted in a private letter, possibly dated 1575, that he still needed more time to put military farming in order.99

7, III Appropriation of military supplies

287

Unlike the land tax data which were periodically published by the local communities, the statistics of military farming were based entirely on official reporting. Other surveys were compiled on the basis of observations by senior officials but this information is generally superficial and provides no basis for comparison. Nonetheless it is clear that military farming was never suspended completely and the principle that each command should produce at least part of its own food-supply was observed throughout the dynasty. In the frontier region both uncultivated land and military manpower were always available and energetic governors-general and their civilian assistants were constantly organizing farming programs of some kind. Yet these programs did not follow any overall scheme laid down by the central government, nor did individual commands attempt to formulate their own permanent guidelines. Military farming was thus extremely diversified. In the sixteenth century the Hsiian-fu command leased most of its land to civilian farmers and collected rents from them, these being counted as the proceeds from military farming.100 The Liao-tung command, whose soldiers were mostly on active duty, enlisted other male members of the hereditary military households to carry out its farming program. 101 Though the prototype of military farming, in which individual households were allocated fixed acreages of land and paid part of the produce on a per capita basis, still existed in some areas in the sixteenth century, collection on the basis of acreage became popular and eventually came to differ little from regular rents or land taxes. Other commands introduced a type of collective farming program (ying-fieri). The soldiers on active service cultivated the land in their spare time, so that the guard units obtained the entire crop.102 Some commands on occasion preferred cooperative farming (t'uan-chung) whereby the soldiers, after handing over a fixed production quota to their commanding unit, shared the remainder of the crop.103 It is difficult to ascertain when the governors-general first started to grant permanent ownership of the land to the soldiers who cultivated it, but from the mid sixteenth century the practice became widespread. P'ang Shangp'eng in his reports to the emperor repeatedly argued that such grants should be extended in order to encourage the opening of new land.104 In 1585 the governor-general of Chi-chou converted an entire transportation battalion into a farming unit, giving each soldier twenty mou of land and a certificate of permanent ownership.105 An army unit was thus in effect demobilized in order to improve the grain supply. In short, military farming, by no means systematic under the early Ming (2, in), was much less so in the sixteenth century. The only common feature shared by all the various types of program was that they enabled each command to produce a part of its food supplies. Some army posts, while remaining fiscal offices under the supervision of the ministry of revenue, in

288

Financial management

effect performed the combined functions of local government, landlord and tax collector. The decentralization was so complete and diversities so numerous that the aggregate figures given in the national accounts can have been no more than rough estimates. The primary data submitted by the different units, even if accurate, were not statistically uniform. In the 1570s the imperial government subjected the accounts of the fourteen northern army posts to thorough auditing. Investigating teams were also frequently sent out. Chang Chii-cheng personally demanded that governors-general increase their farm production.106 The annual returns dating from between 1578 and 1579 that eventually appeared in the TaMing Hui-tien, are quite likely to have been over-estimates, but it is impossible to obtain more reliable data. The accounts show that the fourteen units annually produced a total of about 1.4 million piculs of grain of various kinds, plus 180,000 taels of silver.107 This level presumably could only be attained in the rare intervals of peace when the military commanders were able to assign more men to farm duty. The situation in the interior provinces was simpler, in that it showed a clear and consistent decline. By the late sixteenth century the scattered plots of land that had originally been assigned to military farming, even if they still survived, produced only a small amount of rent. The local officials generally collected this and merged it with the regular land taxes in order to support the local army units.108 Because the accounts were scattered and fiscal responsibility decentralized, the civil officials handled both the collection and disbursement of the proceeds. In some cases the sites of army barracks were converted to agricultural land and rented out; 109 in others soldiers became landlords,110 or sold or mortgaged their allotted land, or else made private arrangements for their dues to be paid by civilian cultivators.111 All these made the so-called national statistics meaningless. According to the Hui-tien the total income from military farming in the interior provinces in 1579 was still some 3 million piculs112 but it is likely that the data were copied from earlier records. Support of the northern army posts Because of the different supply systems in use, the Ming army in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appeared to be made up of three separate components. The capital garrisons in Nanking and Peking were supplied directly by the central government. (The Nanking garrison received payments from the Nanking ministry of revenue under similar conditions as prevailed in Peking, see 7, i.) The guard units in the interior provinces were supplied by their local districts. The northern frontier posts were partially self-supporting but also received supplies from four northern provinces (Shantung, Shansi, Honan, and Shensi) and from Peking.

I

o

o

§

K

Manchurian frontier Great Wall of China Headquarters, frontier defense areas

r

MONGOLIA

Headquarters with fiscal accounts equalling those of the defense areas

TA-TUNG COMMAND (TA-TUNG)!

Other important army posts

-*"jlr*Shen-yang

HSUAN-FU COMMAND (HSUAN-FU^Oj^p'ing Mi-vim COMMAND ^ (CHI-CHOU)

han-hai-kuan 5 Yung-p'ing KAN-SU COMMAND (KAN-CHOUWEI)

MNG-HSIA COMMAND (NING-HSIAWEI)

Hua-ma-ch'ih

I i

SHAN-SI D COMMAND (T'AI-YUAN)

KU-YUAN COMMAND (KU-YUAN)

Fib. 5. Northern frontier army posts in the late sixteenth century.

«-^~

290

Financial management

In 1569 Vice-Minister of War T'an Lun stated that while the army's total authorized strength was 3,138,300 men, in fact only about 845,000 men could be accounted for.113 The latter estimate seems quite reasonable. It can be further estimated that 500,000 men were serving on the northern frontier, using at least 100,000 horses.114 In 1576 the ministry of revenue compiled an account of the annual expenditures of the fourteen northern army posts, that included four key items: silver, food, animal-feed and hay. The account covers twenty-one pages of the Shih-lu115 but though it lists the quantities of each item for each army post, it gives no assessment of their total monetary value nor any aggregate figures. In Table 25 the figures have been added together and the commodities converted to silver. The revenues of the same army posts in 1578 likewise take up twentyeight pages of the Hui-tien11* and are condensed in Table 26. The two accounts are very close to each other even though the primary data were calculated by different accounting methods and submitted by fourteen different agencies. The similarity may be partially due to coincidence; since the conversion rates are only approximate, the total amounts in both tables are probably fairly accurate only. The actual prices were subject to regional variations and may have differed considerably from these estimates. But it is safe to assume that the expenditures of the fourteen posts in the 1570s were fixed at a level that on the whole corresponded to the level of income. Both accounts seem to have included quartermasters' items only, omitting the articles delivered by the ministries of works and war. The total annual expenditure of the order of 8 million taels nevertheless appears to have been rather a tight budget. In 1594 when an army of 20,000 was stationed in Liao-tung during a relatively quiet period of the Korean campaign a soldier's basic maintenance and pay cost 2 taels of silver per month.117 The whole army, estimated at 500,000 soldiers, would thus cost 12 million taels a year to maintain. The frontier posts in the 1570s managed to stay within a smaller budget because the troops were serving as domestic garrisons in time of peace and were not all paid at standard rates; in addition the military authorities could requisition services and supplies from the local population. These conditions, which permitted a reduced level of subsidies to the army commands, were far from satisfactory. At the same time the delivery of annuities at the rate of 3 million taels of silver had already used up the disposable funds of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury. In the following decade the frontier governors-general repeatedly appealed to Peking to increase their annuities, as their supplies including the grain they produced themselves, the subsidies from the northern provinces, and those derived from the salt revenue were rarely delivered in full. The ministry of revenue, having no more funds at its disposal, simply turned

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291

25. Major items of supply disbursed by the fourteen frontier army posts in 1575

TABLE

Disbursed items and quantities (reported)

Monetary value (estimated) (tls.)

Grain for human consumption 2,008,918 piculs Grain for animal-feed 1,125,080 piculs Hay 14,314,822 bundles Silver 5,908,562 tls. Total

@ 0.80 tls. = 1,600,000 @ 0.35 tls. = 390,000

TABLE

@ 0.03 tls. =

420,000

approximately 5,910,000 8,320,000

26. Revenues of the fourteen frontier army posts, 1578 Item, quantity and source (reported)

Annuities, from the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, in silver Subsidies, delivered by the northern provinces, in silver Proceeds from military farming, in silver Salt revenue, delivered by merchants and salt-distribution offices, in silver Grain, dispatched by Peking, 350,000 piculs Grain, delivered by the northern provinces, 280,000 piculs Proceeds from military farming, including grain for both human and animal consumption, 1,450,000 piculs Hay, delivered by the northern provinces and from military farming, 6,830,000 bundles Total

Monetary value (estimated) (tls.) 3,180,000 2,730,000 180,000 640,000 0.80 tls. = 0.80 tls. =

280,000 220,000

0.50 tls. =

730,000

0.03 tls. =

210,000 8,170,000

a deaf ear to these appeals. Chang Chu-cheng even admitted in a private letter that he was under great pressure to reduce military expenditures.118 Up to 1591, the central government's allocation of some 3 million taels remained the permanent budget for the frontier commands. The Wan-li Ku'ai-chi-lu, published in 1582, lists the total annuities delivered to the fourteen commands by the ministry of revenue as 3,105,000 taels119 and in 1584 the ministry asserted that an extra of 300,000 taels had accumulated over the previous eight years. But in 1587 it reported that the total amount was again down to 3,159,400 taels and in 1591 that the total was 3,435,000 taels.120 Supplies of military establishments in the interior The supply procedure of the army units in the southern provinces was established during the wo-k'ou campaign. The fund-raising program

292

Financial management

carried out in these provinces in the 1550s showed the following features. Firstly, all the funds were raised locally, not handled by the ministry of revenue. The court either permitted the governors and governors-general to make arrangements at their own discretion or else authorized impositions at their own requested rates. Secondly, all the extra collections were to be kept separate from the regular revenues and audited separately. Thirdly, the sources of income were very diverse. As they were managed by provincial officials and military officers the total amount they yielded was never disclosed. Fourthly, many of the new revenues and surcharges created during the campaign, including a number of nuisance taxes, were never subsequently abolished. The military situation in the south was quite different from that in the north. In the 1550s no adequate army organization existed and the entire command had to be built up from scratch. Even the governors-general, military circuit intendants and commanders-in-chief were commissioned at short notice. Most of the fighting men were recruited in the field. When Chang Ching was governor-general of the region (1554-5), the recruits included mountain aborigines from Kwangsi, salt-smugglers from South Chihli, and Buddhist monks from Shantung. Later on the recruits were distinguished by the names of their native districts, being known as P'ei troopers, Chang troopers, I-wu troopers and so on.121 Wei-so soldiers and militiamen, on the other hand, played only a minor role. The prefectural gazetteer of Shao-hsing, Chekiang, summarized the situation as follows: 'The wei-so regulars are called soldiers and the recruits are called troopers. The troopers fight; the soldiers merely sit idly.'122 In the course of the campaign Chekiang enlisted 100,000 such troopers. Even ships had to be hired. The recruiting was carried out by officers of all ranks. Detachment commanders and their superiors were encouraged to recruit 'standard troopers', and the generals to gather companies of 'housemen' to form a more highly-paid elite corps. This unsystematic approach was dictated by circumstances. In the early phase of the campaign the necessary funds were derived principally from fi-pien, & term for which there is no adequate English equivalent; fi meaning to lift up, andpien to organize (3, iv). The original concept of fi-pien was similar to that of the federation of national guards in the United States, except that in Ming China the term was used almost exclusively in its fiscal sense, and rarely applied to personnel. In 1554 the court ordered all the counties and subprefectures of South Chihli to defer the service of 40 per cent of their militiamen, and that each of these men should contribute 7.2 taels of silver to Chang Ching's war chest. The following year each county of South Chihli and Chekiang, according to its size, was ordered to provide 200 or 300 militiamen on the governorgeneral's command. Later on the service obligation was largely met by an

7, III Appropriation of military supplies

293

annual payment of 12 taels of silver per man. In addition, 1 tael of silver was levied on every corvee laborer in the two provinces.123 As the campaign dragged on, the fi-pien was extended to the li-chia and chiin-yao. Since at this time most counties still required the village communities to supply raw materials and labor service in five-year cycles, the fi-pien called those households scheduled to serve in the following year to perform their duty in the current year. The following year's services were in turn performed by those who had been scheduled to serve in the third year. As the military authorities were naturally not interested in the collection of raw materials or labor service unrelated to the war effort, all the irregular collections were made in silver. Though fi-pien had originally been devised as a stop-gap measure, in the course of the protracted campaign these extra-schedule collections gradually became permanent. They were designated as 'military supplies', being at first added to the service levy accounts and later indirectly charged to the land taxes (3, iv). At the high point of the campaign the surcharges on the land taxes in both South Chihli and Chekiang were approximately 500,000 taels a year.124 This was the situation that forced the local officials to undertake the Single Whip Reform. The number of miscellaneous taxes in the southern provinces increased enormously on account of the campaign. Monastic properties in Fukien that had previously been tax-exempt were partially confiscated by the state or made subject to taxation. Hilly land in Ku'ai-chi county, Chekiang, which prior to the campaign had been only lightly taxed, was made to pay a heavier assessment. An extra amount was likewise added to the 'roof tax' in the city of Hangchou, the proceeds of which were allocated as military supplies. Kwangtung province imposed a toll at its principal bridges and a tax on the slaughtering of cows was collected in Shun-te county. A salt transit tax was imposed along the southern borders of Kiangsi. Fishermen in the coastal provinces were required to pay a new tax and had to produce receipts for this before they were allowed to purchase salt. As mentioned earlier, the newly-created maritime tariff in Fukien and the old one in Kwangtung, together with the taxes on iron mining in these two provinces, were also appropriated as military supplies (6, i). Some existing revenues, such as the stamp tax on real estate transfers and miscellaneous excise duties, were retained by the provincial officials to help pay defense costs, a practice which spread to the inland provinces. Yunnan was authorized to retain the proceeds from taxation on mining while Szechuan derived its military supplies from the excise on tea and the salt revenue.125 After the wo-k'ou pirates were suppressed, the militiamen in the southern provinces were partially demobilized. In 1595 there were still 199,650 of them under arms however,126 and in the Lung-ch'ing and Wan-li periods there were frequent demands that they be discharged. Efforts were made

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likewise by the civil and military authorities to replace the recruits with wei-so regulars, but met only limited success. During the Korean campaign in the 1590s recruiting was once again stepped up and towards the end of the dynasty recruits formed the backbone of the army.127 Remarkably enough this did not result in the complete abolition of the wei-so system. Chia-hsing prefecture in Chekiang throughout the second half of the sixteenth century maintained a mixed force of five battalions, one of which was filled with recruits, and two each with militiamen and wei-so regulars. The prefecture also had a naval force of 1,500 men, among whom the recruits were classified as 'experienced helmsmen', and the wei-so soldiers as 'assistant sailors'. As late as 1597 all the warships were hired. These military forces were under the direction of the military circuit intendant and their supplies were delivered by the Chia-hsing prefectural treasury.128 It is impossible to define the status of these mixed units in the imperial army. It is very difficult to form an accurate estimate of troop strength and defence costs in the interior provinces in the late sixteenth century on the basis of the extant sources. While relevant data do exist for certain districts, the extent of regional diversity in military matters renders them of little use in studies at the national level. Nevertheless, in 1570 three prefectures in the lower Yangtze area, namely Soochow, Sung-chiang, and Ch'ang-chou, altogether supported 10,565 recruited soldiers.129 In 1573 it was reported that the Nanking garrison, which had an authorized strength of 120,000, actually consisted of 22,000 men.130 In 1575 Kwangtung reported that the province actually had 30,000 wei-so soldiers under arms, as against an authorized strength of 120,000 men.131 With the inclusion of the hired militiamen, it is estimated that in the provinces south of the Yangtze there should have been a total military force of over 250,000 men in the two decades between 1570 and 1590. To keep these units ready for active service would have cost 6 million taels of silver a year, allowing 2 taels per soldier per month. Though this estimate is a very tentative one, it does show, nevertheless, that the cost of supporting the army remained the government's heaviest financial burden. There is no evidence that the problem was ever solved. To maintain T'an Lun's estimated army of 845,000 men would have cost 20 million taels a year in military supplies alone, that is, more than half the state's total estimated revenues.

IV FISCAL RETRENCHMENT UNDER CHANG CH0-CHENG The record of Chang's administration The period of Chang Chii-cheng's administration from 1572 to 1582 was an exceptional phase in late Ming financial history. Shortly before his death

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the granaries in Peking had enough grain in stock to meet the needs of the next nine years.132 The deposits in the old vault of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, which were not to be drawn on except in an emergency, rose to over 6 million taels of silver.133 The court of imperial stud held another 4 million taels134 and the vaults in Nanking likewise contained reserves of 2.5 million taels.135 The provincial treasuries were also well stocked with grain and cash. Wang Shih-hsing (1546-98), on the basis of his conversations with local officials, recorded that in the 1570s and 1580s, the prefectural and provincial treasuries of Kwangsi, Chekiang, and Szechuan on average held deposits of between 150,000 and 800,000 taels.136 This forms a paradoxical contrast to the general state of sixteenth-century governmental finance. Chang came to power in 1572 at an opportune moment, when the peace settlement with Altan and the gradual falling off of the wo-k'ou raids enabled him to carry out a general policy of retrenchment. This was aimed at a drastic reduction of government expenditures without any curtailment of income. Under his direction, all unnecessary and less urgent government operations were either suspended or postponed.137 The number of students on government stipends was reduced and the procurement missions of the palace eunuchs were stringently supervised. Provincial officials were ordered to cut down on corvee labor, in general to one-third of the existing level. The hostel services provided by the imperial postal system were likewise cut to the minimum. These cutbacks were not accompanied by corresponding reductions in the contributions required from the population; the savings simply accrued to the government treasuries.138 The proceeds from fines, confiscations, and commutation of punishments were made subject to auditing. Tax delinquents, most of them affluent landowners, were prosecuted with vigor and a real attempt was made to collect their tax arrears. The sale of official rank and ecclesiastical licenses was continued. The austerity program was also extended to the army. Since the Mongols were temporarily pacified, reductions could be made in the frontier guards and border patrols. This permitted savings all round and also freed more soldiers for farming.139 Governors-general in charge of frontier posts were requested to reduce their expenditures so as to save up to 20 per cent of the annuities sent to them by the central government.140 Army stud horses that were being maintained by civilian households were sold and the stabling services that these households had performed in lieu of land taxes were commuted to money payments (3, n). The stipends due to the imperial clansmen were generally not paid. Only after Chang's death did some of them dare to appeal directly to the emperor, revealing that in some cases the payments had not been made for over twenty years.141 Chang Chii-cheng's insistence on rigorous auditing of fiscal accounts was unprecedented in the sixteenth century. Instead of relying on the censorial officials, Chang began the auditing at the ministerial offices.

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In 1572, as a first step, the ministry of revenue declared twenty-eight types of accounts superfluous and discontinued them; another twenty-two types were simplified and consolidated.142 Thereafter the accounts, especially those sent in by the frontier army posts, were condensed into a much shorter format.143 These records were still cumbersome by present-day standards but were at least easier to examine and review. In 1579, on the suggestion of a supervising secretary, Chang ordered all counties and prefectures to submit their service levy accounts to Peking for review.144 The accounts of Shantung and Hukwang are known to have been scrutinized by the grand-secretary himself.145 After the books were returned with the required revisions the local officials were instructed to publish them as a semi-permanent budget. The most enormous project for gathering fiscal data undertaken on Chang's orders was the compilation of the Wan-li Ku'ai-chi-lu, which began in 1572 and was completed in 1582, exactly the period when he was in office. This work was used as the foundation for the fiscal sections of the Ta-Ming Hui-tien. The junior officials participating in the project included Ku Hsien-ch'eng, Li San-ts'ai, and Chao Nan-hsing, all of whom later made names for themselves.146 Chang Chii-cheng's administration involved no innovations, but rather laid stress on administrative discipline and strict observation of tax laws. In 1576 it still required the emperor's personal intervention to make the provincial officials deliver their tax payments in time, but in 1581 the grandsecretary was able to report that due to the tightening up of personnel evaluation with regard to fiscal matters the tax quotas were now generally filled.147 Chang's record in eliminating official corruption was a mixed one, and clearly subject to controversy. His greatest success was to check the extortion by warehouse receiving men in Peking, who habitually demanded extras from the civilian tax agents delivering goods to these depots. This involved taking on a formidable adversary, the emperor's own maternal grandfather, the Earl of Wu-ch'ing, who had been receiving payments from the tax agents and arranging for them to deliver tax materials of inferior quality to the warehouses. Chang secured a roll of cotton cloth thus checked in, which was clearly below the official standard and urged the youthful emperor to complain before the empress dowager.148 He then took advantage of the public scandal to replace the eunuchs and other personnel in the supply depots. In a letter written after the incident, in 1577, he revealed that some of the most notorious extortioners had been put to death and the demands for 'cushion money' effectively stopped.149 On the other hand Chang made no attempt to compel all officials to live within their salaries, which would have been impossible without substantially increasing them. Such a reform was beyond the capability of the government and consequently not expected by the public. Chang's main objective seems to have been the prevention of the misuse of the account-

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able items of public funds. Like his contemporaries, he apparently did not think that absolute honesty in officialdom was necessary or possible. He himself is known to have lived in elegant style and to have had luxurious tastes. His biographer and critic Wang Shih-cheng (1526-90) even accused him of advancing the careers of his subordinates in return for their bribes. Since Wang was at odds with Chang, there is an element of malice in the criticism.150 Yet several of Chang's subordinates, including Yin Chengmou, governor-general of Kwangtung and later minister of revenue, and Wang Ch'ung-ku, governor-general of Shansi and later minister of justice, were considered by their contemporaries as corrupt. 151 In Chang Chiicheng's extant correspondences the mention of 'gifts' is frequent.152 The background of the administration A discussion of the political background is essential to any understanding of the fiscal management in the late sixteenth century, because governmental finance under the Ming was far more responsive to the power structure in Peking than to economic conditions in the empire. Chang chii-cheng maintained his pre-eminence through his collaboration with the eunuch Feng Pao and through his own position as the tutor of the Wan-li Emperor. The confidence placed in him by the Empress Dowager Li was likewise indispensable to his career.153 But under the Ming system it was impossible for him to assume authority overtly. Furthermore at this period no official would dare to suggest reorganization of governmental institutions; the introduction of drastic reforms was an invitation to impeachment. As senior grand-secretary, Chang's official functions were limited to drafting rescripts for the emperor. To initiate fiscal legislations on his own authority would clearly have been out of order. This was why Chang was forced to maintain his position for over ten years chiefly through the manipulation of personal relationships. Through Feng Pao he maintained cordial relations with the empress dowager, and through her influence he controlled the emperor. By influencing the emperor's orders he in effect exercised the power of appointment, which he used to place his lieutenants in key positions in and out of the court. The reports of the secret police kept him informed of all the major events of the empire. His administration was effected through private correspondence with senior officials. Before proceeding to measures of any significance it was necessary for him to urge his trusted ministers and governors-general to submit memorials proposing the desired change; in drafting the rescripts to them he approved his own proposals.154 In a letter to Wang Tsung-mo, imperial commissioner of the Grand Canal, Chang said: Your servant now serves under a young sovereign. He is obliged to be extremely law-abiding and to go easy on the people. All ambitious policies must wait until

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His Majesty adds a few more years to his august age and until his precious wisdom has further developed. Only then can suggestions be leisurely presented for his imperial decision.155 In view of what is known of Ming court practice, this statement may genuinely reflect Chang's opinion, though it is tinged with over-exaggerated humility. It is impossible to guess the nature of the 'ambitious policies' he envisioned. His extant letters reveal only his vigor and devotion to duty, which do not by themselves make Chang an original thinker. The men whom he helped to place in important positions were remarkably capable, though not all of them were noted for financial integrity. They included important names of the late sixteenth century such as Ling Yun-i, Wang Ch'ung-ku, Chang Hsiieh-yen, Liang Meng-lung, P'an Chi-hsiin, Chang Chia-yun, Yin Cheng-mou, Ch'i Chi-kuang, and Li Ch'eng-liang. The letters that he wrote to them contain a mixture of cajolery, persuasion, polite reprimands, and hints of career advancement. Most of the issues discussed in them were connected with regional administrative problems, such as the enforcement of tax laws, troop dispositions, water-control projects, and so on, and though the grand-secretary showed himself remarkably well-informed and his directions were usually sound, the scope of the problems under discussion was too narrow for him to demonstrate his genuine greatness. Chang Chii-cheng never proposed the creation or abolition of an office. If he ever contemplated increasing official salaries, it is not apparent in his writings. He did at one time indicate that minting copper coins would benefit the population, since silver was in short supply,156 but made no attempt to carry this out when he was in office. On the contrary, his efforts to build up silver reserves further reduced the money supply, resulting in deflationary tendencies. Whereas Ni Yiian-lu, the last minister of revenue under the Ming, did attempt to induce the Ch'ung-chen Emperor to abolish the wei-so system, carry out fiscal decentralization, transport tribute grain by sea, and build up a base in central or south China to derive income from industrial and commercial sources,157 Chang Chii-cheng advocated no such far-reaching measures. It would be unfair to condemn him on these grounds however; any judgement must take into account the difficulty of his position and the complacency and senility of the Ming court.158 Chang Chii-cheng differed from his fellow officials over the enforcement of tax laws. He argued that it was not wrong for the state to build up its armaments and fiscal strength,159 and that in this respect he aimed to return to the ideals of the Hung-wu and Yung-lo Emperors.160 This was not enough to silence his critics. Though some of their concern over Chang's monopoly of power and the increasing harshness of his administration may well have been genuine, it seems likely that they were largely motivated by

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personal factors. Wang Shih-cheng, never hiding his own grudge against Chang, made the objective observation that the grand-secretary's austerity program was resented by the officials (who regarded travel at the expense of the post system as their rightful privilege), hated by the government students (who had to wait longer to enter the civil service), and disliked by the eunuchs (who saw their income from procurement missions being cut off). His rigorous auditing of the tax accounts displeased the large landowners in the lower Yangtze area, who were used to keeping their payments in arrears. In addition to all this Chang was intolerant of criticism.161 Unknowingly, he thus made himself the enemy of the entire empire. Meanwhile the existing system, which depended on a delicate balance between the prevailing ideology and vested interests, and was safeguarded by the dynastic founder's instructions that his style of government should never be altered, endured firmly enough to frustrate the most capable and determined statesman of Ming times. On the threshold of a major reform Because most of his time was devoted to gathering more accurate fiscal data, enforcing the current tax laws and filling up the treasuries, Chang Chii-cheng was never able to introduce any fundamental reforms. Though he took the preliminary steps that might have led to a reform, these of themselves did not result in any institutional changes. The only change in legislation that Chang actually carried out was the abolition of the stabling services provided by civilian households. This measure, which represented a deviation from the fiscal instructions of Hung-wu and Yung-lo, aroused no criticism as it affected no vested interests. No other institutional reform was attempted. The minting of copper cash was still totally inadequate and the salt monopoly was never reorganized. Though Ming-shih claims that general implementation of the Single Whip Reform was first decreed in 1581, within the period when Chang was in power,162 the statement is clearly erroneous. Only in 1588 did the governor of Shansi request its adoption in that province, by which time Chang Chii-cheng had already been dead for six years.163 The extant sources show that Chang adopted a cautious attitude towards the controversial Single Whip Reform. It must be remembered that when the reform was first introduced in north China it was strenuously resisted by the population and by officials of northern origin (3, in). When in 1570 it was adopted in Shantung it had soon to be rescinded in the face of local opposition.164 In 1577 a senior supervising secretary, Kuang Mou, a native of Shantung, even memorialized the emperor requesting the abolition of the reform all over south China and demanding punishment for Pai Tung, magistrate of Tung-ao county in Shantung, who had carried it out in that

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district.165 The imperial rescript, drafted by Chang Chii-cheng, read: 'We have already announced that the adoption of the Single Whip is entirely dependent on the wishes of the local population. It has never been our intention to call for its universal implementation. The matter is hereby closed.'166 In a private letter to Li Shih-ta, governor of Shantung, Chang admitted that Pai Tung was a capable official and that there were few disadvantages to the reform but that the opposition had whipped up such feeling against it that he himself was helpless.167 These incidents reveal how little he was in control of events, and how far politics in the capital were dominated by the combination of vested interests and ideology. Chang did, however, take one step towards a major reform by initiating a national land survey. In a letter to a provincial governor he stated: 'A land survey will benefit the small people and will inconvenience the affluent households and those of an official background.'168 For several years he found it prudent to defer the measure, for the decree promulgated on the Wan-li Emperor's accession in 1572 had explicitly ruled out the possibility of a national land survey.169 Chu Tung-yun speculates that after 1577 Chang underwent a psychological change, and that his decision may have been hardened by the impeachment actions against him and the growing opposition.170 The survey was first tried in Fukien in 1578. The counties were notified that its purpose was to facilitate their internal tax apportionment and that their tax quotas would not be revised regardless of the outcome.171 This assurance was apparently given to prevent the magistrates from under-reporting when pressurized by local landowners. The whole provincial survey took one and a half years, being completed in the summer of 1580. On 16 December 1580, it was decreed that the survey be carried out over the whole empire.172 As far as is known, this was the only order of its kind ever issued during the Ming. When Chang died on 9 July 1582, the returns were still not complete. The details of the survey are not at all clear. The imperial order entrusted the responsibility for it to the provincial administrative commissioners, their circuit intendants, some military circuit intendants and the local officials. The 240-square-pace standard mou was declared the universal unit of measurement; this was recorded in the gazetteers of Chi-chou in Shantung, Huai-ch'ing prefecture in Honan, and Huai-yiian county in Shensi, all of which had previously used larger measurements than this.173 According to Ming-shih curve measurement was introduced,174 but it is impossible to verify this claim. The survey could not be considered a success. Honan province took one and a half years to submit its returns, which were later discovered to be simply the old data resubmitted. Though the provincial officials were reprimanded and ordered to carry out the survey again, the second report was rushed through only five months after the first was rejected.175 Wen-

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shang county in Shantung had previously conducted a local survey in 1567; its magistrate, on being notified of the national land survey, merely informed the landowners of the new unit of measurement so that the latter could convert their own land-holdings.176 K'ai-hua county in Chekiang also evaded the survey, by simply adding 0.27 mou to every mou of land previously registered.177 On those districts which did carry out the survey Wang Shih-hsing made the following general observations. For the land close to the cities, the surveyors used the yardsticks.* Over 20 // from the cities, they measured with ropes but beyond 50 // even the ropes were discarded. The report was thus no more than a general estimate.178 The returns of the national land survey of 1580-1 were never officially published and the provincial aggregate figures given in the Shih-lu are incomplete (see Appendix D). Two months after Chang Chii-cheng's death, the survey was severely criticized. The emperor therefore ordered that in those districts where the population was satisfied with the returns, the officials should use the new land data as the basis for taxation. In other districts the governors and surveillance commissioners were to take 'corrective measures'. No new survey was authorized.179 The arguments still continued. Some officials contended that all the survey records of 1581 should be invalidated and taxation remain as before,180 while others actually made a second survey. Ling-chang county in Honan conducted a local land survey in 1588 and Wen-shang county in Shantung did so in 1591.181 Yet, all things considered, Chang Chii-cheng's land survey was not a total failure. In some counties the returns of 1581 were used as the new basis of taxation, as was the case in Shun-te county (3, i). The failure was mainly at the national level, and a complete set of land statistics for the whole country was not successfully compiled until the present century. Governmental finance after Chang Chii-cheng Six months after the grand-secretary's funeral all his measures were reviewed and his associates either dismissed or impeached. The nature of the posthumous charge against Chang was never clearly stated, but from a note appended to his collected works, published by his son in the seventeenth century, it appears that it was suspected high treason.182 The feelings against him were so intense that in the 1580s the local officials who had been negligent over his land survey were praised as righteous men.183 In these circumstances to continue his policies was out of the question. Thus Chang Chii-cheng, despite his efforts and intentions, actually did little to reorganize the fiscal administration. Nevertheless his retrenchment * The stick was made in the shape of a bow, with studs on each end and was rotated like a compass.

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can still be credited with having prolonged the life of the dynasty by half a century. The so-called 'three grand campaigns of the Wan-li era', that is the Korean war against Toyotomi Hideyoshi from 1592 to 1598, the campaign against Piibei in 1592 and the suppression of Yang Yung-lun and his Miao tribesmen from 1594 to 1600, could never have been carried out without the treasury reserves that he built up. The government actually began drawing on the reserves of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury several years earlier. Up to 1587 there were still 6 million taels of silver in the treasury's old vault which in theory were never to be spent, and in addition 4 million taels buried underground in the new vault. The initial withdrawals were from the latter. In 1588 and 1589 a total of 1.75 million taels was removed, and in 1590 another 1.06 million taels were taken. In three years the total reserves of 10 million taels were reduced to slightly over 7 million.184 In the 1590s the government began to draw on the old vault, the Chang-ying Treasury administered by the court of imperial stud, the reserves in Nanking and the provincial treasuries.185 The regular taxation system, which badly needed overhauling, could make little positive contribution to the war effort. When in 1592 the government authorized Chekiang province to increase its land taxes by 0.003 taels of silver per mou, the proceeds were retained by the provincial officials to strengthen coastal defenses, in anticipation of a naval invasion by the Japanese.186 In 1598 a surcharge was imposed on all service levy accounts; the counties being required to divert between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of their militia service expenses to finance the imperial army.187 In 1599 the governors of Hukwang and Szechuan were permitted to increase their land taxes at their own discretion in order to finance the campaign against Yang Yung-lung.188 Though in theory the quotas of the inland customs duties and the salt revenue were increased,189 it was subsequently reported that the actual income fell even below the previous level (5, iv and 6, i). It was fortunate that at the point when treasury reserves were almost exhausted and the ineffectual nature of the tax increases was becoming apparent the series of military campaigns also came to an end. But it is clear that by 1600 both governmental finance and the taxation system were in a worse state than they had been in 1572 when Chang Chii-cheng took over and possibly even worse than they had been in the mid sixteenth century. Most traditional historians and some modern scholars hold the Wan-li Emperor solely responsible for this deterioration in affairs of state. Admittedly Wan-li, cynical and indolent, is hardly deserving of sympathy. In 1584, at the age of twenty-one, he ordered the construction of his own mausoleum, which was completed four years later.190 When recently excavated it was found to contain dazzling riches.191 The monarch's greed for wealth was legendary. From 1596 onwards he sent eunuchs and some

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army officers as 'mining supervisors' to the provinces. In theory all underground mineral resources were open to exploitation by the populace; the government took no part in extracting them but merely collected half the proceeds.192 In practice, however, the eunuchs issued orders to the local officials, conscripted labor at will and dispatched their personal agents to harass the rural areas. In time they attracted crowds oflocal ne'er-do-wells who persistently extorted money from the people on the pretext that deposits of metal existed under their houses and in graves. When the eunuchs were put in charge oflocal business taxes, riots broke out in many cities. The abundant records of malpractice in the last half of the Wan-li reign make depressing reading.193 These events should not, however, be allowed to distract attention from the main issues. It should be stressed that many dangerous problems were developing in public finance even before Wan-li's abuses. The emperor indeed exercised arbitrary power, but outside the formal fiscal structure and the governmental organization. Throughout the sixteenth century the latter was never able adequately to mobilize the financial resources of the empire. Chang Chii-cheng's retrenchment represented basically a negative approach to the problem. As no effort was made to strengthen the fiscal apparatus the benefits of the accumulated treasury reserves could only be temporary. Though Wan-li's self-indulgence cannot be defended, there is little validity to the charge that he wrecked the fiscal foundations of the empire single-handed. His behaviour reflected the dynasty's institutional weakness. From the mid fifteenth century onwards the emperor's position became increasingly oriented towards ceremonial functions, and had little to do with public service. Imperial pomp and extravagance proliferated and the 50,000 eunuchs and palace women, like the civil officials, were virtually unpaid, though their food and clothing were provided by the state. A closer scrutiny of Wan-li's personal expense accounts reveals that some of the charges brought against him were exaggerated. The imperial estates, which produced an annual income of 49,000 taels, provided the expense accounts of several dowager empresses.194 The portion received by Empress Dowager Li was largely donated to the construction of stone bridges outside Peking and to religious institutions.195 The emperor's personal account consisted of the Gold Floral Silver, which yielded a million taels a year, but some 200,000 taels of this provided the pay of the army officers in the capital. After 1578 this was compensated for by the so-called 'purchasing money' (mai-pan fei) demanded from the ministry of revenue, again bringing the privy purse close to a million taels. In addition Yunnan annually supplied the palace with 2,000 taels of gold; in 1592 Wan-li increased the quota to 4,000 taels.196 The emperor never travelled apart from making short visits to the imperial tombs in the

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suburbs of Peking, but spent most of his money on jewelry and on presents for his favorites.197 Some of this gold and jewelry has recently been found in his mausoleum. Another heavy item of his expenditure seems to have been the wedding ornaments of the imperial princesses.198 When he died in 1620 the vaults in the Forbidden City were found to contain approximately 7 million taels of silver, the bulk of which was transferred by his two successive heirs, T'ai-ch'ang and T'ien-ch'i, to the ministries.199 Wan-li's worse characteristic was his greed which made him hoard money as well as spend it. In order to keep his own savings intact he often forced the government treasury to pay his petty bills. In their memorials to the emperor, Ming officials often criticized his personal extravagance by citing various items of palace expenditure over a number of years. One frequently-cited article was silk, the cost of which often ran into several million taels.200 The imperial satin, woven to special designs showing the wearer's rank, was tailored to a sort of dress uniform for wear in the palace. Every year between 8,000 and 28,000 bolts of such fabrics were ordered at an average cost of about 12 taels of silver apiece.201 The costs were deductible from the tax accounts of the districts which produced them. At times, however, the imperial allocation failed to cover the total expenses or else local tax collection fell short of the delivery quota, resulting in a shortage of funds. The local officials then had to adjust the difference either by abridging payments at some point or else by making extra impositions on some taxpayers. In 1575 when affairs of state were still under the control of Chang Chii-cheng 97,000 bolts of such fabrics were ordered, to be delivered over several years.202 Though the procurement program resulted in fiscal irregularities, it was consistent with the general practice of the dynasty. The most distorted story concerning Wan-li's personal expenditures is connected with the wedding of his son, the later T'ai-ch'ang Emperor. Wan-li wished to remove him from the succession, but the officials considered primogeniture to be an inviolable rule of the dynastic constitution and bombarded the emperor with requests that the crown prince be formally installed, that he be tutored by the Hanlin academicians, and that his wedding date be promptly announced. Every possible attempt was made to secure the heir apparent's right to the succession. Though the emperor continued to put off the proposals with excuses, he had no legitimate way to enforce his personal wishes or even to put a stop to the petitions. In 1599, as a last resort, he ordered the ministry of revenue to collect 24 million taels of silver in preparation for the weddings of his three sons. This was merely an ingenious subterfuge, as both the emperor and the officials were well aware that the ministry would never be able to raise such an enormous sum. Both the Shih-lu and Ming-shih, however, record the demand without explaining the circumstances.203

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Though such a tale may seem inappropriate for inclusion in the present study, it is mentioned because in recent years several scholars, including the author of a highly-specialized study of Chinese monetary history, have all taken it for granted that the 24 million taels were actually delivered and spent.204

8 Concluding observations

The Ming empire remained non-competitive with other nations, militarily and economically; therefore it was not keenly concerned with administrative efficiency. Even when governmental institutions were degenerating, this seldom led to an immediate crisis, for the population exhibited remarkable tolerance of mismanagement. Unsatisfactory conditions could sometimes persist for decades or even for over a century without causing serious alarm. Furthermore, the ad hoc, piecemeal measures adopted to deal with problems had the tendency not to solve them, but to transfer them into other areas. For these reasons the institutional history of the Ming dynasty is extremely difficult to analyze. Earlier discussions of such matters as the manipulations of the currency, the management of the salt monopoly, and the administration of the wei-so system has provided many examples of such complexities. The case of army logistics is most illuminating. Having been neglected since the mid fifteenth century, it became a matter of genuine concern only 100 years later. When a solution was devised, it did not involve reorganization of the armed forces, but further increases of the land taxes. Obviously, most historical problems have deep roots. The constitutional crisis in Stuart England cannot be understood without reference to the Tudor Reformation, and it is only comparatively recently that historians have established that the foundations of Meiji Japan were in fact laid during the late Tokugawa period. It is thus essential to take a long-term view of Ming financial history, especially as the government avoided periodic reorganization and drew no clear-cut divisions between its departments. The fiscal apparatus is noted for its ability to grow like a living organism. Historians who adopt the methodology of the social scientist usually prefer to divide their topic of study into many small segments, which are subjected to intensive and specialized examination. No final synthesis is attempted until all available evidence has been analyzed in minute detail. This approach, though logically sound, is of only limited value in the study [306]

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of governmental finance under the Ming. The narrow perspective may involve the investigator into a greater risk than would a broad survey. The final analysis thus arrived at may not be an accurate presentation of the whole system, but rather that of its disjointed parts. In the same manner, to rearrange Ming financial data is not a simple matter. The effort to bring some logical order to what is essentially an institution of disorder may facilitate the comprehension of the reader, but at the same time obscure the issues about which he wishes to know. The narrator may unknowingly assume the role of a fiscal reformer rather than that of a financial historian. It is also impossible at present to treat the subject in exhaustive detail, owing to the scarcity of reliable data. What is clear, however, is the general style of the administration; all the scattered information on its various aspects presents a consistent pattern. This general style of administration furnishes the substance of the discussion in the following sections. First it is examined together with several theories of Chinese historical development, and then analyzed for its longterm consequences in Chinese history.

I THE RISKS OF OVER-SIMPLIFICATION The dynastic cycle theory This theory has been propounded by both traditional historians and modern scholars. The former, preoccupied with moral issues, attributed dynastic decline to the character of the ruler, portraying most dynastic founders as paragons of virtue and the monarchs at the end of the dynasty as corrupt and incompetent tyrants. Modern scholars on the whole have replaced the ethical and personal elements in the theory with economic factors. The foremost proponent of the dynastic cycle theory in the present century is Wang Yli-ch'iian, whose influential article 'The Rise of Land Tax and the Fall of Dynasties' places particular emphasis on the Ming and Ch'ing. In his view the Ming dynasty collapsed because 'the agricultural economy of China was bled to exhaustion by special land taxes levied on the peasantry'. 1 In describing the Ch'ing, Wang is even more explicit. He says: The process of corruption may be described briefly as one in which the central government was robbed of real wealth and power, which were transferred to the very individuals who, as members of the ruling class, controlled the government. They could not be possibly restrained because, while responsible as officials and as a class for protecting the interests of the nation, they were as private individuals the sole beneficiaries of corruption. While some of them, as officials, understood what was wrong, the most they could accomplish as a

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class was to try to protect both the government interest and their class interest by trying to make up for the taxes which they themselves evaded, by increased taxation of the poor and unprivileged classes.2 The charges against the Ming are not substantiated by the rates of tax collection which it imposed. The tax increases ordered by the government in the early seventeenth century, in the name of 'Manchurian supplies' and 'bandit-suppression supplies', at the very most produced a total of 21 million taels of silver a year3 and this extra revenue was not raised entirely from the land taxes. For instance in 1623 when the state had to meet additional military expenses of 6,668,677 taels it was expected to produce 4,491,481 taels from increases on the land tax, while the rest of the revenue was raised from forced savings on other expenditures, the sellingoff of government properties, and miscellaneous taxation, including a tax on pawnshops.4 Even if the 21 million taels of silver had all been added to the land taxes the burden on the taxpayers would have been high but not absolutely unbearable, as Wang asserts. Inflation in the early seventeenth century, when commodity prices in general rose by 40 per cent,5 meant that the tax increases were to a large extent illusory. This is corroborated by the fact that the Ch'ing subsequently retained most of the Ming tax rates. Though Wang considers that the Ch'ing kept its promise to reduce taxes,6 a check of the fiscal records for the early part of the dynasty shows that this was not the case.7 Taxation under the new dynasty was at about the same level as before, that is, at approximately the same rates that Wang asserts to have bled China's agrarian economy to exhaustion. Nonetheless Wang's description of the late Ch'ing, quoted above, is not entirely inaccurate and actually bears remarkable points of resemblance to conditions in the late Ming. It should be noted here that widespread tax evasion by influential landowners and their shifting of their tax burden to the less affluent constituted only one of several manifestations of institutional breakdown, the fundamental causes of which went much deeper. In the late Ming, despite the proposed tax increases, even the regular tax quotas were never filled. In 1632 tax arrears of 50 per cent or more were reported in 340 counties, that is, more than a quarter of the fiscal districts of the entire empire. Moreover, 134 of these counties had actually delivered no tax payments to the central government whatsoever.8 This situation supports the view that tax collection under the Ming, for historical reasons, had a definite ceiling, and that when the demand for revenue significantly exceeded this limit it led to the collapse of the fiscal apparatus. All this cannot fully be explained by higher rates and tax evasion. The solution is more likely to be found in the tax quota system. From the fourteenth century and even earlier the income from agricultural land, after regular taxes and a minimum wage had been paid to the primary producers, was claimed by a host of interested parties by virtue of special kinds of land tenure,

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leases, mortgages, reserved rights, share-cropping, and private transfers of public obligations (4, n). In addition some share of it went to local officials, office clerks and rural auxiliaries in the form of customary fees and gifts (4, v). Since the tax rates were generally low and money was scarce, this combination of circumstances must have created a paradise for agrarian exploitation on all levels and on all scales. In the course of two centuries, the tax-paying capacity of the population was thus severely undercut. Sometimes even the share of the exploiter was so small that he himself was reduced to a minimum level of subsistence. In general the effect of the increased agricultural productivity was nullified by a growing population. Though slight tax increases might sometimes effectively cut into the agrarian profit margin, any drastic increase was bound to meet with resistance. In addition to the powerful landowners, many different sections of the population were involved. Tax evasion became a really serious problem only when the general collection was held up. The theory of the dynastic cycle thus fails to take full account of the institutional weakness. Financial administration under the Ming was handicapped by the limited capacity of its apparatus and the rigidity of its approach. The proponents of the dynastic cycle theory simply take it for granted that at the founding of the dynasty its institutions were in a state of perfection and that all later deviations from this ideal state were due to corruption. Their research usually adds little to our understanding. The Ming dynasty as a feudal state Since most modern scholars are Western-trained they naturally tend to view Chinese history in terms of Western experience. Though the comparative method is obviously useful, it can lead to distortion, especially as simultaneous developments in Chinese history can often be viewed as corresponding to different stages of development in the history of the Western world. The Ming dynasty should probably be viewed as neither entirely 'backward' nor completely 'modern'. Herrlee G. Creel, in his study of the origins of bureaucracy in China, goes so far as to say that 'as early as the beginning of the Christian Era the Chinese Empire showed many similarities to the super-state of the twentieth century', which he characterizes as 'modern, centralized, and bureaucratic'.9 The Ming, developing in this tradition, certainly retained most of these so-called 'modern' features. It has already been mentioned that the ministry of revenue as early as the fourteenth century controlled the accounts of some 2,400 offices (1, i). The use of stub-books in business transactions can be said to have anticipated the use of computer cards. Yet such practices as flogging tax delinquents to death, assigning contraband quotas to patrolmen, and

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arbitrary confiscation of personal property all seem to mark Ming China as 'medieval'. The Wan-li Emperor's construction of his own huge underground mausoleum, using the labor of thousands of soldiers (7, iv), might in fact be more appropriately labelled as 'ancient'. In the past two decades it has become fashionable for Chinese scholars to designate the Ming as a feudal society. While it is undoubtedly possible to assemble a considerable number of episodes from the Ming histories which show superficial parallels with medieval Europe, in terms of institutions and organization this categorization is clearly misleading. Under the Ming dynasty there was not a single hereditary office, apart from that of the emperor, that carried any functional responsibilities. After Yung-lo even the emperor's consorts were deliberately selected from families of lesser status, rather than those with aristocratic titles.10 From the fifteenth century onwards the prestige of the military sank to probably its lowest level in Chinese history. In the sixteenth century neither the central government nor the provincial authorities were able adequately to support an army and even their warships had to be rented (7, in). The rents on palace and aristocratic estates were actually collected by civil officials rather than the titleholders, effectively reducing the latter's privileges to a mere stipend (3, n). Ironically enough, while some modern scholars consider that the mismanagement of the tax administration was due to the survival of feudal practices, Ku Yen-wu in the seventeenth century argued that it was due to the absence of feudal spirit in the government structure. Ku considered that the solution was to restore what he called 'the essential meaning of feudalism', which included the relaxation of centralized control, the right of local officials to select their own subordinates, more fiscal authority for local government, and even the opening of some public offices to inheritance.11 While there is no point in debating the feasibility of Ku's proposed reforms, it should be emphasized that they were an attempt to deal with genuine problems. In the late Ming, though the imperial government was in theory omnipotent, in practice it was often unable to act; the local officials could have achieved much more but did not possess the necessary authority. This resulted in deadlock. The land-tax administration could not cope with conditions in the rural districts and mismanagement was widespread in all areas and at all levels of administration. As was shown earlier, taxes could not be collected without applying pressure and the pressure was generally directed to those who could offer least resistance to it. The arbitrary and excessive demands of the tax collectors, which some modern scholars regarded as a feudal characteristic, in part reflected this loss of control, and in part represented attempts by officialdom to compensate for its own organizational weakness. Oppression was thus not a sign of strength, but of a lack of it. It can by no means be considered the fundamental characteristics of any system.

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Possibly less confusion might have arisen if these scholars had limited their discussions of' feudalism' to those practices within traditional Chinese polity the origins of which could be traced to China's remote feudal past. The principle of group responsibility, for instance, was adopted by the feudal states of the first millennium B.C. when they first attempted to create a bureaucratic administration, and was never subsequently abandoned. The emphasis on the service obligations of imperial subjects was a historical survival of the practice of paying tribute. But in general these Marxist historians show little patience with historical details. Starting from the premise that the Ming was a feudal society, they then go on to postulate the 'historical inevitability' of class struggle within it, concluding with the emergence of 'budding capitalism' in the late Ming. The implications of this last view will be considered later. Moral interpretation of history Chinese traditional historians, not surprisingly, always tended to interpret history in terms of moral leadership. When good men were in power, governmental finances were naturally in a sound state. Conversely, corruption always started with degeneration in the quality of leadership. Since Chinese administrative theory traditionally laid more stress on the personal ability of the officials than on the creation of specialized institutions, this approach sometimes has its uses in assessing localized, shortterm situations. Its complete disregard of all environmental and technical questions make its limitations obvious, however. In the previous chapter it was shown that Chang Chii-cheng, despite his strong character and undeniable moral courage, had only limited success in financial administration (7, iv). Though his savings on state expenditure undoubtedly strengthened public finance in the short term, the deflationary effect caused by his building up of silver reserves must have resulted in considerable public distress. His methods moreover were conditioned by political pressures; the fiscal machinery was forced to work harder without being overhauled. Resistance was only to be expected, and probably accounts for his own posthumous disgrace. The subsequent reaction not only led to the abandonment of his policies but was also the beginning of a general split in the bureaucracy.12 Though one might expect the moral interpretation of history to be generally discredited by now, this is not the case. Some modern historians tend to view the Confucian morality of certain individuals in terms of their own sense of social justice. Wu Han, for instance, praises his hero Hai Jui for' standing on the side of peasantry' in their conflict with the landlords.13 He also asserts that Hai, 'despite a hundred setbacks, still continued the struggle to build a socialist society'.14

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In reality Hai Jui was an orthodox and rigorous Confucian who demanded the same austerity of his subordinates as he did of himself. As governor of South Chihli, he waged a relentless struggle against official corruption and the gentry's abuse of the tax laws, which undoubtedly evidenced great personal courage and integrity. Nonetheless he can hardly be considered a social reformer, let alone a revolutionary. In his frequently cited memorial to the Chia-ching Emperor he greeted the sovereign with the statement: 'All under heaven is Your Majesty's own household.' 15 His opinion of the common people (hsiao-min) was that they 'rival each other in greed, all being motivated by profit so that their lawsuits are unending'. 16 After his retirement, moreover, Hai compromised his own standards, as his letters show, by accepting 'gifts' from a local prefect, a surveillance commissioner, two military defence intendants, and two governors-general, the last two being Ling Yun-i and Yin Cheng-mou, who were generally regarded as corrupt.17 At least one of the gifts was large enough to enable him to purchase a piece of real estate. The purpose here is neither to downgrade an upright man nor to exonerate official corruption, but to emphasize that institutional weaknesses in the late Ming were too serious to be remedied by moral rearmament. Yet Wu Han writes that H a i ' all his life was opposed to bad men and bad deeds but never to good men and good deeds', 18 and censures anyone who has criticized his hero including those who, though they approved of Hai's objectives, felt that he could have exercised greater diplomacy in pursuing them.19 This kind of attitude has already spread to the study of institutional history, as is shown by the fact that for some writers the Single Whip Reform is above criticism (3, in). The revival of historical stereotypes is a dangerous practice.* It seems of extremely doubtful value to classify the personalities of sixteenth-century Ming China with the current labels of 'liberal' and 'progressive', 'conservative' and 'reactionary'. While few of them fit neatly into any one category, many overlap into several at once. Though practically all of them aimed to preserve traditional social values, egalitarian principles were by no means absent from their thinking. While they relied on the state to protect their own personal interests, they also held that the livelihood of the general population was of prime importance to the state. To label them as 'good' and 'bad' leads therefore to confusion rather than clarification. * To make things more complicated, Wu Han was himself purged for reasons connected with his interpretation of Hai Jui.

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II MING FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION AND ITS PLACE IN CHINESE HISTORY Centralization ahead of technology A generalization can readily be applied to the vast range of disparate topics discussed in this volume: Governmental finance under the Ming represented an attempt to impose an extremely ambitious centralized system on an enormous empire before its level of technology had made such a degree of centralization practical. By the latter is meant both practical technology and economic expertise. They included transportation, communication, other service facilities, the principles of money and banking, techniques of accounting and data processing, and even the mental attitudes of the officials. The financial system created by Hung-wu, of not separating the emperor's personal income from that of the state, nor imperial from provincial expenditures, imposed a unified administration over all the financial resources of the empire. Such a scheme would be ambitious even for modern times, and not unnaturally encountered technical problems from the very beginning under the Ming. The difficulties would not have been so acute if the scheme had been carried out in an area of dry cereal cultivation, such as the northern loess plan. The geographical diversity of China as a whole multiplied the problems enormously. The Ming, relying on land taxes as its major source of income, never produced a set of consistent land data throughout its history of 276 years (2, n; 3, n; 7, iv); on reviewing the regional reports it becomes understandable. Since the taxation had to cover all households, including the lowest income group, every type of land had to be accounted for, down to the reedy stretches along the banks of the major rivers and the mountain forests (6, in). On Hai-nan island, for instance, palm trees were counted in order to provide funds for the service levy.20 Fish ponds were often too productive to be omitted, and likewise mulberry groves, which were sometimes far more profitable than rice paddies, were not neglected. It was not infrequent for single-cropping land to give higher yields than the same acreage of double-cropping land in the same locality. Some types of land provided only a modest annual return, but a reasonably certain harvest, whereas conversely some highly productive land might be more subject to crop failure. The possible variations are simply too numerous to be described, but it is obvious that the odds were heavily against any scheme of detailed universal taxation. The administration was also badly short of technical skills. Even in the late sixteenth century, land surveys were conducted not by professionally trained teams but by workers from the villages who were incapable of comprehending even the pre-

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fectural standards for land classification, let alone those at the national level. Lack of control over standards facilitated all kinds of abuses, even before a survey was carried out.21 In Tokugawa Japan, by contrast, land taxes were as a rule assessed on the village communities collectively, not on individual taxpayers.22 Though the Japanese method might seem crude and backward and the Ming system far more modern and egalitarian, in practice, owing to the absence of effective control in China, this was not necessarily so. It is probable that the Japanese feudal lords knew the conditions in their own villages much better than the Ming magistrates did those in their assigned counties. Centralization in Ming China created many other paradoxical results. Though it might be expected that it would stimulate the development of technology and economic theory, this did not in fact happen. It is essential to remember that the integration affected only fiscal authority, not fiscal responsibility, and that the actual handling of materials and goods and manpower was still done on the lowest possible level (2, i). The fiscal data, which were not standardized to begin with, easily deviated from reality because they were not directly related to actual business transactions. The establishment of the quota system made many of the technicalities even more irrelevant. Gradually fiscal logic became distorted. The overall level of taxation and the regional tax quotas, which should have been elastic, became fixed, whereas such concrete units as one adult male, a mou of land, and a picul of grain, were all transformed into elastic measurements. The administration became less and less methodical and more artistic, as it evaded rather than solved its technical problems. Separation of theory from practice Another characteristic of the Ming system was its limited handling capacity, which was a deliberate part of the founder's design. Hung-wu, being a cautious man, preferred to create a centralized fiscal authority with extensive rather than intensive coverage. His main concern was to prevent any sub-system arising within this monolithic structure, rather than to refine and improve on its operations. From the beginning, therefore, the fiscal administration was characterized by simplicity and even crudity. This is evidenced by such practices as assessing taxes directly on productive labor, and failure to re-invest tax income or to build up logistical capacity at the intermediate level. But the low level of taxation was only made possible by the dynastic founder's policy of peace abroad and extreme austerity at home. The army was made to produce its own food, and village autonomy cut down the functions of local government. Understaffing saved administrative overhead. The tax quota system, however, was introduced with no thought to its possible consequences.

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Though it did reduce the tax burden on the population, it should logically have been followed up with a series of protective measures. The creation of a sound monetary system was essential, to enable the state to control credit and interest rates. It would also have been desirable to impose some effective control over property transactions and surveillance over land mortgages and rents. Such provisions were essential if the peasants were to enjoy the benefits of their minimal tax rates in perpetuity, but needless to say nothing of the kind was done. By the fifteenth century conditions had already begun to deteriorate. No adequate monetary system was ever created and the self-sufficiency of the army turned out to be a myth. Census-taking and periodic registration of property bore little relation to reality, as is shown by the disappearance of large tracts of public land (3, II). As the government had from the beginning failed to establish control in the rural areas it was impossible to introduce it later. As a result fiscal practice diverged increasingly from theoretical ideals. Tax increases were imposed in the form of surcharge readjustments, or of local procurement orders. Officials supplemented their meager salaries with unscheduled collections. Funds earmarked for legitimate expenses were siphoned off to meet other fiscal needs. Though the permanent regulations were never revised, much of the administration no longer considered itself bound by them. All this continued in the sixteenth century. It has been argued throughout this work that, contrary to the usual view, mismanagement was not simply a matter of over-taxation. Attention should be directly not exclusively to palace extravagance, which was a form pf misappropriation, but to the inadequacies of public services, the local government budget and army logistics. When the financial history of the Ming is examined in detail the unfortunate consequences of the government's excessive emphasis on frugality are clear. Income and expenditure were always in excess of the limited handling capacity of the system, and this affected even the self-indulgence of the emperors. Since public finance was always in disorder, the emperors saw no reason why they alone should exercise self-restraint. When Wan-li dispatched his eunuchs as business tax collectors (7, iv) he may well have considered that he was only keeping up with his bureaucrats.23 The organization created by the dynastic founder, though clearly unworkable, was so vast in extent that no thorough overhaul could be carried out, except perhaps by the establishment of a new dynasty. Left as it was, however, the system was obviously incapable of handling the problems of the day. Owing to its ideological preconceptions, rigid sense of responsibility, compartmented spheres of action, unrealistically low salaries, insufficient office personnel, lack of information, deficiency in logistical capacity at the intermediate level, and reluctance to invest (all connected in

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one way or another with initial under-taxation) the state was unable to mobilize the empire's financial resources, some of which were within its grasp. This was always the case with regard to the salt monopoly, maritime tariff, inland customs duties, forest produce levy, and government mining. Eventually the taxpayers had to pay more, especially to those who were unable to resist the extra-schedule collections. Most contemporary writers never understood that it was the low official rates that were ultimately responsible for the increased tax burden on the populace, and only a few realized the harm caused by under-taxation (4, v). Though in the sixteenth century some improvements were made, they had only limited effect. Moreover as they were neither systematic nor thorough, they mostly had undesirable features of their own. On the positive side, the collection of military supplies in the southern provinces, the introduction of the Single Whip Reform and the compilation of accounts in silver did at least bring the financial system somewhat closer to reality and meant that some of its resources were put to legitimate use. On the other hand these measures may have used up much of the remaining taxpaying capacity of the population, which had not been and could not be expanded. Retrogression and retardation The Ming financial administration was undoubtedly inferior to those of some earlier dynasties. Even under the Sung, the fiscal administrators had discovered that by gearing their policies towards an expanding economy the state could increase its revenues without over-burdening the taxpayers. Wang An-Shih's fiscal reform, antedating the Single Whip Reform by 500 years, undertook the task of converting the service obligations of the populace into monetary payments. The state in turn stepped up its production of copper coins, the potentially inflationary effect of which was neutralized by the increased demand for money in tax payments. The Sung frequently used its financial power to achieve its economic goals. Even under the Yuan dynasty, land taxes were initially assessed in copper coins. When grain was required by the state, the amounts were calculated from the assessments, effecting a commutation in reverse. This enabled the fiscal accounts to be integrated.24 All these devices and techniques seem to have been completely lost under the Ming. Whereas during both the T'ang and the Sung there was a distinct trend towards professionalism in fiscal administration, 25 under the Ming, salt administrators were often drawn from the ranks of disgraced officials (5, v). In many financial offices, including the ministry of revenue, the actual work was performed by clerks (1, i), but in the early seventeenth century even these lesser functionaries also hired substitutes to perform their duties.26 Obviously the quality of the administration underwent a drastic decline.

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The inertia of the Ming administration had many social and economic implications. One is that the service sector of the economy was seriously retarded. Mention has frequently been made of the dynasty's failure to work out a monetary policy. In fact it appears that the government minted copper coins in only 40 out of its 276 years and that the average output was no more than 200 million coins a year (2, iv). Thus at a rough estimate, the total Ming production of copper coins was 8 billion coins, the amount that the Northern Sung could have minted in two years. Many Ming coins are visibly inferior to those minted by the Sung in the eleventh century. This failure resulted in the widespread use of unminted silver in both official and private transactions, which led to enormous inconvenience and confusion. Worse still, even when the government failed, private agencies were not permitted tofillthe gap. Up to the end of the sixteenth century there is little mention of private financial institutions27 and the only ones in the money market were the pawnshops. In the area of transportation, the most the Ming achieved was to keep the Grand Canal open to traffic. Yet despite the vast quantity of materials and labor used in its maintenance (7, n), the waterway played a much smaller part in vitalizing China's economy than many modern scholars have assumed.28 Though a remarkable achievement, the Grand Canal contained lakes, rapids, and channels full of sandbars, and at the northern end crossed the courses of two rivers, both of which froze during the winter. At its junctions with the Yangtze and Yellow rivers only government boats were permitted to pass through the watergates. All other vessels had to be unloaded and lifted over by capstans.29 In 1548 a Japanese tributary mission spent sixteen days at the entrance to the canal before itsflotillaof 5 boats could be transferred to it from the Yangtze.30 In the middle section of the waterway, there were 38 watergates over a distance of less than 200 miles. These gates, only twelve feet wide, had to be repeatedly closed and opened to adjust the water level which, according to travel logs of the late Ming and early Ch'ing, was often less than four feet in depth.31 It must be recalled that there were around 12,000 boats carrying tribute grain on the canal, and that they quite often took a whole year to complete the round trip, including the time that they were frozen in the northern sector during the winter months. If placed end to end their combined length would actually have occupied one-tenth of the entire distance from the Yangtze river to the northern terminal. In addition, the court operated another fleet of 1,800 craft for haulingpalace supplies from Nanking.32 Most of their cargo was of doubtful economic value, including such items as imperial furniture, dragon robes, and fresh fruit and vegetables from the south.33 There is no evidence that the Ming government spent funds on road maintenance and construction, apart from erecting the stone bridges outside Peking. No effort was made by these means to increase the efficiency

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of the imperial postal system, the primary function of which was to transmit official documents, not to serve the public. Its supply procedures actually discouraged local road construction programs, for it was felt that better roads would encourage more official travel in the area. The costs of this, and of providing hostel accommodation, all had to be met by the local population which was reluctant to see its burdens increased. When in 1560, owing to the wo-k'ou campaign, Shun-an county in Chekiang suddenly became a focal point for inland traffic, the financial burden imposed by official travel proved so intolerable that the magistrate finally decided to suspend all travel by land. Instead travelling officials were requested to make a detour by water, even though this was more time-consuming.34 The Ming's only achievements in construction were the building of the Great Wall, palace halls, ceremonial gates and imperial mausoleums. The fact that public services were starved of funds inevitably retarded the progress of technology and of the economy as a whole. Silver mines were actually sealed off (6, i) and the process of salt manufacture degenerated, huge iron plates being eventually replaced with small caldrons and then bamboo trays pasted with paper and alkalis (5, n). In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries many Ming soldiers wore helmets made of bamboo, and armor made of paper.35 This evidence conflicts directly with the theory, vigorously promoted by the history seminar of the Chinese People's University, that the late Ming and early Ch'ing witnessed the 'budding of capitalism' in China.36 Admittedly during this period general political stability, population growth and a rise in the standard of living of the upper classes, did lead to increasing economic diversification and specialization in certain parts of China, notably the southeastern provinces. But this in itself is not necessarily indicative of incipient capitalism, which is characterized by a persistent trend towards the accumulation of capital by industrial and commercial enterprises. So far the theorists have only come up with isolated cases in which individuals became affluent through the farming of cash crops or participation in the handicraft industries. As Albert Feuerwerker has pointed out, they have yet to substantiate their claims with more convincing data. It must be pointed out that in the late Ming most of the service facilities indispensable to the development of capitalism were clearly lacking. There was no legal protection for the businessman, money was scarce, interest rates high and banking undeveloped. Such an environment was hardly favorable to industrial production and the efficient circulation of goods. At the same time merchants and entrepreneurs were hindered by the frequent road-blocks on the trade routes, government purchase orders and forced contributions, the government's near monopoly of the use of the Grand Canal and active involvement in manufacturing. On the other hand the security and status of land ownership, the tax-exemption

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enjoyed by those who purchased official rank, and the non-progressive nature of the land tax increased the attractions of farming to the detriment of business investment. The Marxist concept of 'class struggle' is often applied too literally. In fact there have been many instances, during the early stages of the development of capitalism, of entrepreneurs entering into partnership with the feudal authorities. In Tokugawa Japan, for instance, the daimyos licensed the merchants, granted them monopolistic privileges, and even commissioned them as their own business agents. The merchants for their part provided the feudal lords with service facilities and business expertise, and sometimes advanced credit. It was in other words a kind of joint enterprise, with the feudal authorities controlling agrarian production and the merchants in charge of marketing.37 Only in this way could farm surpluses gradually be invested in the industrial and commercial sectors of the economy. It is quite possible that the feudal lords had to liberalize their trade regulations and bring them into line with commercial practice in order to promote the expansion of the business in which they themselves were partners. In sixteenth-century Ming China the government had practically no surplus to dispose of. The actual handling of its financial resources was so fragmented that no large-scale operation run on commercial lines was necessary. The officials were simply content to use the service facilities at their disposal; if these proved inadequate they resorted to commandeering rather than contracting for extra service. The only department which might have proved an exception was the salt monopoly, yet this still relied on the managerial experience derived from other sectors of the administration, its primary concern being merely to fulfill its immediate quota. It exhibited neither cost-consciousness nor any awareness of the need for long-term planning, and at best can only be considered to have provided a model for an early form of bureaucratic capitalism, the kuan-tu shang-pan enterprises under the Ch'ing. It is doubtful whether capitalism would of itself have created a more desirable social order in sixteenth-century Ming China, in view of the conditions experienced by the urban proletariat in other industrializing societies. It could, however, have led to increasing production and more efficient circulation of goods, besides promoting legal reform and technological advance. Significantly, it is in the following areas that China's backwardness has been most pronounced: a low per capita income, an inefficient transportation system, archaic legal proceedings and the failure to institutionalize technology. Ming fiscal administration clearly did nothing to ameliorate these conditions. The inadequacy of the administration is further exemplified in the management of government-owned industries. This touches another

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controversy. Many mainland Chinese historians, while labeling the Ming as feudal, at the same time credit it with 'promoting productive forces' (shen-cKan-li) by requiring artisans to work in rotation in government manufacturing agencies (see 6, m(r)). The specialized division of labor in these agencies is said to have resulted in technological improvements, the effects of which spread to the private sectors of the economy.38 In point of fact from the midfifteenthcentury onwards few of these artisans performed their statutory duty in person but discharged it with silver payments instead. The actual workers were hired substitutes. In 1562 even the remaining statutory laborers also had their duties compulsorily commuted to silver. The hired artisans working for the government were generally of two kinds. Some of them, such as the silversmiths and jewelers in the Imperial City, produced only luxury items; in reality this entire category of artisans was committed to elaborate piece-work on products which had little market potential. The other category of workers was to be found in agencies involved in mass production. Management in these was generally decentralized. A factory was usually divided into several units, each under a supervisor who assumedfiscalresponsibility for it. For instance, a furnace chief in the government mint, in charge of a squad of workers, was issued with a fixed amount of copper and expected to produce a fixed quota of coins; he personally had to make up any short-fall in production (2, iv). In these circumstances it was impossible to organize production on an assembly-line system. Despite the mint's seemingly impressive production quota there was little incentive to introduce labor-saving devices. The Ch'ingchiang-p'u dockyard near Huai-an in the same way comprised eighty-two units, each of which had its separate housing and was under a separate manager (2, i). Though the dockyard in its heyday produced 746 rice carriers in one year, each unit constructed no more than 10 craft. The socalled functional specialization of the workers actually implied no more than their trade identification, with carpenters constructing the hull of the vessel, blacksmiths forging the anchor, and bamboo-workers making the sails. At most there may have been one or two specialists who did jobs like caulking.39 The Ming officials in charge of these operations, so far from being content with their technological progress, made many complaints about the craftsmanship of their workers, considering them inferior to the artisans in private establishments.40 The arsenals in Peking, also admired by some modern scholars, concentrated on producing ornamental weapons for the palace guards. Because of the supply problems, most of the weapons used by thefieldarmy had to be locally procured. Ch'i Chi-kuang, when in charge of army training in the 1570s, found that the weaponry of his own command was not standardized, and complained frequently of projectiles that did not fit the gun barrels, and gun barrels that tended to explode.41 The Ming

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government's manufacturing enterprises were actually even more backward than their critics had imagined. The institutional resemblance of the Ming to previous dynasties is clearly misleading. The T'ang, the Sung, and the Yuan never imposed such a rigid fiscal structure as did the Ming, nor did their top government offices assume so little operational responsibility as under the Ming. The Ming administration was indeed remarkably self-denying, in that it reduced its own operational capacity to the minimum, neglected to develop revenues from industrial and commercial sources, and refused to consider the possibility of seeking assistance from private quarters. The whole tone of the administration was regression rather than progress. Purposes of the financial administration On the whole, the virtues of the financial administration were negative ones. In traditional China the major concern was always governmental stability, which was well served by the Ming fiscal system. One of its notable advantages of the system was to prevent the regions from over-developing any financial potential of their own, and thus from challenging the central government. Thus every fiscal office in the empire was forced to draw its revenues from innumerable different sources. This meant that though provincial and local officials were effectively prevented from improving the quality of their administration, they were likewise unable to assert their independence against the state. This system, combined with a policy of frequent rotation of office and of preventing officials from serving in their home provinces, worked so well that throughout the Ming period no official or general ever attempted to raise a rebellion. Most revolts in the Ming seem to have been led by imperial princes, discontented peasants, or tribal chiefs. One frequent reason for their failure was that none of them commanded a financial base substantial enough to sustain the uprising in its early stages. The only exception was Yang Yung-lung, whose rebellion, supplied by the Miao tribes, lasted from 1594 to 1600. The empire's fiscal operations were so fragmented as to make them virtually safe from capture, and the mere knowledge of this fact was sometimes sufficient to discourage potential rebels. In 1555 Chang Ching, governorgeneral in command of the armed forces of six provinces, was abruptly arrested by imperial order on a very flimsy charge and was subsequently put to death.42 It is doubtful whether the most powerful emperor in the Han or T'ang could have acted with such ease and confidence. The security of the dynasty was founded on ideological indoctrination, bureaucratic consensus and the vigilance of the censorial officials and the secret police. Military power was of comparatively less importance. When in 1553 a band of wo-k'ou pirates, reported to be fewer than 100 men,

322

Concluding observations

managed to make a raid south of the Yangtze penetrating several hundred miles inland, they met with practically no resistance.43 Though this was partly due to the decline of the wei-so system, it also shows that the Ming state, despotic as it might seem, in normal times could survive with very few garrisons, particularly in the interior provinces. This apparently encouraged the emperors to divert army funds for their own extravagant purposes. The situation did change somewhat after the middle of the sixteenth century, but not drastically. The funds retained by the southern governors as military supplies were still composed of small items from a variety of sources (7, in). The long-term consequences The Manchu takeover in the seventeenth century was indeed a setback for China, but not because, as the Marxist historians claim, the invaders represented new forces of feudal reaction who crushed the development of indigenous capital in its early stages.44 The major fault of the new dynasty was to follow the old too closely, disregarding the criticisms of thinkers like Huang Tsung-hsi and Ku Yen-wu.45 As alien conquerors who to some extent lacked administrative experience, the Manchus were simply anxious to gain effective control and to promote a swift return to normality. They did attempt to tighten up administrative discipline, notably by a rigorous persecution of tax delinquents in 1661,46 but in general they avoided major institutional reforms particularly with regard to fiscal practices. No other major dynasty in Chinese history had introduced fewer organizational changes. Before the nineteenth century, the only important modifications made to the Ming system were the permanent freezing of the ting quota as of the record of 1711, the subsequent merging of ting payments with the regular land taxes, the institutionalization of melting charges, and the creation of supplementary official salaries to principal officials in the name of' nourishing honesty' (yang-lieri)*1 The essentials of the Ming fiscal system, notably its monolithic structure, undivided fiscal authority at the top in the person of the emperor, combined with the residual fiscal responsibility at the lower levels, the quota system, the criss-crossing supply lines, and the absence of a central treasury, thus survived in China up to the present century.48 The inflexibility of the Ch'ing land tax system, as described by Yeh-chien Wang, was inherited from the Ming; apparent increases in revenue were in fact largely the result of price inflation. When allowance is made for this, it appears that the collection actually declined in the closing years of the dynasty.49 Though the Ming financial system had many unusual features, by the time it had been in operation with only minor modifications for close on

8, II Ming administration in Chinese history

323

500 years, its peculiarities were taken for granted and its social and economic consequences accepted, not unjustifiably, as being typical of traditional China. It is rarely observed that the Ming system represents a significant break in Chinese fiscal history. From this time onwards the main aim of governmental finance was to maintain the political status quo, and it ceased to exhibit any dynamic qualities. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the financial establishment was its passivity. There was almost no centralized planning. Preventive measures or readjustments were only undertaken when a crisis was actually at hand. This complacent attitude is illustrated by the mismanagement of the maritime tariff right up to the Opium War. Throughout this study more emphasis has been placed on institutional inadequacy at all levels than on personal graft and corruption in the bureaucracy. The latter, though abundantly documented, were of secondary importance, and can all too easily distract attention from the major problem of the financial administration: its superficiality. The survival of this system depended on continuing cultural and political dominance over a large and self-sufficient economy which was able to disregard commercial pressures and competition from outside. The sixteenth century was, however, a turning point in world history, the period when Western Europe was beginning its modern transformation. One of the consequences was the arrival of Europeans in East Asia in large numbers. Even though China's size and remoteness from the West were to delay the final conflict for about three centuries, the first challenge to her isolation and self-sufficiency had been made. As early as 1524 Cristavao Vierira, himself for a time imprisoned in Canton, was talking of seizing the city with no more than fifteen Portuguese ships and 3,000 men.50 The evidence presented in this volume, though incomplete, indicates that many of China's more recent economic problems, such as the difficulty of re-investing agrarian surplus in industrial production, have their roots in the past, and are in some cases traceable to the sixteenth century. Any fiscal policy, carried on for a long time, will inevitably affect the history of the nation. It is therefore unwise to dismiss the financial system created by the Ming as inconsequential. Its lack of positive features is not an indication of its lack of overall influence.

Works cited only by alphabetical abbreviations

CSWP Hsii Fu-yuan f& ^ g£ et al. ed. Huang-Ming Ching-shih Wen-pien M W ® "ffi 3t II, reproduced blockprint edition Taipei, 1964. HYWCL Chang Hsuan % H, HsUyuan Wen-chien I « g | B | , £|, reproduced from a 1627 manuscript. Yenching University, Peking, 1940. /CL Ku Yen-wu |g i£ K. Jih-chih-lu Chi-shih R ft] £| ^ P . W^/w-jw Wen-k'u ^^XWedition. MS Ming-shih IH^ j£. National Defense Research Institute edition, Taipei, 1963. M5L M/«^ Shih-lu BJ Jf ^ . Academia Sinica reprint. Taipei. The annals of individual emperors are identified by their temple names, i.e. T'ai-tsu ;fc |§.; T'ai-tsung -X. ^ ; Jen-tsung iz ^ ; Hsiian-tsung 2 ^ ; Ying-tsung ^ ^ ; Hsien-tsung ^ ^ ; Hsiaotsung ^ ^ ; Wu-tsung g| ^ ; Shih-tsung i t ^ ; Mu-tsung fj§ ^ ; Shen-tsung ^ ^ ; Kuang-tsung it ^ ; and Hsi-tsung ^ %. THCKLPS Ku Yen-wu, Tien-hsia Chiin-kuo Li-ping Shu % T M M V] ffi fl- Ssu-pu Ts'ung-Wan VBUMfil edition. TMHT Ta-Ming Hui-tien ^ 0J # Jft. Southeast Publishing Company reprint from the 1587 edition. This list is repeated before the notes to the text, p. 331.

[324]

Appendix A

[325]

326

Appendixes Appendix A. Landed properties not subject to regular taxation

Category

Location

Estimated acreage

Estimated annual income

Disposition

Palace estates

Shun-t'ien, Ho-chien, Chen-ting and Paoting prefectures, N. Chihli

(Until 1522) (Late 16th The revenues were used 3.7 million century) as the expense accounts mou; (there- 50,000 tlsi. of the dowager emafter) 2 milpresses. lion mou

Princely estates

Mainly in Shantung and Honan, partly in Hukwang. Acreages in two peripheral provinces, Shensi and Szechuan, are uncertain

(ca. 1500) Unknown, Princes Hui, Ch'i, Hsing 1 million but unand Heng may have mou; (early likely to received 700,000 mou 17th century) have exbefore 1505. Prince Te 3 million ceeded received 130,000 mou mou 100,000 tls. in the mid 16th century at any Prince Fu received time. 2,000,000 mou in the early 17th century.

Other Concentrated in aristocratic N. Chihli, but the estates holdings of the Mu family in Yunnan uncertain

(Until 1530) 50,000 to 4.4 million 90,000 tls. mou (thereafter) 2.8 million mou

Pastures N. Chihli belonging to the capital garrison

Unknown

Pastures belonging to the court of imperial stud

N. Chihli, S. Chihli, (In 1596) Shantung and Honan 3 million mou

N. Chihli, Shantung Land assigned to and Honan the imperial stable and imperial zoo

In theory the local officials delivered the revenues to the titleholders. Sometimes the estates were returned to the state.

(Until 1580) The revenues were dell,000 tls livered to the court of (1596) imperial stud, and 30,000 tlsi. sometimes partially to the ministry of revenue. (ca. 1576) The 1576 account shows 92,400 tls. that 85,000 tls. were delivered to court of imperial stud in Peking, 7,400 tls. to Nanking. The 1580 account shows that the ministry of revenue received 65,000 tls.

(ca. 1580-90) 50,000 tls. 34,000 tls. were delivered in excess of to the ministry of re3 million venue; the eunuchs collected 16,000 tls. mou

Notes 1. Sources: MS, 77/821, 82/866; MSL, Hsien-tsung, 3678, 3708; Shih-tsung, 0151, 0258, 0651, 1516, 1842, 5884; Shen-tsung, 5152, 9193; TMHT, 17/22-4, 27-30, 23/1-11, 251/2-9; CSWP, 202/7-14; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/9; Yang Shihch'iao, Ma-cheng-chi, 8/2-3; Shimizu, Mindai tochi seidoshi kenkyii, pp. 15-155. 2. With the exception of the pastures belonging to the court of imperial stud, landed properties in the above categories were generally understood to be of poor quality and the rents were set at 0.03 tls. per mou or lower. In some cases the princes and aristocratic title-holders assigned managers to the estates and collected the rents themselves, despite the prohibition on this. They also sometimes encouraged the practice of 'commendation' whereby private landowners merged their own properties with these estates, paying a nominal rent to the title-holders in order to evade taxation. The extent of this practice was grossly exaggerated by contemporary writers, however, and some of their arguments are logically inconsistent. See Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, p. 404.

Appendix B

327

Appendix B. Customary fees and extra services collected by the magistrate of Shun-an county, Chekiang, 1561

1. Added to regular tax collection All silver payments increased by 5 per cent. Collection of summer tax in silk fabrics; extra payable by taxpayers: 174 tls. in silver plus 12 bolts of sample silk fabrics. Autumn tax collection: extra payable by the rural collectors: 20 tls. Collection of payments from registered saltern households: extra payable by collectors: 10 tls. Tax delivery: extra payable by each deliverer: 0.5 tls. 2. Fees for special occasions, payable by each of the county's 80 communities Checking of registered artisans and hereditary military households: 1 tl. Compilation of the county's tax register book: 1 tl. Assessment of chiin-yao: 1 tl. Compilation of the Yellow Book (once every ten years): 2 tls. 3. Added to the magistrate's salary and allowances Magistrate, rank 7a: nominal salary 90 piculs of grain per year; actual collection from taxpayers, 180 tls. Allowance for personal attendants, etc. (the original account does not indicate the exact amount, but usually the magistrate was allowed 30 to 50 tls.), actual collection increased by 200 per cent. 4. Services provided by the '//' chiefs The 80 // chiefs to attend the magistrate's office daily, in rotation. Presents to the magistrate from each // chief, on his first turn of duty: polished rice, 1 or 0.50 piculs; geese, chickens, fish, candles, fruit, and 1 jar of wine. The magistrate's travel expenses and gifts to fellow-officials: to be paid by the li chief on duty. 5. Extra collections from salt merchants On salt in transit: 0.1 tl. per 100yin. About 50,000yin in transit annually, making a total of 50 tls. (The rate was about 1/5000 of the value of the salt.) On salt sold in Shun-an county: 1 tl. per 100 yin. About 7,000 yin sold each year, making a total of 70 tls. (The rate was about 0.5 per cent.) Notes. 1. Source: Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, pp. 48-9. The list has been slightly rearranged and explained. 2. Similar customary payments were provided for the magistrate's staff and the prefect. 3. Tours of inspection by higher officials always imposed extra financial burdens on the county. The tour of the salt-control censor could cost it 200 tls. and that of the provincial governor somewhere between 300 and 400 tls. The cost had ultimately to be borne by the general population, as no funds were available to subsidize them. See Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, p. 62.

328

Appendix C

Appendix C. Barter rates and excise tax on each yin of salt, 1535 All the following packages were considered as one yin: District and production area

Government salt Weight (catties)

Liang-Huai Huan-nan Huai-pei Liang-Che Chia-hsing Hang-chou Shao-hsing Wen-chou CKang-lu North South Shantung Entire province

Surplus salt

Barter value (a) Weight (tls.) (catties)

Excise tax (b) (tls.)

Total package Estimated income Weight (a + b) (catties) (tls.)

285* 285*

0.50 0.50

265 265

0.65 0.50

550* 550*

1.15 1.00

250* 250* 250* 250*

0.35 0.35 0.35 0.35

200 200 200 200

0.50 0.45 0.40 0.20

450* 450* 450* 450*

0.85 0.80 0.75 0.55

205 205

0.20 0.20

225* 225*

0.35 0.30

430* 430*

0.55 0.50

205

0.15

225*

0.31

430*

0.46

* = allowance for crating included. Notes. 1. Source: TMHT, 34/12. This differs slightly from the passage in MSX, Shih-tsung, 3793. The estimated total revenue, including the bartered commodities and excise duty in cash, was 1,166,734 tls. See Shih-tsung, 3794. 2. Fujii has compiled a similar table, in * Mindai ensho no ichikosatsu', Shigaku zasshi, 54: 7 (1943), p. 734.

Appendix D

329

Appendix D. Partial returns of the land survey of 1581, as recorded in Ming Shih-lu The Shih-lu records the provincial returns in two different ways. For some provinces it gives the actual reported acreages, and these are indicated in the following table by asterisks after the reported acreages. In these cases I have calculated the increase in acreage. In many cases, however, the Shih-lu gives only the increase in acreage without recording the actual survey results. These are indicated by asterisks after the increase in acreage; here, conversely, I have had to calculate the reported acreages.

Province (special area) Chekiang Kiangsi Shantung Shansi Honan Shensi Szechuan Kwangtung Kwangsi Pao-ting pref. N. Chihli 11 southern districts of S. Chihli 4 northern prefectures of S. Chihli Total

Reported acreage (a)

Recorded acreage of 1578 (b)

Increase in acreage (a-b)

Percentage increase

(mou) 48,308,192 46,261,081 112,734,500* 37,313,922 94,949,374* 50,299,925* 40,934,767 32,960,030* 9,478,961 11,467,550

(mou) 46,696,982 40,115,127 61,749,899 36,803,922 74,157,951 29,292,385 13,482,767 25,686,513 9,402,074 9,709,550

(mou) 1,611,210* 6,145,954* 50,984,601 510,000* 20,791,423 20,937,540 27,452,000* 7,273,517 76,887* 1,758,000*

(%) 3.5 15.3 82.5 1.5 28.0 71A 203.6 28.3 0.8 18.0

45,158,050*

36,853,886

8,304,164

22.6

29,553,047

27,227,047

2,326,000*

8.6

559,349,399

411,178,103

148,171,296

36.1

Notes 1. Sources: MSL, Shen-tsung, 2190, 2225, 2237, 2283, 2343, 2346, 2356, 2361, 2371, 2436, 2449, 2712; TMHT, 17/8-12. 2. The following returns are recorded in the Shih-lu but are not included in the above table because of lack of any basis of comparison: Ta-t'ung (military command); land under private ownership, 3,153,979 mou; land under military farming, 4,781,104 mou. Liao-tung (military command); land under military farming, 890,350 mou; other, 2,418,870 mou. Hsuan-fu (military command): total 6,310,036 mou. Kweichow province: total increase in acreage, 159,495 mou. (The land classification is not clear.) Hukwang province: actual acreage, 83,852,546 mou. (The entry is ambiguous as to whether this was a complete or a partial return. The above figure moreover includes 'lakes' as a land category.) Kan-su (military command): actual acreage, 4,599,335 mou. For these entries, in the above order, see Shen-tsung, 2238,2276,2341,2344,2412,2482. 3. Fukien province conducted its survey before the national land survey and its returns are not given in the Shih-lu. There is no mention of Yunnan province.

330

Appendix D

4. The complete returns of the survey appear to be permanently lost. The editors of the Shen-tsung Shih-lu merely summarized the above figures from the documents giving the results of the survey, and it is doubtful whether they ever saw the actual survey records themselves. Though Minister of Revenue Chang Hsiieh-yen declared his intention to publish the complete returns (see his preface in Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu), no reference to such a publication has ever been found. As the whole project came under severe criticism after Chang Chii-cheng's death it is unlikely that anyone would have dared to suggest that the records be preserved. 5. The above table itself shows that either the 1578 acreage was unrealistic or that the 1580-1 survey was not carried out on the basis of any uniform standard. This is evidenced by the increases of over 200 per cent in Szechuan and of less than 1 per cent in Kwangsi. There are probably fallacies in both views. For further discussion see Shimizu, Mindai tochi seidoshi kenkyu, pp. 563-92. Shimizu notes on p. 583 and p. 592 that he has not seen the original text of Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu.

Notes

Works cited only by alphabetical abbreviations CSWP Hsu Fu-yuan f£ ^ }t et al. ed. Huang-Ming Ching-shih Wen-pien M I1B JE i t 3^C l i , reproduced blockprint edition Taipei, 1964. HYWCL Chang Hsiian jfg W, Hsi-yuan Wen-chien Lu ffi gg fill j | £g, reproduced from a 1627 manuscript. Yenching University, Peking, 1940. JCL Ku Yen-wu Jg j£ J£, M-chih-lu Chi-shih El ftl $ 4g P . H^«->w Wen-Vu

n^XM

edition.

MS Ming-shih \$ A- National Defense Research Institute edition, Taipei, 1963. MSL M/>?# Shih-lu PJ3 ff g t Academia Sinica reprint. Taipei. The annals of individual emperors are identified by their temple names, i.e. T'ai-tsu ^c jjj§; T'ai-tsung ^c ^ ; Jen-tsung (i ^ ; Hsiian-tsung 2 ^ ; Ying-tsung ^ 5f?; Hsien-tsung M ^ ; Hsiaotsung # ^ ; Wu-tsung ^ ^ ; Shih-tsung ty: 5j<; Mu-tsung 9 ^ *» Shen-tsung # ^ ; Kuang-tsung %. %i; and Hsi-tsung ^ 5j<. THCKLPS Ku Yen-wu, Tien-hsia Chun-kuo Li-ping Shu X T H$ 12 ^Ij IS § . &«/-/?*/ Ts'ung-k'an B PP K ?'J edition. TMHT Ta-Ming Hui-tien ~X \% # A. Southeast Publishing Company reprint from the 1587 edition. This list is repeated before the appendixes, p. 324. Most other references in the following notes give short titles only. For complete references see bibliography, p. 367. Modern reprints of Ming source materials have new page numbers as well as the old ones. Since the Academia Sinica reprint of the Ming Shih-lu is widely used only the modern page numbers are cited here, in accordance with the practice of the Ming Biographical History Project. For other works, such as the Ta-Ming Hui-tien, which are available in more than one reprint, the original chapter number and pagination are cited, omitting the letters a and b used to denote the first and second halves of a double page. 1 Fiscal organization and general practices 1 For the Nine Ministers' Conference, see Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 65. 2 MSL, T'ai-tsu Shih-lu, 2544-5. 3 MS, 81/849; MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0224; Wada Sei, Shokkashi yakuchu, pp. 721-2. 4 Wu Han, Chu Yuan-chang Chuan, p. 212. 5 See Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 30 for the difficulties of the grandsecretaries in acting as intermediaries between the emperors and the bureaucracy. 6 For the palace layout see Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 6/8-17, 56-7. [331]

332

Notes to pages 9-23

7 For the functions of those service agencies, see ibid. 6/56-7'; TMHT, 30/1-19; Ho Shih-chin, CKang-k^u Hsii-chih, passim. 8 TMHT, 30/2,18; MS, 79/835. More information on palace warehouses is given by Liu Jo-yu, Cho-chung-chih, 97, 149. 9 For the operations of the Kuang-huei Treasury see TMHT, 30/5-6; Ta-Ming Kuan-chih, 4/2431. 10 The nei-kuan-chien was the highest-ranking eunuch and at one time exercised control over all the others. His power gradually fell into the hands of the ssu-li-chien, possibly in the early fifteenth century. See Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 6/56. Cf. MS, 74/778; Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 25. 11 Hucher, 'Governmental Organization', p. 25. 12 Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 2/11,4/8. 13 For the reorganization of the ministry of revenue during the Hung-wu period, see MS, 72/740-1; MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 0609, 1261, 1481, 1723, 2068. 14 See MS, 139/1747, 149/1833, 157/1904, 202/2347; MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 1674, 1684, 1904; Ta-kao, 1/73; Yen Ts'ung-chien, Shu-yii Chou-tzu-lu, lift. 15 Based on MS, Chronological Table of Seven Ministers, 111/1400-112/1455. 16 MS, 160/1929,186/2170,194/2266,214/2488,220/2543, 241/2749, 256/2897; Chiang P'ing-chieh, Pi-shao-pao-kung Chuan, 22. 17 MS, 151/1847; MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 1786, 2024. 18 The functions of the Nanking ministry of revenue are outlined in TMHT, ch. 42 and can also be found in Pi Tzu-yen, Liu-chi Su-ts'ao. Japanese scholars cite a work entitled Nanking Hu-pu-chih, which I have not seen. 19 TMHT, 41/42-4; Ta-Ming Kuan-chih, 4/2431-2, 2455. 20 Ta-kao Hsu-pien, 1/181-2. 21 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1076. 22 CKung-chen Ts'un-shih Su-cWao, 1/100. 23 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1481, 1723, 2066-7, 3054; TMHT, 2/4-10. 24 See 'Chiang Ch'en' in Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 4/8-9. 25 MS, 75/795; TMHT, 2/4-5; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu 37/1-2. 26 MS, 72/743, 225/2596; TMHT, 14/1. 27 MS, 225/2595. 28 Lu Shien-chi, Jen-chen-ts'ao, chs. 1 and 2. 29 /CL 13/79. 30 Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 25/29. 31 Ibid. 38/1. 32 The precedent was established as early as 1444: see TMHT, 21/21, 22/32-40. 33 MS, 92/968; MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1441,1526; TMHT, 150/1-18; Sun Ch'eng-tse, 53/5. 34 For the fiscal functions of the ministry of works, see MS, 72/749-51; TMHT, chs. 181-207; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 46/1-3; Ho Shih-chin, CWang-k'u Hsii-chih, passim. 35 An example of 'local procurement orders' is to be found in Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/4. The cost of this particular order was deductible from the deposits of the Yung-feng granary, which was under the control of the prefect. 36 Ho Chung-shih, Ting-chien-chi; Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, passim. 31 In 1575, the procurement orders were defended by the ministry of works: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0951-2, 0956. 38 For an illustration, see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 10764-5, 10768-9. 39 For the 1373 system, see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1503. For the 1393 re-organization, see Ta-Ming Kuan-chih, 4/2361-2; MS, 71/734, 75/803. For the number of local districts, see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1149. 40 Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', pp. 44-5. 41 MS, 75/803. 42 For the functions of a subprefecture, see MS, 75/803. 43 For example, in 1590 Yunnan was ordered to deliver to Peking the funds which it had previously been permitted to retain: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4177.

Notes to pages 24-37

333

44 THCKLPS, 32/46. 45 MS, 75/803 has a brief outline of the magistrate's fiscal responsibilities. For the details it is necessary to refer to the local gazetteers. 46 Hsi Shu and Chu Chia-hsiang, Ts'ao-cK uan-chih, 5/12. 47 MS, 75/803; Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', pp. 45-6. 48 One local official who took this initiative was Wang I, prefect of Soochow in 1538 For Wang's administration, see Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, pp. 556-61. 49 Hucker indicates that there were 'variable numbers of vice-prefects', see 'Governmental Organization', p. 44. There were seven vice-prefects in Shun-t'ien prefecture, including those who bore different titles. See TMHT, 2/28-9. 50 Hucker, Censorial System, p. 73. In general all local offices comprised six sections. An illustration of prefectural government is provided by TMHT, 9/15-16. 51 The list of granaries appears in TMHT, 21/14-21, 22/1-27. 52 Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', pp. 43-4. It seems that the creation of circuits under surveillance commissioners can be traced to the Hung-wu period. See MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 3231-2. For the list of circuits see MS, 75/799-801. 53 For the origin of military defense intendants see MS, 75/810; MSL, Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0298, 0301; Hucker, Censorial System, pp. 71, 78. 54 MS, 79/834; MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0135; TMHT, 22/29. 55 TMHT, 227/13-15. 56 Fen-chou Fu-chih, 5/5, 55-6. 57 TMHT, 21/21-6, 22/29-41. See also Chang Hsiieh-yen, Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu, ch. 23 for Hsiian-fu; Chang Yii, Pien-cheng-k'ao, ch. 4 for Kan-su; and Wei Huan, Chiu-pien-Wao, ch. 2 for Liao-tung. 58 Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 9. 59 Control over the imperial clansmen was gradually relaxed. See MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0609, 0637-9. In 1590 they were permitted to take the civil service examinations, ibid. 4162-8. Presumably the permission was put into effect in 1595. See Ping-ti Ho, Ladder of Success, p. 22. In the early seventeenth century some imperial clansmen were appointed as business tax collectors. See Ch'i Piao-chia, Jih-chi: the pagination of the original text is inadequate but the entry is to be found in vol. 5, dated 2nd day, 9th lunar month, 1643. 60 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 0070. 61 Wei Ch'ing-yuan classifies the households into three major categories: military, civilian and artisan: see Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, pp. 20-1. An additional category, that of saltern households, appears in TMHT, 20/5. Eight categories, including physicians, Confucian scholars, Buddhist monks, and Taoist priests in addition to the four mentioned, appear in TMHT, 9/25. 62 Ta-kao Hsu-pien, 1/150-1. 63 Feng Ch'i (1559-1603), for example, traced his family origins to military registration. The family established a record by producing holders of the chin-shih degree in four consecutive generations. Feng himself rose to become minister of personnel and minister of rites: see Feng-tsung-po Chi; also MS, 216/2506. 64 TMHT, 20/4, 104/2-6. 65 Each hunter was required to provide annually one tiger skin and nine miscellaneous hides: see Hui-chou Fu-chih, 1/47. 66 TMHT, 104/19. 67 Ho Shih-chin, CKang-k'u Hsu-chih, 9I62-3', THCKLPS, 9/46. 68 THCKLPS, 6/4, 5, 38, 39-40, 72, 94-6. 69 Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, p. 37; Yamane Yukio, Mindai yoeki seido no tenkai, pp. 43-7. 70 TMHT, 20/10-11. 71 See MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1279, 1507, 1724, 2653; MS, 78/825; TMHT, 29/2-3. 72 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2144. 73 Ibid. 1724-5. Liang Fang-chung, Liang-chang Chih-tu, p. 42. 74 Ibid. pp. 6, 48, 54. 75 Ibid. pp. 62-3, 70-2.

334

Notes to pages 38-45

76 THCKLPS, 6/41, 83^. 77 The list of postal stations appears in TMHT, chs 145-6. In addition there were 140 transport offices of which a list appears tin TMHT, ch. 147. For details see Su Tung-pin, I-ti Chih-tu. 78 For an example of double-cropping land paying taxes twice, see Wei Ch'ing-yiian, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, pp. ii-iv In the late Ming, however, many districts levied both their summer tax and autumn grain quotas on all land owners, in which case every piece of land paid tax twice. 79 MS, 78/823. 80 Temporary commutation of tribute grain from Chia-ting county, South Chihli, started in 1584. Thereafter the commutation order was renewed once every three years. In about 1596 the commutation became permanent. See THCKLPS, 6/25. 81 A yield of 2 piculs of husked grain per mou was reported in Ch'ang-shu county, South Chihli; Shang-yii and I-wu counties, Chekiang, Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien; and Shun-te county, Kwangtung. Except in the case of Shang-yii county, Chekiang, all sources are dated before 1600. See Ch'ang-shu Hsien-chih, 4/13; Chang-chou Fuchih,5/53; Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3 /I; THCKLPS, 22/118; Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 3/13. 82 Yeh Sheng (1435-94) reported that most properties in K'un-shan county, South Chihli, yielded 'over 4 piculs of husked rice and wheat per mou annually'. See Jih-chi, 31/12. Wang Ao, writing about 1506, indicated that top-quality land in Sung times paid taxes at 1.5 piculs per mou and assessed the tax rate as 30 per cent of the yield. These two statements together suggest that around 1500 this top-quality land actually yielded 5 piculs of grain annually. Though the nature of the grain is not here specified, the Sung is known to have collected land taxes in husked rice. See Ku-su Chih, 15/1. (Unit of measurement under the Sung, however, was somewhat smaller.) In the early Ming, some landed properties in Soochow prefecture actually paid taxes at a rate of 2 piculs of husked rice per mou: ibid. 15/6. 83 Ho Liang-chim, Ssu-yu-chai, 3/179. The productivity also varied from 3 piculs of husked rice to 1.5 piculs per mou. 84 Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, pp. 102-23. 85 MS, 78/824; TMHT, 17/13; Shimizu, shakai keizaishi, pp. 17 ff. 86 Ibid. p. 17. 87 MS, 77/819. 88 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2726. Cf. Chin-hua Fu-chih, 6/2. 89 Ping-ti, Ho, Studies on the Population, p. 108; Fujii, 'dendo tokei', pp. 104-5. 90 Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, p. 48; Wei Ch'ing-yiian, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, p. 74. 91 THCKLPS, 2/28; Fujii, 'dendo tokei', p. 105; Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, p. 462. 2 The heritage of the sixteenth century and major fiscal problems 1 In 1384 an administrative commissioner in Fukien was executed for violating this rule: see Ta-kao Hsii-pien, 1/117-18, 119-21. Though it was not enforced in later reigns, it is still recorded in TMHT, 173/3. 2 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 3396, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0654-5, Hsiian-tsung Shih-lu, 1991. 3 In 1371 the total number of provincial and local officials was 5,488: see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1176; Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 70. 4 Ta-kao Hsii-pien, and San-pien, passim. 5 For the 1382 case see MS, 94/987-8; Wu Han, Chu Yuan-chang, pp. 166-8. Meng Seng considers that the case actually took place in 1376; see Ming-tai Shih, p. 57. For the 1385 case, see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2490, 2581,2631; Ta-kao, 1/26, 29-31, 54-5, 77; Hsii-pien, 1/143-5, 147-9. Wu Han suggests that these two cases claimed 70,000 to 80,000 lives: see Chu Yuan-chang, p. 159. 6 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2871, 2998. 7 The emperor left a list of fifteen states to which his descendants were permanently prohibited from sending expeditions: see Huang-Ming Tsu-shiin, 3/1589-91; Wu Han, Chu Yiian-chang, p. 154. 8 The level of taxation was not expected to rise. The emperor denounced all the

Notes to pages 46-51 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

335

financial experts of previous dynasties who had increased state revenues as enemies of the people: see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2141, 2681-2. MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3548-55, cf. Chiao-k? an-chi, 648-50 for typographical errors. Wang Chih-jui, Ching-chi-shi, p. 135. Ibid. pp. 31, 62. A seventeenth-century scholar also observed that the level of taxation was below that of the Sung: see Shen Te-fu, Yeh-huo-pien Pu-i, 2/27. The quota system was given in Ta-Ming Kuan-chih, 4/2430, 2452. In 1387 the fish duties were declared to be outside the quota system: MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2779. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1848. Ibid. 2641. Ibid. 3370. Previously the level of land taxes tended to increase. In 1381 the income was 26,105,251 piculs; in 1385: 20,889,617 piculs; in 1390: 31,607,600 piculs; and in 1391: 32,278,800 piculs. Ibid. 2218, 2673-4, 3078-9, 3166-7. Ibid. 3532; TMHT, 17/16-17; JCL, 4/46. MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 1652. In 1408 Governor Huang Fu was authorized to fix the tax quotas for the districts of Annam, ibid. 1043. From 1425 to 1428, it always remained close to 30 million piculs, the figure for the latter year being 30,249,936 piculs: MSL, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 1196. MS, 153/1863-5; MSL, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 1448, 1639-40. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1176. MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 5417. HYWCL, 34/2. For the Hung-wu salary schedule see MS, 82/864; MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1182, 1598, 2061-2, 2101, 2778, 3249. Partial payment in paper currency started in 1377. The rates and later revisions appear in MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1748, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0270-1, Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0136, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 2254-5, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0414. TMHT, 39/8-10, MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 2033, 2160. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2136, 2218. Ibid. 3583. For allowances made for substituting for personal attendants, see MS, 158/1910-11; TMHT, 157/10; MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 3940, 4917, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3945. For their origin, see Hucker, Censorial System, pp. 267-8; Yamane, yoeki seido, p. 110. MSL, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 1342-4, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4686, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu9 0452; Hucker, Censorial System, pp. 260-2. MS, 183/2148-9. Cf. Ho Liang-chim, Ssu-yu-chai, 2/99. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1499. JCL, 3/85. The expenditures were partially made in paper currency. I have estimated that, on the basis of the capacity of the two paper currency superintendencies, during the Yung-lo period the annual production of paper notes was only between 50 million and 100 million kuan. The purchasing power of this amount of money was no more than 3 million piculs of husked grain. MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 2341-2. Ibid. 0686, 0835-6, 0936, 0988, 1128, 1435, 1482, 1545, 2267; HYWCL, 92/1; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 46/63; Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 59/112; Ch'eng Wenshih, Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e, p. 85. This was indicated by an imperial decree; see MSL, Hsilan-tsung Shih-lu, 1639-40. The decree issued by Hung-hsi in 1424 virtually apologized for previous excesses: see MSL, Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0015-17. Chang Hsiieh-yen, Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu, 24/22. Hoshi, The Ming Tribute Grain System, passim. MSL, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 1949; TMHT, 27/30.

336

Notes to pages 51-9

42 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 0556. 43 TMHT, 21/21-9; Kiangsi Fu-i CKuan-shu, 'sheng-tsung' (a general summary of provincial quota), 6-7. 44 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2315, 2378; Wu Chi-hua, Hai-yun chi Yu'n-ho, p. 127; Hoshi, soun no kenkyu, pp. 64-8. Cf. Ch'ii T'ung-tsu, Local Government, p. 140. 45 THCKLPS, 12/95. 46 MS, 78/824; MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0293, 0414-15, 0966; TMHT, 30/1; Horii, 'Kinkagin no tenkai', p. 47. 47 The functions of transportation commissioners under the T'ang and Sung are described in Chili Tang-shu, ch. 49; Hsin Tang-shu, ch. 53; Sung-shih, chs. 186, 327. The most successful of these commissioners was Liu Yen (715-80). See Twitchett, Financial Administration, pp. 90-6. 48 A total of 47,004 full-time laborers worked on the canal system, as a part of the local corvee service. Shantung province alone provided 14,150 men: see THCKLPS, 15/9. 49 TMHT, 27/11-15; Hsi and Chu, Ts" ao-cK uan-chih, 3/2-3. 50 76/^.1/2,4/11-15. 51 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2178. 52 CSWP, 108/1-5; Huang Shun, Ming-ch'en Ching-chi-lu, 22/22. 53 TMHT, 27/40-1. 54 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 3578. 55 Chou Chih-lung, Ts'ao-ho I-pi, ch. 8. 56 Hsi and Chu, Ts'ao-ch'uan-chih, 3/12-14. 57 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0254; TMHT, 27/51; Hsi and Chu, Ts'ao-cKuan-chih, 3/20-1, 4/2-5, 6/44-8. 58 Ibid. 1/5-9. 59 Ibid. 7/15, 25. 60 Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 6/58. It was also stated that each agency or bureau had only two to five eunuchs: see MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0152. 61 Hucker, Traditional Chinese State, p. 11, and Censorial System, p. 24. 62 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 2067. 63 Cheng Hsiao, Chin-yen Lei-pien, 3/137. 64 Ting I, Te-wu Cheng-chih, pp. 22-6. 65 MSLt Hsiian-tsung Shih-lu, 0143, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0152, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0624. 66 MSL, Hsiian-tsung Shih-lu, 1883. 67 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3664. 68 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 1947, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1909, 3934; TMHT, chs. 205-6. 69 Based on the 1468 commutation rate of 1 tael per man per month, as indicated in TMHT, 206/3. 70 MS, 82/863; TMHT, 194/4. Also see MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 1557, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2499. 71 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 6750. 72 MS, 197/2292; MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0090-1. 73 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1503. 74 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2406. 75 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 5417. 76 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2407. 77 HYWCL, 34/2. 78 MS, 79/831; TMHT, 27/5, 62-3; MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3549. 79 TMHT, 39/1-7, 41/9, 13, 15. 80 In addition to the capital officials and army officers, there were 100,000 soldiers in the capital garrison. Another 150,000 artisans served the palace agencies in rotation. 40,000 soldiers from Honan and Shantung reported in two groups to the capital garrison, in the spring and autumn. There were also several thousand Mongols on the payroll. Though there were actually numerous vacancies in the ranks of these forces, grain payments in general were made according to the authorized strength; thus a substantial amount of the grain was intercepted by the com-

Notes to pages 59-65 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

337

manding officers and eunuchs. For the evidence for this estimate see MS, 90/951; TMHT, 289/10; MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2415, 4069; CSWP, 36/16. MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3549. MS, 190/2217; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 0202, 0258, 1153, 3768. One source indicates that the actual annual saving was 1.68 million piculs: see HYWCL, 33/25. TMHT, 17/1, 4, 8. Fujii, 'dendo tokei', pp. 108-10. Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, pp. 55-6, 60-1, 68-9; Yamane's preface in Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, pp. 6-7. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2218, 3166-7. Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, pp. 6-7, 514-6. For instance, Hou-hu-chih also indicates that 1393 total acreage was 880,462,368 mou; quoted by Wei Ch'ing-yuan in Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, pp. 74-7. One piece of evidence in favor of Fujii's theory is that in many late Ming local gazetteers, land in the Hung-wu period is designated as 'acreage assigned for reclamation': see THCKLPS, 7/56; Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/2. Wei Ch'ing-yuan, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, pp. 142-51. Cf. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5799. Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, p. 18. Wei Ch'ing-yuan, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, p. 92, pp. 115-20. Cf. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4128. Wei Ch'ing-yuan, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, p. 224. Lung Wen-pin, Ming Hui-yao, 2/944; Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 4/1-2. Ku'ai-chi Chih, 5/2. TMHT, 19/1, 6, 12. From MS, 80/837-8 and Hsu Wen-hsien Tung-k'ao, 2955-8, the annual salt production can be estimated to have been 459,316,000 catties. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1433 suggests that the average annual production from 1368 to 1372 was approximately 600 million catties. Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, pp. 12-13. Ibid. pp. 23, 277. Koyama, 'daitochi shoyu', p. 64. The author emphasizes that tenant farmers partially supported themselves by handicrafts. Ku'ai-chi Chih, 5/2-3. Sakuma, 'kaigai shiboeki', pp. 1-25. For instance, People's University, She-hui Ching-chi, pp. 221-48. P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 464, 466-7. HYWCL, 32/6, 16; Wei Ch'ing-yuan, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, pp. 197-8. MS, 11mi', Wei Ch'ing-yuan, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, p. 228. Mentioned in THCKLPS, 1/1; Hang-chou Fu-chih, 28/6; Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/25-6. TMHT, 18/1-2; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 36/2, 42/72. MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0489. MS, 77/820. The entry is partially based on a decree issued in 1403: see MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0495. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 36/3. Ta-kao Wu-cKen, 1 /appendix 9. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 0919,1089, 1203, 1290, 1442, 2510, 2620, 2771, 2777, 2781, 2902, 2998, 3184, 3377, 3470, 3559, 3591. MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0500. Ibid. 2421. MSL, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 1224-5. Wang Yu-ch'iian, Chun-tun, pp. 104-5, 210-11. In the central government, military farming came under the jurisdiction of the bureau of state lands in the ministry of works. In later years this bureau virtually became redundant: see Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 46/3. The lack of overall planning can be observed from Ta-kao Wu-cKen 1/appendix 9; Wang Yiich'iian, Chun-tun, pp. 114-20, 194-9.

338

Notes to pages 65-8

117 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 3529-30. Cf. Chiao-k" an-chi, 728 for typographical errors. Wu Han stresses that the number of servicemen was a state secret. See ' Ming-tai ti Chun Ping', p. 157. Also reprinted in Tu-shu Cha-chi, p. 101. 118 MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0589, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3322. 119 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1881-2; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu 42/10. 120 MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1331, 2533-4, 2735, 2788, 3192, 3225, 3264-6. 121 Ibid. 1292, 3592; Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 2172; Wei Ch'ing-yiian, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, p. 55. 122 Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/21; Chin-hua Fu-chih, 21/6-7. 123 TMHT, 41/4; Ta-kao Wu-cKen, 1/appendix 20. 124 TMHT, 40/1-2. 125 The last time the paper currency was distributed as unscheduled payments to the soldiers was in the winter of 1423-4: see MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 2426, 2475. 126 Some soldiers are said to have owned 300 to 500 mou of land: see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1203, 2782; Wang Yii-ch'iian, Chun-tun, p. 72. It seems that some of the hereditary military families were originally landowners and it is possible that some of them acquired landed property outside the military farming system. 127 MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 1478; HYWCL, 91/2; Wang Yu-ch'iian, Chun-tun, p. 191; Shimizu, 'Chun-tun ti Peng-huai', pp. 37-8. 128 Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/12, indicates that every soldier received 20 mou. For other similar cases, see Wang Yu-ch'iian, Chun-tun, pp. 63-7, 70, 190. 129 MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0495-6; TMHT, 18/12. 130 Military farming was ordered by Hung-wu prior to the founding of the dynasty, and was repeatedly emphasized thereafter in decrees: see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1203, 2782, 2902, 2910, 3104. 131 For the supply procedure see Ta-Ming Kuan-chih, 4/2452; Ta-kao, 1/16-18; MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2791, 2998. Supplies to Liao-tung were exceptional. 132 MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0927. 133 MS, 77/820; MSL, Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0214; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 36/3. Yung-lo might have temporarily reduced the production quota at an earlier stage: see TMHT, 18/13. 134 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0014; TMHT, 18/13. 135 See Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/14; THCKLPS, 13/71, 26/106-7; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 36/4; Wei Huan, Chiu-pien-k'>ao, 1/25. 136 TMHT, 41/3-18. 137 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1166. 138 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0579. 139 TMHT, 41/17. 140 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2066. 141 For 'troop purifying censors', see Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 51 and Censorial System, pp. 75-7. An actual case is described by Lu Jung, in Shuyuan Tsa-chi, 1/11. 142 Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 4/22; Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/4; Wang Yii-ch'uan, Chun-tun, pp. 244-7. 143 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 1261. 144 Ibid. 3424, cf. Chiao-k'an-chi, 587 for errors. 145 Chin-hua Fu-chih, 21/5. 146 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4069, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0809, 1899, 4058. 147 In 1487, on the accession of Hung-chih, each soldier on frontier duty was awarded 2 taels of silver by the emperor, a total of 615,320 taels of silver being thus distributed: see MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0095. For frontier troop dispositions see also MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2109, 3908-9. 148 For early recruiting, see MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3418, 3447, 3682; CSWP, 90/7, 99/7. 149 MS, 91/956. Cf. Wu Han, 'Ming-tai ti Chun Ping', p. 221. 150 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3554; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/14, 18. The actual amount is quoted as 483,132 taels.

Notes to pages 68-75

339

151 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3554. 152 Ni Yiian-lu, CKuan-chi, Memorials, 11/6-7. 153 Chu Hsieh, Hsin-yung Ho-pi, pp. 156-7; P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 432-3; Li Chien-nung, Ching-chi Shih-kao, p. 102; Lien-sheng Yang, Money and Credit, p. 67. 154 These sixty-nine entries are to be found in MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2981-3078. 155 Ibid. 3079. 156 Ibid. 3062. 157 Ta-kao Hsu-pien, 1/143-5. 158 Based on MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2458, 2926. 159 MS, 81/849; MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0509, 0589-90. Cf. Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, p. 608. 160 TMHT, 31/582. From the increased payments made to soldiers and laborers it can be observed that the actual value of the paper notes was much less. See MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0623, 0691, 0836, 1657, 1681, 1723. 161 In 1425, a picul of husked rice could be purchased with 40 to 70 kuan of paper currency. See MSL, Hsiian-tsung Shih-lu, 0175. 162 Ibid. 1313-14. 163 Ibid. 0493, 1171. 164 Ibid. 0095. 165 For franchise fees and other taxes payable in paper currency, see MS, 81/849; TMHT, 31/4-6, 35/2-6; MSL, Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0219, Hsiian-tsung Shih-lu, 1324-6. 166 Ibid. 1977. 167 Ibid. 2406. 168 For tax reductions 1433 see ibid. 2305-6; TMHT, 31/6-7. 169 MSL, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 0151-3. 170 MS, 81/849; Feng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, p. 422. 171 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0224. The account in MS, 81/849 is somewhat distorted. Cf. Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, pp. 721-2. 172 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0293. 173 Ibid. 2723. 174 Ibid. 3209. The order was rescinded by Ching-t'ai in 1453: see TMHT, 31/7. 175 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 0533; Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 57. 176 TMHT, 35/44. 177 For taxes paid in paper currency, see TMHT, 35/8, 47; MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0093, 1104, 1690. On dealers buying and selling paper notes see MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2471, 2680, 2971. 178 By the mid sixteenth century 1 kuan notes were counted i n ' blocks' of 1,000, which were worth between 4.6 and 10 taels of silver to the tax collector: see MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 1634; P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, p. 441. 179 Li Chien-nung, Ching-chi Shih-kao, p. 103. 180 P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, p. 441. 181 MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 0051. 182 Ho Shih-chin, CKang-Vu Hsu-chih, 1/19. 183 TMHT, 31/8. 184 MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 2342, 3142, 3355. 185 CSWP, 244/16. 186 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0081. 187 The official rates were 800:1 in 1481, 700:1 in 1527, and 800:1 in 1567: see TMHT, 31/10, 12, 13. 188 On the process of coining money, see MS, 81 /850; MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0080-2; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 38/12; Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, pp. 748-9; Sung Ying-hsing, Tien-kung K'ai-wu, 158-9, 166-8. 189 HYWCL, 92/18. 190 MS, 81/850; CSWP, 244/16. 191 P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 425, 437.

340

Notes to pages 75-9

192 Ibid. p. 425. 193 MSX, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1419, 1617. 194 This productive capacity is calculated from the list in Chu-ssu Chih-chang (kungyii-pu), 24-5. The provincial mints had an annual capacity of 177,867,800 coins, while the Nanking production quota was 12.8 million coins. P'eng Hsin-wei estimates the annual capacity as 166,090,400 coins: see Ho-pi-shih, pp. 438-9. 195 From 981 to 1080 the Sung on average produced 2 to 3 billion coins annually. The lowest level of output was 500 million copper cash in 981 and the highest 5,060 million copper cash in 1086: see Wang Chih-jui, Ching-chi-shih, p. 85; Peng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, p. 281. 196 Imperial edicts mention the production of copper coins in connection with these voyages: see MSX, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 2267, and Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0015-17. That copper coins were exported by Cheng Ho is suggested by Liang Fang-chung in 'Kuo-chi Mou-i', pp. 281-2, and confirmed by P'eng Hsin-wei and Ch'en Wenshih: see Ho-pi-shi, pp. 442-3, and Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e, pp. 84, 86. 197 MSX, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 5141; Ch'en Wen-shih, Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e, p. 60. 198 MSX, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 3663, 3689. 199 According to MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3622 and Chu-ssu Chih-chang (kung-yiipu), 25, the annual productive capacity in Peking was only 12,830,400 coins. 200 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3622, 3644-7. Though the emperor ordered that certain revenues be intercepted to subsidize the minting of cash (ibid. 3657) it appears that this order was never carried out. 201 Ibid. 4005. 202 MSX, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0081. 203 This estimate is based on MSX, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3622. 204 Ibid. 4241. 205 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1130. P'eng Hsin-wei suggests that after 1505, the project was suspended: see Ho-pi-shih, p. 425. 206 MSX, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 1855: TMHT, 31/11. 207 MS, 81/850; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7119-21; Ko Shou-li, Ko-tuan-su-kung Chi 2/3. 208 Li Chien-nung, Ching-chi Shih-kao, p. 103. 209 MS, 81/849; TMHT, 194/9. The information can be traced to MSX, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7063. The entry in the Shih-lu, however, does not make clear how many coins were to be minted. 210 P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 426, 444. 211 TMHT, 31/11, 194/9. 212 MS, 81/850; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7297-8. 213 In 1558, for instance, 61.75 million coins were minted: see ibid. 7789, 8819. 214 CSWP, 244/17. On the suspension of production in Nanking see Fu I-ling, Shih-min Ching-chi, p. 28. 215 MS, 81/850. The memorial is reproduced in CSWP, 244/16-18 and dated 1564. See also Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, p. 748. 216 The imperial orders were not always consistent: see TMHT, 31/10; MSX, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1585, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7059, 7119. 217 MSX, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1113-14, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1141, 1802-3. 218 Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 56-8. 219 For example, in 1571 and again in 1574, small quantities of coins were minted: see MSX, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1519, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1293. 220 TMHT, 31/14; MSX, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1130-1. The operation was largely suspended in 1580, ibid. 1802-3. 221 P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, p. 445. 222 Yang Tuan-liu, Ho-pi Chin-jung, pp. 71-2. Silver taels were actually minted in Tibet. Also see P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, p. 508. Taels had also been minted by the Jurched Chin in 1197, ibid. p. 364. 223 Liang Fang-chung, 'Kuo-chi Mou-i', pp. 267-324, Liang-chang Chih-tu, p. 127. 224 P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 461, 471.

Notes to pages 80-96

341

225 Ku Yen-wu, Wen-chi, 1/13-14. 226 Basis of estimate: Salt revenue, 1 million; Gold Floral Silver, 1 million; tax deliveries by the northern provinces to the frontier, 2.5 million; miscellaneous, 0.5 million. See Tables 14, 23 and 26. 227 See Sakuma, 'Keitokuchin yogyo', p. 483. Nishijima, 'mengyo shijo', p. 274; Fu I-ling, Shin-min Ching-chi, pp. 16-17. Also see Ku Yen-wu, Yu-chi, 13; Wang Shih-ch'i, San-yun Chou-tsu-k'ao, ch. 2. 228 Ku Yen-wu, Wen-chi, 1/13. 229 HYWCL, 92/21. 230 Chou Hsiian-wei, Chitig-lin Hsu-chi, 2, 5. 231 Feng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 459-60.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

3 The land tax—(/) Tax structure Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/1. MS, 45/507; Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/6-8. Ibid. 3/9. Ibid. 3/15. MS, 223/2574; HYWCL, 32/9; Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 59/95; MSL, Shihtsung Shih-lu, 8181-2, Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/23-4. Ibid. 3/24. Ibid. 3/26-7. Ibid. 3/19-21. Ibid. 3/31-2. /ta/. 3/30-1. /fa/. 3/21. Ibid. 3/15. /fa/. 3/19. Chou Hsiian-wei, Ching-lin Hsii-chi, 47. The author also observes that grain prices in that region were the lowest possible. THCKLPS, 6/65. Chang Chi-shun, et al. ed. CKing-shih, II, p. 1464. Ho Liang-chim, Ssu-yu-chai, 3/179. Ibid. 3/190. HYWCL, 32/24. Fu I-ling, Nung-ts'un She-hui, pp. 24-5. Cases occurring in the early Ch'ing are included. Wei Ch'ing-yiian, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu: the illustrations appear on pp. i-iv. Hui-chou Fu-chih, 7/19-45; Ku'ai-chi Chih, 5/8-9. Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/27. At worst there were twelve tax deadlines each month, although not all deadlines were applicable to all taxpayers: see Ho Liang-chim, Ssu-yu-chai, 3/167, 173. Ch'ang-shu county abandoned the distinction between government and private land in 1462, Hang-chou prefecture in 1572: see Ch'ang-shu Hsien-chih, 2/33; Hang-chou Fu-chih, 29/19. An-hua Hsien-chih, 2/8; Chin-hua Fu-chih, 6/29; Chang-chou Fu-chih, 27/15. Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/9. The gazetteer indicates that the district followed the precedent of Kiangsi province. Kiangsi Fu-i CKuan-shu, provincial summary, 1-2. Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/15. Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/12. This estimate is based on the unedited figures in the local gazetteer. It is clear that only 9,780 piculs of grain out of a tax quota of 45,279 piculs were paid in kind: see Ku'ai-chi Chih, 5/1-6. I have calculated that only 2,780 piculs out of a tax quota of 57,213 piculs was paid in kind. See Lin-fen Hsien-chih, A12-5. That is, an official was not permitted to serve in his own district nor, with few

342

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Notes to pages 96-105

exceptions, in his native province. There were exceptions in the case of Yunnan and Kwangsi; see TMHT, 5/14-15; also Parsons, 'The Ming Bureaucracy: Aspects of Background Forces', pp. 175-231. JCL, 3/85. Kifai-chi Chih, 5/13-18. Ibid. 5/17-18. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2953-4; HYWCL, 32/27; Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 4/1. Wenshang Hsien-chih, 4/4. This lack of initiative on the part of local officials was criticized by Ku Yen-wu, who considered it an inevitable result of the political system. Ku's essays are translated and summarized in de Bary, ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition, II, pp. 611-12. MS, 78/825; HYWCL, 33/7. Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, pp. 460-2. JCL, 4/53-6; Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/1. The forced purchase seems to have started in 1263. MS, 71/818, 78/824; JCL, 4/53. CKang-shu Hsien-chih, 2/31. THCKLPS, 6/74, 7/4, 8/32; JCL, 4/53. Cf. Chou Liang-hsiao, 'Su-Sung Ti-ch'U\ pp. 65-6. JCL, 4/53; Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, p. 187. JCL, 4/53. THCKLPS, 6/13. JCL, 4/53. TMHT, 27/25-6, 28. TMHT, 27/61-2; THCKLPS, 12/13. TMHT, 42/40-4; THCKLPS, 6/41. TMHT, 26/13-15; THCKLPS, 6/47. The local grain price is assumed to have been 0.6 taels of silver for each picul of husked rice. Other references are: THCKLPS, 6/12, 41, 67-9, 83-4, 7/32-3, 12/95; Ming-ch'en Tsou-i, 34/656; CSWP, 438/18-19; Nishijima, 'mengyo shijo', p. 274. Ku-su Chih, 15/6. MS, 153/1863-4; Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 60/5-10; THCKLPS, 6/41, 69, 7/53; Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/5-6; CKang-shu Hsien-chih, 3/50; K'un-shan Hsien-chih,

2/21-2. 57 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 2349-50, 2727, 4220, 4453, 4478. Cf. Lu Jung, Shu-yuan Tsa-chi, 5/54. 58 Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/18. 59 Wu-hsien Chih, 8/1, 3. 60 CSWP, 438/18-19; THCKLPS, 6/50, 79, 12/13; HYWCL, 32/18. 61 MSL, Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0194. The rate is calculated from the data in MSL, Taitsung Shih-lu, 2182, 2245, 2301, 2364, 2421. Errors have been corrected on the basis of Chiao-k'an-chi, 111. 62 TMHT, 151/6-13. 63 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 0655, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 1498; Yang Shih-ch'iao, Ma-cheng-chi, 8/2. 64 MS, 92/968; TMHT, 152/7; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 53/1-3; Lu Jung, Shu-yuan Tsa-chi, 4/41. 65 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0092; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 53/5. 66 Yang Shih-ch'iao, Ma-cheng-chi, 8/1; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 53/5. 67 TMHT, 152/4. 68 TMHT, 152/4-5; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 53/4. 69 Lu Jung, Shu-yuan Tsa-chih, 4/41. 70 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1070. 71 Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 44, 68. 72 MS, 92/970; Yang Shih-ch'iao, Ma-cheng-chi, 8/4; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 53/4. 73 TMHT, 152/6-7; Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 71.

Notes to pages 106-15

343

74 TMHT, 150/15-18; Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 68-71; Hsiang-ho Hsien-chih, 5/2; Ku-an Hsien-chih, 3/15. 75 See Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, pp. 16-90, 91-115. 76 TMHT, 17/16-17; THCKLPS, 1/61; MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 3532. 77 MS, 157/1904; MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-tu, 5488-9. 78 MS, 77/821. 79 MSZ, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 1876-7. 80 These cases can be found in MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 1518; Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 0402, 1065, 3561, 3678, 3708, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0629, 3924. 81 THCKLPS, 1/61; MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1531. 82 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0629. 83 MS, 300/3366-7; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2369-70. It seems, however, that Chiaching also had personal grudges against Chang. 84 These regulations appear in TMHT, \1125-6. Frequent violations were reported: see Shimizu, tochi seidoshi, pp. 87-90. 85 Hsiang-ho Hsien-chih, 4/2, 13. 86 Tung-cKangFu-chih, 11/4,6,8,10,13,15,17,19,26, 31, 33. See also MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0468, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4557. 87 THCKLPS, 13/51. 88 JCL, 3/63-4; THCKLPS, 13/71. 89 Honan Tung-chih, 12/6. 90 THCKLPS, 15/164-5. 91 Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 73. 92 Yung-chou Fu-chih, 9/3. 93 Hang-chou Fu-chih, 7/35, 29/9-10, 31/17. 94 Chang-chou Fu-chih, 5/51-3; THCKLPS, 16/69, 86-8, 90-3; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5269-70. 95 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 6032. 96 Quoted by Yamane, in yoeki seido, p. 66. 97 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 0650. 98 Yamane, yoeki seido, p. 105; Friese, Dienstleistungs-System, p. 97. 99 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 2425, 4202, 2975, 6031-2. 100 TMHT, 20/11. 101 For the origin of the militia, see Liang Fang-chung, 'Ming-tai ti Ming-ping', p. 221. Cf. MS, 91/959. Militiamen should not be confused with local patrolmen, who came under the category of chiin-yao. 102 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 1702. 103 Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/4. 104 Liang Fang-chung, 'Kuo-chi Mou-i', pp. 278-9, 281-2. 105 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0795; Su T'ung-pin, I-ti Chih-tu, p. 277. 106 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0700. 107 Chang-chou Fu-chih, 5/38. 108 Su T'ung-pin, I-ti Chih-tu, p. 287; Yamane, yoeki seido, p. 169. 109 Hang-chou Fu-chih, 31/15. 110 Su T'ung-pin, I-ti Chih-tu, p. 320. 111 Liang Fang-chung, 'Ming-tai ti Min-ping', p. 227. 112 THCKLPS, 9/48; Liang Fang-chung, 'Ming-tai ti Min-ping', p. 227. 113 Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 15/170. 114 THCKLPS, 16/59. 115 Feng Ch'i, Feng-tsung-po Chi, 51/34; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 35/21. 116 In 1522 eight types of unauthorized surcharge, each with its fixed rate, were added to the tribute grain; they were payable by the army officers serving with the transportation corps. See MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 0440-1. Such practices were quite common at the time. 117 Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, p. 7. 118 Shanghai Htien-chih, 4/32. 119 Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/24; HYWCL, 32/9.

344

Notes to pages 115-24

120 MS, 78/826. Note 5 added by Wang Yu-ch'iian on p. 42 of Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method is quite mistaken. The kang-yin in this context had nothing to do with the salt revenue. 121 Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, pp. 56-60. 122 Such as Wang Shu and P'ang Shang-p'eng. See CSWP, 357/6-7; Wu-chiang Hsien-chih, 10/11-12; Wu-hsien Chih, 7/7-8. 123 Cf. Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, p. 6. Note that Liang defines H-cKai as service performed locally and yin-cKai as service performed away from home. Though there is some evidence for this definition it is inappropriate in a sixteenth-century context. See also THCKLPS, 6/18; Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 249. 124 See Liang, 'The "Ten-Parts" Tax System of Ming', in Sun and de Francis, Chinese Social History, pp. 271-80; also, THCKLPS, 7/9-17; TMHT, 20/14; Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/42-3; Hang-chou Fu-chih, 31/4. 125 Wada, Shokkathi yakuchu, p. 217, based on MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2971. The term had been used for some time without being precisely defined. Kuribayashi considers that the Single Whip began to be developed fully around 1560: see 'Ichijobenho', pp. 115-30. 126 HYWCL, 32/27. This statement has been slightly rearranged here. 127 Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, p. 1. 128 J. K. Fairbank, in East Asia: The Great Tradition, co-authored with Edwin O. Reischauer (Boston, 1958), p. 340. 129 Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 49-50. 130 See the article by Feuerwerker, 'From "Feudalism" to "Capitalism"', pp. 107-8. 131 Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 4/8. 132 Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 269; Hang-chou Fu-chih, 31/14. 133 Ku'ai-chi Chih, 1/5. 134 For the official standard see Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/27; THCKLPS, 27/53. Cf. TMHT, 20/15. 135 Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/38. 136 THCKLPS, 22/53. 137 It was practised in Hang-chou prefecture in 1579: see Hang-chou Fu-chih, 31/14. 138 Chung-mou Hsien-chih, 2/15, 17-18. 139 Hsiang-ho Hsien-chih, 4/2-3, 19-22. 140 THCKLPS, 15/175-6; Yamane, 'ekiho no tokushitsu', pp. 221-50. 141 One of its most ardent opponents was Ko Shou-li, who served as minister of revenue for six months in 1567: see Ko-tuan-su-kung Chi, 2/10, 3/19, 14/15, 15/11, 15/18, chia-shiln hsia, 27. Cf. Kataoka, 'tochi shoyu', pp. 148-9. 142 MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1200-1; Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1095, 1100, 1112, 1245, 1338, 4124. 143 Lu-cKeng Hsien-chih, 3/46; Hsiang-ho Hsien-chih, All', Huai-jou Hsien-chih, 2/6; THCKLPS, 15/175-6. 144 In most districts some items on the service levy lists were permanently fixed, while others could be periodically adjusted. In theory the former could not be mixed with the latter, nor the latter items with each other. See Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, p. 32. 145 Ku'ai-chi Chih, 7/12-13. The form is mentioned by Fang-chung Liang, in The Single-whip Method, pp. 60-1. 146 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3755. 147 MS, 78/828. 148 THCKLPS, 6/61. 149 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4124. 150 The exemption schedules appear in TMHT, 20/19; THCKLPS, 7/20-1; Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 141-2. 151 HYWCL, 32/21. 152 THCKLPS, 7/20. 153 I-chou Chih, 3/2. 154 Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/25.

Notes to pages 124-37

345

155 There were 12,084 salt-producing ting in the county eligible for some form of service exemption: Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/8. For salt-producing ting affected by this tax ruling, see TMHT, 20/18. 156 Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/24-6. 157 The shih-cheng-ts'e is occasionally mentioned by local gazetteers. See, for example, Hang-chou Fu-chih, 28/6; Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/25-6. 158 Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/24-5. 159 Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, p. 29. 160 Wu-chiang Hsien-chih, 10/11-12; CSWP, 397/13. 161 Ko Shou-li, Ko-tuan-su-kung Chi, chia-shun-hsia, 27. 162 Chang-chou Fu-chih, 5/19-50; THCKLPS, 26/85. 163 Ibid. 21121 \ K'ai-hua Hsien-chih, 3/1-11; Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/1-21; Sui-an Hsien-chih, 1/48-65; Hui-chou Fu-i CKuan-shu, Hsi-hsien, 1-3, Hsiu-ning Hsien, 1-10. 164 THCKLPS, 26/63. 165 Ibid. 26/8$. 166 The extent of the variation is commented on by Wang Shih-hsing, as quoted by Ku Yen-wu: see JCL, 3/62-3. 167 Hang-chou Fu-chih, 29/1, 31/70. 168 Yung-chou Fu-chih, 9/22. 169 Yueh-chou Fu-chih, passim. 170 Yung-chou Fu-chih, 9/11. 171 Kiangsi Fu-i CKuan-shu, provincial summary, 1-55. 172 Feng-tse Hsien-chih, 3/10, 11, 12. 173 As an example, for some palace ceremonial functions Wan-p'ing county was ordered to provide as many as 1,000 female sedan-chair bearers: see Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 125. 174 I-chou Chih, 3/1-32; Hsiang-ho Hsien-chih, 4/1-3. 175 The data appear in Fen-chou Fu-chih, 5/3-46. 176 The quotations are taken from People's University, She-hui Ching-chi, p. 170. 177 Twitchett, Financial Administration, p. 24. 178 Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 4/14. 179 I-chou Chih, 3/25. 180 THCKLPS, 5/180-2; Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, p. 31. 181 Huai-jou Hsien-chih, 2/6. 182 Ho T'ang's statement appears in THCKLPS, 13/112. 183 CSWP, 278/8, 11. 184 The ting payment, at 0.019 taels of silver per person, produced only 1,155.84 taels from 60,834 ting: see Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/24-5. 185 Ku'ai-chi Chih, 6/3. 186 Chang-chou Fu-chih, 5/51; THCKLPS, 16/51. 187 For fi-pien see MS, 78/826. It was also imposed in Honan, Shantung and North Chihli: see MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 151 A, 7859-60, 8703. 188 Ho Liang-chiin, Ssu-yu-chai, 3/167, 173. 189 Chang-chou Fu-chih, 27/28-9. 190 MS, 78/823; MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 0231, 0541; Shimizu, shakai keizaishi, p. 53. 191 TMHT, 17/41. 192 Sui-an Hsien-chih, 1/49-54. 193 Hang-chou Fu-chih, 30/17. 194 Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 21A. 195 Chung-mou Hsien-chih, 2/16. 196 Hui-chou Fu-chih, 1/63-4. 197 Hui-chou Fu-chih, 7/55. 198 TMHT, 25/3. 199 The collection started in 1370, according to MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1067. For the regional quotas see TMHT, 25/34-8.

346

Notes to pages 137-47

200 Usually each bundle was commuted to a payment of 0.3 taels of silver. In south China this was sometimes the price of a picul of husked rice. See note 14 above. 201 Liang Fang-chung, 'Liang-shui Shui-mo', pp. 57-61. 202 TMHT, 207/3-15; Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/11. 203 TMHT, 289/10. 204 MS, 81/899; MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0589-90. 205 It was 0.018 taels per person in Shun-te county and 0.0028 taels per person in Huai-an prefecture: see Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/18-19; Huai-an Fu-chih (1627), 12/16-17. 206 Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/18-19. 207 Tung-cKang Fu-chih, 11/5. 208 Wang Chih-jui, Ching-chi-shih, p. 141. 209 Yung-chou Fu-chih, 9/11. 210 MS, 153/1864; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/69; THCKLPS, 6/120. 211 Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/19. 212 CSWP, 357/1-6.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

4 The land tax—(//) Tax administration Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, pp. 52-3. THCKLPS, 17/70. Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 8/'61. THCKLPS, 6/16. TMHT, 27/35. THCKLPS, 7/21; Hang-chou Fu-chih, 28/6; Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/25-6; MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0355. The exact date of origin of the comprehensive books is uncertain. Pi Tzu-yen, writing in 1628, declared that their compilation had been going on for forty-five years. See Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/24. Thus it may have started somewhat earlier than 1583. It was practised in Ku'ai-chi county, Chekiang, in the 1560s. See Ku'ai-chi Chi, 5/4-11. Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/20-1. For these tax bills, see TMHT, 20/13-14; THCKLPS, 6/64, 66; Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 72; Ku'ai-chi Chih, 7/12-13. HYWCL, 33/14. TMHT, 20/14. JCL, 3/79-80; Ho Liang-chun, Ssu-yu-chai, 3/184. CSWP, 397/1. THCKLPS, 16/34. Ibid.S/56. Little is known of the stone tablets but they were frequently mentioned. See Fangchung Liang, The Single-whip Method, p. 64; K'ai-hua Hsien-chih, 3/6. Fang-chung Liang, The Single-whip Method, p. 59. Ku'ai-chi Chih, 7/6-12; Huai-an Fu-chih (1573), 4/13. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1039; HYWCL, 32/19; Yeh Meng-chu, Yueh-shih-pien, 6/1. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1169; CSWP, 278/10. Kuei Yu-kuang, Ch'uan-chi, 218. Ku Yen-wu, Wen-chi, 1/15-16. Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 17/94. HYWCL, 33/17. THCKLPS, 6/92, 17/70. Yeh Meng-chu, Yueh-shi-pien, 6/1; Lung Wen-pin, Ming Hui-yao, 2/1018-20. Ko Shou-li, Ko-tuan-su-kung Chi, 2/18. THCKLPS, 6/89. Ibid. 7/10-11, 18, 34-7. Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/4; THCKLPS, 6/75-6.

Notes to pages 148-55 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80

347

Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/4; THCKLPS, 6/87. Cf. CSWP, 438/20. Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/5. The statement is made by Liang Fang-chung in The Single-whip Method, p. 59. CSWP, 438/20. K'ai-hua Hsien-chih, 3/35-8. THCKLPS, 6/89-90. Ibid. 6/S1. Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/4-5; THCKLPS, 6/74, 90. Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/6. THCKLPS, 6/83, 85. /6/tf. 7/23, 34, 36-7. Ibid. 22/10-11. /W
348 81 82 83 84

Notes to pages 155-64

The Yuan tax assessment is recorded in Hui-chou Fu-chih, 7/18. Chang Hsiieh-yen, Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu, 14/17. Lin-fen Hsien-chih, All. In 1586 for example the governor of South Chihli authorized the commutation of more than 40,000 piculs of tax grain from Shang-hai county: see Shanghai Hsienchih, 3/20. 85 The option was offered by Hang-chou prefecture in 1579: see Hang-chou Fu-chih, 29/21, 36, 56. 86 CSWP, 327/12; Chang Chli-cheng, Shu-tu, 3/5, 3/21. 87 THCKLPS, 1/11. 88 Ibid. 6/79. 89 The magistrate was Wang Ssu-jen, who held office in 1610-11. The record of his campaign was published as a book, the preface of which was reproduced by Ku Yen-wu: see THCKLPS, 6/97-9; Sung-chiang Fu-chih, 38/15. 90 MS, 251/2846. Ch'ien Shih-sheng was regarded by his contemporaries as an honest man. 91 Yeh Meng-chu, Yueh-shih-pien, 6/1-8. 92 CKing Sheng-tsu Shih-lu, 3/3. 93 The presence of a large number of medium-grade landowners may possibly be corroborated by the fact that in Chia-hsing prefecture, Chekiang, there were ninetyone distinguished clans, each comprising hundreds of households. In the late Ming and early Ch'ing each of these clans maintained its prominence for over 200 years, according to P'an Kuang-tan, Chia-hsing ti Wang-ts'u. For the number of tax-paying households see Nan-chi Chih, 3/2. 94 Yeh Meng-chu, Yueh-shih-pien, 1/18. 95 Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 431-2. 96 THCKLPS, 6/97-9. 97 HWYCL, 33/13. 98 THCKLPS, 6/14, 15, 24-6, 35, 61. 99 T'ang Shun-chih, Wen-chi, 9/24. Cf. CSWP, 261/8-9. P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 457-61. 100 CSWP, 397/9. 101 HYWCL, 32/22. 102 Ko Shou-li, Ko-tuan-su-kung Chi, 13/19, 14/15. 103 Yeh Meng-chu, Yueh-shih-pien, 1/18-19. 104 JCL, 4/56. 105 Wu-hsien Chih, 9/14. 106 CKang-shu Hsien-chih, 4/13. Also see ch. 1, notes 81 and 82. 107 THCKLPS, 26/85, 88-9; Fu Ming, Nung-ts'un She-hui, pp. 25, 45-6, 51-9. Cf. Shimizu, 'Fukuken no nokakeizai'. 108 THCKLPS, 26/88-9. 109 Ibid. 26/89. 110 They are dated 1808, 1812, 1863, and 1891: see Fu I-ling, Nung-ts'un She-hui, pp. 53-9. 111 MS, 78/825; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2803-6; CSWP, 366/20, 397/1; THCKLPS, 17-111. 112 MSL, Shen-tsungShih-lu, 10862-5;Ch'eng K'ai-hu, CKou-Liao Shih-hua, 11/13-17, 15/41. 113 There was apparently some justification for these readjustments, though the imperial order did not specify it clearly. Note that the land survey of Hukwang in 1581 reported an acreage in excess of 83 million mou. See MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2412. Also see Appendix D above. On the basis of the unedited data it is estimated that the taxable land in Huai-an prefecture in 1573 was 9,705,830 mou: Huai-an Fu-chih (1573), 4/7-8. 114 MS, 78/823. 115 Teng-chou Chih, 7/5. 116 TMHT, 17/5, 10.

Notes to pages 165-75 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142

143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

153 154 155 156 157

349

CKung-chen Ts'un-shih Su-cKao, 5/1. For example, see Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 125, 135. For details, see Ch'en Jen-hsi, Shih-fa-lu, 34/35-7. THCKLPS, 13/45-6, 74-5; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3893. Chang Hsiieh-yen, Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu, 4/98-9. Based on the data of Hang-chou Fu-chih, 29/1-31/70. Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, pp. 108-9. THCKLPS, 22/118. Fu Ming, Nung-ts'un She-hui, p. 288. Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 3/13. As quoted by Fu I-ling, in Nung-tsUm She-hui, p. 37. Hang-chou Fu-chih, 29/31, 36, 56. This is based on the data of Fen-chou Fu-chih, 5/3-46. Fen-chou Fu-chih, 5/4. MS, 41 /453; Fen-chou Fu-chih, 6/1. Ibid. 5/40-1. Ibid. 5/35-6. Ibid. 5/32. Hsu Cheng-ming, Lu-shui K'e-fan, 12; Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu, 7/79. The estimated prices in this study are below those quoted by Ch'iian Han-sheng in 'Pei-pien Mi-liang Chia-ke', pp. 61-2. Ch'iian's original data reflected unusual conditions on the northern frontier. An-hua Hsien-chih, 2/8-9. MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 1558. Ano, 'Yosuko churyuiki', p. 66. Ku-chin Tu-shu Chi-cKeng, Shih-ho-tien, 152/5/2. See Ano, * Yosuko churyuiki', p. 85. THCKLPS, 8/73-4. For the irrigation system see Kuei Yu-kuang, San-Wu Shui-li-lu, 3/39. By comparison, Feng-yang prefecture, which was situated to the north of the Yangtze and whose land was considered poor, also reported an average yield of 1 picul of husked rice per mou: see THCKLPS, 9/13, 24. Ko Shou-li, Ko-tuan-su-kung Chi, 15/18. Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, pp. 105-7. Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 8/61-2. THCKLPS, 26/88-9. Chang-chou Fu-chih, 5/53. The yield has been converted from local measurements. THCKLPS, 15/175. K'ai-hua Hsien-chih, 3/12. Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, pp. 109-11. The total taxable acreage was 1,495,070 mou. Total taxes were 155,537 piculs of husked rice plus 121,447 taels of silver: see Shanghai Hsien-chih, 3/19-21. The rates were as follows: On each mou of top-quality land, 0.182 piculs of husked rice plus 0.1275 taels of silver. On each mou of medium-grade land, 0.136 piculs of husked rice plus 0.140 taels of silver. On each mou of poor land, 0.0637 piculs of husked rice plus 0.07 taels of silver: see THCKLPS, 6/47. Ni Yiian-lu, CKuan-chi, Memorials, 8/6-7. For the wartime surtaxes, see my article 'Fiscal Administration', p. 118. Governor Wang Hsiang-heng mentioned in 1621 that except in the lower Yantze region, land taxes in general varied from 0.04 taels to 0.09 taels per mou. The lowest rates were 0.02 to 0.03 taels per mou. THCKLPS, 6/47. Ibid. 18/81-2. The following episode provides a basis for comparison: In 1534 the emperor ordered that the land taxes be reduced by half for a year, which the ministry of revenue indicated would cost the treasury 6,819,000 taels of silver. No other information was given, but presumably either the Gold Floral Silver, the tribute grain and other tax consignments paid in kind were not included in the estimate, or

350

158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203

Notes to pages 176-87 else the retained revenue was excluded. Taking this into account it seems likely that the total value of the land taxes was close to 20 million taels. For the 1534 order, see MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3712. TMHT, 42/37, 38, 43, 46. The main features of the administration remained unchanged until the nineteenth century: see Sun, 'The Board of Revenue', pp. 175-228. The figures have been arrived at by summarizing the data given in chapters 25, 26, 27, 28, and 42 of TMHT. For the 1502 summary, see MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3548-55. Similar summaries appear in HYWCL, 34/1 and 32/24. The summary is derived from the unedited data in Lin-fen Hsien-chih, 4/2-5. THCKLPS, 13/76. MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3552. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5169. Cheng Hsiao, Chin-yen Lei-pien, 1/36. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0843,1424. Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 9; Wu Han, Chu Yuan-chang Chuan, p. 216. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 8448-9; MS, 82/864. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1039. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5753-4, 5902-6, 8191-2, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0570, 0843, 0857. The summary is derived from the unedited data in Wu-hsien Chih, 8/1-51. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 3596. CSWP, 369/9. Chang-chou Fu-chih, 5/18. CSWP, 397/16-17. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 3596. See Ho Liang-chun, Ssu-yu-chai, 3/196-7; Chin-hua Fu-chih, 8/13. The combined budget was called' lien-ping-mi' (' troop-training rice') o r ' lien-pingyin* ('troop-training funds'): see ShanghaiHsien-chih, 3/21; Wu-hsien Chih, 1/11. For instance, Ku-su Chih, 15/1; Chin-hua Fu-chih, 8/40; Hui-chou Fu-chih, 111, 7/4. MS, 224/2585. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 4208, 4215. Wang Ao, Chen-tse Ch'ang-yu, 1/23; HYWCL, 34/2. TMHT, 39/1-7; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 27/5. Hsieh Shang-chih, CKang-shu Shui-lun, 10; CSWP, 375/11. MS, 222/2559; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1986, 3317, 5491, 6543, 11266. Su T'ung-pin, I-ti Chih-tu, p. 439. Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/23. K'ai-hua Hsien-chih, 3/31-2. Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 48-9. HYWCL, 32/9. Ni Yuan-lu, CKuan-chi, Memorials, 9/5; JCL, 3/80. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, i, p. 769. K'ai-hua Hsien-chih, 3/33. Huai-jou Hsien-chih, 2/10. CSWP, 438/3-4. Hsieh Kuo-chen, CKang-shu Shui-lun, 3-4, 10-11. Kuei Yu-kuang, San-Wu Shui-li-lu, 1/5, 7. Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 8/61-2. MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0110. JCL, 4/56. Fu Ming, Nung-ts'un She-hui, pp. 11-13, 22, 24, 33; Hsieh Kuo-chen, Tang-she Yun-tung-k'ao, pp. 268-9. Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 418, 457.

Notes to pages 187-96

351

204 Ping-ti Ho, in Ladders of Success, shows numerous cases of upward and downward social mobility. Fu I-ling also admits that large land-holdings were always fragmented after a few generations: see Nung-ts'un She-hui, p. 85. Marginal landowners must have played an important role in the process as they represented both the initial stage of upward mobility and the final stage of downward mobility. 5 The salt monopoly 1 This statement is made in 'Ming-tai I-t'iao-pien Nien-piao' (A Chronological Table of the Single Whip Reform), which originally appeared in Journal of Ling-nan University, 12:1. I have not seen the article but have taken the quotation from People's University, She-hui Ching-chi, p. 192. 2 MS, 225/2596; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0979, Chiao-k'an-chi, 309. 3 MS, 80/837. 4 For details of conditions in the production areas, see MS, 80/838; THCKLPS, 15/133, 17/82, 84-6, 19/93-102; Ho-tung Yen-fa-chih, 1/1. 5 CSWP, 382/4. 6 For areas of salt distribution, see TMHT, chs. 32-3. 7 TMHT, chs. 15-16. 8 THCKLPS, 17/81, 28/8; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/44. 9 THCKLPS, 18/27. 10 MS, 73/859, 75/802; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/44, 48/43. For salt-control censors, see Hucker, Censorial System, p. 83. 11 Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 9/9-14 contains a list of salt-control censors complete up to the date of publication. 12 MS, 80/842, 227/2316; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 8047. 13 THCKLPS, 12/42; CSWP, 475/23-9. 14 It is possible that the production fields had territorial responsibilities: see Liang-Che Yen-fa-chih, 2/5. 15 TMHT, 32/1-2; CSWP, 475/27; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/42. 16 CSWP, 475/25; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/68. 17 Shantung Yen-fa-chih, 11/21. 18 Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 4/28; MS, 80/839; TMHT, 32/4. In Kwangtung, however, each salt-producing ting provided only 1,286 catties of salt. See Liang-Kuang Yen-fa-chih, 3/14. 19 For these village collectors, see Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/22-3; THCKLPS, 31/29; TMHT, 34/38; CSWP, 358/8. 20 TMHT, 34/36, 38; Ch'en Jen-hsi, Shih-fa-lu, 29/2. 21 For the granary receipts and stub-books see TMHT, 34/4-5. 22 For the different weights of the yin, see CSWP, 475/19-20; Ho-tung Yen-fachih, 10/8; Shantung Yen-fa-chih, 11/7-8; Liang-Che Yen-fa-chih, 3/81-3. Also refer to Appendix C above for the regulations of 1535. For yin license, see TMHT, 34/14-15. 23 Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/49. 24 MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0730; Liang-Che Yen-fa-chih, 3/84-6. 25 Ibid. 3/84. 26 CSWP, 414/6, 475/1, 14. 27 Ibid. 474/15,29. 28 Shantung Yen-fa-chih, 11/2. 29 CSWP, 475/15, 28-9. 30 CSWP, 475/5, 26; THCKLPS, 12/43-4. 31 CSWP, 475/9. 32 See THCKLPS, 31/29-30; CSWP, 476/4-5. 33 THCKLPS, 31/30; Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/17; MS, 153/1864; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/69; Ku'ai-chi Chih, 7/16. 34 Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/70. It is also stated that Liang-huai 'originally' had 35,266 ting: see Ch'en Jen-hsi, Shih-fa-lu, 29/2.

352

Notes to pages 196-206

35 Shantung Yen-fa-chih, 14/11. 36 The estimate is based on a statement by Huo T'ao in 1528, a report by the ministry of revenue in 1550, a memorial by Censor Yang Hsiian in 1551, and an analysis by a salt official, Yuan Shih-cheng, dated 1616. For the sources see MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 6420, 6575; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/50; CSWP, 475/11. 37 CSWP, 357/22; MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0650, Wu tsung Shih-lu, 0085. 38 Shantung Yen-fa-chih, 14/11. 39 Ibid. 13/2-5; Ping-ti Ho, Ladder of Success, p. 85. 40 Shanghai Hsien-chih, 4/26-7. 41 Shantung Yen-fa-chih, 14/6, 25; CKang-lu Yen-fa-chih, 6/44, 79; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 5/14. 42 Hang-chou Fu-chih, 31/18. 43 THCKLPS, 21/29, 31, 36. 44 THCKLPS, 22/21; CSWP, 357/1-5. 45 MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0185. By comparison, the commuted payments in Shantung varied from 0.2 taels to 0.9 taels per ting, depending on the household grading: see CSWP, 358/2. 46 Ping-ti Ho, 'The Salt Merchants of Yangchou', p. 132. 47 THCKLPS, 22/133. 48 Ibid. 15/130. 49 Ibid. 17/81. 50 Ho-tung Yen-fa-chih, 10/4-5. 51 MS, 80/842; CSWP, 409/5. 52 For details of those plates see Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/9, 43; THCKLPS, 12/44. 53 CSWP, 357/21-3. 54 CKang-lu Yen-fa-chih, 6/8. 55 THCKLPS, 21/31. 56 Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/8, 10; CSWP, 474/31-2, 460/31; MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 2208. 57 Ho-tung Yen-fa-chih, 2/1-2, 12/38. 58 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 3154-5, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 1400-1. 59 Ibid. 1704. 60 Cases of this kind are cited in CSWP, 414/2, 477/4. 61 CSWP, 477/14. 62 MSL, Hsiian-tsung Shih-lu, 1313. 63 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4103-4, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0792. 64 TMHT, 34/9; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 5/15. 65 Ibid. 4/7; MS, 80/839. 66 Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 4/8. 67 THCKLPS, 21/36. 68 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1698. 69 Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/5-6. 70 Ibid. 4/22, 29, 7/7. 71 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0403-5. Possible errors are checked against Chiao-k'anchi, 0519. 72 For details, see Fujii, 'ensho no ichikosatsu'; Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 7/52-4. 73 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2891. 74 Ibid. 2434. 75 MS, 80/840, 185/2161. 76 Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/45; CSWP, 474/6. 77 For ticket salt, see Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 4/7; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3750, 4205-6, 8714, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0897; CSWP, 358/3. 78 Fujii, 'ensho no ichikosatsu', Shigaku zasshi, 54:5, pp. 62-111; 54:6, pp. 65-104; and 54:7, pp. 17-59. Cf. Ch'ung-wu Wang, 'The Ming System of Merchant Colonization', in Sun and de Francis, eds. Chinese Social History, pp. 299-308.

Notes to pages 206-16

353

79 MS, 80/840. 80 For details see CSWP, 357/24-5, 360/23. 81 CSWP, 360/24, 475/9. 82 It is not clear when the collection of the surplus salt money started. According to one source it was during the Ch'eng-hua period: see MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 2878. Wang Ch'iung used the term in Hu-pu Tsou-i, 1/16. It seems that the collection had become common practice by 1507, if not much earlier. 83 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3593-4. 84 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0153, 0506, 0599, 2584, 2805; MS, 80/840; Ming-cKen Tsou-i, 16/278. 85 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1019, 2308, 2805. 86 For the settlement see MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3791-5, 5630, 6575, 6655. See also Appendix C above. 87 MS, 308/3489-90; Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 168. 88 MS, 80/842; Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 17/3; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 8255, 8276, 8299, 8464, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0895. 89 CSWP, 357714. 90 MS, 80/841; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 6922, 8868. 91 Ibid. 6420, 7776. 92 CSWP, 357/23, 358/8. 93 THCKLPS, 12/41. 94 CSWP, 414/21, 29. 95 CSWP, 360/24-5. 96 CSWP, 357/24, 360/22-3. 97 P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, 474. The monthly rate could be as high as 5 per cent. 98 CSWP, 357/31. 99 CSWP, 357/24-5, 360/23. 100 CSWP, 357/26, 29, 360/28. 101 CSWP, 360/29. 102 River salt is said to have been started by Yen Mou-ch'ing. See THCKLPS, 12/38; MS, 80/842. The statement that P'ang Shang-p'eng discontinued it is incorrect. Cf. Ch'en Jen-hsi, Shih-fa-lu, 29/45. 103 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1687. 104 For Lu Pao see MS, 80/842, 237/2706; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 6072, 6095, 6392, 6543, 8307. The consequences of his administration are discussed in CSWP 470/1-8. 105 MS, 80/841; TMHT, 34/12; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3791-5. 106 CSWP, 375/15. 107 CSWP, 474/25, 475/7. 108 TMHT, 32/1-33/27. 109 Liang-Huai Yen-fa-chih, 4/9. 110 CSWP, 357/5. 111 THCKLPS, 22/20-1. 112 Liang-Che Yen-fa-chih, 4/10; THCKLPS, 21/31; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 6059. 113 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 8482. 114 MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0735. 115 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 7149. 116 MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0441. 117 Chou Hsiian-wei, Ching-lin Hsu-chi, 48. 118 THCKLPS, 26/94. See also MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0720-1. 119 In 1616 it was reported that Yunnan had not delivered any funds outside the province for over twenty years. See CSWP, 474/2. 120 In 1575 Minister of Revenue Wang Kuo-kuang estimated that the income from the barter system was worth approximately 500,000 taels: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0792. In 1616 Minister of Revenue Li Nii-hua estimated the total annual income to be 2.4 million taels. See CSWP, 474/2. For other references see MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0850-1, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0624.

354 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144

145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

Notes to pages 216-26 This is calculated from the unedited data in TMHT, chs. 32-3. Ya-tung Hsiieh-she, Jen-k'ou Wen-fi, P- 299. CSWP, 476/1; Twitchett, Financial Administration, p. 58. Hsiang-ho Hsien-chih, 11/11. CSWP, 477/19. CSWP, 477/21. Yuan Shih-cheng's paper is entitled 'Ten Proposals of the Ministry of Revenue', in CSWP, 474/1-411125. CSWP, 357/24-6, 360/22-3, 27. CSWP, 474/4, 475/15. CSWP, 474/18. CSWP, 474/10. Sometimes the speculators bought the receipts at 0.17 taels per yin and sold them at 0.85 taels per yin: see CSWP, 475/7. CSWP, 474/16-17, 23-4, 477/6. CSWP, 474/22. CSWP, 474/23. CSWP, 474/26-7. CSWP, 476/9. CSWP, 474/26. THCKLPS, 12/44. THCKLPS, 12/44; CSWP, 360/25. Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 49-50, 55. For the incident see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 6534. Another instance of unauthorized taxation is also recorded, ibid. 2522. This rate is calculated from the data in THCKLPS, 26/67. CSWP, 474/26. The basis of this estimate is as follows: In the middle of the sixteenth century, the price was about 10 taels per short ton, whereas later in the century the lowest price was about 9.6 taels per short ton. One source gives it as 11.4 taels per short ton. When the governor of Hukwang imposed price control, the ceiling price was about 18 taels per short ton. These prices are calculated from Chu T'ing-li, Yen-chengchih, 7/40; THCKLPS, 12/48; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/49; CSWP, 477/21. The statement is made by Fujii in Wada, shokkashi yakuchu, pp. 598-603. For the settlement see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 10607, 10687-8; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 35/46-8; CSWP, 475/19-20, 477/1-5. Shantung Yen-fa-chih, 14/7-9. Chu T'ing-li, Yen-cheng-chih, 10/20-1. CSWP, 475/24. CSWP, 383/21. CSWP, 475/24. It is interesting that Yuan Shih-cheng, who reported all these irregularities, was himself later impeached for corruption. MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 0179. MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 1569. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 2141, 2681-2. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 6922. CS WP, 474/26, 475/24. CSWP, 474/29. Ch'iu Chun, Ta-hsueh Yen-i-pu, 28/11. Both Fujii and Ch'ung-wu Wang consider the charges unjustified. For references see note 78 above. CSWP, 360/27.

6 Miscellaneous incomes 1 For the origins of the tonnage stations see MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 2365, Hsiiantsung Shih-lu, 1325. 2 THCKLPS, 21/53-4. 3 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2494. Cf. MS, 81/854.

Notes to pages 226-34 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

355

MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0862. Another source indicates that the joint operation started in 1529: see HYWCL, 40/1-2. THCKLPS, 21/51-3. For the collection at the Ch'ung-wen Gate see TMHT, 35/48. An assistant collector at Chiu-chiang had allegedly embezzled several tens of thousands of taels: see HYWCL, 40/6. For other evidence of abuses see Ch'i Piao-chia, Jih-chi, vol. 5, dated the second day, ninth lunar month, 1643. Their impression was that 'the mandarins are arbitrary but honest', Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, i, p. 754. For similar observations see Hucker, Traditional Chinese State, p. 82n. The quota was first established in 1377: see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1848. Lin-cKing Chihli Chou-chih, 9/2. THCKLPS, 11/44. THCKLPS, 21/51. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2529. Ibid. 2589; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/39-40. THCKLPS, 22/16. HYWCL, 92/24. Lin-cKing Chihli Chou-chih, ch. 9; Tu Lin, Huai-an San-kuan Tung-chih, ch. 2; I-ling-a, Huai-kuan Tung-chih, 7/1-29. Hsu Wen-hsien Tung-k'ao, 2933. Ibid. 2938. Tu Lin, Huai-an San-kuan Tung-chih, 8/9. THCKLPS, 21/52-3, 55-6; HYWCL, 40/1. The table is based on the figures in Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/42 and Hsu Wen-hsien Tung-k'ao, 2937. Wu Chao-ts'ui, Shui-chih-shih, pp. 175-6, lists the collection quota at the Ch'ungwen Gate in 1625 as 48,900 taels. Sakuma's table shows more variations: see Sakuma, 'shozei to zaisei', p. 61. THCKLPS, 21/53-6. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 7072. TMHT, 35/7; Chu Kuo-chen, Yung-cWuang Hsiao-p'in, 2/40. For examples of ad hoc distribution see MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 1413, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2579, 4530. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/9-10. Wu Chao-ts'ui, Shui-chih-shih, p. 169. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0555. HYWCL, 40/1. Fen-chou Fu-chih, 5/12. Chin-hua Fu-chih, 8/20. Hui-chou Fu-chih, 1/64, 8/14-16. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0441, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0764-5. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5991, 6474; HYWCL, 40/3-4. CSWP, 358/28-9. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1827, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 1038. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1197. TMHT, 35/32-7. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1116, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 0447-8. Ch'en Wen-shih, Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e, pp 59-60. MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 1367-8. Cf. Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4590. Ch'en Wen-shih, Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e, p. 107; THCKLPS, 33/60. MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1496, 2911-12; Ch'en Wen-shih, Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e, pp. 107-8; Liang Fang-chung, 'Kuo-chi Mou-i', pp. 292-3; CSWP, 357/7-10. Liang Fang-chung,' Kuo-chi Mou-i', p. 292; Ch'en Wen-shih, Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e, p. 109. Little is known of conditions in the intervening years. See Lach, Asia in the Making, i, pp. 737, 788.

356 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Notes to pages 234-42

THCKLPS, 29/105. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2509; THCKLPS, 33/58-60. CSWP, 357/7-10; Liang Fang-chung, 'Kuo-chi Mou-i\ pp. 298, 305. Chou Hsiian-wei, Ching-lin Hsu-chi, 48. Liang Fang-chung, 'Kuo-chi Mou-i', p. 305, quoting the 1601 edition oiKwangtung Tung-chih. H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company, i, p. 9. Chang Hsiieh, Tung-hsi-yang K'ao, 7/95-8. The rates have been tabulated by Liang Fang-chung, in 'Kuo-chi Mou-i', pp. 292-3. In 1589, the governor of Fukien indicated that the rates were about 2 per cent ad valorem: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3939. In 1597 the port was partially open: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5899; THCKLPS, 26/33-4, 99-104; also MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4864-5. Katayama, 'Gekko nijyushisho', pp. 389-419; Chou Hsiian-wei, Ching-lin Hsii-chi, 47. Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 92-3. Ibid. 83-91. Cf. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2355. Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 91. THCKLPS, 14/43. THCKLPS, 7/40. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 6960. MS, 81/835. TMHT, 204/1-8. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1724; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 46/54. TMHT, 204/1. TMHT, 204/7. THCKLPS, 11/43; Hsi and Chu, Ts'ao-cKuan-chih, 4/10. Chou Chih-lung, Ts'ao-ho I-pi, ch. 8; Chu Kuo-chen, Yung-cKuang Hsiao-p'in, 4/79. Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 6-7, 14. MS, 189/2213; HYWCL, 92/24. MS, 206/2397. MS, 224/2591. THCKLPS, 11/43-4. I-ling-a, Huai-kuan Tung-chih, 5/7. Hsiang Meng-yuan, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 4. Chou Chih-lung, Ts'ao-ho I-pi, ch. 7. Ch'en Tzu-chuang, Ching-chi-yen, 3/42. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4319. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 1232. The latter figure is quoted by People's University, She-hui Ching-chi, p. 94. Chou Chih-lung, Ts'ao-ho I-pi, 8/13-14. Ching-chou (referred to as Sha-shih in the text) in 1587 produced only 14,000 taels: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3544. MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 3518; TMHT, 194/16. TMHT, 194/19-21; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 46/59-60. TMHT, 194/18; Ho Shih-chin, CHang-k'u Hsu-chih, 6/91, 7B/1-8. (There are two chapter 7's in this work. Here it is the second that is referred to.) THCKLPS, 28/8. THCKLPS, 26/73, 104. Sung Ying-hsing, Tien-kung K'ai-wu, 231; Sun, 'Mining Industries', p. 840. Ho Shih-chin, CKang-Wu Hsu-chih, 1/3-4. Ni Yuan-lu, CKuan-chi, Memorials, 10/11-12; Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 4/17. The term chia-pan appears in MSL, Tai-tsung Shih-lu, 2266, Jen-tsung Shih-lu, 0017, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 5372. Sung Ying-hsing, Tien-kung K'ai-wu, 229. MS, 10/82-3; THCKLPS, 23/52-3. THCKLPS, 23/54.

Notes to pages 242-8

357

94 Liu Chin's fiscal reforms deserve further study. Even the isolated and prejudiced statements in the Shih-lu suggest a far-reaching purpose behind them: see Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0864, 1318, 1439, 1440, 1456, 1482. 95 JW. 0815, 0847. 96 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 0072; TMHT, 37/33. 97 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7867. 98 MS, 18/130. 99 TMHT, 37/25. 100 THCKLPS, 15/138-140. 101 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 6180. 102 Ibid. 7692. 103 For these entries see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 6645, 6663, 6700, 6718, 6731, 6732, 6751,6782, 6839,6863,6864. Furthermore, in the two years between 1596 and 1598 five provinces, including Shantung, Honan, Shansi, Chekiang, and North Chihli, were reported to have delivered 106,000 taels: ibid. 6059-60. 104 THCKLPS, 32/46. 105 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, AMI. 106 MS, 75/804. 107 The list appears in TMHT, 31/1-26. 108 Ta-kao, 1/55. 109 Yung-chou Fu-chih, 9/1; THCKLPS, 25/50. 110 TMHT, 200/26-38. 111 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1810. 112 For the sales of 1465, 1485, 1512, 1536, 1561 and 1564, respectively, see MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 0436, 0552, 4521, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1883, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3993, 8512, 8667. The commonest form of purchase was the acquisition by qualified scholars of the status of imperial university student. The title alone was almost equivalent to * associate membership' of the civil service. Even if he neither attended the university nor entered the bureaucracy, an imperial university student received a hat and belt from the government and was allowed the forms of address and certain privileges of a low-ranking official. Some purchasers did actually attend the university while others merely used the title to secure appointments as local officials, usually in the frontier provinces. See JCL, 6/59-60; TMHT, 5/11-16, 220/21; MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 1023; Ping-ti Ho, Ladder of Success, pp. 33, 46. 113 This is the impression given by several funerary inscriptions composed by Kuei Yu-kuang: see Kuei Yu-kuang, CKuan-chi, 18/241-2. 114 Hsu Cheng-ming, Lu-shui K'e-fan, 7. 115 Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 5. 116 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1005. 117 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 8887. 118 Chang Chu-cheng, Shu-tu, 3/15. 119 MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 2316; Liu Tsung-chou, Liu-tzu CKuan-shu, 415/5. 120 MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 2064. 121 MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4550; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 39/86. Cf. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2301, 2310. 122 Ibid. 4406. 123 Ibid. 3658. 124 Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/31; CSWP, 325/18. 125 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0937. 126 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1818, 2896-7. 127 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0937. 128 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0307. 129 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 1241. 130 This sum is derived from the unedited data in TMHT, 26/1-59. 131 Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 35/9. 132 See MS, 308/3488; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 8848, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2757-8.

358 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146

147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176

Notes to pages 248-55

TMHT, 176/14. See table of commutations in TMHT, 176/9-14, 15-18. TMHT, 179/19-24. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5199; Wei Ch'ing-yiian, Huang-ts'e Chih-tu, pp. 124-7. Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 49. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4904-5; Lien-sheng Yang,' Ming Local Administration', p. 20. TMHT, 30/23. TMHT, 179/18. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 35/10. Ho Liang-chun, Ssu-yu-chai, 3/161. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2127-8. Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 259, 276; Ho Liang-chiin, Ssu-yu-chai, 1/3. MS, 81/851; TMHT, 31/14; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1129-31, 1132, 2944; CSWP, 325/22-3; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 38/1-16; Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih 3, 5; P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 444-6. TMHT, 31/14; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1129-31, 2944. The statement in the Shih-lu that the rate was fixed at 1,000 copper coins per tael of silver seems improbable. P'eng Hsin-wei suggests that some 2-cash coins were minted and that the actual rate was 500:1: see Ho-pi-shih, pp. 444-6. Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 3. Huai-an Fu-chih (1627), 12/24. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 38/8. HYWCL, 92/20. TMHT, 152/18. For details see Tani, 'Mindai no chuang-p'eng-yin ni tsuite', pp. 165-96. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 3046; TMHT, 152/23. MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 1282-3. MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0470-1. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2337; Yang Shih-ch'iao, Ma-cheng-chi, 8/3. Wang Yu-ch'iian, Chun-tun, pp. 8-9. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0716-17. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5241. HYWCL, 40/9; CSWP, 406/1-5. MS, 82/866; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/10; CSWP, 406/5; MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 2733. The quota in 1578 was 445,257 taels and in 1579 it was 450,900 taels. See TMHT 27/28; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1871. TMHT, 27/27-9. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 37/15. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 0627-8. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3491. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7733. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1871-2. TMHT, 189/10; Ho Shih-chin, CKang-Vu Hsu-chih, 2/22-3. TMHT, 206/4-5; Hsi and Chu, Ts* ao-cK uan-chih, 4/1-15, 6/16, 41, 7/15. TMHT, 208/18-19; THCKLPS, 8/70. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3556, 3628. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3893, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5383; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Mengyii-lu, 35/43. In 1609 the income was approximately 1.5 million taels: see Ho Shih-chin, CKang-k'u Hsu-chih, 2/21. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3652, 5916. The latter entry states that the income in 1597 was approximately 400,000 taels. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 53/8-9. According to Chu Kuo-chen in 1614 the income was 980,000 taels: see Yung cKuang Hsiao-p'in, 2/41. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 4835, 4957. MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4917; also see TMHT, 157/1-12.

Notes to pages 256-64

359

177 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1408, 1448, 1494, 1558, 1559, 1581, 1706. 178 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5992; also see 3473, 5274. 179 Ch'en Shih-ch'i states that the commutation took place during the Wan-li period: see Kuan-shou-kung-yeh, p. 124. 180 For the early collections, see MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0060, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 4393. 181 For the number of cooks see MSL, Hsiian-tsung Shih-lu, 0149, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0624; TMHT, 194/4. In 1574 the court of imperial entertainments consumed 160,000 catties of salt, which indicates that its kitchens could feed 15,000 persons daily: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0654. 182 MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7863-4, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0148-50, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0593-4, 3632. 183 Rossabi, 'Tea and Horse Trade', p. 163. 184 For the early system see MSL, Tai-tsu Shih-lu, 1300-1; MS, 80/843-4; TMHT, 37/3-5. 185 THCKLPS, 19/17-18, 35-7. 186 TMHT, 37/1; Hucker, * Governmental Organization', p. 46. 187 MSL, Hsuan-tsung Shih-lu, 0249. 188 MSL, Ying-tsung Shih-lu, 0189; TMHT, 37/8. 189 TMHT, 37/13. 190 Many tea plantations were not taxed, and as much as a million catties of tea a year was traded as contraband: see CSWP, 115/1-10, 12-13. 191 MS, 80/845; TMHT, 37/8; MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0846. 192 CSWP, 115/16-17. 193 MS, 80/845; THCKLPS, 18/98. 194 TMHT, 37/16; THCKLPS, 18/98; CSWP, 386/12. 195 CSWP, 386/7. 196 MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0683-4. 197 TMHT, 31/7; CSWP, 115/12-13. 198 CSWP, 115/16-17. 199 MS, 80/845; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3968. 200 CSWP, 386/16. 201 THCKLPS, 19/36. 202 Rossabi, 'Tea and Horse Trade', pp. 159-63. 203 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3773. 204 For Altan's request see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1459-60. For tax reductions see ibid. 2943, 3405. 205 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5207. 206 MS, 80/846. 207 CSWP, 385/7, 9-10, 19-20; THCKLPS, 18/86. 208 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3699, 4407; Yang Shih-ch'iao, Ma-cheng-chi, 8/4. See also Hou Jen-chih,' Ma-shih-k'ao', an English translation of which appears in Sun and de Francis, Chinese Social History, pp. 309-32; Wang Shih-ch'i, San-yun CKou-tsu-Wao, 2/17. 209 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5085. 210 MS, 80/846; TMHT, 37/2, 9. 211 THCKLPS, 19/104-5; CSWP, 383/2-3 212 TMHT, 37/3. 213 Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/54. 214 It seems to have become general in the late sixteenth century. The later entries are dated 1585,1587,1589, and 1598: Wang I-o, Tsou-i, 1/18; MSL, Shen-tsung Shihlu, 3401, 4079, 5941. 215 These conditions were observed by Ni Yiian-lu, the dynasty's last minister of revenue. See Ni Yiian-lu, CKuan-chi, Memorials, 6/2; Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p'u, 4/17, 27. 216 Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population, pp. 23, 277. 217 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 8200-1.

360

Notes to pages 265-75

218 MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0746. 219 MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 0609.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

7 Financial management Twitchett, Financial Administration, pp. 97-123. In 1568, for instance, the ministry of revenue accused the Kwantung provincial officials of mismanaging the funds which they were allowed to retain: see MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0440-1. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5961, 5976-7. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5952-3. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 6405; CSWP, 199/44. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7712-13. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0332, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1831, 2684, 2852, 3517, 4084, 4170, 4333; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/31; CSWP, 325/18-19, 389/2. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2684, 2853, 2921, 3517, 4084, 4333. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2920. These accounts changed very little over a long period. See MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7201; CSWP, 198/14-15; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/8-10. MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 2408. MS, 78/826. The imperial edict announcing the collection indicated that it would be discontinued when the frontier situation improved. See MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 6604. MS, 202/2347; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5908-9. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5315, 6891, 8482. Also see CSWP, 259/9-10; T'ang Shunchih, Wen-chi, 9/25; Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, p. 323n. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5339; TMHT, 17/23. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7870-1. TMHT, 17/26-30. MS, 78/826; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7712-13. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7713-15. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7717-18. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7719-20. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7733-6. MS, 78/826. The MS states that at an earlier stage the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury had deposits of 8 million taels (see MS, 78/826), but this cannot be verified. The only positive evidence is that 400,000 taels, a rather small amount, was withdrawn from the reserve in 1543: see MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5338. In 1550 Minister of Revenue P'an Huang likewise stated that 'in earlier years' the treasury had a regular reserve of 4 million taels: see CSWP, 198/14. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7349, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1027. See TMHT, 28/26, 29, 30, 33, 34, and 36, under the headings of Chi-chou, Yungp'ing, Ch'ang-p'ing, I-chou, and Liao-tung. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/9. MS, 82/866. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1641. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2920. For the 1578 payment in silver see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1647; CSWP, 375/12. In 1567, Minister of Revenue Ma Shen reported that pay and salaries had cost the treasury 1.35 million taels that year, which shows that on this occasion the payments were all made in silver instead of grain: see MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0414. TMHT, 31/1; MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7871. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1611. An imporatnt work on the operations of the treasury was the T'ai-ts'ang ICao by Liu Szu-chieh (fl. 1545-75), possibly completed around 1580 (see MS, 97/1028), which unfortunately cannot be located. The summary of the accounts of the T'ai-

Notes to pages 275-83

35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

361

ts'ang Treasury in Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, dated 1580, was taken from this account (see Meng-yii-lu, 35/8). The summary in MS, 82/866 is very close to Sun's, and it is probable that they all come from the same source. In 1578 the ministry of revenue stated that in Peking it annually disbursed between 700,000 taels and 800,000 taels of silver. In 1591 the amount was said to be 630,000 taels, but this may not include the pay of the army officers, disbursed by the emperor. In 1600 the cost of maintaining the imperial stable and imperial zoo was said to be 123,000 taels. In 1623 'salaries' totalled 526,633 taels. See MSL, Shentsung Shih-lu, 1590, 4333, 6594; Ch'en Jen-hsi, Shih-fa-lu 36/8. Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 40. See Shun-fien Fu-chih, 52/12-14. See Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 142-7. Kiangsi Fu-i CKuan-shu, provincial summary, 41. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3712. Shen Pang, Wan-shu Tsa-chi, 84-5. MSL, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 3550. Ku Ch'ing, P'ang-cK iu-f ing Tsa-chi, 1/8-9. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 4046. MSL, Shih Tsung Shih-lu, 2374; CSWP, 198/22-3. See MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5824, 8092, 8222. Hucker, Censorial System, 86-7. Ho Shih-chin, CKang-k'u Hsii-chih, 2/9. Ni Hui-ting, Nien-p^u, 4/13; Ni Yiian-lu, CKilan-chi, Memorials, 9/5. Sun Ch'eng-tse described his personal difficulties as a magistrate in Meng-yii-lu, 35/12, 36/56. THCKLPS, 4/32-5, 32/5, 44. MS, 84/883-90. MS, 85/849-902; THCKLPS, 15/43; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0056, 0845, 1057. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1239; CSWP, 375/21, 376/31, 378/30. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1559, 1647; CSWP, 375/12. CSWP, 375/9. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1188, 1662; CSWP, 375/11. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1651; CSWP, 375/10. CSWP, 376/10-13. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 2106. MS, 83/879; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0845. For a summary of the memorial see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2862-3. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7604; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 6/9; Chao I, Nienerh-shih Cha-chi, 32/687. Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 3. Yang, 'Economic Aspects of Public Works', pp. 194-5. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2957. Hsiang Meng-yuan, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 3. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7708. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2787. Hui-chou Fu-chih, 8/15-16. This is based on the statement in Sun Ch'eng-tse's Meng-yii-lu, 46/63, the average being calculated from the general estimate. Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 4. Kuei Yu-kuang, CWiian-chi, 449, Pieh-chi, 6/8. He complained in 1562 that the traffic virtually came to a standstill and that his boat as a result 'barely got out of Chang-chia-wan'. Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 306-7. TMHT, 190/2-3; Ho Shih-chih, CKang-k'u Hsii-chih, 4/39. Hsiang Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 1-2. Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century, 307. Hsiang-Meng-yiian, Tung-kuan Chi-shih, 2; Ho Chung-shih, Ting-chien-chi, 12.

362 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

115 116

Notes to pages 284-90

MS, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 1131. MS, 78/829. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4933. MSL, Hsiao'tsung Shih-lu, 3418; Wei Huan, Chiu-pien-k'ao, 1/18-19. TMHT, 41/16, 24; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1986, 5317, 5941, 6543, 11266; MS, 222/2559; Ming-cKen Tsou-i, 35/673-6; see also chapter 6, note 214 above. On the establishment of the Ku-yuan Command see Wei Huan, Chiu-pien-k'ao 10/1; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 42/17, 19. Wei Huan, Chiu-pien k'ao, 10/1. The nine defense areas were Liao-tung, Chi-chou, Hsiian-fu, Ta-t'ung, Shan-si, Yen-sui, Ning-hsia, Ku-yuan, and Kan-su: see Hucker, 'Governmental Organization', p. 63. The other five army posts were: Yung-p'ing, Mi-yiin, Ch'ang-p'ing, I-chou and Ching-hsing. In 1576 the fiscal accounts listed all these fourteen units in equal terms: see Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1162-82. See Yii Tzu-chiin's biography in Chaio Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 38/69. On fifteenthcentury construction work see MSL, Hsien-tsung Shih-lu, 2110, 3491, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu, 0523. Calculated from a summary statement in MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 5800. Calculated from MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 7840. TMHT, 193/1, 3-4. TMHT, 193/5. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3249-53. See MS, 212/2462, 2466. Ho Shih-chin, CWang-k'u Hsii-chih, 8/84. Wang Yii-ch'iian, Chun-tun, pp. 215-16. Ibid. p. 211. CSWP, 198/19. CSWP, 358/21, 24, 359/3, 360/10. Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 3/15. The rents varied from 0.015 taels of silver per mou to 0.03 taels per mou: see Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu, 23/7, 22. CSWP, 358/24. This also went on in Kan-su, Ning-hsia, and even in the area near Nanking: see Wang Yii-ch'uan, Chun-tun, pp. 52-4. Ying-fien was practiced in Liao-tung, Shan-si, and Ning-hsia, certainly in 1591: ibid. pp. 4-5. See CSWP, 358/18; Wang Yii-ch'iian, Chun-tun, pp. 8-9. CSWP, 358/10, 12, 14, 23, 359/16, 360/17. Wang I-o, Tsou-i, 1/15-16. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0379, 0467, 1162-82, 2152; Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 2/3, 9. TMHT, 28/26-53. The sums have been calculated from the unedited data. Several gazetteers suggest that this was a general practice: see for example Fenchou Fu-chih, 5/45-6; Chang-chou Fu-chih, 28/18; Szechuan Tsung-chih, 2/6-13; Teng-chou Chih, 9/1. In some cases army officers collected the rent from this land. Chin-hua Fu-chih, 21/5. Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/12-14. This was also a common practice. Technically speaking the hereditary military household was in fact the landowner. Best illustrated by an early seventeenth-century document. See MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 1557-60. All these must have been long-term developments however. TMHT, 18/1-8. This is a rough estimate from the unedited data. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 0902; CSWP, 322/15. Hucker, * Governmental Organization', p. 63, nl43 indicates a total strength of 553,363 men in the nine defense areas, on the basis of TMHT, chs. 129-30. By comparison the ministry of revenue in 1620 stated that there were 867,946 men serving on the frontier: see MSL, Kuang-tsung Shih-lu, 0047. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1162-82. TMHT, chs. 129-30.

Notes to pages 290-7 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

134 135 136

137

138

139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151

363

MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5143. Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 2/3. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 35/28. See MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2853, 3484, 4331. However MS, 224/2584 gives the total as 3.61 million taels. See Li Kuang-ming, Chu-k'e-chiin-k'ao, passim. THCKLPS, 22/27, 33, 35, 33/109. MSL, Shih-tsung Shih-lu, 3237-8, 7241-2. Chin-hua Fu-chih, 8/13; THCKLPS, 33/109. Chang-chou Fu-chih, 5/51-3; Ku'ai-chi Chih, 6/3-4; Hang-chou Fu-chih, 31/16-17; Shun-te Hsien-chih, 3/22; THCKLPS, 22/36, 23/62, 76, 26/94, 28/8. Liang Fang-chung, 'Ming-tai ti Min-ping', pp. 225, 231. On the recruiting of soldiers for the Korean campaign, see MSL, Shen-tsung Shihlu, 4683, 5791, 5809, 5825, 5976, 6332. THCKLPS, 22/27-8. MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1250. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0509, 2504. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0983. See Chang Hsiieh-yen's memorial presenting the manuscript of the Wan-li K'uai-chi-li to the Wan-li Emperor (printed as a preface to the work, i). The new vault also held deposits of 4 million taels, some of the bullion being stored underground. As it handled current accounts, not all its deposits could be considered as treasury reserves, however: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3318, 3329. The treasury reserve was steadily built up during the decade 1572-82: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0086, 0195, 0256, 0308, 0554, 0891, 1027, 1396, 1793, 1831, 2684, 2884. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1503. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5312. The statement is quoted by Ku Yen-wu, in JCL, 5/5-6. It also indicates that the provincial treasury at Cheng-tu alone had deposits of 8 million taels, which seems unlikely. The smaller sums quoted seem more probable. It should be noted that the author's statements were based entirely on casual conversation and memory. See MS, 213/2479-82; CSWP, 324/1-328/31; Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 17/60-108. Many aspects of Chang's administration are documented only in the Shih-lu and his correspondence. Chu Tung-yun's Chang Chu-cheng Ta-chuan contains many technical errors on fiscal matters, notably that on the returns of the land survey of 1580-1. The cutback in the services provided by the postal system likewise sometimes permitted a reduction of payments by the population: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shihlu, 1408,1448. But in general any savings were retained by the provincial treasuries: see ibid. 1558-9, 1581, 5243, 5992. For reduction of frontier patrols, see Wang Shih-ch'i, San-yun CKou-tsu-k^ao, 2/19-21, 4/1. In 1579 it was claimed that this order could not be entirely carried out: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1830-1; also ibid. 0381, 0794, 1594, 2152, 2167. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2435, 2668. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0176. For these simplified accounts see Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 2/3. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1852-3. Chang Chu-cheng, Shu-tu, 2/8, 6/2; CSWP, 328/26. On the preparation and completion of the K'uai-chi-lu, see MSL, Shen-tsung Shihlu, 1076, 2132, 2261, and the preface of the work. MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1100, 2128. MS, 300/3367; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1495. Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 4/18. Wang's statement appears in Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 17/96, See MS, 213/2178, 222/2563, 2569.

364

Notes to pages 297-302

152 See Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 1/2, 10, 2/27, 5/6. At one point he claimed that the provincial officials of Kwantung and Kwangsi offered him more than 10,000 taels of silver in gifts, which he declined. 153 Tao-chi Chou, 'Li-shih, Imperial Consort', biography in the forthcoming publication of the Ming Biographical History Project. 154 On his use of secret police, see MS, 213/2480. His methods are largely revealed by his personal correspondence, which was edited by his son, Chang Mou-hsiu, some time after 1610. 155 Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 2/23. 156 HYWCL, 92/19. 157 See my article 'Ni Yuan-lu: "Realism" in a Neo-Confucian Statesman', in de Bary, Self and Society in Ming Thought, pp. 415-48. 158 It appears that Chang discussed very few of his ideas in writing. Robert Crawford, who has thoroughly examined his collected works, also comments on the ' paucity of data': see Crawford, 'Confucian Legalism', in de Bary, Self and Society in Ming Thought, pp. 367-411. 159 Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 5/1; CSWP, 327/2, 328/14. 160 CSWP, 326/6; Crawford, 'Confucian Legalism', pp. 373, 393. 161 Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 17/71, 75, 94. 162 MS, 78/827. Cf. Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, p. 218; Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yu-lu, 35/37. 163 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3755. 164 MSL, Mu-tsung Shih-lu, 1200-1. 165 For Kuang Mou's memorial and the rescript, see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1490. For attacks on the Single Whip Reform see ibid. 1095, 1100, 1112, 1245, 1338. 166 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1490; Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 4/5. 167 Ibid. Aj\. 168 Ibid. 5121. 169 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0123. 170 Chu Tung-yiin, Chang Chii-cheng Ta-chuan, p. 279. 171 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 1732, 2031; Ning-te Hsien-chih, 2/4. 172 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2050. 173 I-chou Chih, 3/1, 16; Huai-yuan Hsien-chih, 2/4; THCKLPS, 13/72. 174 MS, 77/819; Wada, Shokkashi yakuchu, pp. 67-9. 175 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2289, 2371-2. 176 Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 4/2. 177 K'ai-hua Hsien-chih, 3/3. 178 As quoted by Ku Yen-wu, JCL, 3/64. 179 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2378. 180 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2530, 2732. 181 THCKLPS, 13/64; Wen-shang Hsien-chih, 4/2. 182 Chang Mou-hsiu, in his note on his father's letter to the general, Ch'i Chi-kuang, indicated that Chang was suspected of plotting to seize the throne, apparently because messengers were observed going between his house and that of Ch'i Chi-kuang at night. See Chang Chii-cheng, Shu-tu, 5/19. According to Wang Shih-cheng some of Chang's followers actually tried to persuade him to take over: see Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 17/92. 183 Chou Hsiian-wei, Ching-lin Hsii-chi, 30. 184 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 3318, 3329, 4084. 185 See MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4626, 5312, 5917, 5918, 6324, 6349, 6452; JCL, 5/6; Chu Kuo-chen, Yung cHuang Hsiao-pHn, 2/41. By the early years of the seventeenth century practically all the reserves were exhausted: see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 7217, 8271. 186 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4722. 187 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5991. 188 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 6331. 189 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5883, 6390.

Notes to pages 302-12

365

190 For the construction of the mausoleum, see MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2841, 2851, 3795-7. 191 Chung-kuo K'o-hsiieh-yuan, K'ao-ku ti Shou-huo, pp. cxxix-cxxx; the New York Times, 21 May 1971. 192 See MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 5591, 5646, 6163. According to another source the government took 40 per cent of the yield: see CSWP, 441/21. 193 MS, 305/3429-32; Ku Ying-t'ai, Ming-shih Chi-shih Pen-mo, 65/699-712; CSWP, 441/19-22. 194 The income from the estates belonging to the Tzu-ning, Tzu-ch'ing and Chiench'ing palaces is given in MS, 82/866. Also refer to Appendix A above. 195 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0822, 2911, also see Chou, note 153 above. 196 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 4663. 197 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0520, 1844. 198 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 2945. 199 The exact amount of silver in the reserves and the sums transferred are not entirely clear. Some of the transfer orders given in the Shih-lu seem to be duplicated or overlapping: see MSL, Kuang-tsung Shih-lu, 0024,0032,0173; Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 0052, 0211, 0231, 0242, 0418, 0767, 0773, 2415. 200 MS, 235/2690 serves as an example. 201 For more accurate accounts see TMHT, 201/7; Ho Shih-chin, CWang-k'u Hsiichih, 6/66; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0951, 0956, 2926. 202 MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 0951. For other orders and costs, see ibid. 1111, 2956, 3165. 203 MS, 21/143; MSL, Shen-tsung Shih-lu, 6192. 204 The relevant publications are: Li Kuang-pi, Ming-cKao Shih-lueh, p. 135; Kung Hua-lung, 'Ming-tai Ts'ai-k'uang ti Fa-ta ho Liu-tu', in Pao Tseng-p'eng, ed. Ming-tai Ching-chi, p. 121 (the article is reprinted from Shih-ho Fortnightly 1:2 (1954)); P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, p. 463. 8

Concluding observations

1 Yii-chuan Wang, 'The Rise of Land Tax', p. 201. 2 Ibid. p. 202. 3 In 1641 the annual wartime surtax quota was 21,330,735 taels. See Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 35/17. He obtained his figure from the ministry of revenue. 4 The figures have been calculated from the provincial quotas listed in Ch'en Jen-hsi, Shih-fa-lu, 34/1-78. 5 On seventeenth-century prices, see Yeh Meng-chu, Yiieh-shih-pien', P'eng Hsin-wei, Ho-pi-shih, pp. 459-61. Cf. Ch'iian Han-sheng,' Ming tai Pei-pien Mi-liang Chia-ke ti Pien-tung', pp. 49-87. The extremely high prices given in the last work were the result of an abnormal situation. 6 Yu-ch'iian Wang, 'The Rise of Land Tax', p. 202. 7 See CKing Shen-tsu Shih-lu, 4/9; CKing Shih-tsu Shih-lu, 61/6-7, 70/31-2, 79/23-4; Chang-sha Fu-chih, 7/2; Yeh Meng-chu, Yueh-shih-pien, 6/2. 8 CHung-chen Ts'un-shih Su-cKao, 2/72-89. 9 Creel, 'The Beginning of Bureaucracy', p. 155. 10 Hucker, Traditional Chinese State, p. 43. 11 A translation of Ku's arguments appears in de Bary, ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition, pp. 611-12. See also Yang, 'Ming Local Administration', p. 4. 12 See Hucker, 'The Tung-lin Movement of the Late Ming Period', in John K. Fairbank, ed. Chinese Thought and Institutions, p. 133; also Hucker, Censorial System, p. 153. 13 Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 24. 14 Ibid. 25. 15 MS, 226/2602. 16 Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 50. 17 These letters appear in ibid. 441, 447, 448, 449, 467, 469, 541. In most cases the

366

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Notes to pages 312-23

amounts of the gifts are not disclosed, but it is mentioned that a military circuit intendant once provided him with a boat for travel. The gift of another military circuit intendant was large enough to enable him to purchase 'several mou of land'. Gifts returned are mentioned in ibid. 417, 465, 474. Ibid. 25. Ho Liang-chun is criticized on these grounds. See Wu's preface in Hai Jui Chi, 9-10. Ibid. 279-80. Ibid. 190, 195, 280, 284, 289, 408. Smith, 'The Land Tax in the Tokugawa Period', p. 204. Wang Shih-cheng attributed Wan-li's greed to his envy of the extravagance of his courtiers and the eunuchs. See Chiao Hung, Hsien-cheng-lu, 17/104; MS, 213/2482. Liu, Reform in Sung China, pp. 4, 6, 49, 56-7; Hartwell, 'Financial Expertise', p. 298. Ibid. p. 298; Twitchett, 'Salt Commissioners', pp. 60-89. Sun Ch'eng-tse, Meng-yii-lu, 25/29. Lien-sheng Yang states: 'Although the use of draft or hui-p'iao existed already in the seventeenth century, the oldest Shansi 'draft bank' cannot be traced back earlier than 1800.' Yang, Money and Credit, p. 82. See my doctoral dissertation 'The Grand Canal During the Ming Dynasty' (University of Michigan, 1964; also available in University Microfilm), pp. 21-37. THCKLPS, 11/16, 12/64, 68, 71, 73, 74, 79. Makida, Sakugen nyuminki, I, pp. 244-7. PreVost, Histoire Generate de Voyages, v, pp. 347-9. Ch'i Piao-chia, when travelling on the Grand Canal, observed that the water was only one foot deep: see Ch'i, Jih-chi, vol. 5, fourth to sixth days, ninth lunar month, 1643. See Ch'i Ch'en-yeh, Nanking CKe-chia-ssu Chih-chang. See Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century, p. 307, 358. Hai Jui, Hai Jui Chi, 155, 167-8. Ibid. 112; MSL, Hsi-tsung Shih-lu, 0705, 0761. Feuerwerker, 'From "Feudalism" to "Capitalism"', pp. 107-15. Crawcour,' Changes in Japanese Commerce in the Tokugawa Period', pp. 169-202. Ch'en Shih-ch'i, Kuan-shou-kung-yeh, passim; Wu Han, 'She-hui Sheng-ch'an-li', pp. 70-1; Feuerwerker, 'From "Feudalism" to "Capitalism"', p. 108. Hsi and Chu, Ts'ao-cK uan-chih, 6/44-8. Ibid, passim, MSL, Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 0081; CSWP, 244/16-18. Ch'i Chi-kuang, Lien-ping Shih-chi, 175, 176, 182, 199, 210; CSWP, 347/17, 21. MS, 205/2378-9. Kuei Yu-kuang, Cttuan-chi, 95; Ku Ying-t'ai, Chi-shih Peng-mo, 55/597. See Feuerwerker's summary, in 'From "Feudalism" to "Capitalism"', p. 111. The translated passages appear in de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, i, pp. 53042, 556-7. CKing Shen-tsu Shih-lu, 3/3; Yeh Meng-chu, Yueh-shih-pien, 6/1-10. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the CKing Period, p. 917; Ch'ii, Local Government, pp. 131-2. For these features see Sun, 'The Board of Revenue', pp. 175-228; Ch'en Kung-lu, Chung-kuo Chin-tai-shih, pp. 238-9, 665-6, 678-9. Wang, 'Fiscal Importance of the Land Tax', p. 842. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, i, pp. 734-7.

Bibliography

The abundance of source materials on this subject represents a serious problem to the historian. The Ming-shih lists 1,525 historical works by Ming scholars and in addition 1,398 works classified as collections of private writings. Most of these works are in more than one volume and, obviously, even the most industrious scholar can read only a small fraction of what is available. The primary sources used here are given in the list of abbreviated titles (p. 324) and the local gazetteers. The chronological framework is provided by the Ming Shih-lu, the modern reprint of which consists of 133 volumes. These annals of the thirteen emperors are not edited in any consistent style; from the financial historian's point of view, those for the later reigns are in general of better quality than those for the earlier reigns. The Shih-lu does not note all matters of financial significance, its primary purpose being to provide historical lessons in moral government. State documents are seldom reproduced in full and an important memorial can sometimes be reduced to a single descriptive sentence. Such statements, quoted out of context, can be misleading. Whenever possible the original document must be located or the consistency of the statement checked against other accounts. Both the Ta-Ming Hui-tien and the Ming-shih have been in part reconstructed from the Shih-lu. The former also reproduces many important accounts from the Wan-li K'uai-chi-lu, compiled in 1582. Though the financial sections of the Ming-shih cite many other earlier works it is never indicated whether a passage is quoted directly; normally it is trimmed down and many details are omitted. Those confusions have been largely eliminated by Wada Sei's annotated translation, Minshi shokkashi yakuchu, which is much richer in detail and cross references than the original text. The Huang-Ming Ching-shih Wen-pien, in thirty volumes, contains writings on administration by 425 Ming authors, most of them being government officials, and about two-thirds of them living in the sixteenth century. Their memorials and letters are reproduced verbatim. T'ien-hsia Chiin-kuo Li-ping-shu is a collection of passages copied from local gazetteers and many other miscellaneous works. Most of these passages, varying in length from a short paragraph to more than ten pages, reflect conditions in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The quality of the selection is admirable, even though the work as a whole lacks organization. Local gazetteers of Ming date are extremely varied in length and contents. Wealthy counties were able to compile them more often and at greater length; more detail on local conditions and customs could be included, and also official documents relating to local government. Economically-depressed districts usually produced poor gazetteers in which the vital fiscal statistics, presented without accompanying notes, are virtually useless. At present it is impossible to compile a comprehensive bibliography on Ming financial history, as most Ming writers refused to treat fiscal administration as a specialized topic, preferring to discuss it along with a wide variety of other matters under the general heading of ching-chi, which really means 'management'. As a result the source material [367]

368

Bibliography

is extremely diffuse and the present bibliography could, in theory, be enormously expanded. For the sake of economy, however, the selection has been limited to works directly cited in the text and notes, references being given wherever possible to modern reprinted editions. The reader is reminded that several bibliographical guides to Ming historical source materials are now available. Extremely useful is Wolfgang Franke's An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History (New York, 1969) which contains over 800 titles, with evaluations and cross references by the author. Yamane Yukio's bibliographical list, Mindaishi kenkyu bunken mokuroku (see below), contains 5,128 items in Chinese and Japanese. The same author has also compiled a list of 680 contemporary Chinese and Japanese publications on Ming social and economic history and appended them to Shimizu hakase tsuito kinen Mindaishi ronso. Francis D. M. Dow has published a useful work entitled A Study of Chiang-su and Che-chiang Gazetteers of the Ming Dynasty (Canberra, Australia, 1969). The Ming biographical index published by the National Central Library, Ming-jen Chuan-chi Tzu-liao So-yin (Taipei, 1965), also includes a list of 593 Ming and early Ch'ing works. Provincial and local gazetteers An-hua Hsien-chih £ it U M, 1543 edition. Chang-chou Fu-chih ft JM Iff M, 1573 edition. Chang-sha Fu-chih ^ ?p Jff ;g, 1747 edition. CKang-shu Hsien-chih % m % ;g, 1534 edition. Chin-hua Fu-chih & ^ Jff ;g, 1578 edition. Chung-mou Hsien-chih 4* $ Wk M, 1626 edition. Fen-chou Fu-chih %ft jM Jff M, 1606 edition. Hang-chou Fu-chih ia 'M Iff ;g, 1579 edition. Honan Tung-chih S S I f e 1678 edition. Hsiang-ho Hsien-chih f| J5f U ;g, 1620 edition. Huai-an Fu-chih i ^ f M, 1573 and 1627 editions. Huai-jou Hsien-chih ft ^ U ;§, 1625 edition. Huai-yiian Hsien-chih -R jg J$ jg, 1605 edition. Hui-chou Fu-chih % jf\ Jff M, 1566 edition. I-chou Chih ?f J)M ^ , 1608 edition. Ku-an Hsien-chih | $ l f e 1633 edition. Ku-su Chih ift H i&9 1506 edition. K'ai-hua Hsien-chih gg {b H ;£, 1585 edition. K'un-shan Hsien-chih % \U Wh M, 1576 edition. Ktfai-chi Chih # ff •£, hand-copy of 1572 edition. Lin-cKing Chihli Chou-chih W» 'M it It ffl ^ , 1782 edition. Lin-fen Hsien-chih ^ ^ ^ ^ , 1591 edition. Lu-cKeng Hsien-chihffit$ $$ ;g, 1625 edition. Nan-chi Chih ^f ^ ^ , 1540 edition. 7Ve/-A:o Wenk'u faMXW- copy. Ning-te Hsien-chih $ ^ ^ ;£, 1591 edition. P'eng-tse Hsien-chih &WM -g, 1582 edition. Shanghai Hsien-chih ± m U M, 1590 edition. Shun-te Hsien-chih )l@ ^ jR ^ , 1585 edition. Shun-fien Fu-chih jig ^ Jff ^g, 1885 edition. 5m-a/i Hsien-chih & % % ^ , 1612 edition. Sung-chiang Fu-chih 1& %L Jff ^ , 1818 edition.

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Szechuan Tsung-chih E9 HI $£ & 1580 edition.

Teng-chou Chih tp ffl * , 1644 edition. Tung-cKang Fu-chih M H* Jff M, 1600 edition.

Wen-shang Hsien-chih #C ± f£ ;g, 1609 edition. Wu-hsien Chih j% H •£, 1643 edition. Wu-chiang Hsien-chih jg ££ $6 ^ , 1561 edition. Yueh-chou Fu-chih § JW Iff ;&, 1570 edition. Yung-chou Fu-chih T]C j \ \ Iff <£> 1571 edition. NOTE: Only those gazetteers cited in the text are listed. The date of publication is generally taken as that of the latest preface. Other Ming and early CKing sources (Ts'ung-shu Chi-cKeng | j H % JS editions are identified as TSCC.) Chang Chii-cheng 3ft g IE, Chang Chiang-ling Shu-tu gg ft g£ # Ijf. Ch'iin-hsueh Shu-she ^ ^ g fi reprint. Shanghai, 1917. Chang Hsueh 5g §$, Tung-hsi-yang K'ao M ffi #- ^ . TOCC. Chang Hsiieh-yen %^M, ed. Wan-UK''uai-chi-lu S i t ft ®. University of Chicago microfilm, preface dated 1582. Chang Yu 55 M> Pien-cheng-k'ao ^# iE^ 3f. National Peking Library reprint. 1936. CKang-lu Yen-fa-chih g 31 §g ^ -g. 1726 edition. Chao I f i l , Nien-erh-shi Cha-chi iJ* n A SI IB. r£CC. Ch'en Jen-hsi ^ -t £§> Huang-Ming Shih-fa-lu H HJ tit j£ ®. Hsueh-sheng Shu-chu * ^ • ^ reprint. Taipei, 1965. Cheng Hsiao i[5 ^ , Cheng-tuan-chien-kung Chin-yin Lei-pien M ^S ffi <2> ^ B" II S .

race. Ch'eng K'ai-hu II H jjfe, ed. Chou-Liao Shih-hua $ ^ Jg i | . 1620 edition. Ch'i Chi-kuang J^ f£ 5fe, Lien-ping Shih-chi W.^ 'S ffi. Commercial Press reprint. Shanghai, 1937. Ch'i Piao-chia f[5 jg S , CKi-chung-min-kung Jih-chi 15 ^ S <2r H IB. Shao-hsing, Chekiang, 1937. Chiang P'ing-chieh ^ ^p pg, Pi-shao-pao-kung Chuan # ^ ^ £ <$. Early Ch'ing edition. Chiao Hung ^ ft, Kuo-cKao Hsien-cheng-lu M ^ Wi Wl M- Hsiieh-sheng Shu-chu reprint. Taipei, 1965. Ch'ing Sheng-tsu Shih-lu Sf !g IB Jf %k- Manchu Kuo-wu-yuan M MMBU edition. 1937. Ch'ing Shih-tsu Shih-lu ffi i& jf§ 'g g . Manchu Kuo-wu-yiian edition. 1937. Ch'iu Chiin ® ^ , Ta-hsueh Yen-i-pu ^ i f i i i f . Princeton University rare edition. Chou Chih-lung J! ;£, f| , Ts'ao-ho l-pi if M — £5 • Library of Congress microfilm of original 1609 edition. Chou Hsiian-wei | g | j , Ching-lin Hsii-chi M W IB #E- Commercial Press Han-fen-lu

Pi-chi ffi&mffl% edition. Chu Kuo-chen ^ m fi|, Yung-cKuang Hsiao-p'in M d /J^ no- Chung-hua Shu-chu 4« $ $ ^ reprint. 1959. Chu T'ing-li ^ g A/:, Yen-cheng-chih H igr ^ . 1529 edition.

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CKung-chen Ts'un-shih Su-cKao |ft jpji # % |jg £I>. Reprint. Peking, 1934. Feng Ch'i #§ f£, Feng-Uung-po Chi M ^ ffi ft. 1607 edition. Hai Jui m 3S, Hai Jui Chi M^M- Peking, 1962. Ho Chung-shin g #
fTw Wen-hsien Tung-k'ao II 5t K M ^ . Commercial Press reprint. Shanghai, 1936. Huang Shim g fl|, Hung-Ming Ming-cKen Ching-chi-lu M W £ ill $2 #¥ ifc. 1551 edition. Huang-Ming Tsu-shun M ^ |a Hi, in Ming-cKao K'ai-kuo Wen-hsien HJ IB |g §13£ g t Hsiieh-sheng Shu-chu reprint. Taipei, 1966. Hui-chou Fu-i CKuan-shu ft i/II K g ^ f | . Library of Congress microfilm of 1620 edition. I-ling-a & $ pU, Huai-kuan Tung-chih M gg 86 ^ . 1778 edition. KiangsiFu-i CKuan-shu %L H ® g ^ • • Library of Congress microfilm of 1610 edition. Ko Shou-li M ^ ft, Ko-tuan-su-kuang Chi g #g I t & 3g. 1802 edition. ^T«-cA/« T'w-^w Chi-cKeng £ 4- H g ^ j ^ . 1934 edition. Ku Ch'ing |g /f, P'ang-cKiu-fing Tsa-chi $ %k ^f Jl IB. Han-fen-lu Pi-chi edition. Ku Yen-wu H jfc g|, r/h^-Zw ^n-cW ^ # ^ « . r//^-/wi Fw-c/?/ ^ ^ . 5^«-/w Ts'ung-k'an m%lM W edition.

Ku Ying-t'ai ^ K ^ , Ming-shih Chi-shih Peng-mo S J 8 I * ^ San-min Shu-chu H S U reprint. Taipei, 1956. Kuei Yu-kuang g f ft, Chen-cKuan Hsien-sheng Pieh-chi f j J[[ 5fe ^£ SO M- Ssu-pu Ts'ung-Wan edition. San-Wu Shui-li-lu H ^ 7X ^J $k> TSCC. Kuei Yu-kuang

CKuan-chi ^ M- Tzu-li Ch'u-pan-she g ^J Mi }K tt reprint. Taipei, 1959. Li Chao-hsiang $ 03 ;1¥, Lung-chiang CKuan-cKang-chih fi yX jg J^ ;&. Hsiian-lanfang Ts'ung-shu edition. Li Hua-lung $ >fb f|, Fing-Po CKuan -shu 2p jf £ § . TSCC. Liang-Che Yen-fa-chih W:fift$i& ^ . 1801 edition. Liang-Huai Yen-fa-chih M ?i IK ?£ & 1748 edition. Liang-Kuang Yen-fa-chih M K IK ?£ j£. 1835 edition. Liu Jo-yu SI S S , Cho-chung-chih S 44 ,*. TOCC. Liu Tsung-chou 10 ^ j i , Liu-tzu CKiian-shu fiJ •? ^ g . Chien-k'un Cheng-cKi Chi %LttIE a ^ edition. Lu Jung ^ ^ , Shu-yuan Tsa-chi M M i i IS. TSCC. Lu Shien-chi |M # j ^ , Jen-chen-ts'ao i g | . TSCC. Lung Wen-pin f| ^t |^, M/«^ Hui-yao PJ # H. Reprint. Taipei, 1956. Ming-cKen Tsou-i m E # ^ . TSCC. Ni Hui-ting {M # F4, Ni-wen-cheng-kung Nien-p'u {S Jt JE <2r ^- f@. Yueh-ya-fang Ts'ung-shu % g§ S ^ t r edition.

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Ni Yiian-lu #3 jt 39$, Ni-wen-cheng-kung CKuan-chi {g £ j | £ ik H. 1772 edition. Pi Tzu-yen l | § JR, Liu-chi Su-ts'ao §J ft Sfc ^ . Library of Congress microfilm. Shantung Yen-fa-chih lij ^ S J£ ;£. 1725 edition. Shen Pang ft; $g, Wan-shu Tsa-chi % % $| IB. Reprint. Peking, 1961. Shen Te-fu ft; |g ft, Yeh-huo-pien 1? » ffi, P«-i fit S t 1870 edition. Sun Ch'eng-tse ^ ^ IS, CKun-ming Meng-yti-lu # BJ3 ^ 4& S- Lung-men Shu-chu II F9 HI lu reproduction of a late Ch'ing edition. Hongkong, 1965. Sung Ying-hsing 5fc M M, Tien-kung K'ai-wu % X Bg ^ . Commercial Press Jen-jen wen-k'u A A X H edition. Taipei, 1966. Original preface dated 1637. T0-A;tf0 ^C it, 7b-A:aa Hsti-pien |g | i , 7^-A:^ San-pien H jg, T«-A:ao Wu-cKen K £ . All in Ming-cKao K'ai-kuo Wen-hsien. Ta-Ming Kuan-chih ^c 0J g" $lj. In Ming-cKao K'ai-kuo Wen-hsien, T'ang Shun-chih gf Jfi ^1, Ching-cKuan Wen-chi ¥&)\\%%.. Ssu-pu Ts'ung-k'an edition. Tu Lin ifc # , Huai-an San-kuan Tung-chih | g £ l ,ft ^ . 1686 edition. Wang Ao 3£ S» Chen-tse CKang-yu M'MMM- 1748 edition. Wang Ch'iung 3£ S» Hu-pu Tsou-i fi §P # ^ . Library of Congress microfilm. Wang I-o 3£ — f|, Tsung-tu Ssu-chen Tsou-i fH # RH i t # It. Hsiian-lan-fang Ts'ungshu edition. Wang Shih-ch'i 3E ± ^f, San-yun CK ou-tsu-k" ao H ' H I 3§. National Peking Library reprint. 1936. Wang Ying-chiao riE JB !^, Wang-cKing-chien-kung Tsou-su 9E ft? SB & It 88. Library of Congress microfilm. Wei Huan §| ^ , Huang-Ming Chiu-pien-k'ao H P^ JL ^S ^ . National Peking Library reprint. 1936. Yang Shih-ch'iao ^ Bf S , Huang-Ming Ma-cheng-chi JI $! JH igc IE. Hsiian-lan-fang Ts'ung-shu edition. Yeh Meng-chu ^ ^ S , Yueh-shih-pien M 1& M- Reprinted in Ming-CKing Shih-liao Lei-pien PJ ?g * ^ * | | . Taipei, 1969. Yeh Sheng M & Shui-tung Jih-chi 7X IC 0 IB. Reproduction from 1680 edition. Taipei, 1965. Yen Ts'ung-chien g| tS fW, »SAM-JW Chou-tzu-lu % ig JH g ^|. Chung-hua Wen-shih Ts'ung-shu t ¥ 5 t A i t edition. Yu Chi-teng ^ i S , 77£7*-A:H Chi-wen ft ifc *E H-

Contemporary Chinese and Japanese sources Ano Shozo g f f H, ' Minmatsu Shinsho Yosuko churyuiki daitochi shoyu ni kansuru ichikosatsu' BJ! ^ M t l fl ? rX + 3E « ^ ± i t BT ^ Ki BS "t ^5 - ^ ^ , Toyogakuho, 44:3 (1961). Chang Chi-shun 35 K Bt ^ «/• eds. CKing-shih g A (Taipei, 1961). Ch'en Kung-lu j ^ ^ jjg, Chung-kuo Chin-tai-shih tf* M jft ft ^ . Revised edition (Taipei, 1965). Ch'en Shih-ch'i |$C ff Jg, Ming-tai Kuan-shou-kung-yeh ti Yen-chiu BJ§ f^ 'g ^ X H Kj #F 55 (Wuhan, 1958). Ch'en Wen-shih ^ ^ 5 , Mm^ Hung-wu Chia-ching Chien-ti Hai-ching Cheng-ts'e

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Chung-kuo Yun-ho Tzu-liao Hsuan-chi + I I M S S I I (Peking, 1962). Chu Tung-yun ^ J | , CZra^ Chu-cheng Ta-chuan jjg g IE ^c f# (Wuhan, 1957). Ch'uan Han-sheng ^ g| # , 'Ming-tai Pei-pien Mi-liang Chia-ke ti Pien-tung' gg ft

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Hart well, Robert M. 'Financial Expertise, Examinations, and the Formulation of Economic Policy in Northern Sung China', Journal of Asian Studies, 30:2 (1971). Ho, Ping-ti. The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York, 1962). 'The Salt Merchants of Yangchou: A Study of Commercial Capitalism in EighteenthCentury China', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 17:1-2 (1954). Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953 (Cambridge, Mass. 1959). Hoshi, Ayao. The Ming Tribute Grain System, trans. Mark Elvin (Ann Arbor, 1969). Huang, Ray. "Fiscal Administration During the Ming Dynasty", in Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies, ed. Charles O. Hucker (New York, 1969). 'Military Expenditures in Sixteenth-Centuiy Ming China', Oriens Extremus, 17:1-2 (1970). Hucker, Charles O. 'Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 21 (1958). Reprinted in1 Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese History, ed. J. L. Bishop (Cambridge, Mass. 1968). The Censorial System of Ming China (Stanford, Calif. 1966). The Traditional Chinese State in Ming Times: 1368-1644 (Tucson, 1961). Hummel, A. W. ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period. 2 vols. (Washington, D.C 1943-4). Lach, Donald F. Asia in the Making of Europe, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1965). The sections concerning Ming China are reprinted in a separate volume entitled China in the Eyes of Europe: The Sixteenth Century (Chicago, 1965). Liang, Fang-chung. The Single-whip Method of Taxation in China, trans. Wang Yu-ch'iian (Cambridge, Mass. 1956). Liu, James T. C. Reform in Sung China: Wang Anshih and his New Policies (Cambridge, Mass. 1959). Lo, Jung-pang. 'The Decline of the Early Ming Navy', Oriens Extremus, 5:2 (1958). 'Policy Formulation and Decision-Making on Issues Respecting Peace and War', in Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies. Morse, H. B. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China: 1635-1843. 4 vols. (Boston, 1931). Mote, F. W. 'The Growth of Chinese Despotism', Oriens Extremus, 8:1 (1961). Parsons, James B. The Peasant Rebellions of the Late Ming Dynasty (Tucson, 1970). 'The Ming Bureaucracy: Aspects of Background Forces', in Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies. Prevost, Antoine Francois. Histoire Generate de Voyages, vol. 5 (Paris and Amsterdam, 1776 et ser.). Ricci, Matthew. China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 15831610, trans. L. J. Gallagher (New York, 1953;. Rieger, Marianne, 'Zur Finanz und Agrargeschichte der Ming-Dynastie: 1368-1643', Sinica, 12 (1937). Rossabi, Morris. 'The Tea and Horse Trade with Inner Asia During the Ming Dynasty', Journal of Asian History, 4:2 (1970). Smith, Thomas C. 'The Land Tax in the Tokugawa Period', Journal of Asian Studies, 18:1 (1958). Reprinted in Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan. Sun, E-tu Zen. 'The Board of Revenue in Nineteenth Century China', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 24 (1962-63). 'Ch'ing Government and Mining Industries Before 1800', Journal of Asian Studies, 27:4(1968). Sun, E-tu Zen and Francis, John de, trans, and eds. Chinese Social History (Washington, D.C. 1956). Twitchett, D. C. Financial Administration under the T"*ang Dynasty (Cambridge, 1963). 'The Salt Commissioners after the Rebellion of An Lu-shan', Asia Major, 4:1 (1954). Wang, Yeh-chien. 'The Fiscal Importance of the Land Tax During the Ch'ing Period', Journal of Asian Studies, 30:4 (1971). Wang, Yii-ch'iian. 'The Rise of Land Tax and the Fall of Dynasties in Chinese History', Pacific Affairs, 9 (1936).

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Bibliography

Yang, Lien-sheng. 'Economic Aspects of Public Works in Imperial China', in the collection of articles by the author entitled Excursion in Sinology (Cambridge, Mass. 1969). 'Ming Local Administration', in Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies.

Money and Credit in China (Cambridge, Mass. 1952). 'Numbers and Units in Chinese Economic History', in the collection of articles by the author entitled Studies in Chinese Institutional History (Cambridge, Mass. 1963).

Glossary index When an item is referred to in the same context over several consecutive pages, only the first occurrence is cited. Administrative andfinancialterms, and names of institutions tea and horse trade, cKa-ma 257 cKang-ku yen % fix jjjg salt of regular stock, 203 cKang-li ^ $! customary payments, 152, 185, 219, 235 Ch'ang-yin Treasury S ^ ff 20, 105, 250, 302 cKen-cKai ^ J£ unpaid supernumerary, 246 cheng-tui IE ;& regular transmittance of tribute grain, 52 cKi-yun j£3 M transferred revenue, 23 chia-pan f$ If mining withfixedquota, 241

f Ij chu-cKien li-yiin profits from minting, 250 chu-kung Bfo X contributions to construction projects, 255 cKu [1 tax district, 147 chuan-yun-shih $$ jH {j£ transportation commissioner, 53 cKuan-chiao %k # tonnage, 226 chuang-p'eng yin $J ^ $t 'common post money', 250 chuang-fien ££ B3 aristocratic estates, 106 chiin-yao j£j ^ equalization of corvee service, 6, 36, 38, 91, 110, 112, 147, 184, 293

chiang-yin E ^1 artisan payment, 253 chieh-hu f$ ft tax transmitting house- fan-p'o cKou-fen § JQ ft ^ maritime holds, 38 tariff, 233 Chieh-sheng Treasury f5 fl W. 20,254, fang-ti cKi-shui fB $LMM stamp tax 265 on real estate transfers, 236 c/*7e« H one copper cash or mace, the fen-chu J | £ 'fertilizer owner', 161 /« flS land tax, 38, 109 weight of one tenth of a tael, 74 Ch'ien-ch'ing Palace $£ $f ^ 271, 282 fu-i-cKuan-shu ® #£ ^ # comprehenchih-shu |£ S paper redemption cost sive book on taxation and services, collected from prisoners etc, 248 142 chih-yin £p £P honorary custodian of fu-tsung J^f 1^ prefectural chief scribe, official seal, 246 149 chinshih *M ± doctorate, the highest civil service examination degree, 27,196 hai-tao fu-shih $$ ^ gij ^ vice circuit intendant on coastal defense, 234 ching-chih-cKien |M M It tax account assigned to a regional administrator hao-tsao 8E ft wealthy saltern household, 196 during the Sung, 139 chin-hua-yin ^ ?£ $| 'Gold Floral ho-kung M X river-control expenses, 165, 255 Silver', 52 c/*'m# bg 100 mou of land, 157n ho-p'o so Jpf $g §f fish duty station, 243 ctting-chi yin H H $t ' Speed-the-deli- ho-yen ffi i^ 'river salt', 211 very money', 252 hsiang-shui § IS incense fees at cKing-yu # ft tax bill, 143 national shrines, 251 chiu-ts'u shut /g §jHf fS duties on wine hsiao-min /J\ J5; common people, 312 and vinegar, 236 hsien-tsung f& |H county chief scribe, chou-mo cKou-fen Yl /fc ft ^ forest 149 produce levy, 226 hsien-yii J | ^ declared surplus, 152 [377]

378

Glossary index

hu-k'ou shih-yen-chiao p P Jt §j§ §& pay- kung-peng yen X ;$: 'cost paid salt', ment for rationed salt, 138 209 hu-pu shang-shu P t\l fqj U minister of revenue, 11, 15 U-cKai jj H service performed by the hu-yin ft £1 household payment, 120 taxpayer in person, 116, 120 huang-chuartg ]§| jf£ imperial estate, 106 li-chia M Ep rural community for taxhuang-ts'e g ffi Yellow Book, 32 ation, 25, 30, 37, 40, 92, 110, 112, 116, Hui-t'ung Kuan # |U fg 276 143, 185, 256, 262, 293 huo-hao 'X $£ melting charges, 148, li-chia yin M ^ $ | community payment, 151 115 li-jih ]¥f 0 cost of calendar paper, i S service, 34, 109 256 i-chuan W {# service for postal liang-chang H ^ tax captain, 36 stations, 38, 112, 184 lien-ping mi W. J^ 7ft surtax in grain for i-chuan yin W W M payment for poslocal defense, 350 tal service, 255 lien-ping yin Wk ^k iS surtax in money i-Viao-pien-fa —M& #$ }£ 'Single Whip for local defense, 350 Method', 6, 118, 131 lou-Vou >M uM. furnace chief, 74 i-tHen-san-chu - 0 H i 'one field with lu-k'o W. U reeds tax, 254 three owners', 161 Inner Ch'eng-yiin Treasury ft^IS ma-cheng Ml $k horse administration, 104 10, 20, 52 ma-shih Mi rf/ horse market, 261 jen-ting ssu-chuan A T $# ffi 'poll tax ma-ts'ao Jfs jf£ animal fodder, 137 silk', 137 mai-penfei H i | g ' purchasing money' of the Wan-li Emperior, 275, 303 kai-tui t& ^ added transmittance of meng-fan shui ^ M M store franchise tribute grain, 52 fees, 236 k'ai-chung §§ ^ barter for government min-chuang j ^ iff militia and its mainsalt, 193, 258 tenance, 38, 111, 112, 126, 184 k'ai-na shih-li [JH $fo V- $1 sale of rank, min-mi j ^ ^ land tax as distinguished 244 from rent on government land, 85 Kan-ho M & stub-book, 14 kang M a syndicate, 220 na-liang-ti~$faff ^ tax-paying land as kang-yin M $1 combined payments, 115 distinguished from 'horse maintenance kao-yu wan-ch'ing H £$ ||" tg 1 milland', 105 lion mou of fertile land, 157n nan-Hang pg $| consignment of tax grain kuan Jf 1,000 copper coins or its equito Nanking, 101 valent in paper currency, 65, 69, 71, nung-sang ssu-chuan J | ^ |^ Ifi 'farm138, 232 land silk', 136 kuan-liang fung-p'an fi H M 4^J assistant prefect in charge of taxation, 96 pan-chun che-yin $}£ % t/f ^1 commutakuan-mi If ^t rent on goverment tion of capital guard duty, 255 land, 85 pang-chii 1$ g£ 'posted standard', kuan-tu shang-pan % % fig if enterprise 120 of joint public and private ownership, pei-liang E=] II highly polished grain for 319 palace consumption, 100 Kuang-huei Treasury Bi M W- 10, 231, pei-ti a J^ 'untitled fields', 108 245, 247 pei-tui a ^ 'empty-handed taxpayer', Kuang-lu-ssu cKu-liao % fil f If f\ a tax agent 161 supplies to the court of imperial p^i-yen-so #t |^ 0t checking station, 192, 257 entertainments, 256 k'uang-yin $g ^ income from govern- p'iao-yen '^l M 'ticket salt' distinguished from licensed salt, 205 ment mining, 240 kuei-fou M II person in charge of tax ping-hsiang ^ |[nj military supplies, 28, 38, 134, 182 silver chest, 148 p'ing-mi ^p Xt 'levelling grain', 101 K'un-ning Palace tt^g 282

Glosary index seng-tao tu-fieh ffl 8t g? Jt8c ecclesiastic license, 246 shang-shui fgj 5£& local business tax, 226, 231

shen-cKan-li tf^M J3 'productive forces', 320 shih-cheng-ts'e jf ?J( flft actual collection records, 124, 142 shih-tuan-chin + J£ £$ 'ten-sectioned tapestry method', 117 shou-tui ife 5: grain checker, 147 shu-huan it Jg redeeming payments or fines, 248 shu-wei-ts^e j | | M flff 'rat's tail' or roster of marginal taxpayers, 111 ssu-ssu liao-chia jzg Wj ^ {g material supplies for the four bureaus of the ministry of works, 138, 255 sui-pan Jg We annual contributions, 35 ta-tsu-chii XM. major tax-paying owner, 161 T'ai-su Hall X * K 282 T'ai-ts'ang Treasury :£ # ^ 15, 138, 231, 247, 249, 253, 265, 268, 284, 290, 295 fang-chia |g {if 'marsh-land payment', 139, 140, 195 ti-mou

mien-hua-jung

j& R& #g 7b #$

379

tsao-li che-yin 41 |£ JFf II commutation of personal attendants, 48, 255 ts'ao-liang ff ft 'tribute grain', 50, 100 tso-pan ^Ii f&f local procurement, 19, 24, 35 ts'un-chi yen # If ^f salt of reserve stock, 203 tsung-ping ft" ^ commander-in-chief, 30 tsung-shu ,|t H chief scribe, 149 tsung-ts'ui $| {H general tax expediter, 147, 193 /« chih-hui cKien-shih M f H f? ^ V assistant regional military commissioner, 30 tu chih-hui fung-chih U fit j? IU ^J vice regional military Commissioner, 30 /Vtf/i [S a group of saltern households, 193 Vuan-chung ffl @ military farming of the cooperative type, 287 /iii-^/i if ^g 'dockyard salt', 211 Tung-yii Treasury ^C %$ ]$. 10, 20 Vung-kuan I | fulfillment of payment obligations by a fiscal unit, 14 Tz'u-ning Palace ^£ ^ HT 282 we/-.?*? f|f §f military colonies, 28, 65, 258, 294, 306, 322 wen % the value of one standard copper coin, 74

cotton wadding assessed on acreage, 137 //-/?« ?gj f| 'extra drops' of silver ya-men Wl P5 the general designation of accompanying ingots, 148 any governmental office, 133 Vi-pien £H #§ selected call for tax payyang-lien §| JH subsidies 'to nourish ments in advance, 134, 292 honesty', 322 Vi-pien yin £§ $f £| funds derived from yang-ma-ti W: M $L 'horse-maintenance the tax payments in advance, 135 land', 105 Vieh-i-yin jj£ #£ ^ | 'money for subyeh-chu H ^ property owner, 161 sidizing services', 125 fien-lien chiin-hsien EB Si f$ $& land- yen-cKang ^§ % salt production field, 192 holding extending over one county and yin 31 the unit of officially licensed salt, prefecture, 157n sometimes the license itself, 193, 205, ting T the able-bodied male as a fiscal 212, 257 unit, 35, 86, 92, 109, 116, 123, 193, 196, yin-cKai £H Jg service commuted to 322 payment, 116 ting-ssu-fien-liu T ffl ffl 7\ 40 % charged to ting and 60 % to land, yin-Vien ff ffl military farming of the 126 collective type, 287 Ving-chieh jg| ft? tax deliverers, 148 yin-fou | | HI designated agent in tsa-pan J | $jf materials requisitioned charge of silver collection, 148 irregularly, 35 yu-Vieh gj ^ tax bill, 143 tsang-fa H fj commutation of punish- yu-k'o i t p | fish duty, 243 ments and fines, sometimes including yii-linfu-ts'e | | H fish-scale boo confiscations, 247 or land survey records, 42 ts'ang-chiao # # granary receipt, yii-yen f£ £§ surplus salt. 207 193 Yuan-ma Ssu ^ H ^P 761

380

Glossary index Place names

An-hua Annam

ft 170 fg

47, 72

Chang-chou § jf\ 113, 126, 155, 161, 171 Chang-p'ing ^ ^ 127, 134 Chang-p'u ji$ rf 162 Chang-sha | | #> 171 Ch'ang-chou 'B jf\ 57, 149, 157, 158, 176, 236, 294 Ch'ang-hua g ft 166, 167 Ch'ang-lu g jt 191, 221 Ch'ang-p'ing I, 2js 289, 362 Ch'ang-shu g ^ 99, 144 Ch'ang-t'ai g | | 162 Chao-ch'ing jjl Jg 120 Ch'ao-chou $Hf| 113,240 Chekiang j|)f ft xvi Cheng-chiang £g ft 54, 98 Cheng-hai § | ?§ 181 Cheng-ho jgt ^p 162 Cheng-ting M ^ 237 Ch'eng-hai ?j£ ?g 162 Chi-chou fff JH1 300 Chi-chou (military district) fij jf\ 285, 289, 362 Chi-hsien fc U 42, 108 Ch'i-men jpI5 P! 90, 185 Ch'i-yang fl5 f^ 140 Chia-hsing S M 98, 166, 294 Chia-shan H # 90 Chia-ting S ^ 100, 122, 153, 159 Chiang-hua ft ^ 140 Chieh-hsiu ^ ft; 169 Ch'ien-t'ang ^ jg 167 Chihli IK ^ xvi Ching-chou ^J ffl 237 Ching-hsing # |M 289, 362 Ching-hua ^ ^ 68, 166 Ch'ing-chiang-p'u ffi ft ffl 25, 56, 237, 239, 254, 320 Ch'ing-chou ff j11 149 Ch'ing-p'u W ?i 149, 158, 159 Chiu-chiang % ft 226 Chung-mou 4* $ 120, 137 Ch'ung-te ^ ^ 151 Ch'ung-wen Gate ^k 3c P^ 228 Ch'li-chou M iMi 153, 185 Ch'uan-chou ^ ffl 240 Chiin-chou &| jMi 252 Fei-hsien Fen-chou Fen-yang Feng-hua Feng-yang

|IJB 130 ^9- JM 130, 168 fj9" (^ 232 5M b 61 S PI 54,349

Fukien Fu-ning Fu-yang

XVI

127 167

Hai-nan Island ^ ^ g, 187, 190, 313 Hai-ning ^g $ 166, 167 Hai-yen $ S 149,213 Hang-chou }H jf\ 54, 113, 128, 149, 166, 226, 236, 293 Ho-chien ^f [HI 106 Ho-ch'iu M ft 130 Ho-hsi-wu ^ @ i 226 Honan ffi ^ xvi Ho-tung M S 191,214 Hsi-hsien & U 127 Hsi-hua B ^ 108 Hsi-ning |§ $ 289 Hsiang-ho § M 107, 120, 121, 149 Hsiang-shan ^ ill 61 Hsiao-i # ^ 169 Hsin-hua ff ft 114 Hsing-hua p ft 61 Hsiu-ning ft: $ 127 Hsu-yeh If § 226 Hsiian-fu (military district) j j Jff 214, 268, 285, 289, 362 Hukwang ^ ]S xvi Hua-ma-ch'ih ^ ,1 fife 289 Hua-t'ing ^ ^ 149, 157, 158 Huai-an m £ 25, 54, 145, 163, 226, 230, 236, 250, 278, 280, 320 Huai-ch'ing if H 300 Huai-jou ff m 120, 185 Huai-yiian '|f S 300 Hui-chou Wi >H 91, 112, 120, 137, 143 Hu-chou m JM 98, 109, 166 i 57, 254, 362 I-chou -g, '}\ I-WU ^ i§ 166 Jen-ho ^ ?P 166, 167, 197 K'ai-feng $1 M 27, 179 K'ai-hua H ft 127, 172 Kan-su (military district) 1t ft 29,2 362 Kiangsi ft H xvi Ku-an 0 ^: 106 Ku-yiian gj| J^ 285, 289, 362 Ku'ai-chi -|r ft 61, 62, 91, 145, 293 Kuang-ning mm 233,237 K'un-shan [ m III 342 Kwangsi ^ I§ xvi Kwangtung m IK xvi Kweichow i" #1 xvi

Glossary index Lan-chou M J>H 237 Li-yang $g fi§ 171 Liang-Che (salt administrative district) M $f 190, 213, 258 Liang-Huai (salt administrative district) M m 191, 212, 258 Liao-ch'eng Ijljp J$ 139 Liao-tung (military district) $££ j$( 29, 289, 290, 362 Lin-an Ba ^ 136, 167 Lin-ch'ing ffi 78 54, 226 Lin-fen B35 & 95, 155, 177, 179 Lin-hsien HS U 169 Ling-chou £ >JI| 191, 214 Ling-ling 2g [^ 140 Ling-shih M S 130, 169 Lu-ch'eng $g %$ 120 Lung-chiang II %L 237 Lung-hsi ft g| 127, 162 Mi-yiin $ S

289, 362

Nan-ch'ang \M &i 68 Nan-ching ^ £# 127, 162, 171 Nanking ^ g xvi, 54 Nan-p'ing ^ ^P 162 Ning-hsia (military district) ¥ M 29, 285, 289, 362 Ning-hsiang 5p ^ 168 Ning-kuo ft g| 114, 149, 176 Ning'po $ $c 234 Ning-yiian 3p 5s 140 Pao-te ft M 130 Pao-ting ft ^ 106, 237, 243 Peking it M xvi, 54, 289 Pei-hsin-kuan ;JfcrrBS 226 P'eng-ts'e I> ^i 129 P'ien-t'u-kuan {g 3l HI 289 P'ing-ho ^ ^n 127, 171 P'ing-liang q± ® 174 P'ing-yao -7f 3J| 130 Sha-hsien /^ |$ 162 Sha-shih fp TfiT 237 Shanghai ± ^I 94, 124, 140, 147, 158, 197 Shang-yii ± ® 166 Shansi jj_j S xvi Shantung ill ^ xvi Shan-hai-kuan Jj M | | 233, 289 Shan-si (military district), 285, 289, 362 Shan-yang 1J4 pg 25 Shang-jao ± ^ 242 Shao-hsing IS f| 16, 166, 292 Shao-wu SP IES 162 Shensi [$ S xvi

381

Shen-yang ^ Pi 289 Shun-an }$ ^ 108, 151, 185, 219 Shun-te jig ^ 84, 89, 114, 122, 160, 172, 293, 301, 318 Shun-t'ien jig ZX 165, 276 Soochow M 41! 98, 100, 122, 151, 158, 161, 180, 294 Su-chou ffi 'M 289 Sui-an ^ ^ 136 Sung-chiang fe in 89, 98, 122, 146, 149, 153, 155,277,294 Szechuan [ZH J\\ xvi Szu-shui M 7k Ta-hsing ~X p 236, 276 Ta-tung (military district) X In] 268, 285, 289, 362 T'ai-ho-shan ± ft] UU 251 T'ai-p'ing ^ zp 237 T'ai-shan ^ Jj 251 T'ai-ts'ang ^ # 100 T'ai-yuan X ^ 168, 289 Tan-ch'eng % ^ 130 Tao-chou M4H 140 Te-chou ^ ^N 54, 151 Teng-chou fMH 164,348 Ting-t'ao S p@ 172 Ts'ao-chou W jNI 172 Ts'ao-hsien W M 121, 132, 149, 172 Tseng-hua m ft 241 Tsi-nan $f fg 27,54 Tsou-hsien £$ ^ 121 Tung-an ^ £ 140 Tung-ao JfC psj 97, 149 Tung-ch'ang 3I g 107, 149 Tung-t'ing Lake* mfew 165 Tzu-yang ^ U I 155 Tz'u-hsi ?M ^ 181 Wan-ch'iian |h ^ 29 Wan-p'ing ^g ^ 105,119,236,276 Wen-shang ^ ± 61,97,114,137,149, 171, 186, 301 Wu-chin St 3§ 147, 149 Wu-hsien ^ |% 103, 152, 172, 180 Wu-hu M M 237, 239 Wu-yiian g | 1I 242 Yang-chou f§ 54,191,217,226,278, 281 Yen-sui (military district) 285, 289, 362 Ying-t'ien J9g % 45, 176 Yii-ch'ien K ?f 166 Yii-hang ^ t/L 166, 167 Yii-lin tm W 289 Yiieh-chou g ffl 128

382

Glossary index

Yiieh-kang ft 235 Yung-an ^c 90, 162 Yung-ch'eng %fc 108 Yung-chou f\ 108, 140, 244

Yung-ming Yung-ning Yung-p'ing Yunnan ft

140

168, 169 289, 362

Personal names KoTun fBSfc 64 Ku Hsien-ch'eng lg ;#, j ^ 296 Chang Chia-yun 3ft & A 298 Ku Yen-wu M & K 15, 49, 80, 96, 99, Chang Ching 5g |M 278,292,321 145, 150, 152, 185, 187, 310, 322 Chang Chu-cheng 3ft Jg IE 4, 81, 97, KueiYu-kuang U ti it 145,151,186 145, 150, 153, 154, 157, 245, 256, 267, 286, 294, 304 Li Ch'eng-liang f 298 Chang Hsueh-yen %^M 154n, 165, Li Ming ft 107 298 15, 163, 202 Li Nii-hua 296 Chang Tung 3ft S 186 Li San-ts'ai Chang Yen-ling 3ft 2E $ 107 300 LiShih-ta Chao Nan-hsing i S M 296 {# 153 Li Wei Chao Shih-ch'ing m^&M 231 37,118,121 Liang Fang-chung ChaoWen-hua mX~^ 278 298 Liang Meng-lung ChaoYing ffi » 100 278 Liang Ts'ai * Chao Yung-hsien m ffl K 44, 181 Lin Fu # g 234 Ch'en Feng Pf ^ 219 Lin T'ing-ang ^ fil 183 Cheng Hsiao f$ ^ 42 Ling Yun-i I I 298, 312 Ch'i Chi-kuang 286, 298, 320 Liu Chin gij 4,242,247 Ch'ien Shih-sheng gg ± \ 158 Liu Chung-fu + ft 12 : Chin Lien & M 12 Liu Kuan S 49 Ch'in Chin IS ^ 12 Liu Szu-chieh ij 9f ^ 360 Ch'iu Ch'iin flS j# 222 Liu Ta-hsia ^c S 19 Chou Ching Jl M 229 LuPao t211,213,217,219 Chou Hung-mo Jij #t jjg 49 Chou Sheng jfj f£ 52 12 Ma Shen , Mou K'un 167 ^ 273 Fang Tun 1$ 159 Feng Ch'i Ni Yiian-lu jjg TU M 12, 15, 68, 119, ^ 297 Feng Pao 173, 185, 230, 241, 298 5c & 90, 157n, 162 NiYiieh U S 49 Fu I-ling Nien Fu ^ 1 187 Hai Jui H9, 151, 159, 187, 311 Han Wen W X 12, 177 Oosai 285 Ho Liang-chim ^ ft 41, 92, 249 Ho T'ang H i t 132 Pai Tung fi It 97, 299 Hsia Yiian-chi S jt ^ 12, 71 19, 27, 86, 115, Fan Chi-hsun Hsu Cheng-ming ^ M. ^ 169, 245 280, 298 Hsu Chieh & (^ 78, 157n, 159 Fan Huang S 278,286 Hsiieh Shang-chih If ^ M 186 27, 119, P'ang Shang-p'eng Ml Hu Tsung-hsien ftg ^ ^ 278 166, 191, 209, 222, 286 Hu Ying ffl W 52 Feng Hsin-wei % \t J& 62, 77, 79, 210 Huang Fu H Pi Chiang mm 12 52 HuoYu-hsia Pi Tzu-yen # @ K 12, 15 M Wx 181 Pubei 0. n 302 Jinong ^ H 285 Sang Hung-yang # ^ ^ 222 Kao Hung-t'u Shao Ching-pang gp M ^ 238 197 Sheng Shih-hsing ft B$ fl 123, 160 Kao Yao M 245 Shih Hsing 5 1 183 Ko Shou-li t 132, 160, 171 SunP'i-yang ffi dS ^ 249 KoTse M 12, 50 Altas

208,260,266

General index SungHsun 5fc H 183 Sung Ying-hsing J | |

241

383

Wei Chung-hsien 1^ ;cA jlf 4

Yang Chieh % if 97 Yang I-ch'ing M 1 - ^ 258 Yang Shih-chiao HI IHf ^ 238 235, Yang T'ing-ho ii g f t l 7,59,272 Yang Yen i§ ^; 222 Yang Yung-lung ^ Ifi fi 302, 321 Wang An-shih 3 : ^ S 222, 316 Yeh Ch'i ^ 8t 204, 206, 222 Wang Chen 3£ S! 4 Yeh Hsiang-kao SI fnl IS 7 Wang Ch'ung-ku =£ ^ •Jf 297, 298 Yeh Meng-chu '-1 # ft 158, 160 Wang Kao £ S 12 Yeh Tsung-liu 3| m @ 242 Wang Kuo-kuang 15, 190 Yen Mou-ch'ing IP g* pp 191,208,213 Wang Lin £ ^ 12, 247 Yen Sung R g 208, 248 Wang Shih-cheng 3E lit i t 61, 297 Yin Cheng-mou Jg IE m 77, 297, 298, Wang Shih-hsing 3E ± tt 295, 301 312 Wang Shu 3E 16 63 Yin Min ^ g 49 Wang Ssu-jen 3 : ^m u 159 Yii Sheng-hsing ^F 'fl fx 118 Wang Tsung-mo =E ^ ^(c 297 Yii Ta-yu # ^c t^ 286 Wang Ying-chiao "ffiflgiK 12, 149 Yii T'ai-su 3a ^: # 12 Wang Yii-ch'iian 3 : IS ££ 64, 286, 307 Yii Tzu-chiin ^ ^ ft 285 Wei Ch'ing-yuan Iw i ^ 61,90 Yiian Shih-cheng ^ t^ M 217 Tan Lun jg Ma 109, 290, 294 T'ang Shun-chih If I'll ;£ 159 Toyotomi Hideyoshi H gL ^ ^ 302

General index The general index is to supplement the glossary index, the table of contents, and the running heads. While some degree of overlapping is inevitable, it is not intended to duplicate the information. aristocracy, aristocratic title-holders, 31-2, 106, 153, 179, 275, 310 army logistics, 5, 28, 29-31, 34, 45, 53, 58, 63-8, 88, 126, 134-5, 177-8, 181-2, 214-16, 231, 269, 284-94, 295, 306, 310 auditing, of fiscal accounts, 1, 14, 16, 89, 278-9, 295, 299 Brunei, 233 Buddhist, monks and monastic properties, 17, 33, 55, 109, 134, 246, 292

stration, 29; authorizing tax payments in silver, 52; legalizing use of precious metals, 72; captured by Mongols, 73 Ch'eng-hua, the Emperor, xv, 285 Chia-ching, the Emperor, xv, 7, 12, 59, 118, 266, 285; ordering coinage, 76-8; limiting aristocratic estates, 107; promoting mining, 242; commuting tribute grain, 272; surrendering crown income, 273; authorizing tax reduction, 277 Chicago, University of, 154n bureaucracy, 4, 9, 30, 45, 183, 224, 311, Ching-t'ai, the Emperor, xv, 71 Ch'ing, dynasty, 45, 89, 95, 198, 200, 221, 323 Burma, Burmese, 24, 215, 243 230, 231, 239, 307, 308, 317, 319, 322 Ch'ung-chen, the Emperor, xv, 6, 16, 173, censorial officials (including regional 298; putting eunuchs in charge of civil deinspectors, surveillance commissioners fense, 10; rejecting proposal to abolish and supervising secretaries), 16, 27, 29, hereditary military households, 68 186, 191, 201, 261, 278, 312, 321 Columbia, University, 154n Champa, 234 commerce, 21, 230 Cheng-te, the Emperor, xv, 4,285; abusing commutation, of taxes in kind and service the salt monopoly, 207 obligations, 3, 18, 39, 52, 86, 93, 105, Cheng-t'ung, the Emperor, xv, 4, 12, 71; 115-17, 143, 155, 156, 166, 197, 237, turning granaries over to civil admini252-6, 265, 271, 272, 320

General index SungHsun 5fc H 183 Sung Ying-hsing J | |

241

383

Wei Chung-hsien 1^ ;cA jlf 4

Yang Chieh % if 97 Yang I-ch'ing M 1 - ^ 258 Yang Shih-chiao HI IHf ^ 238 235, Yang T'ing-ho ii g f t l 7,59,272 Yang Yen i§ ^; 222 Yang Yung-lung ^ Ifi fi 302, 321 Wang An-shih 3 : ^ S 222, 316 Yeh Ch'i ^ 8t 204, 206, 222 Wang Chen 3£ S! 4 Yeh Hsiang-kao SI fnl IS 7 Wang Ch'ung-ku =£ ^ •Jf 297, 298 Yeh Meng-chu '-1 # ft 158, 160 Wang Kao £ S 12 Yeh Tsung-liu 3| m @ 242 Wang Kuo-kuang 15, 190 Yen Mou-ch'ing IP g* pp 191,208,213 Wang Lin £ ^ 12, 247 Yen Sung R g 208, 248 Wang Shih-cheng 3E lit i t 61, 297 Yin Cheng-mou Jg IE m 77, 297, 298, Wang Shih-hsing 3E ± tt 295, 301 312 Wang Shu 3E 16 63 Yin Min ^ g 49 Wang Ssu-jen 3 : ^m u 159 Yii Sheng-hsing ^F 'fl fx 118 Wang Tsung-mo =E ^ ^(c 297 Yii Ta-yu # ^c t^ 286 Wang Ying-chiao "ffiflgiK 12, 149 Yii T'ai-su 3a ^: # 12 Wang Yii-ch'iian 3 : IS ££ 64, 286, 307 Yii Tzu-chiin ^ ^ ft 285 Wei Ch'ing-yuan Iw i ^ 61,90 Yiian Shih-cheng ^ t^ M 217 Tan Lun jg Ma 109, 290, 294 T'ang Shun-chih If I'll ;£ 159 Toyotomi Hideyoshi H gL ^ ^ 302

General index The general index is to supplement the glossary index, the table of contents, and the running heads. While some degree of overlapping is inevitable, it is not intended to duplicate the information. aristocracy, aristocratic title-holders, 31-2, 106, 153, 179, 275, 310 army logistics, 5, 28, 29-31, 34, 45, 53, 58, 63-8, 88, 126, 134-5, 177-8, 181-2, 214-16, 231, 269, 284-94, 295, 306, 310 auditing, of fiscal accounts, 1, 14, 16, 89, 278-9, 295, 299 Brunei, 233 Buddhist, monks and monastic properties, 17, 33, 55, 109, 134, 246, 292

stration, 29; authorizing tax payments in silver, 52; legalizing use of precious metals, 72; captured by Mongols, 73 Ch'eng-hua, the Emperor, xv, 285 Chia-ching, the Emperor, xv, 7, 12, 59, 118, 266, 285; ordering coinage, 76-8; limiting aristocratic estates, 107; promoting mining, 242; commuting tribute grain, 272; surrendering crown income, 273; authorizing tax reduction, 277 Chicago, University of, 154n bureaucracy, 4, 9, 30, 45, 183, 224, 311, Ching-t'ai, the Emperor, xv, 71 Ch'ing, dynasty, 45, 89, 95, 198, 200, 221, 323 Burma, Burmese, 24, 215, 243 230, 231, 239, 307, 308, 317, 319, 322 Ch'ung-chen, the Emperor, xv, 6, 16, 173, censorial officials (including regional 298; putting eunuchs in charge of civil deinspectors, surveillance commissioners fense, 10; rejecting proposal to abolish and supervising secretaries), 16, 27, 29, hereditary military households, 68 186, 191, 201, 261, 278, 312, 321 Columbia, University, 154n Champa, 234 commerce, 21, 230 Cheng-te, the Emperor, xv, 4,285; abusing commutation, of taxes in kind and service the salt monopoly, 207 obligations, 3, 18, 39, 52, 86, 93, 105, Cheng-t'ung, the Emperor, xv, 4, 12, 71; 115-17, 143, 155, 156, 166, 197, 237, turning granaries over to civil admini252-6, 265, 271, 272, 320

384

General index

copper, copper coins, 6,72,74-9,155,231, 233, 240, 247, 250, 298, 317, 320 corruption, official, 49, 141, 144, 152-3, 179, 185, 201, 208, 221, 228, 278, 307, 311, 312, 323 cotton, cotton cloth, 9, 101-3, 137, 142, 262, 271, 296 county magistrate, as fiscal officer, 24, 97, 111, 119, 142, 144, 148, 151, 159, 179, 185, 236, 300, 314, 327 Creel, Herrlee G., sinologist, 309 deficit financing, 202-4 dual capital system, 13 eunuchs, 4, 8-11, 56, 58, 114-15, 208, 211, 219, 233, 234, 242, 247, 251, 260, 266, 267, 295, 297, 299, 302, 303, 315 excise tax, 207, 210,212, 224, 328 Fairbank, John K., sinologist, 118 Fang, Chao-ying, sinologist, 157n farm credit, 151, 160, 187, 315 Feuerwerker, Albert, sinologist, 318 foreign trade. 1, 76, 233-6, 257-61 franchise, 71, 220, 236 Friese, Heinz, sinologist, 110 Fujii, Hiroshi, sinologist, 60-1 gentry, 45, 97, 158, 197, 299, 312 Gold Floral Silver, 10, 52, 93, 102, 180, 273, 275 grain, prices, 101, 155, 156, 159, 160, 167, 170,186; production, 40-1,90,166,169, 170-2, 313 Grand Canal, 1, 11, 23, 40, 51-5, 94, 101, 186, 226, 238, 252-3, 279, 283, 297, 317, 318 Great Wall, 269, 285, 289, 318 Han, dynasty, 220, 321 Harvard-Yenching Library, 121 Ho, Ping-ti, sinologist, 41,62,125,168,198 horses, government, 1, 18, 104-6, 250-1, 255, 257-61, 269, 295 Hsiian-te, the Emperor, xv, 12, 57-8, 64, 72, 75; creating aristocratic estates, 106-7 Hucker, Charles O., sinologist, 4n, 56 Hung-chih, the Emperor, xv, 46, 58, 223, 285; disclosing abuses of salt monopoly, 204 Hung-hsi, the Emperor, xv, 12, assigning civil officials to administer army commands, 29; collecting franchise fees, 71; creating palace estates, 106

Hung-wu, the Emperor, xv, 5, 12, 39, 42, 44, 51, 55-7, 63, 65, 67, 72, 75, 104, 233, 246, 257; as fiscal legislator, 44-6, 183, 189, 221-2, 298-9, 314; interviewing tax captains, 37; issuing paper currency, 69; confiscating landed properties, 99; authorizing permanent tax exemption, 106; promoting silk and cotton, 136 I-pu-la, 260 imperial clansmen, 31, 178-80, 182, 214, 295 Japan, Japanese, 2,234,240,302, 306, 314, 319 joint fiscal administration, by central and provincial authorities, 17, 23, 191 K'ang-hsi, the Ch'ing Emperor, 89 Korea, Korean, 104, 233, 290, 294, 302 land reclamation, 18, 106, 195 land survey, 26,42, 84,98,154,168, 300-1, 313, 329-30 land tenure, 37, 67, 85, 99, 106-8, 156-62, 287, 315 law of avoidance, 96 lawsuits, 97, 248, 312 lesser functionaries, 16, 26, 27, 133, 144, 181, 192, 230, 316 local procurement, 24, 35, 143, 315 lumber, 19, 108, 127, 237-40, 282-3 Lung-ch'ing, the Emperor, xv, 121, 293 Macao, 235 Manchuria, Manchurian, 104, 163-4,172, 233, 289 Mansur, 260 merchants, 33, 127, 149, 195, 198, 200-24, 226, 228, 230, 232, 235, 238-45, 250, 259, 318, 319 militia, 111, 114, 184, 294, 302 ministry of revenue, 11-17, 154, 163, 190, 201, 214, 216, 226, 227, 231, 235, 243, 245, 247, 262, 268-77, 290, 303 ministry of rites, 17, 227, 256, 281 ministry of war, 17, 227, 251, 265, 269 ministry of works, 13, 17-20, 87, 227, 237, 239, 243, 245, 254, 255, 265, 282 Mongol, Mongolian, 12, 68, 260, 295 Morse, H. B., sinologist, 235 mortgages, 90, 236, 288, 309 mou, fiscal, 41, 60, 99,105, 108, 168, 1723; standard, 40, 300 Nanda, Bay in, 24, 243

General index palace, construction, 19, 58,239, 255, 267, 282-4; estates, 106-8, 273, 303, 310, 325; expenditures, 8-11, 56-9, 87, 315, 317 paper currency, 1, 69-74, 232, 261 People's University, Peking, 318 poll tax, 36,87,114,133,139,192,195,198 population, 19,26,61-3,224,248,264,309 Portugal, Portuguese, 234-5, 285, 323 postal system, 38,88,112,184,256,295,318 quota system, 39, 46-7, 51, 52, 155, 163, 177, 183, 195, 208, 210, 213, 215, 228, 231, 232, 240, 243, 254, 255, 261, 264, 304, 308, 309, 314, 319, 322 reform, fiscal, 6, 72, 96, 115, 131, 223-4, 310, 316, 322 (see also Single Whip Reform) Ricci, Matteo (Matthew), 283 Rossabi, Morris, sinologist, 257, 260 salaries, 8, 23, 25, 48, 59,73,175,178,230, 275, 277, 296,298, 303, 315, 322 Schall, Adam von Bell, 241 Shimizu, Taiji, sinologist, 60, 98 ship construction, 24, 50, 53, 237, 244, 320 Siam, 234 silk, silk fabrics, 9, 11, 40, 57, 127, 136-7, 167, 262, 271, 304 silver, 6, 70, 79-81, 89, 95, 103, 142, 148, 150, 177, 241-3, 267, 295, 298, 316, 318 Single Whip Reform, 27, 36, 103, 112-22, 130-3, 144, 147, 166, 171, 183, 267, 293, 299-300, 312, 316 stub-books, 14, 193, 218, 309 Sung, dynasty, 1, 21, 42, 46, 53, 75, 91, 99, 108, 111, 155, 186, 193, 200, 236, 316, 321 supply lines, criss-crossing, 5, 14, 65-6, 176, 275, 322 Taoists, 17, 33, 246 Tai-ch'ang, the Emperor, xv, 7, 304 Tang, dynasty, 1, 21, 47, 53, 91, 131, 186, 216, 266, 316, 321 tax, agents, 92, 133,145-50,193, 209,230, 296; delivery, 36-7, 40, 101, 142-3,

385

152-4,296; exemption, 97,123-4; rates, 41-2, 71, 85, 89, 100, 127-8, 130, 140, 166-75, 182-7, 216, 229, 235, 236, 238, 259, 308 (see also commutation, excise tax, poll tax, two-tax system) taxation, progressive, 35, 87, 88, 121, 131, 183, 319 tea, 9, 35, 57, 257-62, 265 tenancy, 160-2, 187 timber see lumber T'ien-ch'i, the Emperor, xv, 4, 7, 74, 282, 304 tribute grain, 40, 50, 59, 95, 100, 142, 147, 252, 271, 272, 274, 282, 298 Twitchett, D. C , sinologist, 131, 266 two-tax system, 39 Vierira, Cristavao, 323 Wan-li, the Emperor, xv, 4, 20, 153, 249, 256, 285, 293, 297, 300; commissioning eunuch tax collectors, 7, 10, 212, 267, 315; authorizing surtax to finance Manchurian campaign, 163; personal extravagance, 183, 303-5; ordering mining, 243; increasing reeds tax, 254; demanding 'purchasing money', 275; ordering tax reduction, 277; constructing own mausoleum, 302, 310 Wang, Yeh-chien, sinologist, 322 water-control projects, 18, 98, 165, 186, 255, 279, 298 white book, 63 Yamane, Yukio, sinologist, 110 Yang, Lien-sheng, sinologist, 282 Yangtze delta, 40, 47, 54, 62, 81, 98-104, 116, 122, 124-5, 142, 159-60, 171-2, 174, 180, 186, 199, 238 Yellow Book, 32-3, 60, 164, 248 Yellow river, 165, 168, 280, 317 Yuan, dynasty, 1, 79, 99, 155, 316, 321 Yung-lo, the Emperor, xv, 50-1, 57, 63, 65, 75, 233, 246, 282, 298-9; expedition to Mongolia, 12; creating circuit intendants, 28-9; annexing Annam, 47; currency inflation, 70; horse procurement, 104