A Concise History of the Qing Dynasty: Volume 2 9814332194, 9789814332194

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Notes
References
Index

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Contents Preface

vii

Chapter 5 The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration and the Governmental Organizations of the Qing Dynasty

1

Chapter 6 The Development of the Agricultural Economy and the Feudal Farm Rent and Taxation System

41

Chapter 7 The Development of the Handicraft Industry and Commerce

117

Notes

183

References

199

Index

211

Preface The Qing Dynasty was a feudal institution with the Manchu, a minority in China, as the upper class and was the last feudal monarchical dynasty in the long feudal history of China. The Qing Dynasty ruled China, a vast country, for two hundred and sixty eight years. China was an independent feudal state in the stage of late feudal society when the Qing rulers broke through the border in the year 1664 to usurp the achievements of the Peasants’ War in the late Ming Dynasty and establish its rule over the whole country. After more than one hundred years of development, the Qing Dynasty reached its peak in the mid-eighteenth century. Within the vast territory the unity of all ethnic groups in China was further enhanced, and the feudal politics, economy and culture were developed to their peak. Following this, due to the growth of internal contradictions in the feudal society and the bud of capitalism in China, the crisis of feudal rule occurred. In the late eighteenth century, peasant uprisings broke out all over the country. As a result, the Qing Dynasty began to decline. At this time the Western European countries had already completed their bourgeois revolutions and moved into a capitalist society, plundering their colonies all over the world. Finally, feudal China became one of their important targets of predation. With the outbreak of the Opium War in 1840, the armed capitalist invaders opened the door to China. From then on China gradually stepped into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society and onto the stage of modern history. At the same time as imperialism colluded with feudalism in China to force China to beome a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, the Chinese people never gave up their fight against the imperialists and their lackeys. In the Opium War, the Taiping Revolution, the Sino-French War, the Sino-Japanese War, the Hundred Days Reform and the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese people demonstrated their indomitable courage and fighting spirit. In the Revolution of 1911 the bourgeoisie overthrew the Qing Government, which had become the lackey of imperialism, ending the autocratic monarchy of more than 2,000 years in China and establishing a democratic republic. The "long river" of the history was surging forward. These two hundred and sixty years witnessed the rise, prosperity, decline and downfall of the Aisin Giorro dynasty, but more importantly it witnessed the development, creativity and struggle of the great people of all nationalities in China. During this long and arduous period, the Chinese people suffered enormous hardship and frustration, created beautiful ideas and hopes and undertook continuous

Preface

exploration and combat. In the most difficult years of hardship the Chinese people still left an extremely rich and valuable heritage. In this two hundred and sixty eight years we can find innumerable passionate and epic battle stories; strong, brave, diligent and wise figures; brilliant economic and cultural achievements; and vivid and rich experience and lessons. The Qing Dynasty is an important chapter in China's long history, a great turning point between the past and future and a ladder used by the Chinese people to wage arduous struggles, grope in the dark, get through the "fog" and go forward to the future. Since the history of Qing Dynasty is close to us and closely associated with practical struggle, it is worth serious study and research. This book describes the history from the rise of the Manchu to the Opium War which broke out in 1840, after which China walked into its modern era in which the natures of society and revolution began to change dramatically and were fundamentally different from the early and mid Qing Dynasty. Various works of detailed modern Chinese history have been published, with which the basic content of this book can link up. This book is written by the Institute of Qing History of Renmin University of China and edited by Dai Yi assisted by Ma Ruheng. Chapter 1 of Volume 1 was written by Li Hongbin, Chapter 2 by Lin Tiejun, Chapter 3 by Du Wenkai, Chapter 4 by Zhang Jinfan, Chapter 5 by Ma Ruheng, Zhang Jinfan and Ma Jinke, Chapters 6 and 7 by Li Hua. At first, part of Volume 2 of this book was drafted by Ma Xin, Ma Ruheng, Ma Jinke, Li Hua, Zhang Jinfan, Hu Mingyang and Qin Baoqi et al. Later, due to the structural changes in the book and personnel changes, the writing work was re-organized. Finally, Chapter 8 was written by Luo Ming, Wang Sizhi and Lin Tiejun, Chapter 10 by Mu Ruheng, Chapter 12 by Lu Yingfan, Wang Daocheng and Chen Yalan, Chapter 13 by Li Hua, Chapter 14 by Lin Tiejun and Ma Ruheng, and Chapter 15 by Wang Junyi. Dai Yi wrote the other chapters and revised the whole book. Illustrations were collected by Li Hua and Li Hongbin. We would like to express thanks to institutions such as the Chinese History Museum and the First Historical Archives of China which provided great assistance in the collection of illustrations. We sincerely look forward to any suggestions on the shortcomings of this book. Dai Yi

viii

5

Chapter

The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration and the Governmental Organizations of the Qing Dynasty

A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration of the Qing Dynasty Kangxi Took over the Administration and Removed the Ao Bai Group In 1661 Emperor Shunzhi died and his third son Xuanye took the throne. The following year was the first year of the Kangxi’s reign. When Emperor Kangxi took the throne he was only eight years old. Four ministers, namely Suo Ni (real yellow banner), E Bilong (plain yellow banner), Sukesaha (real white banner) and Ao Bai (plain yellow banner) were in charge of the state affairs. The four ministers were all aristocrats under the control of the emperor. Eighteen years after the Qing army had entered the Shanhaiguan the above three banners which represented the power of the emperor had prevailed over the other five banners. The power of the imperial family could not contend against that of the emperor. With the development of feudalism, the imperial power increased considerably. However the struggle of the Manchu rulers for concentration of power and further feudalism did not cease. In the beginning years of the Kangxi’s reign, the remnant power which hindered the trend still existed. The struggle had narrowed down to the three banners mentioned above, which took the form of the struggle between the emperor and the auxiliary ministers. Suo Ni, E Bilong and Ao Bai belonged to two different yellow banners respectively. They were all trusted followers of Huang Taiji and they had illustrious war exploits across the battlefield. They stood for the ancient traditions and interests of the Manchu aristocrats ideologically and emotionally, which was incompatible with the highly developed economic and cultural systems of the Han nationality. Sukesaha was of the white banner led by Duo Ergun. After the death of Duo Ergun, Su joined the yellow banner and was appointed to important positions. In the period when the four auxiliary ministers held power over state affairs, the trend was that the feudal process was postponed to maintain the old Manchu systems and traditions. In order to keep the close ties between the Manchus and the Mengs and to draw the Mengs over to their side, more powers were given to the division which was in charge of Mengs affairs. The cabinet system and the Hanlin Academy were abandoned and the secretary academy, national history academy and scholar academy restored. A new standard was set for the promotion of officials. In the imperial competitive examination, the discourse on politics was used to replace the eight-legged essay and the quotas

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

Fig. 5.1.

A portrait of Emperor Kangxi

of candidates in the imperial examinations were decreased. The nearly 400 jinshi (進士) in the later years of the Shunzhi reign decreased to 155 in the sixth year of the Kangxi’s reign. In 1661, when Zheng Chenggong attacked Nanjing, the local people responded to support Zheng. The Qing court investigated the case and there were many people involved. The landlord and bureaucrats in the south of the Yangtze River were behind in payment and were deposed. In 1663, many people were put into prison for compiling the history of the Ming dynasty. When the four auxiliary ministers were in charge of state affairs, a series of bureaucracy reformations and political cases showed the anti-feudalism trend and the trend to crack down on landlords and intellectuals. It should be pointed out that since China had entered the late period of the feudal society, there were many decadent factors in the political system. The anti-feudalism of the four auxiliary ministers also fought against some such things such as the eight-legged essay, the 13 governments and the privileges of the country gentlemen. However their purpose was to defend the backward Manchu system, culture and customs and they fought against the Han culture blindly, which in nature was the development of Manchu feudalism. As a national regime, the Qing dynasty had to adapt to the economy, politics and culture of the Han area. This was the irresistible trend. The four auxiliary ministers, especially Ao Bai, tried to adhere to “the ancient systems

3

Fig. 5.2.

Kangxi’s edict

A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

4

The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

and to recover the old policies”1 and “to obey the rules of the founders of the dynasty”.2 They viewed the old system as unmodifiable doctrines and fought against the further feudalism of the Manchus. Among the four auxiliary ministers, Suo Ni was the eldest; E Bilong was the weakest; and Sukesaha had contradictions with Ao Bai who was the most domineering of the four. Ao Bai recommended and promoted those who allied with him and persecuted those who opposed him. As a result, the civil and military officers all drew to his side.3 His trusted subordinates ranged from the central government to local areas. With his power and influence, Ao Bai was domineering and placed himself above the other auxiliary ministers. He did not act according to the rules. If something was contrary to his intentions, he would rebuke or punish his subordinates. He even brought the memorials which other officials had submitted to the emperor to his home and discussed then with his trusted subordinates. “He discussed and decided everything at home and then implemented it”.4 Ao Bai behaved unscrupulously and was a law unto himself. In 1666 Ao Bai put forward that Duo Ergun had favored the white banner by deploying the white banner in the northeast of Beijing, and the plain yellow banner which Ao Bai belonged to in Baoding, Hejian and Zhuozhou. This violated the law of “there should be order within the eight banners”. He proposed to exchange places with the white banner and if the land was not enough, “other places should be enclosed”. 5 In the name of exchanging land, Ao Bai attacked the power of the white banner and provoked conflicts among the three banners, which set off a wave of enclosing land. His proposal was opposed by various classes, including the white banner, Sukesaha and Su Nahai. Su Nahai stated: “The Manchu aristocrats been settled for quite a long period and the land should not be enclosed any more”.6 In March 1667, Ao Bai sent his subordinate to investigate the land. With the excuse that “the land had been submerged by water and sand” and “the land of the yellow plain land was unworkable”, 7 they persisted in exchanging land. He ordered Su Nahai, Zhu Changzuo the governor general and Wang Denglian, the grand coordinator to conduct the business of the land exchange. After the issue of the order, the Manchu and Han people were in a panic and there were many complaints from the unemployed.8 People of the two banners living in the land did not want to exchange the land. “Zhang Jing of the plain yellow banner refused to accept the land and Bao Yizuo of the white banner refused to show the boundary”. 9 The officials of the two banners compared the fertility of the land but could not reach a conclusion. Although people did not say much, they were attached to the place where they lived and were unwilling to leave it.10 After seeing the actual situation, Zhu Changzuo and Wang Denglian reported that “the land

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

was barren and was deserted for reclaiming”; “the Manchu people were in poverty”.11 They requested the exchange of land be stopped. Ao Bai was furious and wanted to sentence Su Nahai, Zhu Changzuo and Wang Denglian to death. Suo Ni and E Bilong were in favor of the idea while Sukesaha was against it. Although the young Emperor Kangxi was against the exchange of land, he was not able to stop Ao Bai from taking his own course. In the end, Su, Zhu and Wang were hanged and their properties were confiscated. Altogether 60,000 males of the white banner and the plain yellow banner migrated; over 310,000 shang (晌) land was exchanged and enclosed. Production was severely damaged and many people lost their land. The conflicts within the ruling classes were intensified and the ambition of the Ao Bai bloc was further exposed. In 1667 (the sixth year of the Kangxi’s reign) Emperor Kangxi took over the reins of government. Ao Bai clung to power and was unwilling to give up power to Emperor Kangxi. He wanted to turn Emperor Kangxi into his puppet. Since Emperor Kangxi had taken the reign, Sukesaha asked to resign from the position of auxiliary minister and give his power back to the emperor. His action hit Ao Bai’s target. Since Sukesaha had asked to resign, Ao Bai and E Bilong were bound to follow suit. Ao Bai was not reconciled to quitting the stage of politics. He explicitly showed that he was not willing to surrender his power in an extremely imperious way. He framed Sukesaha as despising the emperor and with 24 accusations. He planned to sentence Sukesaha to death and searched his house and confiscated his property. Emperor Kangxi disagreed and rejected his proposal. However Ao Bai, who was lordly and imperious, threatened the emperor who was unable to change Ao Bai’s decision. In the end, Sukesaha was hanged. After removing his political enemy, the power of Ao Bai expanded and his imperious behavior became more undisguised. His trusted followers assumed important positions in the three academies and divisions of the government. Ao Bai’s brother Mu Lima was Jingxi general and a famous general of the eight banner army. His son married the daughter of Emperor Shunzhi. It was said that in 1669 when all the subjects paid New Year congratulations to Emperor Kangxi, Ao Bai was dressed in the imperial robe, which differed from Emperor Kangxi in the knot of the hat.12 It was also said that Ao Bai did not go to court using the excuse of sickness. Emperor Kangxi paid a visit to him in person and Ao Bai lay in bed with a sword under his bed.13 He treated Emperor Kangxi with contempt. The imperious behavior of Ao Bai threatened the throne of Kangxi and pushed many counterforces to Kangxi’s side. The willpower and talents of the emperor were important factors in the political struggle. Although Empeor Kangxi was still young, he had outstanding talents and ideals and was not

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

reconciled to being a puppet. His guardian and protector was his grandmother Empress Xiaozhuang, who was the wife of Huang Taiji and the mother of Emperor Shunzhi. She was capable and well-experienced. After the entrance into the Shanhaiguan she assisted the young Emperor Shunzhi to contend with the power blocs of Duo Ergun and Ji Erhalang and survived many political waves. She had high prestige among the Manchu aristocrats and allowed no disadvantageous acts from the Ao Bai bloc. Meanwhile a new generation of the Manchu ruling class had grown up and they were averse to Ao Bai’s policy to resume the old lifestyle. The new generation represented by Suo Ertu and Ming Zhu were the trusted subordinates and support force of the emperor. Suo Ertu was the son of Suo Ni and the uncle of the queen of Kangxi. He was promoted to the official of the ministry of personnel affairs. Ming Zhu was Kangxi’s guard and assumed the role of the supervisor of internal affairs. He was promoted to the scholar of the Hongwen academy and the minister of the Ministry of Punishment. A new political group was taking shape around Emperor Kangxi. In order to recapture power, Emperor Kangxi deployed his trusted followers to defend Beijing. Kangxi picked a group of imperial juvenile bodyguards to practice the game of Buku14 in the palace. Whenever Ao Bai went to court, they continued playing. Ao Bai thought that the emperor was weak and playful, and did not take precautions. The Han officials were resentful that Ao Bai had elbowed them out. In 1667 Xiong Cilü, the shidu (侍讀) in the Hongwen Academy, submitted a written statement accusing political corruption under the control of Ao Bai. He proposed to reform the political affairs from aristocrats and close advisers, and maintained that all policies should be based on Confucianism. The statement was directed at the Ao Bai bloc. In the following year, Xiong once again submitted a written statement to show his concern for the nation and advocated the political effects of Neo-Confucianism, which appealed to Kangxi’s opinion. Ao Bai wanted to punish Xiong Cilü severely but Emperor Kangxi did not allow him to. With the contradictions between Ao Bai and Kangxi being more serious, various forces began to move over to Kangxi’s side and the situation became more and more unfavorable to Ao Bai. In June 1969 (May in the fifth year of the Kangxi’s reign), Emperor Kangxi suddenly arrested Ao Bai. It was said that Kangxi and Suo Ertu asked lots of juvenile bodyguards to lurk in the palace. When Ao Bai entered the palace by himself, they arrested him by surprise and caught all the members of his group in one action. Then he was charged with 30 crimes and was put into prison for life. All the members of his clique were sentenced to death. After Emperor Kangxi had regained his power he

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

immediately declared that enclosure of land should stop forever; readdressed the case of Sukesaha; implemented the screening of officials; and encouraged officials of all ranks to send in memorials, which opened a new page in the political history of the Qing dynasty. The eradiction of the Ao Bai bloc reversed the retrogressive political trend and made the further feudalization of the Qing dynasty possible. It provided opportunities for the resumption and development of production, elimination of the potential separatist forces, unity of the country and the resistance against foreign aggression.

The Revolts of the Three Feudatories Were Put down After the entrance into the Shanhaiguan of the Qing army, although national control has been established and peasant armies and various anti-Qing forces were suppressed, national unity was not achieved. In the early reign of Emperor Kangxi the three feudatories occupied several provinces and possessed powerful armed forces in the south. The Junggar tribe on the northwest frontier conducted ethnic separatist activities. The offspring of Zheng Chenggong captured Taiwan in the southeast sea. The Qing regime put down the three feudatories; cracked down on the attempt to form splits in the Junggar tribe, and basically accomplished the unity of the country. It laid a solid foundation for the formation of a vast multinational country. The three feudatories referred to Wu Sangui, Geng Jingzhong and Shang Kexi. Wu, Shang and Geng Zhongming who was Geng Jingzhong’s grandfather were all Ming generals who surrendered to the Qing dynasty. 15 After the Qing rulers occupied Beijing, these generals who had surrendered to the Qing dynasty acted as the vanguards to suppress the peasant uprisings and other anti-Qing forces. This provided them with the chance to remain and expand their powers. Wu Sangui was conferred as Pingxi marquis to guard Yunnan; Shang Kexi was conferred as Pingnan marquis to guard Guangdong; Geng Jingzhong, Geng Zhongming’s grandson, was conferred as Jingnan marquis to guard Fujian. The situation in which three feudatories each occupied a territory took shape. The three feudatories each possessed strong armed forces. Geng and Shang each possessed 4,500 soldiers and 6,000–7,000 soldiers of the green banner respectively 16 while Wu had 15,900 soldiers and 12,000 soldiers of the green banner, 17 which posed a great threat to the Qing dynasty. Among the three feudatories, Wu Sangui was highly meritorious and respected. Yunnan and Guizhou were under his control. He tried to win people’s support by all means

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possible and win people over to his side. The Qing dynasty could not intervene his appointment of officials and generals, 18 and his ministry of finance and ministry of revenue could not be checked. Wu could even designate officials in the nation”. 19 The three feudatories asked for provisions from the Qing dynasty and claimed that the provisions should not be decreased”. 20 In 1660 (the 17th year of the Shunzhi reign), the official salary of Yunnan was over 9 million liang (兩) and the total sum for Yunnan, Fujian and Guangdong was more than 20 million liang , while the total provision of the country was only 17 million liang .21 Half of the wealth of the nation was consumed by the three feudatories,22 which caused great difficulties to the revenue of the Qing dynasty. Within the three feudatories, the marquises plundered the local resources to expand their own power. Wu Sangui collected taxes in salt, gold mines and copper mountains. 23 Moreover they “assembled merchants and developed trades”. 24 In Guangdong, Shang Kexi sent his followers to pretend to be salt traders. In Fujian, Geng Jingzhong collected heavy salt taxes.25 Apart from that, Geng and Shang traded secretly with Holland and the Southeast Asian areas, and “they unscrupulously collected the salt traffickers”.26 The development of the power of the three feudatories brought disasters to the local people. Wu Sangui held the country state of the Qin Guogong all for himself and enclosed the land which belonged to peasants of all nationalities. He restored the various heavy taxes of the Ming dynasty and forced the peasants to pay rent. His subordinates killed and robbed with nothing to fear. They “pressganged the citizens into become soldiers and if one refused, they would be put into prison”.27 Records of Wu’s governance in Yunnan state: “Three hundred Li around Yunnan was Wu’s pasture. He plundered the properties of the local people and the people lived in poverty”.28 Because of sickness, Shang Kexi entrusted his son, Shang Zhixin with military affairs. Shang Zhixin was a scottish monster and enjoyed killing. Geng Jingzhong also collected heavy taxes and allowed his followers to exploit the local people. In 1661(the 18th year of the Shunzhi reign), it was said that due to excessive taxes and levies, the masses had no means to live within the three feudatories. “People suffered unspeakably”.29 The development of the power of the three feudatories threatened the unity of the Qing government. After Emperor Kangxi took the throne he paid great attention to the unity and concentration of the national power. He said: “The power to govern the whole nation should lie in the hands of the emperor, not anybody else” 30; and “I am not afraid of death, but the power to administer national affairs should be unified”. 31 His words showed his positive attitude towards national unity. In view of the damage brought by the local separatist

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

forces, the three feudatories were hard to ignore. “The three feudatories, canal affairs and water transport were the urgent issues to be solved”. 32 Emperor Kangxi treated it as a serious problem and danger which called for an immediate solution. In 1673 (the 12th year of the Kangxi’s reign), Shang Kexi submitted a statement to ask to live out his life in Liaodong province and give the marquis position to his son. Emperor Kangxi used it as an opportunity to recall the feudatories. Wu and Geng on the one hand probed the stand of the Qing regime; on the other hand, they actively prepared to revolt. Kangxi saw through their prentences in asking for the recall of the feudatories but actually preparing the rebellion. He pointed out that: “Wu has kept on plotting for a long time. Whether we recall the feudatories or not, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Why not take preemptive action?” 33 Opinions on the issue within the ruling class of the Qing regime were divided. Only a minority of people, such as Ming Zhu, Mo Luo, Mi Sihan and some others supported Kangxi’s ideas. Most ministers proposed pacifying the feudatories by satisfying their demands and held that “the three feudatories should not be recalled, which might cause devastating results”.34 Even after Wu had raised the army to revolt, they still tried to compromise with the rebel army and maintained that “we should pacify the revolt instead of fighting”.35 Someone even proposed sentencing the ministers who were in favor of recalling the feudatories to death as an apology to Wu Sangui. The struggle of recalling the feudatories and the anti-recall was in nature a great issue concerning the unity or separation of the country. Most of the ministers were full of worries and overestimated the strength of the three feudatories. However Emperor Kangxi did not think so and held to the right solution resolutely. After the order recalling the feudatories had been issued, Wu Sangui rose in revolt and killed Zhu Guozhi, the governor general of Yunnan, and other officials of the Qing dynasty. Gan Wenkun, the grand coordinator of Yunnan and Guizhou, committed suicide. The rebel forces quickly captured Fuzhou, Changde, Hengzhou, Changsha, Yuezhou and other areas. Wu Sangui proclaimed himself King Zhou and the national marshal. The Qing armies were unprepared and retreated one step after another. Le Erjin, the Shuncheng prince, was appointed as Ningnan general to suppress the rebel army to lead the army southward. After arriving at Jingzhou the army dared not cross the river and confronted Wu’s army across the Yangtze River. Before long, Sun Yanling, the Guangxi general, and Geng Jingzhong,36 the Jingnan marquis, responded to the revolt and occupied Guangxi and Fujian. Many of the ministers in important positions in the Qing regime revolted in succession go over to Wu’s side.37 Wang

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Fuchen, the provincial commander of Shaanxi, revolted in Ningjiang, killed Mo Luo, the strategist of the Qing regime, and seized Lanzhou. Shang Zhixin, the son of Shang Kexi, revolted in Guangzhou, which brought a shock to the Qing regime. The south of the Yangtze River, Shaanxi, Gansu and Sichuan were either occupied by the rebel army or in the flames of war. “The nation was in disorder and chaos”.38 The Qing regime deployed forces and set up defenses everywhere, but was in a disadvantageous position. However, despite the victories achieved by the revolting armies in the early period, the vast land and strong armed forces, there were unsurmountable difficulties within the forces. Firstly, the revolt harmed national unity, which had been achieved not long before. After a long period of war, people were eager to get settled and were against the separatist battles. Wu Sangui tried to take advantage of the contradictions between the Manchu and the Han. But he took the side of the Qing regime in the national battle and led the Qing army into the Shanhaiguan. He suppressed the peasant army and the south Ming regime and killed Emperor Yongli in Burma. His traitorous behavior deprived him of moral charisma. Secondly, the soldiers and generals participating in the revolt were arrogant and unruly and had no political goals. They had no discipline and no battle plan. After Wu had captured Yuezhou, he was fully satisfied and contented and took no action. Wu only attempted to maintain the Fig. 5.3. Part of the instruction to suppress Wu Sangui in the 13th year of the Kangxi’s reign

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

Fig. 5.4.

The strategies to suppress the revolts of the three feudatories

victory that had been achieved and was reluctant to leave the southwest areas. Other revolting armies were in two minds and did not put up a steadfast fight against the Qing army. The Qing armies seemed weak at the beginning. After 30 years since the entrance of the Qing army, they were not as valiant as before for as their invincibility had been worn away by a comfortable life. The Qing regime gradually abandoned its backward and savage policies and implemented relatively correct policies. The national conflicts between the Manchu and Han nationalities were alleviated. The Qing regime won the support of the masses as a unified central government to fight against the separatist local regime. Emperor Kangxi deployed forces based on the overall situation. Hunan was the main battle field; Zhejiang and Jiangxi composed the east line; Shaanxi, Gansu and Sichuan constituted the west line. Each battlefield cooperated with each other and split the revolt armies, which gradually reversed the unfavorable situation. The Qing armies suppressed the anti-Qing revolt put up by Yang Qilong in Beijing in time and then cracked down on the revolts of the Chahar prince. With the policy of suppressing and placating at the same time, they cracked down resolutely on Wu’s army. The armies of Wang Fuchen, Geng Jingzhong, Sun Yanling and Shang Zhixin were suppressed and placated at

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the same time. The surrendered rebel soldiers were pardoned and compiled into forces with fair treatment.39 The Qing regime united the landlord class and did not stick to the pattern when putting Han people in important positions.40 In the later peiod of the suppression, the Qing regime was in the military advantageous position. In 1678, Emperor Kangxi set up the division of erudite learning and ordered people to modify The History of the Ming Dynasty to show that literary affairs were not ignored when the nation was busily engaged in warfare in order to draw the intellectuals of the landlord class to his side. The loyal and capable Han generals were promoted. Zhang Yong, Zhao Liangdong, Wang Jinbao, Sun Sike of the Green Camp, Li Zhifang from Zhejiang and Fu Honglie from Guangxi were all promoted to important positions. The situation in the battlefield was reversed. Wang Fuchen on the west front did not have a firm mind in fighting against the Qing army. The Qing regime tried to draw him to its side and forgave his past misdeeds.41 In the summer of 1676, Wang surrendered to the Qing army and the rebel army on the west front collapsed. Geng Jingzhong’s army on the east front did not take active action to occupy Zhejiang and only defended Fujian. “The rebel army in Fujian was short of provisions and many soldiers fled. They exploited the people and people were discontent”.42 The army had conflicts with Zheng Jing of Taiwan and they fought each other. When the Qing army attacked the Xianxia Mountain, Geng Jingzhou begged for surrender and the Qing regime accepted. Later, Shang Zhixin and Sun Yanling in Guangdong and Guangxi laid down their arms and surrendered to the Qing dynasty. The Qing army concentrated its main force on the Hunan battlefield to fight against Wu Sangui. The rebel armies of the east and west battlefield either surrendered or were defeated. But Wu Sangui of Hunan defended Yuezhou and Changsha and was locked in a stalemate with the Qing army led by Le Erjin, Yue Le and Mu Zhan. On the one hand, the Qing army concentrated its main force and promoted capable generals to deploy armies to attack the south of Hunan and Guangxi, which cut off the back route of the army. On the other hand, the political attack was strengthened. The surrendered soldiers were sent to persuade the rebel army in the front. The morale of the troops began to slump. Important generals such as Lin Xingzhu, Han Daren and others surrendered to the Qing regime. The rebel army was running out of provisions. “Ever since the revolt of the army, the prices of goods were rising. The taxes were heavy which was beyond what the people could afford. Out of provisions, people were sent to open silver mines in the mountain. Complaints could be heard everywhere”.43 In order to inspire the fighting spirit, Wu Sangui who was 74 years old proclaimed himself emperor in Hengzhou. The reign title was Dazhou and he

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appointed civil and military officials. However this brought no good to the situation. In autumn, Wu Sangui died of illness and his grandson Wu Shipan took the throne and the reign title was Honghua. The Qing army launched an attack and reinforced the navy to cut off the supply of provisons. The rebel army in Yuecheng abandoned the city and ran away. The rebel army could not recover after such a setback and withdrew from Changsha and Hengzhou. The Qing government ordered that the archcriminal was Wu Sangui and the others were all accomplices. Whoever surrendered would be pardoned. The rebel soldiers surrendered one after another The Qing army recovered Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou and Sichuan. In 1681 (the 12th year of the Kangxi’s reign), the Qing army branched out to attack Yunnan and captured Kunming at the end of the year. Wu Shipan committed suicide and the revolts of the three feudatories which had lasted for 8 years ended. Fig. 5.5.

The record of success of Dong Weiguo

The suppression of the three feudatories of the Qing regime was in line with the historical trend of unification of the multinational country and conformed with the interests and aspirations of the people. Wu Sangui went against the tide of history, undermined state unity, insisted on separation and persecuted people for his own interests, which was doomed to failure.

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

The Reunification of Taiwan After the revolts of the three feudatories were put down, the renunification of Taiwan became the top priority on the agenda. The internal situation had changed a lot. The national contradiction between the Manchu and the Han nationalities had been alleviated. The Zheng Jing bloc still treated the South Ming regime as legitimate and set up Taiwan as a separatist regime. It had lost its original significance and became the barrier for the national unification. After the death of Zheng Chengong, the internal contradictions of the Zheng family became intense. Zheng Jing fought against his uncle Zheng Xi and several cliques fought for power. Many generals and soldiers found that there was no way out and crossed the sea to surrender to the Qing dynasty. When the Qing regime put down the revolt of the three feudatories, Zheng Jing deployed the army to capture Xiamen and attacked Quanzhou to collude with Geng Jingzhong. But they turned against each other later and lost their political direction. Zheng Jing was incapable of putting forward political propositions to form a rallying point. In 1681 (the 20th year of the Kangxi’s reign, Zheng Jing died and his son Zheng Kezhuang dealt with the military and political affairs. Since several brothers fought for the throne, internal strife took place. Feng Xifan, the subordinate of Zheng Jing killed Zheng Kezhuang and set the young Zheng Keshuang as a puppet. The political bloc was decadent and fell apart. “People’s nerves were in tatters”. 44 To continue his feeble existence and maintain his territory, Zheng Keshuang submitted a statement to the Qing regime “to show his homage and to pay tribute and promised never to set foot on the mainland”.45 The Qing regime refuted his standpoint as being against national unification and refused his ridiculous proposal. There were two opposite viewpoints in the Qing regime concerning the Taiwan issue. Before Emperor Kangxi took the throne, the conservatives represented by Ao Bai repressed the proposal to attack Taiwan. With the excuse that “the journey was long with unexpected dangers, which could not ensure success”,46 the reunification of Taiwan was laid aside. After the three feudatories were put down, Kangxi once again put forward the proposal of reunification with Taiwan. Yao Qisheng was appointed as the governor general of Fujian and Shi Lang was appointed the provincial commander of the navy. However the proposal for reunification with Taiwan was opposed by some ministers. They held that it should be put off.47 All the ministers in the court were against assigning Shi Lang to the post and deemed that Shi would revolt when he reached Taiwan.48 Despite what the ministers insisted, Kangxi stuck to idea of reunification with Taiwan. He transferred Wan Zhengse, the governor general

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

of the navy, who assumed that “Taiwan was hard to capture and there was no need to occupy Taiwan”49 to be the coordinator of the ground force; La Ha, the general of Fujian who was opposed to the recovery of Taiwan and maintained that “Taiwan could definitely not be recovered” 50 was transferred to Beijing. In 1681 (the 20th year of the Kangxi’s reign), Emperor Kangxi deployed Yao Qisheng, the governor general of Fujian, to lead the armed forces of Fujian and cooperate with Shi Lang, the coordinator, to attack Penghu and Taiwan. Taking into account the armed forces in Taiwan at that time, Shi Lang held that in order to recover Taiwan the Penghu should be firstly seized. “It was just like cutting off its throat and the overall situation would be clear”.51 And the forces in Taiwan would collapse without being attacked. In 1683 (the 22nd year of the Kangxi’s reign), after a period of training, Shi Lang led 300 warships and 20,000 marine soldiers to attack Penghu from Fujian. The Zheng bloc concentrated their forces in Penghu and deployed the valiant Liu Guoxuan to defend it. “Barriers were set up along the shore as protection” 52 The army led by Shi Lang was fully prepared and their martial spirit had been greatly roused. The Qing army pressed on and fought for seven days to defeat the Zheng army. Liu Guoxuan fled back to Taiwan by boat. The Qing army had captured Penghu, the gateway of Taiwan, which shocked the Zheng bloc. Taiwan was in collapse.53 Zheng Keshuang led all the people to surrender to the Qing regime and the Qing army entered and garrisoned Taiwan successfully. The reunification of Taiwan won the support of the Taiwan people. When Shi Lang led the army into Taiwan, “people lined the streets to welcome the army with drinks and the marine soldiers made of the flag of the Qing army to greet them”.54 The local people of Gaoshan nationality also welcomed the Qing army. After the capture of Taiwan, opinions were divided as to how to deal with the Taiwan issue. Someone put forward the idea “to abandon the area and to emigrate the people”.55 Shi Lang maintained it necessary to defend Taiwan as after long-term development, Taiwan was a rich and productive area. It was strategically located in national defense. “If the place was taken by the western invaders, there would be no peace for the coastal areas and national safety would be in danger”.56 Kangxi was in favor of Shi Lang’s opinion and pointed out that “the Taiwan issue was of vital importance” and “it was unfeasible to abandon the area”. 57 In 1684 (the 23rd year of the Kangxi’s reign), the Qing regime set up the Taiwan government office and three counties, namely Taiwan, Fengshan and Zhuluo, which belonged to Fujian. One chief general, two deputy generals and 8,000 soldiers were deployed there. Since the earliest times, Taiwan had been an inseparable part of China and now it was again under the central control of the Qing government.

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

The Enhancement of Feudal Imperial Power and the Political Organization of the Qing Dynasty The Enhancement of Feudal Imperial Power in the Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty was the last dynasty of China’s feudal autocracy. The Qing army was the joint dictatorship of the Manchu and Han landlord class with the Manchu aristocrats as the main part. It was the advanced stage of the centralization of the feudal autocracy. The imperial power was the centre of the political system. The national feudal ruling machine which was complex and strictly hierarchical was controlled by the emperor. The emperor demonstrated the will of the heaven and his position was sacred and inviolable. In Chinese history, the development and the rise and fall of imperial power concerned social stability, national strength, ruling efficiency and the balance of power. Advanced despotism and strong imperial power was the inevitable trend since after the Song and Ming dynasties. On the one hand, the power should be concentrated to govern a vast, populous and multinational country. In the circumstances of feudal politics and economy, the concentration of the central power inevitably took the form of the enhancement of imperial power. On the other hand, since Chinese feudal society had entered into the late period, to maintain the economic foundation the feudal super-structure had to enhance its powers of suppression and control. Every coin has two sides. The analysis of the feudal central autocracy should be made as follows. In the darkness of imperial rule and unmerciful oppression, we can see the advance of history. The glorious achievement of mankind was accompanied by uncivilized behavior. The imperial power was enhanced and developed in the struggles among various opposing powers. Before the entrance to the Shanhaiguan and shortly Fig. 5.6. The treasure of the emperor and the seal character (The seal character of the Manchu)

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

after the entrance, to maintain the existence and development of the imperial power, there were fierce conflicts among the imperial family and the leaders of the eight banners. At that time, if the internal strife and separatist trends were not cracked down upon, it would have been impossible to suppress the peasant army and the south Ming regime, to put down the three feudatories, and to rule the whole nation. After Emperor Kangxi took the throne, the further enhancement of the imperial power continued. In the 18th year of the Kangxi’s reign, a governor and deputy governor were set up in each banner to “administer the Manchurian people and soldiers”. 58 The governor of each banner reported directly to the emperor and the nobility of each banner had no right whatsoever to intervene. In his later years, Emperor Kangxi designated his sons to manage the eight banners to enhance control. After Emperor Yongzheng took the throne, he spared no effort to lash out at the power of the leaders of the banners and to break the relationship of administrative subordination between the leader and the subordinates. Empeor Yongzheng once said: “If there were two masters of the five banners, how could the nation survive?” 59 It was stipulated that “the leader should not punish the subordinates arbitrarily and cases should be reported to the related divisions”.60 Therefore, with interference in the imperial power eliminated, the further development of autocratic centralization was ensured. Having learned the governing lessons from the past dynasties, the Qing dynasty guarded against every possible disadvantage which might affect and usurp the imperial power. Apart from the autocracy of the Empress Cixi for over a decade in the late period of the Qing dynasty, the Qing regime witnessed no political turbulence caused by imperial relatives, eunuchs and factions as had been seen in the Han, Tang, Song and Ming dynasties. The reason was that the Qing rulers had taken various precautionary measures. Eunuchs were under the strict control of the division of internal affairs to prevent them from forming a power system. In the reign of Emperor Qianlong, Zhang Ruoying, an officer in a lowly who beat eunuchs with cudgels, was promoted by seven ranks. Factions were strictly prohibited in the early Qing period. In the case of the intellectuals of the landlord class in the south of the Yangtze River who were involved with Ming, collusion was suppressed. The trend of forming factions was restrained. Emperor Kangxi said: “If the subjects develop their own factions, state affairs and the regime will be damaged”.61 Emperor Yongzheng detested factions and wrote an essay entitled “On Factions” to warn officials to protect the imperial power. The emperors in the early and middle period of the Qing dynasty were capable and hard-working. Emperor Kangxi said: “In all kinds of work, no

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

matter whether big or trivial, I shirked no responsibility to deal with it in person”. 62 Emperor Yongzheng energetically took care of every single thing personally. When someone once commented on his paying attention to trivial matters, he rebuked: “Whoever thinks it is not necessary for me to take care of trivial things is so ignorant. If the emperor does not deal with state affairs in person, he may be deceived by others”.63 He set up secret agencies to get to know things in detail and report to him”.64 Emperor Qianlong said: “Ever since the foundation of the Qing dynasty, the power to make decisions has laid in the hands of the emperor. Ever trusted ministers could not affect the decision making” 65; “I read memorials and make the decisions myself, which is not affected by ministers”.66 The three emperors governed China for approximately one and a half centuries. With their personal talents and dispositions, they held the imperial power all to themselves, which pushed the regime of autocratic concentration to a peak in history.

The Political Organization of the Qing Dynasty The evolution of the central organs: The Council of Princes and Ministers, the Cabinet, the South Study, the Grand Council The implementation of the political power of the feudal autocracy called for a strong military force and a gigantic bureaucratic organization, which were the two pillars of the autocratic imperial power. In the early period of the Qing dynasty, the Council of Princes and Ministers was the central organ. “When the nation was established, several princes and ministers were appointed. Manchu ministers assumed the positions. Important state and military affairs were discussed by the ministers”. 67 In this political system the power lay with a small group of princes and aristocrats, which did not serve the purpose of autocratic rule. As the power of the ministers and aristocrats was imposed on it, the political system declined. The cabinet was the nominal central organ in the Qing dynasty. In 1658 (the 15th years of the Shunzhi reign), the Qing regime copied the system of the Ming dynasty in changing the three academies into a cabinet. There were altogether four palaces and two cabinets, namely the Zhonghe Palace, Baohe Palace, Wenhua Palace, Wuying Palace, Wenyuan Palace and the east cabinet. In the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the Zhonghe Palace was abolished and the Tiren cabinet was set up. So there were three palaces and three cabinets. In the early period of the Qing dynasty, the grand secretary was of the fifth rank. In the period when Ao Bai helped administer the country, “conforming to the ancient laws and recovering the old rules”,68 the cabinet was abolished and the

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

three academies were restored. After eradicating the Ao Bai group, the three academies were changed into a cabinet. The establishment and remove of the cabinet reflected the struggle within the ruling class. The system of a cabinet was the product of autocratic politics. It was established to assist the emperor to deal with state affairs. It was a formal organ of the government and had great authority. Figures in the cabinet of the Ming dynasty such as Zhang Juzheng possessed great power. In order to further expand the imperial power and repress the power of the cabinet, the Qing regime endowed great power to the south study and the Grand Council which were less formal. In the reign of Yongzheng, although the grand secretary was of high rank, he did not have real power. The emperor read the memorials in personal. Ministers in the cabinet had no right whatsoever to interfere. If necessary, the emperor would call for the ministers in the cabinet to write proposals, “which could be issued after being agreed to by the emperor”. 69 Especially after the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, and “with the establishment of the Grand Coucil, the cabinet and prime minister performed practically no function”.70 Since the position of the grand secretary was of high rank but had no real power, it was usually used as a measure to promote someone in name but demote him in reality in order to adjust the balance of power within the ruling class. In 1677 (the 16th year of the Kangxi’s reign), in order to meet the needs of the centralization of power, members of the imperial academy were asked to be on duty in the south academy of the Qianqing Palace. The number of people Fig. 5.7.

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The old site of the Grand Council

The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

was not fixed. The south study was actually the secretary to provide assistance to deal with political affairs for the emperor. Therefore “except for the trusted followers, nobody was allowed to enter the Grand Council”.71 Emperor Kangxi selected intellectuals of the landlord class, such as Zhang Ying and Gao Shiqi, to serve in the south study as a means to win them over. After the establishment of the Grand Coucil, the south study did not deal with any confidential issues but focused on poetry, painting and calligraphy. The Grand Council was established in the reign of Emperor Yongzheng. To deal with the military emergencies of the northwest in fighting the Junggar, “it was urgent to set up a military office in the Longzong Gate”. 72 Officers were selected from the cabinet to deal with the confidential issues and later the place was renamed as the Grand Council. In 1729 (the 7th year of the Yongzheng’s reign), Yun Xiang, the Yiqin prince, and Jiang Tingxi and Zhang Tingyu, the grand secretaries, were appointed to deal with confidential issues. There is no exact record of the date of the establishment of the Grand Council. According to the account of Emperor Qianlong in the 48th of his reign, the Grand Council was set up in 1730 (the 8th year in the reign of Yongzheng). Liang Zhangju who used to be an officer of the Grand Council agreed with the statement73 and the extant records of the Grand Council begin from the 8th year of the Yongzheng’s reign. The function and power of the Grand Council were both important and wide. It reported directly to the emperor. The officers of the Grand Council worked out ideas for the emperor, wrote documents, and dealt with major political issue such as the promotion and demotion of officials, hearing cases, checking of the revenues etc. “The Grand Council dealt with state plans and national affairs until a century after the reign of Yongzheng and Qianlong.”74 The Grand Council was the product of the centralization of the feudal autocracy. Its main characteristics were swiftness and confidentiality in dealing with state affairs, but it was not an independent department. “The Grand Council was closely linked with the central court and dealt with political affairs quickly and secretly”. 75 The affairs managed by the Grand Council could be divided into different categories according to the degree of urgency. In 1800 (the 5th year of the reign of Jiaqing), an imperial edict stressed that “the top priority of the Grand Council was confidentiality. There should be no leakage in delivery of the message”. 76 There should be no eunuchs around when the emperor met the ministers. The precautionary measures of the Grand Council were extremely strict. Even senior princes and ministers were not allowed in. The Grand Council took orders from the emperor and had no room for independent actions and decision-making. “The mission of the Grand Council was to report and disseminate information. It had no power to modify any messages”. 77 The organizational form of the Grand Council was very special

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

and it was not an independent department. The ministers of the Grand Council were appointed by the emperor. There was no fixed number of the officers of the Grand Council. There were six to seven at most. To prevent the information from leaking, officers took turns to keep records and check the memorials. “The servants dealing with the miscellaneous affairs were all boys picked from the Internal Affairs Department and they were ordered to leave after they were 20 years old”.78

The government office of the central departments The central administrative departments of the Qing dynasty followed the pattern of the Ming dynasty. Six mininstries were set up, namely the Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs, the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Penalties and the Ministry of Works. There was one minister and two masters in each ministry. The officials of the six ministries had no power to issue orders to the local governments. If the minister and the master disagreed over something, each of them could report to the emperor and let the emperor decide. In the long run, the power of the six ministries lay with the Manchu officials. Kangxi said: “If not involved in the affairs, the Han ministers kept silent”.79 “The Han officials, regardless of rank, shifted the responsibility to the Manchu officials. If the issues were not managed properly, they would shirk the responsibility”.80 Someone commented on the situation in the reign of Kangxi: “The grand secretary did not deal with any political affairs. Feng Pu, Li Wei, Song Deyi and Wang Xi meet the celebrated scholars and competed with each other in poetry”.81 Among the six ministries, the Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs ranked the top. The emperor directly appointed the ministers. The officials of the middle and lower ranks had no real power. They dealt with the procedures of the appointment and dismiss of the officials. The Ministry of Revenue administered the national fields, registered residences and financial revenue, which were lengthy and jumbled. There were 14 divisions under its control which governed the revenue issues of several provinces. The Ministry of Rites governed the ceremonies, schools, and examinations. But its functions overlapped with those of the Taichang Temple and Guanglu Temple. Nominally, the Ministry of War was the highest military organ of the country. But in fact military affairs were managed by the Grand Council according to the intention of the emperor. “The function of the Ministry of War was to evaluate the performance of soldiers”.82 The Ministry of Penalties dealt with criminal cases. The division of labor was not very clear in the ministry. The separation of responsibility was confused and the work was inefficient for the Grand Council

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

and Censorate also governed criminal cases. Such was the case in the Ministry of Works. Affiliated divisions such as the Yuheng division was supposed to be in charge of hunting and fishing, but dealt with arms and ammunition; the Tuntian division was supposed to administer farming but it actually monitored the construction of the imperial tombs. When the reform of bureaucratic politics was conducted in the late period of the Qing dynasty, the Qing rulers admitted that the six ministries did not live up to their names. “The Ministry of Official Personnel, the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of War did not govern the affairs they dealt with. The functions of the ministries were in disorder”.83 The Censorate was the central watchdog institution. The censors were in charge of the affairs of the institution. In order to enhance the imperial power, the six divisions were combined to form the Censorate to supervise and impeach the officials outside Beijing. Ever since the Tang dynasty, the national administrative supervision was united. This was the feature of the Qing watchdog institutions, which met the requirement for enhancing the imperial power. To make the full use of the officials who acted as the informers of the emperor, in 1690 (the 29th year of the Kangxi’s reign), the censor was appointed as a Council minister to participate in national affairs. The emperor encouraged the censor to have a say and to impeach lawbreakers. Kangxi said: “If there was any unlawful behavior among the princes and ministers, the censor should report the case”.84 But there was no real independent censorship in the extreme autocratic system. With the enhancement of the imperial power, the supervising authority remained in name only and censors was afraid to violate the imperial power. In the 36th year of the Kangxi’s reign an imperial edict stated: “There have been few memorials lately. As to the current politics, very few ministers talk directly about what is going on in the country”. 85 In the 5th year of the Qianling reign an edict read: “Although censors of the nation submitted many memorials, most were obsolete issues and there was nearly none that could be adopted”.86 The Qing regime made a great contribution to to the integration and consolidation of the multi-national country. Its merits surpassed all the previous generations. An academy to govern the issues of the ethnic minorities was set up in the central government. The roles of minister and masters were taken by Manchus or Mongols. There were six divisions, namely Qiji, Wanghui, Dianshu, Rouyuan, Laiyuan and Lixing. “The rank and salary system, reward and punishment of the Mongolian and Hui nationalities and other minorities were controlled”.87 The academy and the Ministry of Rites were also in charge

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

of part of the negotiations with foreign nations. Before the establishment of the government office dealing with international affairs, the academy administered the negotiations with Russia and the Russian Pavilion to receive Russian emissaries and merchants. The organ governing the royal family was the Zongren government office. The officials were selected from the Manchu aristocrats. The Zongren government office discussed and handled contentious cases within the royal family. To show the importance of the imperial family, the Zongren government office ranked top among the government organizations and its position was above the cabinet and the six ministries. All the offspring of Tashi, who was the father of Nu Erhachi, were the direct yellow line, which was the imperial clan; the collateral red line was Jueluo. Members of the imperial clan and the Jueluo line assumed important positions in the government, had pensions, and enjoyed extra rewards in terms of weddings and funerals. If they committed crimes, their penalties should be mitigated. There was an internal affairs department to administer the affairs of the court and attend to the life of the emperor. The department was large and possessed broad functions. There were seven divisions, namely Guangzhu, Duyu, Zhangyi, Kuaiji, Yingzao, Qingfen and Shenxing; and three academies, namely, Shangsi, Wubei and Fengchen. There was a bureau to govern handicrafts and a bureau to govern the eunuchs. The internal affairs department dealt with the clothing and family issues of the imperial three banners as well as somet of the issues administered by the six ministries. 88 There were over 3,000 officers as well as craftsmen, soldiers and eunuchs, while there were over 1,700 people in the six ministries. This was a reflection of the autocracy of the imperial power over organization and personnel.

Local Organs of Power There were four levels of province, prefecture, government and county, and each level reported to the higher level. The province was the highest local administrative organization. The governer general controlled several provinces and the grand coordinator governed one province. The civil and military governors were sent temporarily by the Ming dynasty and became permanent commanders representing the emperor and holding the military and political power of several provinces. The governor general was of the first rank; the grand coordinator was of the second rank. The civil and military governors were in charge of the provincial armies. In the early and middle period of the Qing dynasty, the roles of governor general and grand

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

coordinator were assumed by the Manchu people and the Han bannermen. In the reign of Emperor Kangxi, most of the posts of governor general were assumed by Manchu officers. In the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the number of Manchu coordinators and Han coordinators was equal, but most of the governor generals were Manchu people. After the Taiping revolution, there were more Han governor generals in order to achieve the mutual checking of the governor general and the coordinator. In some areas, both the governor and coordinator were established. This meant that the autocratic imperial power could control the local areas better. Auxiliary officer of the governor general were political secretary and supervising secretary. The former was of the second rank and the latter was of the third rank and governed the revenue and judicial affairs. The level under the province was the prefecture which was not an administrative area according to the system of the Ming dynasty. The governor of the prefecture had no rank and was sent for errands. In the reign of Emperor Qianlong, posts of governor and coordinator of the prefecture were set up. The former mainly dealt with political affairs while the latter was in charge of criminal cases. The officials of the prefectures could order and control the military officials within the prefecture. Apart from that, officials were set to govern specific issues, such as governing grain, salt, watercourses and customs. The level below was the government. The magistrate was an official of the fourth rank. “The magistrate governed the whole county, brought good to and removed evil from the area. The local military and political affairs were managed”.89 Since officials under the control of the magistrate were stationed in different areas, a fixed administrative unit named the Office came into being. The Office was an affiliated unit of the government. Although the Office and the state were fixed administrative units, they were not first class political organs. The next level was the county. There was one magistrate of the seventh rank. There were inspectors, and a registrar and prison officer to govern the affairs of the county under the leadership of the magistrate. Since the magistrate of the county directly governed the people, he was called the people-centered officer. In the late period of the Qing dynasty, there were altogether 1,358 counties in the country. There were agencies and neighborhood administrative systems below county level and they were the primary level organization which did not belong to the formal administrative system. The leadership was taken by the landlords and rich people of the local area. In the early Qing dynasty, agencies had a more important place than the neighborhood administrative system while it was the other way around in the late period of the Qing dynasty. The system of Li (里) and She (社) was to divide the nation into Li (county)

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

and Fang Xiang (city). One hundred and ten households constituted a Li . The leader was changed regularly to investigate the revenue and members of the families and to formulate tax systems. The agencies focused on collecting taxes. After the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, unified taxation was implemented to reform the tax system. The system of Li and She gradually fell out of use. But Li and She were the organizations which assisted the government in issuing “the notification of taxex”.90 The neighbourhood administrative system had been in existence since the beginning of the Qing dynasty. Ten household constituted one Pai (牌); ten Pai constituted one Jia (甲); and ten Jia constituted one Bao (保). The system was aimed at maintaining the peace and prevented the people from revolting. “Every household was given a paper card on which to write names and number of adult men. If they traveled to other places, the place name should be given. The information should be reported at the end of each month for the government to check”.91 The statistics of the household were needed to clarify the tax of each household to make a record. The household registration system was humanoriented to make clear the situation of population mobility. After the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, the scattered revolts increased. To suppress the revolts of the people, the Qing government repeatedly ordered local areas to carry out the neighborhood administrative system. The government maintained that: “the neighborhood administrative system is the best way to suppress revolts”.92 The system was put into practice in rural areas, towns and cities where handicrafts were popular, such as Suzhou and Jingdezhen, remote mountainous areas and the ethnic minority areas. “Land owner and employers who had contact with bandits and rebelling groups would be punished”.93 In ethnic minority areas, the system was applied to each place. Officials of local areas who did not carry out the system would be punished severely”.94 “There were too many farmers in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Mongolia and it was hard to discriminate the good and the bad. Anyone who delayed the land rent and was of obscure origin should be reported to the government”.95 Li , She and the neighborhood administrative system were organizations at the basic level. They expanded to every corner of the country, which formed a large ruling network. The system exploited people to the utmost and monitored their thoughts and actions. It exhibited that the national machine exercised closer control over the masses.

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

The Official Appointment and Dismissal System and the Imperial Examination System of the Qing Dynasty The bureaucratic organization of the Qing dynasty expanded and there were over 30,000 officials, which was more than that of Song and Ming dynasties. The feudal bureaucratic organization and feudal armies were the tools used to exploit and oppress the people. Marx pointed out: “The existence of the government authorities is reflected by the officials, armies, administrative organs and justice. Without its form, it would be merely a shadow, an imagination, and an undeserved reputation”.96 The officials of the Qing dynasty could be classified into three categories. Officials appointed directly by the emperor were called Tejian (特簡) and were not restricted by any laws; officials recommended by others were called Huitui (會推); the offspring of officials who had died in the line of duty or had rendered great service could inherit the position. The recommendation system was also promoted. In the 23rd year of the Kangxi’s reign, “he ordered ministers to recommend honest officials”; in the 4th year of the Yongzheng’s reign, provinces were required to recommend able and virtuous personages; Qianlong repeatedly asked ministers to recommend capable officials in secret. In the 41st year of the Kangxi’s reign, the recommended person should not be a countryman or current official of the province of the official who put forward the proposal. These things should be avoided. If the recommendation was false or the recommended person committed crimes, the one who gave the recommendation would be punished. Fig. 5.8.

Kangxi’s visit at the south of China

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

Fig. 5.9.

The permit denoting the job position of Jiang Hui

The Qing dynasty followed the imperial examination system of the Ming dynasty as the official way for cultivating and selecting officials. Candidates should pass the primary level examinations (examination of the county, examination of the prefecture and examination of the academy) to achieve the qualification of Xiucai (秀才) in order to participate in the provincial examination, metropolitan examination and the final imperial examination. The examinations mentioned above were held every three years. The provincial examination was held in the provincial capital and those who passed the examination were called Juren (舉人); the metropolitan examination was held in the capital of the country and those who passed the examination were called Gongshi (貢士). The final imperial examination was held by the emperor in person. The final imperial examination was divided into three levels. The first level included three persons, namely the Number One Scholar, Number Two Scholar and the Number Three Scholar, all of which were conferred as Jinshi jidi (進士及第). They were directly appointed as officials in the Imperial Academy. The second level and the third level were the same as Jinshi . Although it was stipulated that Manchu and Han officers should attend the imperial competitive examination, the Manchu relied on their privileges to secure an official position instead of the examinations. But, the imperial examination was a way for Han officials to participate in political affairs. The content of the imperial competitive system was still the eight-legged essay, which set questions from the Four Books (四書) and Five Classics (五經). The thought, paragraphs and

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

layout of the essay were strictly stipulated to stifle the thoughts of intellectuals. To hunt for skills, alleviate the confrontation with the Han bureaucrat and to expand the ruling foundations, Emperor Kangxi set up extra divisions such as the erudite learning division, economic division and filial piety division. In the 17th year of the Kangxi’s reign, people were recommended by the ministers and attended the examination in the imperial court. Candidates with prestige would all be admitted. Zhu Yizun, Tang Bin, Pan Lei, Mao Qiling and You Tong were all endowed with official positions in the Hanlin Academy. The promotion of the imperial examination system not only selected skilled personnel for the feudal governance but also expanded the ruling foundation of the Qing regime. Moreover the denotion of official position was very popular in the Qing dynasty. In the early period of the Shuzhi reign, a scholar who had been demoted could resume his previous position by paying taxes. 97 In the 13th year of the Kangxi’s reign, under the name of complementing the shortage of official positions, two million liang of silver were collected and there were over 500 magistrates who got positions in this way. 98 To prevent the officials from misusing their authority, Emperor Kangxi ordered that the capable officials could be promoted while the incapable ones could not participate in political affairs within three years.99 The above edict could not be executed in reality. In the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, except for the governor of the prefecture, all its subordinate positions could be obtained by denoting, including the positions of military officers. In the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the positions of civil official, such as magistrate and master could be obtained; military positions such as Gongsheng (貢生) and Jiansheng (監生) could also be obtained. The implementation of the position denoting system complemented the revenue of the Qing dynasty but caused the expansion of the feudal bureaucratic organizations and the corruption of the officials. The position denoting system was one of the disadvantages of the political corruption of the Qing regime. Someone said: “The position denoting system caused corruption among officials and social stability was thus difficult to achieve”.100 “The discipline was lax and the trend of denoting could not be restrained, which led to chaos.101 The forms of appointment of officials of the Qing dynasty were as follows: Agent position: the officials were on probation for two years (later three years) and were endowed with the real power afterwards. Part-time position: the grand secretary also took the role of minister; the governor general assumed the responsibility of military minister and vice-prime minister. Asssitant: the lower level official which took the responsibility of senior officials.

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

Promotion: to attach higher rank to the original rank, such as attaching a secretary to the county official. Extra appointment: this was special treatment from the emperor. In the 50th year of the Kangxi’s reign, Xu Yuanmeng was appointed as special scholar of the cabinet for his good translation record. Dismissal but retain: although someone was dismissed, he was retained at a post. The Qing regime implemented the check-up system on the officials. The check was held every three years. The check of local officials was called Daji (大計) and the check of the officials in Beijing was called Jingcha (京察). “If officials were competent, they would be rewarded and promoted; if not, they would be punished or dismissed”.102 As to the check method, the local governor and officials in Beijing su bmitted a statement to illustrate a person’s merits and demerits. The officials of lower ranks would be checked by the Censorate. Officials of the Censorate who showed favoritism to somebody should be punished. However, the check became formalistic in practice. In the early period of the Qing dynasty, the qualifications of officials were strictly regulated. “Officials should be with clear family background. The servants of the Manchu and Han families should not be allowed to assume official positions”.103 Some positions, such as officer of the imperial academy, the Ministry of Officials and Personnel and the Ministry of Rites were required to pass the imperil examination, except for members of the eight banners. The appointment and removal system of the Qing dynasty was centered on the enhancement of the imperial power. The privileges of the Manchu officers were ensured. In the appointment system, the Qing regime invented the system which appointed officials according to the shortage of officials of each nationality. Officials in the Zongren government, the academy managing the affairs of the ethnic minorities and the storage facilities for money, provisions and gunpowder should be of Manchu nationality. Most of the local governors were Manchu people or Han bannermen. Officials below the rank of magistrate were Han people. The Han officers were not allowed to take the place of Manchu officers even if there were vacancies. This was a reflection of the ethnic discrimination of the Qing dynasty. On the one hand, the Qing regime made use of the Han officials; on the other hand, the Qing rulers were afraid that the Han officials would form a group to fight against the Manchu aristocrats. So the rulers guarded against the Han officials, which gave rise to the avoidance system and related punishment system. The Han officers could not take an official position in their native province and or within 500 li ; if someone was a relative of the superior official, he should avoid the position in order to prevent forming a group. The

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senior official could recommend the junior official and if the recommended official committed a crime, the senior official should be punished. The senior official should take some responsibility even if there was no recommendation relationship between them.

The Army and the Laws of Qing Dynasty The Army The army was the main constituent of the state apparatus and was the tool of government of the ruled class. It was the most important pillar of the centralization of the feudal autocracy. The Qing regime was established after large-scale military suppression, and military rule was a characteristic of the Qing regime. Although the Qing dynasty referred to the military system of the Ming dynasty, its military system and army building were developed on the basis on the Manchu eight-banner system. After the Qing army had entered the Shanhaiguan, the regular military system of the eight banners was established and formed strictly according to nationalities. There were in all 220,000 soldiers with the Manchu eight banner army as the main body. The eight banner army was hereditary and the banner soldiers were picked from the bannermen over 16 years old. Issues concerning the eight banners were adminstered by the government, whose function was to “deal with the political issues of the Manchu, Mongolian and Han armies; and to administer residential registration and other civil and military issues”.104 In the early period of the Qing dynasty, the eight banner army was the armed forces composed of the bordered yellow banner, yellow banner, white banner, red banner, bordered white banner, bordered red banner, blue banner and bordered blue banner. With the establishment of the Qing regime, the army was divided into the guard eight banner army and the garrison eight banner army, both of which were under the control of the nation instead of the leaders of the banners. The part of the guard army which was responsible for the safety of the palace was called Langwei (郎衛). The army was composed of the soldiers from the yellow, bordered yellow and white banners and was governed by imperial ministers. In the reign of Emperor Kangxi, bannermen of the above three banners and some Han warriors were selected as bodyguards. To draw the other five banners to his side, Emperor Yongzheng also picked bodyguards from the other five banners. The soldiers who were responsible for guarding the capital city and gates in Beijing were called custodian. The custodian was divided into guarding battalion, infantry battalion, cavalry battalion and vanguard battalion. Governors were appointed to lead and control each battalion. The

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infantry government was set up to govern the military force in Beijing and was responsible for hunting down and arresting criminals”.105 Interdicts to control people were also executed by the infantry government. Since the government assumed the role of guarding the capital and monitoring the people, the officials of the infantry government were selected from trusted ministers. Apart from this special troops were established, such as the artillery battalion, gunpowder battalion, and strategy battalion. The garrison eight banner army was stationed throughout the nation. The principle of the garrison was the combination of garrisoning important places Fig. 5.10.

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Three seals of the eight banners

The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

and concentration of armed forces. There were over 17,000 soldiers stationed in Jifu, Rehe and around the mausoleum. There were 20,000 soldiers guarding Suiyuan and Zhangjiakou and 40,000 soldiers guarding the northeast. Eighteen thousand soldiers were stationed in the northwest; 18,000 soldiers in the southwest; and 16,000 soldiers in the interior. The eight banner army was a large and mobile armed force and could be deployed to the frontline in battles. There were 220,000 soldiers in the eight banner army scattered throughout the country. After the entrance into the Shanhaiguan, the Han people and landlord armed forces were recruited to form the green banner army, which earned its name through its green banner. The green banner army was classified into cavalry army, infantry army, defending army and naval army. The quota of the green banner army was not fixed. In the reign of Emperor Jiaqing, the number of the green banner soldiers amounted to over 660,000. There were 23 provincial commanders and 83 generals. Both the green banner army and the eight banner armies were the tools used by the Qing government to suppress the people and to maintain the regime. The national governance and national discrimination were reflected in the armies. For example, the eight banner armies had better equipment, political treatment and military payment than the green banner army. The troops of the green banner army stationed in the local places were monitored and controlled by the eight banner army. The provisions of the green banner army were less than one third of the eight banner army. The green banner army was corrupt and degenerate. The strong armed forces composed of the green banner and eight banners were the important pillars for the feudal governance of the Qing dynasty as well as the tools for military suppression. In the middle period of the Qing dynasty, both the eight banner army and green banner army were extremely corrupt and lost their role in suppressing the people. The army of the county was the informal local armed forces of the Han landlords. In suppressing the uprising of the White Lotus Society, the county army played an important role. During the Taiping Revolution, Zeng Guofan made his fortune based on the county army in Hunan and built the Yong battalion. The Xiang army led by Zeng Guofan, the previous Xiang army led by Zuo Zongtang and the Huai army led by Li Hongzhang arose in succession. Based on such armed forces, the Qing regime suppressed the Taiping Revolution. “The Yong battalion was stationed in the strategically important areas. The provisions of the green banner army were less than a quarter of those of the Yong army and many soldiers joined the Yong army”.106 It was not until the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 that the Qing regime ordered Yuan Shikai to train a new army by following the example of the foreign system to form a formal national ground force.

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

The Laws Lenin once pointed out: “Law is the reflection of the will of the class which has achieved victory and seized the political power”. 107 Law, which is the same as the country, is the product of irreconcilable class contradictions. It is the instrument of dictatorship of the ruling class over the ruled class. Before the Manchu people entered the Shanhaiguan, to meet the requirements of governance and the development of the class contradictions, the later Jin regime issued a series of military and political orders. Generally speaking, the period before the entrance of the Shanhaiguan was the transitory stage from common law to statute law. The law system was rather simple. “The laws were formulated according to temperory needs, which did not last long”.108 Faced with the complex class contradictions and national conflicts, the old laws could not fit the new national situation. To meet the need for governance, on the one hand The Law of the Ming Dynasty was applied. Duo Ergun ordered, “The punishment should be based on the law of the Ming dynasty”. On the other hand, legislative activities were accelerated. In 1647 (the 4th year of the Shunzhi reign), The Law of the Qing Dynasty was formulated, which was the first code of written law of the Qing dynasty. In the “Preface of the Imperial System,” Emperor Shunzhi said: “the formulation of the law absorbed the advantages of the law of the Ming and took the national conditions of the Qing dynasty into consideration.” Tan Qian, the then historian, criticized: “as a matter of fact, the law of the Qing dynasty was the same as the law of the Ming dynasty. Some contents of the Ming dynasty should not be applied to the current situation for things have changed”. 109 Because of that, The Law of the Qing Dynasty was not implemented faithfully after promulgation. In 1651 (the 8th year of the Shunzhi reign) Zhao Jinmei, the officer of the Penalty Ministry submitted a statement which said: “It has been a long time since the promulgation of the law, but observance of the law was scarcely seen”.110 The law had no force of constraint over the Manchu officers. Han Dai, the minister of the Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs submitted a statement which said: “there was no written law in terms of punishing the Manchu officers. The penalty of the officials was deliberated and discussed by persons”.111 In 1655 (the 12th year of the Shunzhi reign), it was ordered that a concise law system be formulated with reference to the previous dynasties. In 1689 (the 28th year of the Kangxi’s reign), the subsidiary legislations were compiled into The Law of the Qing Dynasty and notes were added after each text to illustrate the meaning. In 1707 (the 46th year of the Kangxi’s reign), the revision of The Law of the Qing Dynasty was finished, but the law was not officially implemented. After

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Emperor Yongzheng took the throne he actively rectified internal affairs and continued the reformulation of the law. In 1725 (the 3rd year of the Yongzheng’s reign), The Collection of the Law of the Qing Dynasty and Amendments of the Law of the Qing Dynasty were completed and were promulgated in the 5th year of the Yongzheng’s reign. In 1740 (the 5th year of the Qianlong’s reign), the law was reformulated and a relatively complete Qing Legal Code was formulated. There had been over a century of reformulation of the law from the early period of the Qing dynasty. Since the Qing rulers had accumulated more and more ruling experience, the records of the law were exhaustive and rigorous. In structure, The Law of the Qing Dynasty was the same as that of The Law of the Ming Dynasty . It was classified into the law of officials, law of revenue, law of rites, law of wars, law of penalty and law of industry. There were altogether 47 volumes, 30 aspects, 436 articles and 1,409 clauses in the subsidiary legislation. Apart from this, laws of the Uhygur nationality, Tibetan nationality and Mongol nationality were formulated. To sum up the experience of state activities and to improve the efficiency of governance, The Records of the Qing Dynasty was formulated by following the example of The Records of the Ming Dynasty from the reign of Emperor Kangxi. There were Records of Yongzheng, Records of Qianlong, and Records of Jiaqing. By the reign of Guanxu, the contents of the records amounted to over a hundred volumes and there were over 1,220 volumes of example instances. The Records of the Qing Dynasty was the most complete administrative code in the feudal age of China. The Law of the Qing Dynasty continued to use the traditional provisions of the feudal code which had been used since the Sui and Tang dynasties. 112 It served to suppress revolts by the people. The Collection of the Law of the Qing Dynasty explicitly regarded people’s revolts against feudal governance as the most evil behavior which could not be pardoned. To prevent people from organizing uprisings and revolts by using the form of religion and alignment, heresy, deluding people and causing trouble were listed as treason and conspiracy. The parents, grandparents, brothers, wives, concubines and children of the culprit who committed conspiracy should all be punished. Invasion and offence of the imperial family, defection and fleeing to a foreign nation, unlawful possession of gunpowder, and resisting arrest were all capital felonies. To sum up, under the cruel and autocratic control of the Qing dynasty, incautious,thoughts, words and actions might constitute crimes and be suppressed severely by the Qing regime. To defend the property rights and exploitation rights of the landlord class, The Law of the Qing Dynasty explicitly stipulated that if tenants were behind

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

in their rent they should be punished according to the law. The rent in arrears should be paid to the landlord. Robbery which infringed the property rights of landlords and bureaucrats should be punished according to the law and characters such as “thief” “robber” “plunderer” tattooed on the cheek of the culprit. After the middle period of the Qing dynasty, as the class contradictions became more acute, the judicial suppression was crueler. In the reign of Jiaqing, a notorious bandit leader was beheaded in public as a warning. In the first year of the Daoguang’s reign, robbers in the capital and in counties such as Daxing and Wanping were sentenced to death. In the reign of Emperor Xianfeng, the carrying out death sentence on the spot was implemented. The local governors had the power to kill people without reporting to the court. In the feudal Qing society, the different identities and ranks were clearly stipulated by law. These identities and ranks were expressions of the classes in the historical development stage. In the Qing dynasty there were different criteria for people of different status. People were not equal before the law. In the social stratum of the Qing dynasty, the imperial family and officials of ranks were the noblest; the second level was the common people; the third level was the employed workers; the lowest level was slaves and maid-servants. With regard to ranks and privileges, the law of the Qing dynasty resembled the laws of other dynasties. There were eight provisions which served as the grounds for treatment of people of different status. People of the noble class could be pardoned or their punishment mitigated if they committed crimes. The eight provisions could be applied not only to the person in question but also to their relatives. If someone was involved in legal affiliations such as marriage, debt and real estate, his family could represent him in court. In Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢, it was the execution of this legal privilege when Jia Rong sent his family to the court to testify. The interrogation and judgment of the officials should be based on certain procedures and principles. Reward and punishment depended on the will of the emperor instead of enforcement of the law. If criminal cases involved different classes, the juridicial provision was in the favor of the nobler side. If servants rebuked masters, the servants would be sentenced to death; the masters would be spared the death penalty if they killed servants. People who were listed in the lowest category had no protection from the laws. They were not permitted to secure an official position or to attend the examinations. If they committed crimes, they would be punished more severely. Although employed workers were free persons, in the case of a dispute with employers their punishment was more severe than that of common people and lighter than people of the lowest class.

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The Law of the Qing Dynasty defended the strict hierarchy and status relationships of the oppression of the feudal society. The Law of the Qing Dynasty inherited the tradition of past dynasties in terms of protecting the clan authority and paternity by compelling force. The articles stipulated: “If sons and grandsons violated the orders of parents and grandparents, they could be punished and even could be sentenced to death”. Parents could send sons and daughters to the government with the accusation of unfiliality. “If parents charged children of a crime, then the children should be punished according to the crime and there was no need for interrogation”.113 Children had no independent property rights in the family. Children had no marital autonomy. “Marriage was arranged by grandparents and parents”. 114 From the above we can see the authority of paternity. The authority of the clan was paternity in a broader scope. The clan leader was the judge holding the law of the clan and his will was the grounds for judging right or wrong. It was stipulated that the leader of the clan even possessed the right to kill. Children did not have the right of self-defence against elders. In conclusion, the stipulation of defending the feudal clan ruling was based on the feudal ethnics and morality. The requirement for complete filial piety to parents was in line with loyalty to the emperor. Therefore clauses concerning this aspect played an important role in the entire legal system. The Law of the Qing Dynasty listed a picture of mourning apparel into the code, which reflected the important meaning of distance and nobility with regard to crime and punishment. Since families were the basic constituent part of the nation, the stability of families was conducive to the stability of the nation. When the law endowed parents with privileges, the parents were required to shoulder more responsibilities for the country. There were four levels of judicial organizations from county to province. The governor of a province could only condemn the criminal to forced labor in remote places. If the crime was more severe, the case should be submitted to the Ministry of Penalties. A death sentence should be discussed by the Censorate, Grand Court and the Ministry of Penalties. A joint hearing should be held by the ministers of the six ministries, masters of the Censorate, political affairs officials and officials of the Grand Court, which was the highest level hearing. Emperor would order some princes and ministers to hear the case or conduct the interrogation in person in some major cases. Joint hearings could be classified into autumn hearings, rehearings and summer hearings. The autumn hearing was held in August each year. The three judicial departments renquested the death sentences of decapitation and hanging (criminals who committed felonies in the Qing dynasty would be

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

decapitated or hanged). The retrial of cases on which the Ministry of Penalties had issued the verdict and the cases which were committed around the capital was the rehearing. Each year, the rehearing was held after Frost’s Descent (18th solar term) and before the winter solstice. The summer hearing was held by the officials of the Grand Council, ministers of each prefecture and officials from the Ministry of Penalties 15 days after the Grain Full (8th solar term) and before the beginning of autumn. Cases which were tried after the autumn hearing and rehearing could be classified into four categories, namely cases which were turned out to be true and in which the accusation was proper; cases which were true but of little harm and would be handled in the next autumn hearing or rehearing; cases turned out to be true but were not serious and the criminals were exempt from the death sentence; and cases which were serious, but the criminal’s parents or grandparents were old had nobody to care for them, so the criminal would be exempt from the death sentence. These cases should all be submitted to the emperor for final decision. The cases tried by the autumn hearing and rehearing were limited to the cases of minor harm. The retrial system would not indulge criminals and could mitigate the punishment of the criminals within the ruling class. For example, in the 22nd year of the Kangxi’s reign, the emperor instructed: “since a man’s life is involved, considering the case is excusable, criminals are exempt from the death sentence”.115 In the 11th year of the Yongzhen reign an order was issued to the Ministry of Penalties: “If criminals may be spared from the death penalty, you should report and submit the cases to me”. 116 Emperor Qianlong and Emperor Jiaqing also issued such instructions. The Qing regime limited people’s litigation rights. For example, prisoners had no informants’ rights; children and women had no right to accuse their elders and husband. People were forbidden to submit reports bypassing the immediate leadership. “The injustice of people should be firstly reported to local government. If judged unfairly, the case should be reported to the superior organization. If the case was still unjustly trialed, it was allowed to appeal in the capital”.117 If a case was reported to the superior organization directly, the informant should be given 50 blows with a stick even if the case was true. During the period from April 1 to July 30 each year, the judicial organization of the Qing dynasty heard no cases except for the felonies. The avoidance system was developed in the Qing dynasty. If the principal in the trial was of the same banner, same place, or the relative with the litigant, the trial should avoid the case to prevent favoritism. The penalty measures of the Qing dynasty continued to use the four punishments of the Tang dynasty, which were beating with a stick, forced

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The Enforcement of Centralization of Administration

labor, exile, and the death sentence. Apart from the above, other kinds of punishment were established. Forcing the criminals to settle a thousand miles away; transporting the criminals to distant places from four to two thousand miles away for penal servitude; sending criminals to serve as the slaves of the garrison soldiers; putting the criminals to death by dismembering the body. There were 12 crimes in The Law of the Ming Dynasty which should be punished by dismembering the body. In The Law of the Qing Dynasty , the crimes were increased to 13. Even if the criminal died from natural causes, he should still be beheaded publicly as a warning. The prisons of the Qing dynasty were extremely dark. In the book Notes in the Prison (獄中雜記), Fang Bao gave an incisive description of the cruel treatment in the prisons of the Qing dynasty. From the main contents of The Law of the Qing Dynasty it can be seen that judicial suppression was part of the basic activities of the Qing dynasty and played an important role in defending the autocracy of the landlord class. Since the Qing dynasty was the late autocratic dynasty of Chinese feudal society, this historical characteristic was reflected in The Law of the Qing Dynasty . Firstly, legal privileges were endowed to the Manchu people in legislation. For example, if Manchu people committed crimes, they were tried by the military government and penalty department instead of common judicial organizations. The nobility and imperial family members would be sent to the Zongren government. According to the law, the Manchu people had the privilege of abatement from penalty. Even the death penalty could be commuted. If the Manchu criminal had committed robbery, they were spared from the tattoo punishment; if an ordinary criminal committed a felony the tattoo punishment could not be exempted. In order to maintain the combat capability of the eight banner army, soldiers who committed crimes were exempt from exile. The nobility and imperial family could use money for atonement. As a rule, the Manchu people were not put into prison if they committed crimes. Members of the nobility and imperial family were put into the wardship of the Zongren government; the common Manchu people were put into the cells of the internal affairs government where the treatment was better than in ordinary prisons. If there was dispute between the Manchu and Han people in Beijing, the Manchu people should prosecute to the leader of the prefecture while the Han people prosecuted to the government. Then each organization should submit the oral confession of the plaintiff to the Ministry of Revenue. The magistrate had no authority whatsoever to pass verdict on the Manchu criminals, and had to transfer the proof and suggestions for trial to the Manchu judicial organ.

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Secondly, the supreme judicial power lay in the hands of the emperor. All the final decisions were made by the emperor. The imperial edicts issued by the emperor at any time were of supreme legal authority. Since the emperor had the highest judicial power, the powers of ordinary judicial organs were scattered or overlapped. For example, the three judicial departments and hearings were the highest central level of trial in form, but had no real decisive power. As well as the judicial departments, the infantry government, Zongren government, and penalty department of the internal affairs government all had certain judicial authority. The check and balance was to ensure the emperor’s control over the supreme judicial authority. Thirdly, the clauses of the law were made full use of in the trial. Since the legislation was complex, the law could not take all the situations into consideration. Therefore the feudal court usually compared the real cases with related law articles to give the punishment to the criminals. It was explicitly stipulated in the Law of the Qing Dynasty that: “Crimes should be judged by the articles. The degree of the punishment should be adjusted in accordance with cases. Additional punishment and decrease of penalty should be submitted to the superior for discussion.” This applied not only to specific cases but also to criminal concepts and accusations. Some typical cases could serve as the reference for future cases of the same kind. With the increase in typical cases, the Ministry of Penalties simplified the typical cases into clauses. Being approved by the emperor, the clauses were attached to the law and were named as “example clauses”. As a formal basis for dealing with similar cases, the example clauses complemented the defects of the law. Although the content of the law remained unchanged, the example clauses were reformulated frequently. In the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the Law of the Qing Dynasty was reformulated. There were 436 articles and 1,409 example clauses. After the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the clauses were constantly revised. In the 9th year of the Tongzhi reign, the number of example clauses increased to 1,892. The legal validity of the example clauses equaled that of the articles. From historical and practical ruling experience, the Qing rulers came to realize that the example clause was a more flexible legal form. It could better adapt to the changes of the situation of class struggles to ensure the interests of a feudal country and the landlord class. In such a way, the feudal judicial officials were imperious and assertive and they could quote any example clause they viewed necessary to oppress people and to maintain the rule of the landlord class.

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6

Chapter

The Development of the Agricultural Economy and the Feudal Farm Rent and Taxation System

A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

Agricultural Policy and Water Conservancy Construction of the Qing Dynasty Agricultural Policies during the Reign of Kangxi In the early Qing dynasty, the government of Shunzhi engaged in a military crackdown on the resistance against the Qing regime by laboring people. During the reign of eighteen years, positive measures such as the abolition of the “three taxations”, “the remission of tax” and “the encouragement and reward for wasteland reclamation” etc. were adopted. However due to the limitations of the objective conditions, few effects were achieved. By the early years of Kangxi’s reign, severe situations of “fleeing peasants and dilapidated farmlands” still existed in some regions. For example in Sichuan province, which was the important battlefield where Li Zicheng and the remaining armies of Zheng Xianzhong led by Li Dingguo and Li Laiheng kept fighting against the Qing regime for twenties years, there were still “farmlands for cultivation but no peasants to cultivate them” 1 by the tenth year of Kangxi for here the Qing soldiers massacred the laboring people with an unparalleled savagery. In the regions of the southeast coast the struggles of people against the Qing regime were the most furious. The Qing rulers carried out brutal massacres. As a result, in the bustling areas to south of the Yangtze River, during the first years of Kangxi, “everywhere was the same desolate picture … farmlands were also dilapidated due to lack of labor”.2 And similar situations occurred in other provinces including Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi. Emperor Kangxi attached great importance to the resumption and development of agriculture production, the increase of public revenue, and the consolidation of ruling power. Especially after Taiwan was regained and the revolt of the three feudatories was suppressed in 1683 (the 23rd year of the Kangxi’s reign), the ruling order of feudalism became relatively stable. Moreover Kangxi carried on and developed the agricultural policies of the reign of Shunzhi and took a series of measures that could objectively contribute to the resumption and development of the social economy. All of this laid a solid foundation for the social economic development in the early Qing dynasty. Firstly, the policy of “remission of tax” was adopted. After the first years of the Kangxi’s reign, tax was still remitted in years of flood and drought disasters as before; and “several provinces were exempted from taxation every year and a province has been remitted tax for a few years”.3 After 1701 (the 40th year of

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Kangxi), the system of “tax exemption rotations” was carried out. It divided all the provinces into three batches, and each batch was remitted taxes every three years. In that year, apart from “sundry taxes of tribute grain”, six provinces including Nanjing, Fengtian, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou were exempted from “farmland tax in silver”, “poll tax in silver” and “outstanding payments over the years” 4 with a total remission of over 9,562,500 liang of silver. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Revenue, from 1662 (the first year of Kangxi) to 1710 (the 49th year of Kangxi), “more than billions of liang of silver had been exempted” 5 in less than fifty years. The policy of “tax remission” in the reign of Kangxi was firstly beneficial to the feudal landlord class. And for the owner-peasants that held little land or even tenants that owned no lands, their burdens were also more or less lessened. In 1690 (the 29th year of Kangxi’s reign), in Shandong province poll tax was exempted; and, “gentry and plutocrats were exhorted to reduce their farm rent by one to five fen (分) in the year of tax remission”. 6 Thus tenants who possessed no land could deliver less farm rent. In 1710 (the 49th year of Kangxi’s reign) Gao Xiachang, an officer of the Military Department, presented a memorial proposing the introduction of methods in Shandong and the regions south of the Yangtze River all over the country. “Hereafter, in the tax remission year, the owner-peasants and tenants were remitted respectively a tax of seven and three fen . This was written down as a permanent regulation”.7 Secondly, the policy of “the encouragement of and reward for wasteland reclamation” was implemented to absorb the labor force. After Kangxi ascended the throne Xu Xuling, an imperial supervisor of Yunnan Prefecture, pointed out that there were three reasons for “the failure in wasteland reclamation in the past twenties years” since the reign of Shunzhi. “Firstly, tax and corvée were so imperative that the rich were troubled by possession of wasteland; secondly, the poor suffered from receiving wasteland for they had no money to cultivate the land; lastly, the performance of officials was so loosely assessed that they did not fulfill their duty in wasteland reclamation.” In the light of this, Kangxi adopted necessary measures. In 1671 (the 10th year of Kangxi’s reign), it was provided that “people of landlord class who reclaimed twenty qing (頃) of wasteland and who were also literate should be appointed as assistant county magistrate; those that were illiterate should be appointed as low-ranking military officers. Those who reclaimed one hundred qing of wasteland and were also literate should be appointed as county magistrate; those who were illiterate should be appointed to as high-ranking military officers”. 8 For local officials, it was stipulated those that those who made achievements in wasteland

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reclamation should be promoted and those who did not should be dismissed. All possible means should be employed to encourage the reclamation of wasteland and the expansion of planting areas. “The set pattern of wasteland reclamation” in the reign of Shunzhi stipulated that land tax should be levied on wasteland at the most six years after it was reclaimed. But this regulation was changed in 1673 (the 12th year of Kangxi), with a new provision that “hereafter, in all provinces, land tax should be levied on wasteland ten years after it is reclaimed”.9 For certain provinces, it was provided that “official lands should be granted to refugees and official cattle should be loaned to the poor. Public revenue should be spent on the construction of pools and water conservancy. Then people would get rich and more and more people would engage in wasteland reclamation”.10 After ten years of efforts, good results were obtained in the reclamation of wasteland. In the four southwest provinces of Sichuan, Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou it could be seen that land had been devastated by “the revolt of the three feudatories”, “these areas were in sorry states, farmlands were abandoned and dilapidated and one could even not bear what he saw and heard”. However things were changed after this rebellion was repressed. Thanks to over thirty years’ management, by the 51st year of Kangxi, “the population in these regions has been increasing gradually, all wastelands have been reclaimed… and both mountains valleys and rugged places have been cultivated with no lands abandoned”.11 In terms of cultivated land area all over the nation, in 1651 (the 8th year of the Shunzhi reign) there was altogether 2,908,584 qing whereas in 1722 (the 61st year of Kangxi), it rose to 8,510,992 qing , an increase of more than 6,000,000 qing in seventy one years. Thirdly, “the change of land ownership” was carried out. In the 8th year of Kangxi, the Qing government issued the order that lands owned by seigniors in the Ming Dynasty should “be granted to peasants and be possessed by them forever”.12 These parts of the vassal estates of the Ming dynasty, which was altogether about 170,000 or 180,000 qing , were located separately in the eight provinces of Zhili, Shanxi, Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Part of these lands had been taken over by peasants during the great uprisings of peasants in the late Ming dynasty. At first the government of Qing dynasty intended to ask the peasants to purchase these vassal estates of the Ming dynasty that already belonged to them. “Distinguish the cultivated land from wasteland and sell them accordingly at the current prices”; “those that rent the land shall undertake to purchase it. 13 But the laboring people at that time “even worried that they could not afford the regular payments of money

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(farm rent) and grain (land tax), so it was impossible for them to have spare money to purchase land”.14 Therefore they were strongly against the measures of appraising the vassal properties at the current prices. After rooting out the Ao Bai group, in order to maintain social order and develop agricultural production, Kangxi revoked the order of selling the vassal estates at the current prices and gave a new order that “lands that have not been sold shall be transferred to the ownership of peasants”, admitting the land ownership of the peasants. This was the so-called “change of land ownership”. Moreover because tenants that came into possessions of vassal lands suffered from the heavy payments of grain (land tax) and silver (farm rent), “it was ordered that these lands were exempt from payment of silver and only grain was levied on them”. 15 Hence a part of peasants’ possessions of vassal lands were legalized and they became land-holding peasants, escaping the exploitation of “appraisal” and “heavy farm rent”.

River Improvement From the Song, Yuan and Ming to the Qing dynasty, the course of the lower Yellow River ran from Henan province across the northern area of Jiangsu province. It joined the Huai River and the Canal near the southern area of the Huai River and then flowed into the sea. The Yellow River carried along a lot of mud and sand. Its course, which had been out of repair for years, was blocked up by sand and the dykes were not strong enough. Thus it often flooded and burst its banks. This also influenced the Huai River and the Canal, causing floods for Henan and the northern region of Jiangsu every year. According to the incomplete statistics during the reign of Emperor Shunzhi, the Yellow River burst its banks severely altogether fifteen times, causing great damage to the life and properties of laboring people. Although the Qing dynasty “recruited and used thousands of able-bodied men to harness the Yellow River”, “dykes were now built and now broken”,16 so no effects were gained. In the first years of Kangxi flood disasters became more serious. From 1662 to 1677 (the first year of Kangxi to the 16th year), the Yellow River breached the defences heavily more than 67 times and Henan and the northern area of Jiangsu were greatly destroyed. For example, in the first year of the Kangxi’s reign, a flood broke out in Henan and “Daliang city was besieged by floodwater; the remaining waves destroyed Zhengzhou city; seven tenth parts of Zhongmu county were lost; Pengchi county was submerged by branches of the flood; all houses in Zhengzhou and Yangzhou cities were flooded; the whole area became inundated”;17 in 1667 (the 6th year of Kangxi) theYellow River burst its banks in

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Taoyuan and “cities and counties along the Yellow River all suffered from flood ... the floodwater poured into Hongze Lake, the water in Gaoyou was nearly two zhang 丈 deep and thousands of people were drowned for the city gate was blocked by water”;18 in 1670 (the 9th year of Kangxi) both the Yellow River and the Huai River overflowed and the banks in Gaoyan were burst. “Unstrained, the flood rolled in waves; the dyke was like a candle in the wind; if the west wind blew up, the flood would rush down vigorously; then the areas in the east of Jiangdu, Baoying and Taizhou cities would be flooded and cities and counties in the north of Xianghua city would be submerged.”19 Fig. 6.1.

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Harnessing of the Huai River (Part)

The Agricultural Economy and the Feudal System

Kangxi paid great attention to river improvement. He regarded the three feudatories, harnessing rivers and water transport of grain to the capital as the three important matters that need to be resolved before all others. He even “wrote these down and hung it on the pillar of the palace”. Especially due to the fact that Yellow River, Huai River and the Canal mingled in the corner of northern Jiangsu, when th Yellow River and Huai River flooded water would flow backwards into the Canal, jamming it and stopping transport from the south to the north of China. The political center of the Qing dynasty—Beijing, was economically dependent on the support of the south. Every year the Qing government needed to transport by water 4 million shi (石) of grain from southern provinces to Beijing to supply the legions of government officials and soldiers with food. If the Canal was clogged up and the grain could not be transported to Beijing on time, chaos and panic would be brought about immediately. So it can be said that the main reason why the Qing rulers gave great importance to the harnessing of Yellow River was to “transport grain by water” and so to ensure the stability of order and the consolidation of state power. Before “the revolt of the three feudatories” was suppressed, the Qing dynasty had not had time to take river improvement into consideration. It was not until 1677 (the 16th year of Kangxi), when the Qing dynasty had gained the upper hand in the war with “the three feudatories” that it decided to harness the rivers in a large-scale way. Le Fu was appointed as governor-general of rivers. Le Fu, who was from the Han Army of the yellow-edged banner (one of the “Eight Banners”, which was the household registration system in the Qing Dynasty), was a former inspector-general in Anhui province. When worked in Anhui he paid attention to farmlands and water conservancy, carried out on-the-spot surveys, and absorbed the experience of laboring people. When harnessing the Yellow River, “regardless of whether they were gentry, soldiers, ordinary people, craftsmen or those who do corvée labor, whoever had a opinion that was practicable”, “Le Fu was ready to take his advice, wishing to do things appropriately”. 20 He recognized the ability of Chen Huang, an intellectual with no fame or government post, promoted him and put him in an important position to assist him in harnessing the river. Chen Huang was an excellent expert in water conservancy who had conducted deep research on the characteristics and improvement methods of Yellow River. He held that “those that manage to improve the river, first of all, need to make a thorough investigation of th features of the water and then choose the harnessing methods accordingly such as dredging, storing, controlling, discharging, diverting or closing. All of these methods need to conform to the nature of the

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river”. 21 Based on previous expositions and his own experience, Chen Huang gave a comparatively scientific explanation as to why the soil erosion of the Yellow River was the cause for floods. He pointed out that “among all the rivers in China, the source of Yellow River was the furthest” and its drainage area was the largest; moreover it flowed through desert areas with sandy soil in the northwest of China; and as we all know, the more rapid the river flows, the more turbid and muddy the water and the easier the riverbed is silted up and hence the easier the dyke is breached. 22 He proposed that not only the lower reaches but also the upper reaches of Yellow River should be improved. “Farsighted, courageous and resourceful”, Chen Huang kept the great ambition of harnessing the Yellow River in mind and “regarded the doing of good to society and the bringing of peace to the people as his duty”.23 In order to help Le Fu improve the Yellow River, he did not shrink from any hardships and did his utmost. “In stormy weathers, Chen Huang sailed a small light boat alone, examining the river at risk of great dangers; hence he was very familiar with how deep the water was and when the water would increase or dry up”. 24 “Whether in winter or summer, by day or night, Chen Huang worked together with craftsmen for long years”.25 Such a knowledgeable and diligent intellectual as Chen Huang was indeed rare and commendable at that time. Le Fu and Chen Huang’s improvement of the Yellow River can be divided into two stages. The first stage was from 1677 to 1683 (from the 16th to the 22nd year of Kangxi). The main project was to stop up the bursts and direct the Yellow River back to its original course. Because the Yellow River flows very rapidly, huge fascines that were used to block the bursts were often washed away as well as people, leaving people feeling extremely fearful and helpless. This made the project rather difficult. Chen Huang adopted the method of digging irrigation channels and constructing dams to first slow down the flow of water and then block the bursts and close the dykes. In years, the breaks in the banks of the Yellow River in Gaojiayan and other places were completely stopped up and the Yellow River and Huai River retook their original courses. A long dyke was also put up in the Clean Water Pond with swift currents, which was the only path for boats transporting grain. Lashed by torrents, boats often sank. It was estimated that it would cost 570,000 liang of silver to build a dyke here. And “there was even the doubt as to whether the project could be finished before the money ran out”. Again, Chen Huang changed the old way of construction—building a dyke straight across the pond. Rather, he proposed “constructing the dyke around the pond and building it in shallow waters by slightly winding the way”. Finally, a dyke of tens of li long with the shape of a half-moon was put up and it only cost 90,000 liang of silver. It was recorded that

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“boats that cross the pond have never been submerged, so nowadays it is called Forever Safety River”.26 The second stage was from 1683 to 1688 (from the 22nd to the 27th year of Kangxi) and the focus of the project moved slightly to the upper reaches. In order to protect the embankments and prevent their washing away, in regions around Kaocheng and Yifeng in Henan province a 7,989-zhang -long dyke was put up; in Fengqiu, a 330-zhang -long dyke in the shape of the moon was built; in Yingyang, a 310-zhang -long fascine was constructed. And the digging of a middle channel, in particular, played a great role in ensuring the safety of boats navigating across the Canal. In the past, after leaving Qingkou (a part of Yellow River that is not completely frozen in winter), boats that transported grain across the Canal had to cover a distance of 180 Li along the Yellow River. During this journey, boats sailed very slowly and more temporary workers need to be hired. Both the winds and huge waves were very perilous and hence boats often foundered. Le Fu and Chen Huang cut a middle channel on the northern bank of Yellow River. Thus after leaving Qingkou, boats would need to sail for only 20 Li and then enter into the middle channel, avoiding dangers on the journey of more than 100 li . This improved the efficiency in transportation and greatly reduced the loss of lives and properties. Thanks to ten years of improvement of the Yellow River by Le Fu and Chen Huang, great effects were obtained. “Water returned to its original course and the transport of grain was clear of obstructions”. Stretches of lands in areas around northern Jiangsu, which had long been submerged, became fertile land that could be cultivated; “thousands of qing of land that used to be boundless water have been gradually dried out”. And 3 million mu 畝 of lands were dried off in the five counties of Shuyang, Haizhou, Suqian, Taoyuan and Qinghe alone. Le Fu’s achievements were commented on by later generations as follows: “It took Le Fu just eight years to harness the Yellow River that burst its banks in the Ming dynasty and it only cost no more than several million liang of silver” 27 and the “Yellow River has been tranquil for fifty years”. 28 On his sixth inspection tour to the South in 1707, when inspecting river conservancy works, Emperor Kangxi also expressed his praises of Le Fu: “after receiving the task, Le Fu weighs and considers the appropriate time, examines the situation, puts up dykes and dams, and explores all possible ways to divert the river. He dauntlessly brushes aside all objections and exerts himself to the utmost to serve the county. Thus the original courses of the Yellow River and Huai River are resumed one by one and the transport of grain has free water passages. All of his improvement methods cannot be changed; afterwards, though officials of rivers promote new methods of harnessing rivers, his overall framework

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and measures cannot be changed. As for the middle channel, it is cut to avoid dangers of waves in 180 li ’s sailing along the Yellow River. Thus grain can be easily transported by water to the capital, benefiting merchants and saving the people, Le Fu makes great contributions to waterway transport and people’s livehood. Every time I come to the bank, I make visits to the army and people in the regions along the Huai River. They all extol Le Fu’s merits in harnessing the river and speak with one voice that has stood the test of time”.29 These words are a pertinent commentary on Le Fu’s achievements in river improvement as well as those of Chen Huang. Of course, the river improvement by Le Fu and Chen Huang was only a partial one, for under the social and technical conditions of feudalism it was impossible to improve the Yellow River in a complete way. During their more than ten years work on harnessing the river they continually received obstruction and objections from all parties. Since river conservancy works were very large, the water conditions were complicated and dykes were now blocked and now breached, the effects could not be seen within a short period. So some began to make sarcastic comments and others demanded the methods of river improvement be changed. For example, Wei Xiangshu criticized Le Fu for spending too much money but producing no results. He said, “where is the so-called solution that holds good for all time?”. Cui Weiya presented a memorial—Meager Opinions on Flood Prevention —advocating scrapping Le Fu’s project of river improvement. Yu Chenglong and Mu Tianyan etc, objected to the cutting of the middle channel, holding that “it will bring no benefits but disasters to the people”. But Le Fu indomitably insisted on his position and won the trust of Kangxi. Thanks to this, the river improvement project could be carried on. Especially in 1685 (the 24th year of Kangxi), there was a great debate between Le Fu and Yu Chenglong on the drainage of water collected in depressions of the lower river and the dredging of the estuary. Yu Chenglong maintained “the estuary should be dredged so that water collected can flow freely”. 30 At first glance, this claim seemed to be reasonable in some degree. However Yu neglected the problem that seawater would flood the land after the estuary was dug lower. Le Fu held that “the depressions of the lower river are five chi (尺) lower than the sea level. So if the estuary was dredged, tides would invade the lower land, bringing great disasters”.31 Taking a broad and long-term view, he advocated “a big river be dug and a one zhang and five chi -long dyke be built up to control waters of one zhang in depth and withstand tides”.32 He also proposed “measuring the lands dried out inside the dykes to give it back to the people; and recruiting people to reclaim the land and paying them with the value of land”.33 This method of “controlling of water and expelling of sea”

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not only prevented seawater from flooding the land but also contributed to the development of agriculture by summoning peasants to open up wasteland and grow food grain. The debate on the two techniques of river improvement—whether to dredging the estuary or to construct the dyke and control sand, flared up into a big political turmoil because interests of all parties of ruling class were involved in it. After water collected sluiced, a large stretch of land dried out. Covetous of these lands, landlords and bureaucrats on the one hand attempted to take over them as their own and on the other hand, managed to transfer the land tax that should be paid onto laboring people. But applying the methods of “reclamation of land” and “payment with the value of land”, Le Fu nationalized the land and hence put an end to the plundering and secret occupation of land by landlords and despotic gentries, touching a raw nerve. Thus a vast number of officials rallied together to attack Le Fu for “seizing waste lands from people” and called Chen Huang “a mean person”. 34 They even requested that Le Fu be killed. Although Emperor Kangxi, to some degree, affirmed Le Fu’s achievements in taming rivers and allowed him to defend himself in the imperial court, he also expressed his dissatisfaction with Le Fu’s daring to harm the interests of many landlords and publicly shielded landlords and despotic gentry in seizing lands secretly. He said that “as the governor-general of rivers, Le Fu dug rivers and constructed dykes. So it cannot be said that he has not made achievements. However, with respect to the matter of opening up land and seizing the river, he cannot escape the responsibility for the offence”.35 He also said, “civilian land in all provinces is levied on a quota of grain (as land tax); so if the rest of the lands are opened up to grow food grain, it will disturb the people”.36 At that time the Mingzhu clique was impeached. Since Le Fu had connections with Mingzhu, he was also involved in this factional strife and was removed from his office in 1688 (the 27th year of Kangxi). Chen Huang was sent to the jail in Beijing. Worried and indignant, he died of illness before being put in prison. Both an assiduous official and an excellent expert fell sacrifice to factional fighting in feudal society. After Le Fu was discharged Wang Xining, an old bureaucrat, succeeded him as governor-general of rivers but he achieved no success in taming rivers. On his inspection tour to the South, Kangxi learnt that “in Huaian and areas south of the Yangtze River etc. both peasants and boatmen praised Le Fu, the former governor-general of rivers, and missed him very much”.37 Therefore Le Fu was reinstated in 1692, but he died of illness half a year later after taking office. After their deaths, Le Fu and Chen Huang’s achievements in river improvement stood the test of time and became more and more remarkable.

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Even those who had objected them had to show their admiration. From then on, thirties years afterwards, Yu Chenglong and Zhang Penghe etc. held the post of governor-general of rivers one after another and they all generally followed Le Fu’s guiding principles for river improvement. Yu Chenglong used to be strongly against Le Fu. Later, when Kangxi asked him, “‘you criticized Le Fu that the dam for reducing water should not be constructed, how is the result now?’ Yu said, ‘I talked nonsense at that time; from now on, I will follow the example of Le Fu’ “.38

Reformation of the Taxation and Corvée System The Chaotic Taxation and Corvée System and the Heavy Burden of Tax and Corvée in the Early Qing Dynasty Following the taxation and corvée system in the Ming dynasty, “land tax” and “corvée” were the main revenue for the feudal state of the Qing dynasty. Marx said: “taxes are the life source for bureaucrats, troops, priests and royal courts. In one word, they are the life source for the whole institution of administrative power. And a powerful government also means heavy taxation.” 39 Chairman Mao pointed out: “in order to feed a large group of government officials and troops that are mainly used to suppress peasants, countries with a landlord class not only compelled peasants to pay tribute and taxes but also forced them to do unpaid corvée.”40 The so-called “land tax” was a quota of taxes that land-owners (including landlords, small land-owners and land-holding peasants) paid to the government every year by the mu ; the so-called “corvée” referred to the fact that adult males between 16 and 60 years old (so-called “able-bodied men”) had to undertake regular forced labor for the government without pay every year. These two tax collections—“land tax” and “poll corvée” had constantly been the “official taxes” in feudal countries. At the early stage of feudal society, “land tax” was to deliver grain (also called “main taxes”) and “corvée” was to do forced labor service. At the final stage of feudal society, as the feudal rulers needed more and more currency, a great part of the two “main taxes”— “land tax” and “poll corvée” were paid in silver and money. A part of the grain (that is grain to be transported by water to the capital) was still delivered to satisfy the consumption of troops and feudal governments at all levels. This portion of taxation and corvée, which was paid to feudal states in silver and copper coin converted from the payments in kind, was also called “converted taxes” (taxes paid in silver and money) and “corvée silver”.

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The taxation and corvée system in the early Qing dynasty was both very chaotic and complicated. As far as “land tax” is concerned, “lands are divided into two types—civilian lands and reclaimed lands, which are further classified as lands with high, low and medium yields”. The ways to levy land tax included “main tax, converted taxes and half principal collection and half converted taxes”; “basic tax refers to food grains transported by water, which includes main grain (rice) and coarse food grains (such as beans, wheat, buckwheat, hemp etc.); converted tax refers to converting payment of tax in kind into payment in silver. At first, it was provided that it was converted into silver only, but later copper coin was also allowed”.41 As for “corvée”, things were more or less different from province to province but “they all followed the old rules and regulations of the Ming dynasty”. “Some collected according to the grades of land; some in accordance with the One Lash Method; some introduced poll tax into land tax; and some collected poll tax”.42 From the above it can be seen that land taxes in the early Qing dynasty were mainly collected in silver, although payments in silver, money and grain were all allowed. Moreover, in spite of the differences in the methods of levying “corvée” between provinces, the collection of silver was also the major one. Rulers in the early Qing dynasty adopted separate methods to impose “land tax” and “corvée”, which was the policy of “separation of land tax and corvée”.43 In order to deceive laboring people, the rulers of the Qing dynasty levied a not too high amount of “main tax”. But besides this there were “surtaxes” that were imposed under assorted names. In some regions, the amount of “surtaxes” was always three to five times higher than that of the “main tax”.44 So it could be said that “the main taxes were not very many whereas the additional taxes were innumerable”45; laboring people “did not suffer from tax, but from extra taxes”.46 In the early Qing dynasty there were “surtaxes” of every description, such as “tribute for depletion” (also called “additional tax for tribute” or “supertax”). Governments would smelt fragmentary silver collected into a certain amount of silver ingots through processing and casting and then hand them in to the exchequer. The depletion in processing and the conveyance cost were named “tribute for depletion”. For another example, the depletion in the process of delivering grain to the warehouse was called “depletion by sparrows” or “depletion by mice”. And all of the depletion would be imposed on laboring people, so further grain and silver would be demanded. In the early Qing dynasty the salaries of civil officials and military officers of all levels were not very high in name. In 1678 (the 17th year of Kangxi) Cao Xi, an official in charge of the knitted silk production for royal families, whose position was equivalent

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to officials of fifth or sixth rank, “drew a salary of 130 liang of silver every year” and “five dou 斗 of rice every month”.47 In 1698 (the 37th year of Kangxi) Cao Yan, the son of Cao Xi who succeeded to his father’s post, “was paid a salary of 105 liang of silver every year” and “five dou of rice every month”. 48 But such a low salary was far from enough to maintain the luxurious livestyles of bureaucrats at various levels and their families. So in the early Qing dynasty, corruption cases involving bureaucrats occurred repeatedly. In order to subsidize the living costs of all ranks of bureaucrats, when the “main tax” was collected the Qing government allowed officials in various parts of the country to levy a certain amount of additional silver, which was glorified as “silver for honest and upright officials”. Thus local officials at different levels could wantonly levy “silver for honest and upright officials”, some of which was even as high as more than ten percent of the “main tax”. In fact, the imposition of “silver for honest and upright officials” further legalized corruption. There were also th so-called “surcharge” and “sundry corvée” etc. These “surtaxes” of all descriptions, which were all imposed on the laboring people, increased the burdens of the laboring people and pushed them into the depths of suffering. Besides “surtaxes”, local bureaucrats could also extort excessive taxes and levies and willfully “apportion secret levies” under the guise of numerous names and on all sorts of pretexts. In the 40th year of Kangxi, Zhao Shenqiao, provincial governor of Pianyuan City in Hunan province, pointed out: “The people were so poor and weary because they have been tyrannized for years. And it was the miscellaneous levies apportioned secretly that did greatest harm to people.”49 And in Hunan province there was a kind of “secret apportionment of levy” called “Ruantai” apportioned and collected by local government, and “one liang shi (石) was increased to four or five qian (錢)”; another kind of “secret apportionment of levy” named “Yingtuo” was paid by neighborhoods in turns and “one liang shi was increased to four or five liang ”.50 (Note: land tax in Hunan was collected with the calculating units of liang and shi , which was different from other provinces’ unit of mu . As a result of the blood-sucking exploitations of the feudal local authorities, laboring people were forced to “sell their children and property, commit suicide or flee away”.51 However local officials in Hunan still “apportion sundry levy by one by” on the pretext of “official duty” and “apportionments every year were too many to count. For instance “there were levies on the final accounts of land tax and corvée, on the expenses of posthouses and the trials of cases, on the costs of transporting grain by water to the capital” etc; “all levels of government from cities, counties, prefectures, ting (a local government office in the Qing dynasty) to provinces, apportioned extra levies; tax was also apportioned when the birthdays of high-

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ranking officials and festivals were celebrated and when a new official took office; and there was also apportionment on receiving of guests and the sending of gifts”.52 In Guangdong province, yamen runners who went to the countryside to press peasants for payments of money and grain “lead retainers and bailiffs to keep a pack of henchmen to go fishing and hunting, to gather secretly many sentries to serve for them and to dispose henchmen everywhere to search for silk. Tens or hundreds of yamen runners arbitrarily arrested people all over the counties, vilifying them for tax arrears and insults of women and deceiving them into doing corvée”. 53 This, of course, went beyond the scope of “secret apportionment of levy” and became ferocious public robbery. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, phenomena such as shifts of taxation and corvée and inequality in tax and corvée were very serious. In Wujing county of Jiangsu province, the malpractices of “unequal imposition and transferring of taxes” in the late Ming dynasty still occurred in the early Qing dynasty. “There were countless land taxes and sundry duties. Some people who held hundreds of mu of land did not pay any tax corvée whereas those who possessed a few or tens of mu of land became insolvent and were reduced to becoming fugitives due to heavy levies”. During the last years of the reign of Emperor Shunzhi and the early years of the reign of Emperor Kangxi, Hu Bingzhong pointed out: “Zhili (nowadays Hebei province), the other provinces, cities and counties, and guard posts all compiled records of taxpayers and male adults on the basis of the old numbers; corvee was levied on those who reached maturity whereas those who had died were still imposed on; in this case, the number of people that did force labor reduced and there was inequality in the assignment of duties”. Under the exploitation of heavy taxation and corvée, having no way out, laboring people “either were reduced to cult members and thieves or fled to other places”. 54 In 1662 (the first year of Emperor Kangxi), “although the prefectures of Su and Song, in name, were widely said to be prosperous, the amount of their farmlands, unexpectedly, was never investigated”. Although some people had sold their land, they still had to deliver tax and corvée. “Those that possessed a large stretch of land did not do any corvée labor but transferred it to laboring people; as a result, land were held by households without any levies whereas corvée was imposed on those with no land”.55 At that time “those that had died were still kept on the records and those that were just born were registered and ordered to do corvée”.50 This situation could be seen everywhere. The pitfalls of taxation and corvée in the early Qing dynasty not only led to chaotic finance and directly influenced the public revenue of the government, but also harbored the danger of forcing laboring people to risk danger in depression, which would certainly intensify class contradictions. Therefore

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there was a need for the rulers of th Qing dynasty to rectify and reform the taxation and corvée system.

The Rectification and Reformation of the Taxation and Corvée System in the Early Qing Dynasty The rulers in the Qing dynasty began to rectify and reform the system of taxation and corvée immediately after they broke through the border. The first problem they encountered was that since the late Ming dynasty, the records of census registers and lands had all disappeared so the levy of taxation and corvée would be entirely without basis. As early as in the first year of the reign of Emperor Shunzhi, Ning Chengxun, a censor, proposed recompiling the volumes on taxation and corvée. He pointed out: “The system of taxation and corvée has not been issued, so officials and ordinary people have no rules to abide by”.58 In 1646 (the third year of Shunzhi), he reasserted this proposal and advocated “instructing all governing yamen (government office in feudal China), and provincial governors to carefully check and examine in detail the total amount of money and grain collected and compile the volume of taxation and corvée” . But at that time the revolutionary momentum of peasants’ revolts was on the upward surge and struggles against the Qing dynasty surged forward dramatically all over the country. Therefore the Qing rulers’ attempt to recompile the volumes on taxation and corvée was not achieved. In 1657 (the 14th year of Shunzhi), although fights against the Qing dynasty still continued in all the southwestern and southeastern regions, the rule of the Qing dynasty was already comparatively stable which provided certain conditions for the preliminary rectification and reformation of taxation and corvée throughout the country. Therefore, on the basis of the amount of taxation and corvée in the reign of Wanli in the Ming dynasty and remitting the heavy “three tax levies” and “sundry apportions of duties” in the reigns of Tianqi and Chongzhen in the late Ming dynasty Wang Hongzuo, an official of Ministry of Revenue, “compiled A Volume of Taxes and Corvée (賦役全書), which was well organized, and promulgated it to the country”.59 After A Volume of Taxes and Corvée was compiled, two volumes were dispatched to each zhou (an administrative division in ancient China) and county. “One was held by the official and the other was kept in the Confucian temple”. A register of land (also called land measurement record) was also drawn up, which “recorded in detail the grades of land—upper, middling and low”; a census record was also formulated to “record the increase and decrease of households and population”. Thus the “register of land and census record

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Fig. 6.2. The cover of Total Taxes and Corvée in Yongping Prefecture in the reign of Shunzhi

could be in harmony with each other”. For the levy of taxation and corvée, the “One Lash Method” of the reign of Wanli in the Ming dynasty was adopted. According to this method, “the total amount of taxes, grain, expenses of the prefecture, zhou and county, sundry levies, tributes, costs of recruiting and extra silver (that is the extra tax) were summed up and taxpayers could deliver a regular payment”.60 In order to prevent “secret apportionment of levy” by local government officials at various levels, a “comprehensible invoice” (that is letter of advice) was issued to “registered household occupants” (that is taxpayers). The invoice “lists separately the three grades of land, main, miscellaneous, basic levies, converted money and grain”61 and summed up the total amount in the end. A month before the collections of taxation and corvée, “invoices” would be handed out to taxpayers as proof in order to avoid mistakes. In addition to invoices, a “two-page note” was also distributed. It listed the actual amount

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of money and grain of both land tax and poll tax, and “the note was divided into ten parts and when the payments were finished, the part was cut”. In the middle of the “two-page note” there was a “seal” and “the note was split up into two pages”, of which “one was kept by officials, and the other by taxpayers”. Moreover, supplementary volumes that had multiple names and with mixed and disorderly content were also revised such as the “record of seals”, “record of households”, “record of grain”, “register of memorials on the total amount of collected taxes and grain”, and “register of checks on the money and grain in zhou , counties and prefectures”.62 Fig. 6.3. Land measurement record of Huizhou prefecture in the Qing dynasty

In the years of the Shunzhi reign, the Qing rulers made painstaking efforts in reforming the taxation and corvée. However, in the war-ridden years, these measures could not on the one hand prevent the landlord class from concealing their farmlands and shifting the payments of money and grain onto peasants with little or no land, or on the other hand prevent all levels of local government officials from such malpractices as “misappropriation of collected funds, false claims of the tax arrears by people, and secret apportionment of levies”.63

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Fig. 6.4. Invoice of Huiyin county in the reign of Shunzhi

Up to the first years of Kangxi’s reign although it was named a “comprehensible invoice”, the invoice was in fact “filled with various sections, which was difficult for laboring people to understand.” Therefore, duplicate and useless items such as and “register of checks on the money and grain in zhou , counties and prefectures” were abolished, and the rule that “census record be compiled every ten years and the accounting book every year” was also halted to make the census notice more simple and easier to carry out. It had been thirty years from 1657 (the 14th year of the Shunzhi reign) when A Volume of Taxes and Corvée was compiled, to 1685 (the 24th year of the reign of Kangxi). During this period, the number of households and total population and that of land underwent constant change. So if taxes and corvée were still levied in accordance with A Volume of Taxes and Corvée compiled in the years of Shunzhi reign, it would not, on the one hand, “increase corvée and taxes on the basis of the of households and lands respectively” or, on the other hand, benefit the public revenue of the Qing dynasty because “these assorted items

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were very easily confused”. Therefore in that year it was ordered that the whole book be recompiled. In this recompiling, in principle, it was provided that “only critical items were recorded such as expenses of the prefecture, zhou and county, extra levies on transporting grain by water to the capital, river conservancy works; odd amounts with the unit smaller than si (絲) and miao (秒) were cancelled; the recompiled vision was named A Concise Volume of Taxes and Corvée ”.64 In 1687 (the 26th year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi), the concise volume was finished. Because of the memorial of the provincial governor in Shanxi that local officials of different levels, under the pretext of inscribing “invoice”, wantonly “claimed the cost of paper and apportioned heavy levies and people were suffering from this”, it was stipulated that all provinces except Jiangsu province that would “still compile registers and present memorials as usual” for their special circumstances.65 The other provinces were forbidden to inscribe invoices. In the years of the reign of Emperor Kangxi the “two-page note” of the Shunzhi reign continued to be used for tax collection, one part of which was given to the taxpayer and the other was kept by officials”. But when collecting taxes and corvée, local officials always “made a pretext of checks and examination and did not give the notes to taxpayers”. So “there were some officials who although had already collected taxes or collected more than the proper amount claimed that they had not collected or had collected less”. In this way the bureaucrats lined their pockets. In order to prevent problems such as this in 1689 (the 28th year of Kangxi), the “two-page note” was changed into the “three-page note”, “one of which was kept by the zhou or county, one was given to the bailiffs who collected levies, and one to taxpayers as proof”. As for the two-page note, it was provided that “the amount of money and grain should be written down exactly”. It was also provided that when collecting taxes, if “officials instructed not to write or to pay back the note”, “people were allowed to report” and the nature of the crime would be decided as embezzlement”.66 Later the “four-page note was also inscribed”, one of which was delivered to the prefecture, one was kept as a stub, one was given to the taxpayer and one was put into a box by the taxpayer to cross off the due when he paid the tax. In order to prevent malpractices, the rulers who had really given much thought to the matter kept shifting methods from the two-page note, three-page note, to the four-page note. Although procedures of taxation became more and more over-elaborate, abuses still could not be remedied. Therefore the “three-page note was reused a short time after four-page note was implemented”. In 1700 (the 39th year of Kangxi) the “rolling note” was also drawn up to prevent all levels of bureaucrats from “secret apportionment”. A “register of rolling notes”,

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was compiled in every tu (圖) (a local administrative division in the Ming and Qing dynasties (also li ) on the basis of items on the “comprehensible invoice”; the total amount of taxes on every Li was listed. “The amount of land in every household should also be recorded firstly and then the actual liang of silver to be collected; thus the note was clear for people to understand”.67 It was named the “rolling note” because it provided that “in each li , five or ten households were grouped into a unit; in a rolling note, the amounts of land of every household, its silver and grain payable and payments of silver and grain owed respectively in spring and autumn were clearly listed; and the rolling note was given to the head of the jia (甲) (a unit of civil administration in former times in China), who was ordered to press households for payment of land tax within ten days and if households did not deliver, the head of the jia would push them on the second day. If they did not pay within ten days, they would be punished; this method was said to be very convenient. 68 In substance, the reason why the method of the rolling note was effective lay in that it adopted the system of implicating the Baojia (neighborhood administrative system) related to the household which was punished for the arrears of land tax. It was applied to push people for tax and corvée, which hence ensured the revenue of rulers. Despite the many decrees promulgated and the various reforms carried out by the government of the Qing dynasty, the chaos in the taxation and corvée system and taxation procedures still could not be eliminated and embezzlement and inequality in tax burdens still could not be prevented. Taxes and corvée were imposed on the basis of the amount of land and the number of male adults. However the statistics of land and male adults in the whole country were not at all accurate and the amount of land held by a household was always changing. Although the Qing government “counted the amount of land every ten years”, the gentry and bullies who relied on their power could underreport the amount of their land to escape the burden of land tax. As for the total number of male adults, there were not only the new-born and the dead but also those who came of age and who came out of age every year, so “the total number of male adults was checked and counted every five years”. However, when the male adults were counted, landlords could hide the actual number of male adults and laboring people could flee to other places. Therefore exact amount of land and number of male adults could not be established and hence tax and corvée could not be levied on a comparatively reliable basis. With the development of the economy, the stability of society and the increase of population, the rulers felt increasingly that there was a need to carry out a greater reform of taxation and corvée and especially to change the principle of imposing taxes and corvée in accordance with land and male adults,

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so that the chaos and problems brought about by the double standards of tax and corvée collection could be eliminated. In 1712 (the 51st year of Kangxi) the method that “no poll tax shall be imposed on newborns” began to be applied, taking the number of the population in the 50th year of Kangxi as the criteria. From then on, those who came of age would not need to bear the poll tax. In the imperial edict Kangxi said: “According to memorials of governor-generals and inspector-generals in every province, the numbers of increasing male adults have not been reported. Now the whole country has been at peace for a long time and the population has increased. In this case, it is impossible to levy the poll tax of money and grain on the basis of the present number of adult men, for although the number of adult men grows the amount of land does not increase. Therefore I order governor-generals of all provinces to fix the number of male adults in records of money and grain. And hereafter, newborns shall not be included in the poll tax. When checking the number of adult men, you only need to find out the actual increasing number and compile a new record to present a memorial. Every time I make imperial tours of local places, I find out that in a household of five or six adult men, only one pays money and grain and in one out of nine or ten adult men, only two or three pay. In the past, in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangzhou, Guangxi and Sichuan provinces, due to revolts, everywhere was destroyed, farmlands were dilapidated and abandoned and one could hardly bear what he had seen and heard. However, since the repression of these revolts, the population has been increased gradually and all wastelands have been reclaimed. There are some lands that were either filled with sands and stones or are hard to be cultivated. But in mountains and valleys, there have been no abandoned lands. From this it can be seen that the population is increasing. So what I want is to know the actual number of male adults, not to increase the levies of money and grain. When checking the number of adult men, governor-generals and officials in every province hide the actual number because they are afraid of the increase of duties”.69 Although the method that “no poll tax shall be imposed on newborns did not eliminate poll tax, the total amount of poll tax collected in the whole country became constant and would not increase with the growth of population. This would, to some degree, benefit laboring people with little or no land. At that time the landlord class held more land and was a smaller population (or needed not to pay any poll tax because of “remission”), but the laboring people had a larger population and less land (or even no land), so poll tax was mainly directly paid by laboring people. As poll tax would no longer be increased, the burden on the people became comparatively fixed. They then did not flee everywhere due to the heavy poll tax as they often had before and their life

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became stable to some degree. By carrying out this reform, Kangxi aimed to attract laboring people to the land once again. In this way not only was the number of households and total population checked but also the revenue from tax and corvée was increased. In the ten years from 1712 (the 51st year of Kangxi), when the method that “no poll tax will be imposed on newborns” was carried out to 1722 (the 61st year of Kangxi), the population increased to 25,309,178 with an increase of 454,320 due to the implementation of this policy; the amount of land to 8,510,992 qing (頃) and 40 mu (畝); the silver collected to 29,476,628 liang ; the grain collected to 4,668,833 shi . Compared with 1651 (the 8th year of Shunzhi), the population increased by 15,130,172 with a growth rate of 150 percent; land by 5,522,107 qing and 79 mu ; and silver collected by 8,376,486 liang with a growth rate of 44 percent. Although the total amount of poll tax became regular due to the implementation of the method that “no poll tax shall be imposed on newborns”, the problem of inequality in poll tax was not resolved. Poll tax was levied in accordance with the number of male adults in a household, so after a certain time this number would change because of births and deaths, and those who bore the poll tax burden would also change accordingly. Powerful landlords and bureaucrats could engage in embezzlement and malpractice and distort facts to suit their private ends, such as shifting poll tax onto powerless poor people. According to the rules in the Qing dynasty, “the names of male adults above sixty years old would be removed from the registers and those above sixteen years old would be added”; 70 when those above sixties years old were expunged, the newborns would be added to make up for the loss of number;71 but how to “make up for the loss in number”? In accordance with the stipulation, “the loss in a household should be made up for by the newborns. If there were not enough, the relatives should make up for the loss. If still not enough, the households that had a lot of grain should make up for the loss”. In checking, “the expunging” was named “nearly expunging” and “the making up” was called “nearly making up”. 72 It was because that “the expunging” and “the making up” were just right. That is, the number of “the expunging” coincided with that of “making up”, no more, no less. As a result, after a few generations, such unreasonable situations as these occurred, “both numbers of the descendants and quotas of population in households were different; hence, in some households, tens or hundreds of descendants undertook the tax of one person whereas in some households, one descendant undertook the taxes of ten or twenty people and thus it was hard for them to pay”.73 Especially during the period of checking that was conducted every five years, all the expenses were imposed on able-bodied men. Officials and yamen

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runners seized the chance to extort money and engage in various malpractices. According to records in the last years of the Kangxi’s reign, “charges imposed on ordinary people were rather heavy, including the costs of compiling registers by the shu (書) of li (里) (Shu : an ancient government post in charge of secretarial duties) and the shu of zhou (州) and counties, expenses of meals for heads of li and those of silk fabric, paper, ropes and bags; it was even several times more than the “poll silver” delivered to feudal counties. And conditions such as this had become a common phenomenon. “Things are the same in every county and those in Nanjing are the worst”. 74 Moreover the records of lands, population and grain were in the hands of the “heads of Li and Tu (both were local administrative divisions in the Ming and Qing dynasties)”. With power in their hands, these representatives of the landlord class could act willfully and increase the taxes levied on the poor ordinary people every year, regardless of the Qing government’s decree that “no poll tax shall be imposed on newborns”. “Poor peasants who possessed no farmland were imposed upon with duties whereas those who held hundreds of lands elude taxation openly, relying on their control of records of lands”. Laboring people “were levied one or two fen more in taxes this year and two to three fen more the next year. Taxes increased constantly year by year. In some households that have no land, every member had a levy of two or three, four or five qian .75

The Policy of Introducing Poll Tax into Land Tax and Its Implementation Although the policy that “no poll tax shall be imposed on newborns” implemented by the Qing dynasty made progress in the tax and corvée system, the long-standing situation of inequality in land tax and poll tax had not been settled. And bearing in mind the lessons of the peasants’ uprisings in the late Ming dynasty that were brought about by unequal shares of land tax and poll tax, some far-sighted officials and landlords were anxious and suggested some reform projects. For instance in 1656 (the 13th year of the reign of Emperor Shunzhi) Lei Ting, the county magistrate in Jiangsu province, held that “land tax and poll tax should be equalized”. In 1622 (the first year of Kangxi) Han Shiqi, the provincial governor of Jiangsu, in the light of circumstances in the prefectures of Su and Song where “land was possessed by households with no poll taxes, but poll taxes were imposed on households with no land”, proposed the method of “equalization of land tax and poll tax”, 76 which, however, was impossible achieve. In 1674 (the 13th year of Emperor Kangxi) Mu Tianyan, an official in Jiangsu, advocated carrying out the method of “equalization of land

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tax and poll tax” in Suzhou, Songzhou, Hangzhou and Jiazhou prefectures first. He presented a comparatively detailed set of proposals, which was described on the whole as “the lands in Yi (refers to county) would be equalized among all li (a local administrative division lower than Yi) and every household in a li would share both the land and grain (as land tax) equally; this project would be carried out every five years and transfer of ownership of land would be gathered to collect taxes”. 77 These bureaucrats mentioned above just saw the superficial phenomena of the problems and presented some utopian ideas that were hard to realize. In about the 20th year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi, Yu Chenglong, the county magistrate of Leting county in Zhili, perceived the problems of tax collection that were brought about by the double taxation standards-amount of land and number of people in a household. This taxation method that had been applied from generation to generation was not suited to the situation at that time. Holding that the cause of inequality in land tax and poll tax lay in “the separation between land tax and poll tax”, Yu advocated carrying out in Leting county the method of “equalization of land tax and poll tax”, which “would maintain the main levies of the rich and help the poor lay down their burdens of tax”.78 Some time later this method was tried in some areas of Anxiang county.79 But the short-term implementation of the policy of “combination of land tax and poll tax” met various interferences and objections. Before Yu Chenglong was able to apply his “equalization of land tax and poll tax” method he was transferred from Leting county, and Anxiang county was subjected to the censure and investigation of higher authorities for carrying out this method.80 During the years of the reign of Emperor of Kangxi it was Dong Zhisui, the censor in 1713 (the 52th year of Kangxi), who advocated the nationwide implementation of the policy of introducing poll tax into land tax quite early. He presented the proposal of “counting the total amount of land and the population and equalizing taxes in accordance with mu”. However this “was suspended as the Ministry of Revenue commented that it was difficult to carry out”. Later, with the tacit consent of Kangxi, “pilot projects were firstly launched in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces”.81 But it was not until 1716 (the 55th year of Kangxi) that “in Guangdong province, the poll tax was equalized according to the land tax of zhou and counties”; “one liang of land tax was levied on about one qian six li and four hao ”. “The regulation of introducing poll tax into land tax appeared in Guangdong province.82 The pilot program in Sichuan was carried out some time later. “In the last years of the Kangxi’s reign, Sichuan province implemented this policy earlier; poll tax was paid with land tax and land was sold with poll tax; hence this was said to be very convenient by both government and people”.83

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In July 1723 (the first year of Yongzheng) Emperor Yongzheng, who had just mounted the throne, in the light of the proposal of Li Weijun, the provincial governor in Zhili (nowadays Hebei province), officially issued the national decree popularizing the policy of “introducing poll tax into land tax”. From then on, after more than half a century, in 1777 (the 42nd year of Yongzheng) Guizhou, the last province, declared its implementation of the policy. By then the reform of taxation and corvée system had been accomplished in all the other provinces except Fengtian province. See the table below for the implementation of the policy of “introducing poll tax into land tax” in every province”. Table 6.1.

The implemantation of the policy of introducing poll tax into land tax

Province

The time of implementation of introducing poll tax into land tax

The amount of poll silver introduced into per liang of land tax

Reference

Guangdong province

in the 55th year of Kangxi’s reign

One qian six li four hao

——

Sichuan province

in the last years of Kangxi’s reign

——

payments of grain

Zhili province

in the 2nd year of Yongzheng’s reign

two qian and six li

——

Fujian province

in the 2nd year of Yongzheng reig

from five fen two li seven hao to three qian one fen and two li

——

Shandong province

in the 3rd year of Yongzheng’s reign

one qian one fen and five li

——

Yunnan province

in the 4th year of Yongzheng’s reign

——

N/A

Henan province

in the 4th year of Yongzheng’s reign

from one fen one li and seven hao to two qian and seven li

——

Shaanxi province

in the 4th year of Yongzheng’s reign

one qian five fen and three li in leap year plus four li

Zhejiang province

in the 4th year of Yongzheng’s reign

one qian four li and five hao

in the 4th year of Yongzheng’s reign

one qian five fen and nine li two hao for regions to the east of the Yellow River and one fen six hao for regions to the west of the Yellow River

Gansu province

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in leap year an increase for regions to the east of the Yellow River

The Agricultural Economy and the Feudal System

(Con'd)

Province

The time of implementation of introducing poll tax into land tax

The amount of poll silver introduced into per liang of land tax

Reference

Jiangsu province

in the 5th year of Yongzheng’s reign

from one li one hao to six fen two li and nine hao

calculated with the unit of mu

Anhui province

in the 5th year of Yongzheng’s reign

from one li one hao to six fen two li and nine hao

Jiangxi province

in the 5th year of Yongzheng’s reign

one qian five li and six hao

Hunan province

in the 6th year of Yongzheng’s reign

from one hao to eight qian six fen and one li

Guangxi province

in the 6th year of Yongzheng’s reign

from one qian three fen and six li

Hubei province

in the 7th year of Yongzheng’s reign

one qian two fen nine li and six hao

Shanxi province

in the first year of Qianlong

Guizhou province

in the 42nd year of Qianlong

two qian eight fen and one hao

calculated with the unit of mu

collected with the unit of liangshi 糧石

Only Linfen and another sixteen zhou and cities implemented it in this year, other zhou and counties implemented it one by one and in 2nd year of Daoguang’s reign, all zhou and counties had implemented it Details remain to be verified

Note: This table was compiled according to Wang Qingyun: Shiqu yuji , Volume 3, Notes of Introducing Poll Tax into Land Tax.

From the above table, it can be been that although the policy of introducing poll tax into land tax germinated in the early years of Kangxi’s reign, it was not until the late years of Kangxi that it won the tacit consent of the ruling class for trial implementation in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces. After it was popularized all over the country in 1723 (the first year of the reign of Emperor Yongzheng), the policy was successfully carried out in many provinces. But in some provinces, it was stalled on for a long time. So it was

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not until after the three reigns of Emperor Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing— altogether a hundred years later — that the nationwide reform of the taxation and corvée system was basically finished. The implementation time of the policy of introducing poll tax into land tax differed not only from province to province but also between zhou and counties of a province due to the different conditions. For example, Fujian province declared a start as early as in 1724 (the 2nd year of the reign of Emperor Yongzheng), but a few zhou such as Ningyang, Shouning and Nanping were along time in pursuing the policy. Take Shanxi province for another example, it was not until the year 1736 (the first year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong) that the policy begun to be carried out in a few counties. Only in 1822 (the 2nd year of Daoguang’s reign), after 87 years, was the introduction of poll tax into land tax achieved throughout the province. Examining the amount of poll tax introduced into land tax, it can be found that the poll silver in certain counties of Hunan province was the highest, as high as eight qian six fen and one li as it was introduced and collected with the unit of lianshi . In some regions of Fujian province it was as high as three qian one fen and two li . In Shanxi province it was two qian eight fens and one hao (毫). Because in Shanxi, on the one hand, there were many “rich merchants and businessmen who were not engaged in land cultivation”, and the other hand, there were many mountains but little land and that was also very barren, so the poll silver introduced into the land tax was quite high. Then in Nanjing, it was two qian and six li per mu for nobles and bureaucrats gathered there and they took advantage of their power to shift taxes and corvée onto laboring people. Besides the specific circumstances above, generally speaking, in provinces with more land and a smaller population, the amount of poll silver introduced into land tax was lower; in regions with less land and a larger population, the amount was higher. As the feudal society made its way to the late stage, the personal control of people by the country became weaker and weaker. So it can be said that the reform of the tax and corvée system in the Qing dynasty was an inevitable outcome of social economic development. After a long period poll corvée, that is the head tax, declined gradually. Taxes in the Han dynasty were mainly imposed in accordance with the population and Kou (口) tax (tax levied on children from 7 to 14 years old), Suan (算) tax (tax levied on people from 15 to 56 years old), tax of military service and household tax were all different forms of poll tax; a part of Zu-Yong-Diao (租庸調) (Zu refers to farm rent; Yong refers to tax for corvée) in the Tang dynasty were levied according to land, but Yong, as the poll tax, still took an important position. With the implementation of the Two-Tax Law, each taxpayer ’s capacity to shoulder taxes was given

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more consideration and land tax became more and more important. During the hundreds of years of the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, poll tax was still an important source of revenue for the state. But with the development of the commodity economy, the generalization of tenancy relationships, the increase of national population and peasants’ exile en masse and intense revolts, the personal relationships between peasants were greatly weakened and it became more and more difficult for the landlord class and the country to tie peasants to the land, which also made it more difficult to levy the poll tax on peasants. As a result, the taxation and corvée system became chaotic and revenue from tax for the country was affected. Despite painstaking reformation in the first stage of the Qing dynasty it was difficult to continue the double criteria of land and the population for tax collection. In the 51st year of the Kangxi’s reign, the policy that “no poll tax shall be imposed on newborns” was implemented, thus ending the levy on the new born; in the first year of the Yongzheng’s reign, the policy of introducing poll silver into land tax was carried out, which in fact abolished poll tax and imposed tax with the single criteria of land. All of these were the prevailing trends of economic and political development. The policy of “introducing poll tax into land tax” was of positive significance, for it not only simplified the principles and procedures of tax collection but also cancelled the double standards for taxation. This was a great reform of the tax and corvée system. Imposing taxation on people according to the amount of land was, in fact, collection of taxes in accordance with property and capacity to assume tax burdens, which to some degree changed the severe inequality in tax and corvée and alleviated the burdens on poor people. Because the landlord class held more land and had a smaller population and the peasantry owned less land and had a larger population, the policy of “introducing poll tax into land tax” was bound to shift a part of taxation on peasants onto landlords. Therefore it was said that “transferring poll silver to land tax, in fact, benefits poor peasants, but the powerful families are not so happy”.84 Although the policy of “introducing poll tax into land tax” did not ran counter to the long-term interests of the ruling class, it was opposed by many landlords and bureaucrats. Long before the promulgation of this policy, the taxation method of “incorporation of poll tax into land tax” had been tried in Hu county of Shaanxi province. But a government official firmly objected that “whether rich or poor, they all needed to pay poll tax; in a county, two tenths of the people possessed land and eight tenths held no land; in this case, if the rich were ordered to pay poll tax for the poor, the atmosphere of loitering and laziness would be restored.”85 The policy was also considered in Zhejiang province earlier. But in 1701 (the 40th year of Emperor Kangxi) Zhao Shenqiao,

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an official in Zhejiang province, strongly opposed the taxation method of “remitting poll tax and collecting tax according to the amount of farmland and the number of fixed population”, holding that “land tax and poll tax are different kinds of taxes, so it would not be proper to introduce poll tax into land tax”.86 He also ordered suppression of the so-called “vicious and crafty people” in Ningbo Prefecture who “promoted the policy of introducing poll tax into land tax and maintain a standoff with well-known families”.87 In 1723 (the first year of Yongzheng), after this policy was gradually carried out all over the country, the landlord class were more bitterly against it. In the spring of 1723 (the first year of Yongzheng), in Zhejiang province, “rascals with more land and less population” opposed introducing poll tax into land tax and “poisoned and bewitched over a hundred of people to gather at the yamen (the office of the provincial governor), shouting about stopping introducing poll tax into land tax”. Fa Hai the provincial governor, who had recently taken office, “was confounded by this” and “immediately commanded officers to urge them to disperse and ordered the suspension of equalizing taxes”. 88 In 1728 (the 6th year of Yongzheng), although the policy had been implemented in Zhejiang for less than two years, landlords of Qiantang and Renhe counties launched a counterattack in revenge and compelled tenants to “pay two more sheng of rice and two more fen (分) of silver per mu to help landowners to pay poll tax”.89 At the same time, in Suning county of Zhili (nowadays Hebei province), “landowners increased the farm rent by two fen under the pretext of sharing poll tax”. 90 In 1757 (the 22nd year of Qianlong) Hu Zehuang, a bureaucrat, claimed that “the introducing of poll tax into land tax and never increasing taxes” were the causes of inaccurate numbers for households and total population, and strongly objected to the reform.91 In order to reduce the tax burden, laboring people constantly rose in resistance against landlords for their obstruction of the policy of introducing poll tax into land tax. As mentioned above, in 1701 (the 40th year of Kangxi) in Ningbo Prefecture, the struggles between laboring people who favored the policy and Zhao Shenqiao, a bureaucrat, who was against the policy, was one of these revolts. In 1725 (the 3rd year of Yongzheng) in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, peasants who “had a few people in their households but no land and hence who were willing to equalize land tax and poll tax” united with “a group of shop owners of forced laborers” (industrial and commercial taxpayers) to act against landlords’ “blocking of equalizing tax” and the provincial governor Fa Hai of being indulgent towards this. They “assembled a crowd of villagers to argue at the office of the provincial governor” and “refused to do business” “without any dread”. After Fa Hai was removed from his office, they “again

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gathered to make disturbances in the hall of the yamen”.92 In 1828 (the 8th year of Daoguang) the magistrate of Huangxian county in Shandong province (his name is unknown), who practiced favoritism and engaged in malpractices, did not act according to the rule of “introducing land tax into poll tax” and wantonly increased poll tax. A large number of laboring people “went to the office bureau to implore that they pay taxes in accordance with the rule. But the magistrate ordered them beaten.” On that day, a lot of people chanced to be at the fair. Indignant over this they “then poured into the hall, knocking over the screen and the door, etc”.93 The reason why the policy of introducing poll tax into land tax could be carried out lay in both the laboring people’s strong fight against the ruling class and their furious resistance against inequality in land tax and poll tax. Emperor Yongzheng, the main representative of the landlord class, also hesitated about implementing this reform at the beginning. In the first year of Yongzheng, Huang Bing, the provincial governor of Shandong province, advocated enforcing the reform. But on his memorial Emperor Yongzheng wrote the instructions: “the plan of introducing poll tax into land tax is of great concern. How can it be handled in such a rash way? …… Besides, land tax comes from land …… the statutory tax was hard to collect, so how can we carry out a reform? “; he also rebuked Huang Bing, saying that “most of your recent memorials were very impetuous”.94 However the reform of the tax and corvée system was the irresistible trend of history. So in order to ensure financial revenue and mitigate class contradictions, the rulers of the Qing dynasty finally had to abolish the poll tax and apply the single system of land tax. Thus, with great efforts, progress was finally made in the historical development. In the feudal society, any system and policy that were of positive significance would be opposed and blocked by reactionary forces. After the policy of “introducing poll tax into land tax” was officially issued, it was long before it was spread all over the country. And during this period there was continuous public opposition and obstruction from the landlord class. So the enforcement of this policy was filled with violent class struggles. The implementation of the policy of “introducing poll tax into land tax”, in name, abolished the “poll corvée” that had been imposed on laboring people for thousands of years. However feudal countries and the landlord class always invent various excuses to exploit the laboring people. In some regions, forced labor and miscellaneous corvée were still very heavy and surtax and secret apportionment were innumerable. So the masses still lived in great suffering.

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The Resumption and Development of Agricultural Production The Increase in Cultivated Land Area and the Population Growth Chairman Mao once pointed out: to carry out a revolution is to emancipate the productive forces and to boost their development. Great uprisings of peasants in the late Ming dynasty, badly “hit the feudal rule and hence propelled social productivity forward”. 95 The advancement of agricultural productive forces in the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong of the Qing dynasty can be attributed to these revolts. In order to strengthen economic power and consolidate the feudal ruling regime, rulers in the Qing dynasty took various measures such as construction of water conservancy projects, remission of land tax, encouragement and reward of wasteland reclamation, the changing of the land ownership, permanent prohibition of enclosure land, amendment of the Fugitives Law and reformation of the taxation and corvée syem. All of these also contributed objectively to the development of agricultural production. Thanks to the hard work of laboring people of all nationalities who had fought against the forces of nature for decades, the total amount of the cultivated land area and the population grew steeply and constantly after the middle stage of the Kangxi’s reign. As Marx maintained, land is the “basic subject of labor for human beings”96 and without a subject of labor, productive activity is out of the question. Stalin said: “human beings are the essential components of the conditions of social material life. And no social material life can exist without a certain lowest number of population.”97 So it can be said that the increase in cultivated land area and the population growth were the main symbols of the development in social productivity. Undoubtedly, the cultivated land area and the population in the Qing dynasty exceeded those of all the preceding dynasties. Comparatively detailed statistics were recorded in the Qing dynasty, but there is something questionable about these figures. Taking the cultivated land area as an example, the figure in the early Ming dynasty (1393, the 26th year of the Hongwu reign) was 850 million mu and in the late Ming dynasty (in 1580, the 8th year of Wanli), it was 700 million mu . The figures for nationwide cultivated land area in the Qing dynasty, according to the records of The Records of the Qing Dynasty, Regulations for the Ministry of Revenue and Population and Encyclopedia of Documents in the Qing Dynasty , in 1661 (the last years of the Shunzhi reign), it was 550 million mu ; in 1685 (the

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middle stage of Kangxi), it increased to 600 million mu ; in 1724 (the first years of Yongzheng), it increased to 720 million mu ; and in 1766 (the middle period of Qianlong’s reign), to 780 million mu.98 The figure in 1766, which was between those in the early and the late Ming dynasty, was 80 million mu more than that in the late Ming dynasty and 70 million less than that in the early Ming dynasty. Since the territory of the Qing dynasty was much vaster than that of th Ming dynasty, why did the cultivated land area in the middle of the 18th century (the middle period of the Qianlong’s reign) fail to overtake that in the late years of the 14th century?99 Moreover, the national population in the Ming dynasty was only something over 60 million whereas it had reached more than 200 million in the middle period of the Qianlong’s reign. So there is the question of how the extra more than 100 million people were fed. In this case, based on these figures, some people hold that China had made no progress in agricultural production during the four hundred years from the 14th to the 18th centuries. However, what was recorded in the Factual Record of the Qing Dynasty about the nationwide cultivated land area was different from the figures above. According to these records, cultivated land area in 1661 (the last years of the Shunzhi reign), 1685 (the middle stage of Kangxi), and in 1724 (the first years of Yongzheng), were respectively 520 million, 590 million and 890 million mu . (There were no records of cultivated land area after the reign of Emperor Qianlong). These figures, which approximately correspond with the figure of 900 million given by Wang Qingyun, 100 are comparatively believable. Compared with the statistics mentioned above, the total amount of cultivated land recorded in the Factual Record of the Qing Dynasty was much bigger and the growth rate was also much higher. In the last period of the Kangxi’s reign, cultivated land area in all parts of the country increased dramatically. In 1708 (the 47th year of Kangxi) it went above 600 million mu ; in 1716 (the 55th year of Kangxi) above 700 million mu ; and in 1722 (the 61st year of Kangxi) it exceeded 800 million mu mark. There are more doubtful points about the figures for population growth in the Qing dynasty. Historians and economists through the ages, who have been arguing back and forth about this without reaching a consensus, have made various guesses and explanations. The largest national population in the Ming dynasty was more than 63.3 million (according to Wang Shizhen) and it decreased sharply during the long period of war in the late Ming dynasty. According to records in the Factual Record of the Qing Dynasty , it was only 14 million in 1652 (the 8th year of the Shunzhi reign) but in 1661 (the 18th year of the Shunzhi reign) it rose to 19 million. After that, the population continued growing at a low rate. In 1685 (the 24th year of the Kangxi’s reign) the national

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population was 23.4 million and in 1712 (the 51st year of the Kangxi’s reign), when the policy that “no poll tax shall be imposed on the newborns” was issued, it was only 24.6 million. From the figures above it can be seen that over sixty years (from the 8th year of Shunzhi to the 51st year of Kangxi), the population achieved an increase of more than 10 million with an average increase of 170,000 every year. Taking the 14 million population in the 8th year of the Shunzhi reign as the base we can see that the annual rate of growth was only 1.3%. After 1712 there was a change in population statistical method. The national population was fixed at 24.6 million; to obtain the total population every year, the annual figure of “newborns” was added to the regular population. In the 22 years from 1713 to 1734 (the 12th year of Yongzheng), the total number of newborns was 12 million, which was not very large. Thereafter censuses were suspended and statistical figures from the 13th year of Yongzheng to the 5th year of Qianlong are not found in the Factual Record of th Qing Dynasty . But in 1741 (the 6th year of Qianlong), after “counting the total population of the whole county”, it was found that the total number of men and women amounted to a staggering figure of 140 million. During the 29 years from 1712 to 1741 (the 52nd year of Kangxi to the 6th year of Qianlong), the population increased unexpectedly by as much as seven times with a net growth of 4.2 million every year. The rate of growth reached 173%, which is unreasonable and hence rather incredible. From then on, the national population increased significantly over the years. In 1840 (the 20th year of Daoguang), when the Opium war broke out, it had reached 12.81 million. During the hundred years from 1741 to 1840, the average yearly increase was 2.7 million with a growth rate of 18.8%. According to statistics, before the reigns of Kangxi and Yongzheng, the population was very small and grew at a low rate. But why was there so large a population in the first years of the Qianlong’s reign? On this issue much research has maintained that due to the collection of poll tax, a large population was hidden and unreported at that time. However after the issue of the policy that “no poll tax shall be imposed on newborns” in the 51st year of Kangxi and that of “introducing poll tax into land tax” in the first year of Yongzheng, poll tax had been abolished. There was then no need for some people to hide themselves so they poured out and were registered in the census records. Although this explanation makes some sense, the reasons for the swell in population are still far from being explained. During the thirty years from the late Kangxi’s reign to the early Qianlong’s reign, the population swelled by seven times. This not only went beyond the

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possibilities of natural reproduction rate but also could not be fully explained by the “hiding” of the population. As we know, population statistics which was the basis of tax collection was a matter of great concern to governments. So if the hidden population had reached as much as tens of millions and even over hundreds of millions, how could governments be tolerant towards this and how could they sit by idly and remained indifferent towards these illegal acts of wantonly undermining the national tax? Moreover after the middle period of Kangxi, the ruling order in all parts of the country became gradually stable and the governments were capable of checking on household occupants. In this case, if there had been so many households concealed, why did not the governments in the Qing dynasty regard checking households as their most important task? And why did not the lengthy and tedious expositions on reformation of tax and corvée also set this as the urgent mission? We hold that the fact that the population swelled surprisingly from the reign of Kangxi to the first years of the Qianlong’s reign needs to be accounted for from many aspects. Besides the growth of reproduction rate and the flocking out of the hidden people, the main reason lies in that two different statistical methods and ranges were adopted. In the reign of Kangxi the number of male adults, which was the tax unit, was the concern for governments rather than the number of the total population. Thus the official statistics were about male adults (men between 16 and 60 years old) rather than the total population. As we have seen, some residence booklets in the Kangxi’s reign only recorded the number of male adults rather than the number of people in a household. Therefore the so-called “national number of people in households”— 24.6 million in the 51st year of the Kangxi’s reign — referred to the number of male adults all over the country and the actual national population (including the old, the young, women and the hidden people) should be as large as more than two or three times the number of male adults. However when the poll tax was abolished the statistics on male adults, which had lost their significance, were no longer of concern to the governments. Hence, in the last years of Yongzheng’s reign, it was suspended. The fact that the figures for several years were missed out in the Factual Record of the Qing Dynasty shows that taxes were not related to the number of male adults and hence governments ceased collecting the statistics. In the 6th year of Qianlong, in order to boast of the growth of population in “the prosperous age”, a nationwide census which was the population statistics in the real sense was again carried out. To sum up, the two statistics during the reigns of Kangxi and Qianlong were respectively named “the number of male adults and people in households” and “the total population of the whole country”. These two statistics, which were different in

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their names, purposes, methods and ranges, should not be confused together; otherwise, they would contradict with each other. These two statistics can also been found out in some local annals. For example in the Annals of Huolu

county in the reign of Emperor Guangxu, it was recorded that in the periods of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong the county had 50 million male adults and the poll silver collected was 5,300 liang . There was no record of the total population of the county. However after the reign of Jiaqing, when poll tax had been abolished, it was recorded in the annals for the first time that the county had 30,000 households and a population of 170,000. From the above it can be concluded that after entering the border, the Qing dynasty went through restorations and development in the reigns of Shunzhi and Kangxi (about 70–80 years). By the last years of the Kangxi’s reign, the cultivated land area all over the country had reached 800 million mu and the actual population was over 80 or 90 million,101 all of which exceeded the highest figures in the Ming dynasty.

The slow development of agricultural productivity In the prolonged feudal society in China, the laboring people lost interest in

improving the tools and technologies of production as they suffered ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression. Therefore there was slow progress in development of farming implements and agro-technologies and

labor productivity had been at a standstill for a long time. Nevertheless,

implements and technologies achieved a certain degree of advancement at the early and middle stage of the Qing dynasty.

During the years of the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, in order

to produce more and better agricultural products, some people involved in

agricultural production, especially rich farmers, attached great importance to popularizing and reforming farming implements, advancing agro-technologies,

the transplant, spread and introduction of some strains, intensive cultivation of land and crops, and weeding and fertilizing the land etc.

According to historical literature, in the early Qing dynasty, there were

various farming implements such as ploughs, harrows, spades, coulters, da

(搭), tiandang (田蕩), trowels, shovels, hoe-like tools, weeding hoes, and rakes

etc. Taking ploughs as an example: “one sort of plough made by smelting iron” was called an iron plough, which consisted of lijing (犁鑱) and libi (犁壁). The

other sort made of wood was named wooden plough, which was di (底) and was another important tool as working people did not have farm cattle at that

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time. “If some families were very close they would work jointly, so several mu

of land could be cultivated in one day”. 102 During the years of the reigns of

Qianlong and Jiaqing, “rich peasants” in Jiangpu town, Jiangning prefecture, in the south of the Yangtze River, had complete sets of tools such as hoes, ploughs, rakes, drills and water wheels etc.103 In the region of Songjiang prefecture, cattle were commonly used to till and plough fields. With regard to the techniques of plowing and weeding, the fields generally demanded “three weeds”, that is, the field was weeded three times.104 After rice seedlings were transplanted, “they needed draining three times “ “the first day”.105 It was noted that “farmers would rather cultivate less fields densely than more fields extensively,” and “they should sow few for a good harvest, not seed extensively but have a bad harvest” in Tongxiang town, Jiaxing prefecture, Zhejiang province. 106 “It was better to till less fields, rather than more, for less fields were able to save both labor and implements”. 107 Fields must be weeded clearly, and mounds were hilled up to the ploughshares. Besides that, soil should be turned up three times when plowing, the field should be spread with double dung and hoed normally four times. The cotton-field had best be hoed more times. 108 When irrigating fields, the dragon bone water wheel was once used commonly but then other wheels such as the single-wheel lift, double-wheel water lift, cow water lift and wind wheels were used. These wheels economized on manpower and made irrigation easier for farmers, and also sped up irrigation through employing the power of animals and nature.109 According to the peasants’ long-standing experience, fields needed to be fertilized with various sorts of manure which contained different elements in the light of what sort of nutriments the crops needed at different stages of the growth period. Generally speaking, green manure made with grass was applied to fields first. Then pig dung, as fertilizer, was used. Bean cakes were spread last. 110 Through the prolonged struggles of production the laboring people fully realized that “fertilization was extremely vital when cultivating land” and had learnt that “human waste promoted the crops growing densely, cow dung accelerated the growth of crops. Neither of the two was to be neglected”. 111 “If the farmer don’t feed pigs, and students don’t read books, all of them are bound to fail”112 as a saying of the prefecture of Jiangxing went. Using the above effective measures, the productivity of agriculture made marked progress and each unit area output was increased to varying degrees. For example, in the two towns of Yanhu and Pinghu, Jiaxing prefecture, Zhejiang province, the maximum output of one mu of the field was two shi of grain, the minimum was one shi and four dou or one shi and five dou while, after being cultivated intensely and fertilized in a timely way, one mu of the

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field could yield two shi and five dou , and some even doubled the output.113 In some regions of the north, Fan Sheng’s “field-divided model” devised in the Eastern Han dynasty was developed by integrating the local natural conditions, and production was increased strikingly. For instance in 1707 (the 46th year of the Kangxi’s reign) Zhu Wenshu, the magistrate of Puxian town, Shanxi province, applied the “field-divided model” to develop agricultural production according to the local environment: “the town was admid mountains; perilous peaks and steep inclines could be seen everywhere around the town. No crops could be reaped in autumn when there was no rain. “As for the model, in general one mu of the field was eighty chi in length and seventy five chi in width, and the line width was one chi and five cun. Each mu of the field could be divided into 2,650 areas. The planting measures were to “leave one row empty, seed the next row; leave one area empty, seed the next area”, and its advantages were that the rows and areas were emptied for the convenience of irrigation, and they helped to ventilate the crop field, so the crops would not go bad in the heat. The empty parts also offered soil to cover the roots of the crops.” In this way fields could be guarded against drought and water logging, and “the roots were heaped so deeply that the crops could not be broken by wind”. Consequently “the grain output of one mu of highyield farmland could feed five mouths,”114 “which reached thirty shi of grain”.115 After that Zhan Wenhuan, the Datongqiao Supervisor of Tongzhou (the official who took charge of the switch from river transport to land transport), applied the “field-divided model” experimentally to “the vacant plots in the official residence”. “The production of one mu of the field was five times that of the ordinary field.” At the end of the Yongzheng’s reign, Deng Zhongyin employed this model in Liao city, Shandong province. “One mu of the field yielded 20 hu (斛) of grain more than a ordinary field did”.116 In 1726 (the 4th year of the Yongzheng’s reign) Li Weijun, the provincial governor of present Nanjing, tried out the model in Baoding city. “Even though seeding and irrigating the field did not follow the approach, one mu of the field yielded sixty shi of grain.” The Emperor Yongzheng “ordered to exhort and instruct farmers to apply this model”, which was generalized across the country. “Farmers seeded the fields in accordance with the model” and “they achieved remarkable success. “Laboring people summarized the key points of the “field-divided model” in eight phrases: “plowing deeply, dry-land seeding, seeding thinly, reaping more”117 by doing experiments for many years. At the early stage of the Qing dynasty, double-crop rice was widely promoted; the unit area production was doubled in the south of the Yangtze River. As early as the end of the Kangxi’s reign, “rice was gathered in autumn

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only one time in the past, but then it could be ripened twice”. 118 In 1716 year (the 55th year of the Kangxi’s reign) Li Xu, the official in charge of the textile industry, exerted much effort to spread “Yinggun’s rice-planting approach” and planted experimental double-crop rice. It was knowing “the points making one of the 24 divisions of the solar year in the traditional Chinese calendar” which was the key to the success or failure of double-crop rice production. “If farmers had not watched the fields closely, Gu (a kind bird mentioned in ancient books) would come to the fields suddenly and arbitrarily, which would cause damage to the fields. The method would not bring about any effects”. 119 Judging from the results, the experiments produced the desired effect. For instance in 1716 (the 55th year of the Kangxi’s reign), fifty mu of fields were seeded with doublecrop rice. Early rice was “harvested on the fourth of the sixth lunar month of the year, each mu produced three shi and seven dou ”.120 That was the first season. Then “on the sixteen day of the sixth lunar mouth, rice seedlings were transplanted into the same fields. On the fifteen of the ninth lunar month (the 55th year of the Kangxi’s reign), the rice was reaped”, which was called late rice. Owing to two windstorms, the output of the second season was that “each mu just produced one shi and five dou .” The total production of one mu in the two seasons came to five shi two dou. Provided the field had suffered no storms “the output of late rice, as with that of the first season, would be over three shi ”.121 Eighty mu of fields would be seeded the next year (the 56th year of the Kangxi’s reign). The rice of the first season “was harvested on the twenty-first day of the sixth lunar month, one mu of the field yielded four shi and one dou , which was four dou more than that of the previous year”.122 The late rice “was reaped on the second day of the tenth lunar month, each mu yielded two shi five dou ”. The total production reached six shi and six dou . “One mu of the single-crop rice field was able to produce three or four shi in good years”.123 The output was markedly increased. In the early years of the Qianlong’s reign, Hao Yulin, the former governorgeneral of Zhejiang and Fujian, was transferred to be the governor-general of present Jiangxi, Suzhou and Anhui. He introduced millet, a kind of early rice, from Fujian to Anhui province. Some areas in Anhui province “were full of high mountains and steep slopes, which were not good for wheat and rice and other grains”. However, “millet” could tolerate the arid climate and did not need to be irrigated.” Chen Dashou, the provincial governor of Anhui spread use of this early rice for years and “reclaimed fertile land from futile land.” “After several years, millet was widely cultivated and benefited a great many farmers”. 124 Gradually it spread to various provinces in the north. During the Kangxi’s reign, rice and water chestnuts and other southern crops

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were transplanted in Beijing. “As the north was cold, the crops bore little fruit. Once they met frosty weather, the crops would completely fail”.125 By extracting experience and absorbing lessons, farmers improved the cultivation methods. In 1691 year (the 30th year of the Kangxi’s reign), rice was planted on Yuquan hill. One mu of the field only produced one shi of grain.126 The production was small but had great significance. Rice grown here was improved and promoted gradually. Finally it became a kind of rice with an excellent reputation called “Jingxi Rice” In 1704 (the 43th year of the Kangxi’s reign) Guan Lanli, the commanding officer of the garrison of Tianjin, proposed that the low-lying areas in Tianjin, Fengrun, Baodi, and other places “should be changed into paddy lands for raising rice“. He planned to reclaim 10,000 low-lying areas, “recruit about two hundred peasants from Fujian and vagrants from the south of the Yangzi river, and place them in Tianjin, giving them cattle and seeds. …Taxes on these lands would not be collected in certain years”.127 Rice was planted on this land for two years, but only one hundred and fifty qing of the paddy fields were cropped. The fields were submerged by water. This plan did not succeed. They grew rice on a trial basis many times over several years and eventually “they found the right way to cultivate rice.” There were one hundred and fifty qing of paddy fields, “among them fifty qing of the fields were lowlands, which were often submerged by water. So these lands were not good for cultivation. Another fifty qing of the fields were highlands, which were not suitable to grow rice… only the other fifty qing were able to serve as paddy lands to raise rice.” These fifty qing of fields yielded more than 2,500 shi of rice, each mu of the field yielding five dou of rice on average. 128 The low-lying areas were harnessed at the end of the Kangxi’s reign. The government set up floodgates and dredged the channels, so all the one hundred and fifty qing of fields could be farmed.129 “The paddies made good crops”130 until 1727 (the 5th year of the Yongzheng’s reign), and these areas became the land of fish and rice in the north. In the Qing dynasty sweet potatoes, as the laboring people’s main food, were fairly generalized in northern China. Sweet potatoes were introduced into southern China from Annan, Lüsong and other places at around the early stage of the Ming dynasty. Sweet potatoes could be eaten as greens and also as grain. It was not difficult to cultivate sweet potatoes, “they were rapidly grown. All their veins bore roots. Sweet potatoes would be yielded once the roots were buried in the earth. “ The output was very high, “every mu of the field yielded thousands of jin 斤, which was several times the output of the five cereals crops fields (rice, millet, broomcorn millet, wheat and beans)”. 131 Therefore sweet potatoes were grown widely in various southern provinces until the middle

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period of the Ming dynasty, and were very popular with the farmers. At the end of the Ming and in the early Qing, farmers in Henan, Shandong and other areas in the north began to cultivate sweet potatoes, which spread gradually from the southern provinces. Sweet potatoes were a drought-tolerant high-yield crop suitable to be grown in the north. In the middle of the Qianlong’s reign, Henan, Shandong and other places suffered drought and water logging for several years straight. “As no grain was harvested over these years, the common people encountered great difficulty in getting food to eat.” Qinghua prefecture in Henan province and Xinzhou prefecture in Shandong province, as the centers, “grew sweet potatoes to feed the famine victims.” However the vein cuttings of sweet potatoes were transported from Fujian every year. “The seeds of sweet potatoes were stored before Frost’s Descent (the beginning of the 18th of the 24 solar terms, on the 23rd or 24th of October), and were planted after Pure Brightness (the beginning of the 5th of the 24 solar terms, on the 4th, 5th and 6th of April),” and then “vein cuttings were collected in Fujian in due course” and sent to the north. The transport facilities were poor at that time. After a long and arduous journey, the vein cuttings of sweet potatoes “easily went rotten and dried. Wooden pails should be used to pack veins; some soil was put into the pails to cover the veins. Thus the vein cuttings were easy to carry. … The vines, bearing tuberous roots, kept alive easily.132 In 1785 (the 50th year of the Qianlong’s reign), an aged farmer Chen Shiyuan, who was over eighty years old from Ming town, Fujian province “took his servants and grandsons and went to the north with the vein cuttings of sweet potatoes voluntarily. He taught the local farmers how to cultivate the sweet potatoes”.133 Since then both seedlings and sweet potatoes could be grown in some southern provinces. It saved much labor and reduced the cost, which created advantageous conditions for popularizing the cultivation of sweet potatoes. As “Chen Shiyuan taught farmers to raise sweet potatoes, which achieved an effective result”, the Qing government “awarded Chen Shiyuan the official title “juren (舉人), a successful candidate in the imperial examinations at the provincial level in the Ming and Qing dynasties), to show encouragement”. 134 “Cotton and sweet potatoes once had to travel over seas and mountains to the north. However these plants were able to arrive here by themselves; for the winters were warm and the summers were cold in Shandong, Shaanxi, Hebei, Shanxi, and in the regions around the Yangtze River, the Huai River and the Yellow River. How quickly they grow now!”135 Wu Qiun, an official during the Jiaqing reign, pointed out, when he talked about certain farming products of the Qing dynasty which were rapidly spreading.

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The Commercialization of Agricultural Products The growth in agricultural productivity and per unit area output not only provided a great amount of commodities and grain for society but also more raw materials for the handicraft sector. Marx pointed out that: “The capitalist mode of production only exists in industry at first but dominates agriculture later on". 136 Since the middle of the Ming dynasty, there had been the rudiments of capitalism within the feudal society of China. During the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, some handicraft sectors in certain areas had been destroyed and obstructed by the feudal ruling class; but after a period of recovery and development in the early Qing dynasty, the rudiments of the capitalist relations of production underwent a further expansion and a mass of raw materials provided by the agricultural sectors were needed. Therefore during the early and middle Qing dynasty, although the feudal self-sufficient economy still occupied a dominant position in the vast rural areas of China, the extensive production of selling commodity and the making of profits occurred in some agricultural production sectors in relatively developed areas. In the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, the commercialization of agricultural products began with the need of the handicraft sector for raw materials while the pace of development of commercial agriculture varied in each sector of agriculture. Meanwhile, the development of the same sector was not balanced in different areas. Commercial production in the agricultural sector started from cotton cultivation, a product that the majority of working people had the greatest need for. In the ancient feudal society of China, the mass of the working people usually kept out the cold with hemp fabric as cloth. By contrast, cotton and organdy were cheaper, more durable and preserved heat for a much longer period, and thus cotton cultivation had spread from Hainan Island to each province in South China since the Song and Yuan dynasties and gradually took the place of hemp. After the middle of the Ming dynasty, the expansion of the cotton textile industry led to an increased need for cotton; moreover, cotton cultivation was so popular that it was nearly universalized throughout the country. Up until the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, it became prevalent; at the same time, the household sideline industry, which was originally self-sufficient and bonded firmly to agriculture had been separated from the household handicraft industry in some areas and developed into

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an independent industry due to the rise of the commodity economy and the extension of social division of labour. At that time, the famous areas of cotton cultivation included the Yangtze River Delta and the coastal areas in Southeast China. In 1775 (the 40th year of the Qianlong’s reign) Gao Jin claimed: “Songjiang Fu, subordinate to counties such as Taicang, Haimen, Nantong etc. is near the sea hence it is full of sand which is beneficial to cultivating cotton. In such areas, people prefer growing flowers to cultivating grain. In each village, people growing grain for their food only account for two to three tenths whereas people growing cotton for profits account for seven to eight tenths”.137 Shanghai county was also by the sea and so “the silk cotton is cultivated more than non-glutinous rice there”138 during the reign of Jiaqing. In Xinzhuang, Huating county, “the yield of flowers is greater than that of grain". 139 Nanhui county, which was in the east of the Huangpu River, was “suitable for growing cotton instead of grain"; 140 in order to increase its per unit area output, the way of growing by turns (i.e. “to grow grain this year while flowers next year” 141) was adopted in Qianlong's Reign. In Jiading county, men “earn their living by growing flowers” whereas women “live on weaving”.142 In the late reign of Qianlong, Chu Yuheng in his Porridge Ballad stated: “Jiading county is near the sea and cotton makes up the larger share than rice."143 Jiangyin county was located on the south bank of the Yangtze River which was fertile land, and cotton cultivation was also extensively spread in Xixiang and Shazhou.144 Counties of Hangzhou Fu in Zhejiang province were by the Qiantang River; “cotton was extensively cultivated in the past decades and gained a good harvest. It has now become the local specialty of Hangzhou and enjoys good sales”.145 In Yuyao county, “there is only a small part of land used for cultivation but people there live on growing cotton”.146 Henan province was also one of important cotton-growing areas. During the reign of Qianlong, Yin Huiyi, the procurator of Henan, said that: “cotton is grown in Henan province but sold in areas south of the Yangtze River".147 That was because cotton had a great yeild in Henan but few people were able to weave. As a result, cotton was transported to areas south of the Yangtze River. Meng county in Henan was not only a center where cotton cloth was produced but also an area where a great deal of cotton was cultivated; particularly “in Gaoban west of Meng county, the yield of cotton is very great”.148 In Neihuang county north of Hebei province, “the abundant sand in both the eastern and western villages provides a favorable condition for cotton cultivation and there is always a good harvest with no doubt”. Therefore, “most of merchants from Shanxi province usually come to purchase cotton”149 after the autumn harvest every year.

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

In Baoding of Hebei, “the land used for growing cotton makes up two to three tenths” 150 while in Ningjin county “nearly half of the land is used for cotton cultivation”. 151 In the early reign of Qianlong, Fang Guancheng, the procurator of Zhili, stated that:“eight to nine tenths of the people are growing cotton in counties such as Ji, Zhao and Zhending”.152 Owing to the meticulous cultivation by working people for many years, fine strains of cotton came into existence in various areas. Among them some were named after their origins, such as “Jiang Flower” (grown in Hubei province), “Bei Flower” (grown in Zhili, Shandong province), “Zhe Flower” (grown in Yuyao, Zhejiang province) and “Wuzhong Flower” (grown in areas south of the Yangtze River); some were named after the colors of their flowers, such as “Huang Di”, “Rang Di“, “Purple Flower” etc.; some were named after the colors of their pits, such as “Green Pit” and “Black Pit”.153 These diverse species varied in output of cotton as well as their pros and cons due to the different climate and soil of their growing areas. It was true that the cultivation of cotton in most areas could be connected with the natural economy of self sufficiency (including Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces where cotton cultivation enjoyed the greatest popularity). However compared with the area used for growing grain, the cotton-growing areas took up more than one half of the land in many regions and even up to eight to nine tenths in some other regions where cotton were grown for sale. In the early Qing dynasty Chu Hua said: “In the north, Ji Bei (cotton) is cheap whereas cloth is expensive, but it is to the contrary in the south. Therefore Ji Bei is sold in the south while cloth is sold in the north”. 154 Such communication between the north and south represented the prosperity of the commodity economy. In several regions handicrafts were quite advanced but cotton did not abound there. For example, in Wuxi county, “cotton is not grown while a substantial profit is brought by cotton cloth”; 155 in Suzhou, although “each family earns their living by weaving”, “there is little silk cotton cultivated”;156 Jiaxing Fu was in the same situation as Suzhou, “not only in villages but also towns”. In the above regions, the cotton that the textile industry needed was offered by the peripheral cotton-growing areas. In particular, “merchants bought cotton from other places and opened a shop to resell”.157 Merchants engaged in the cotton business took along enormous capital to cotton-growing areas to purchase cotton at a lower price and then they sold the cotton to other areas at a high price, in which way they won a huge profit. For example Jinhuiqiao (in Fengxian county), which was just a small town, was often sparsely populated but “it will witness the greatest prosperity at the time of the cotton harvest every year”.158 Zhang Chunhua of the Qing dynasty gave

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a vivid, detailed description of the cotton market in Shanghai. He wrote that: “In the early morning, the cotton market opens and there are persons specially fixing the price according to the cotton’s weight and quality. The mutual exchange of needed products has existed since ancient times and it is natural that the preciously good products should have a high price.” In his own words, it meant cotton growers going to the morning market from villages at daybreak “carried cotton on their shoulders”. Meanwhile, “besides seller and buyer there was a person responsible for fixing the price of cotton in the light of the cotton’s weight and quality who then drew one percent from the sum of money the buyer paid. The cotton with the highest price was also called kanding (看 頂)“. 159 In Baoding of Hebei province, at the time of the cotton harvest, “the newly picked cotton had to be piled up in an open field”.160 “Each time when new cotton appeared on the market, a great many people flocked in from afar, including those cornering the cotton market, merchants transporting cotton for sale to their hometown and farmers taking the good chance to go to market with their family”.161 In cotton bases like Shanghai, not only the resident “flower markets” but also “foreign firms or shops” operated by merchants from Fujian, Guangdong, etc. were set up to buy cotton at a very low price and sell abroad.162 During the early Qing dynasty, commodity production related to mulberry planting was also universalized in some regions. Fig. 6.5.

Mulberry planting and silkworm raising in the Qing dynasty

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

The raising of silkworms for weaving pongee boasts a long history in our country. For a very long time mercery had not only provided the major material for clothing but also one of the export commodities. With the development of feudal society and the prosperity of the commodity economy, the emergence of capitalism in the silk-weaving industry led to an increase in the need for silk particularly in the Qing dynasty, and mulberry planting and selling were of great significance in the production of agricultural commodities in regions south of the Yangtze River. Thus mulberry was extensively planted and silkworm was raised in several rural areas in order to make money. For example, “the silkworm and mulberry of Zhejiang province brought big profits nationwide, which were particularly needed in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River”.163 The mulberry planting in Huzhou Fu ranked first all over the province and “there had been land of ten thousands of hectares used for planting mulberry until the middle Ming dynasty”. During the Qing dynasty, “mulberry would be planted where there was a vacant area”. Wucheng county, “was famous in the east of Zhejiang for its mulberry planting, fertile ground and rich commodities”. 164 In Shimen county of Jiaxing Fu, more than 69,400 mulberry trees were planted in six towns alone in the reign of Kangxi while “people all devoted themselves to both mulberry planting and silkworm raising and the number of mulberry trees was uncountable”165 up to the reign of Yongzheng and Qianlong. Tongxiang county, “was rich in land and population; men were busy with the mulberry planting whereas women were busy with the silk weaving so that people there got rich easily”.166 Moreover Haiyan county “had large population and limited farmland thus a man could not support his family only by cultivation but needed to raise silkworm”. As a result, “people planted mulberry in places such as the corner of the wall and the side of the field”.167 In Lianshi, which was near Hangzhou, “half of the farmland was used for planting mulberry”; in Dangxi Town “there were much more mulberry trees for it was a place popular for raising silkworm and the mulberry were obviously needed”. 168 In Tangqi Town “the land was fertile enough to plant mulberry”; “the mulberry trees were luxuriantly green” every spring; it would be the same in each village — only “the sound of cutting”could be heard and “ladders” be seen in the fields”.169 The mulberry was universally planted in Hangzhou Fu, Jiaxing Fu and Huzhou Fu of Zhejiang province while the mulberry planting was also known far and wide in Suzhou, Song and Ning of Jiangsu province. In Gan Xi's record, “silk and silkworm teemed in Jiangsu and Zhejiang and also won popularity in Jinling”.170 Apart from this, mulberry planting was universalized especially in Naxiang of Jiangning. Before the Opium War, “the profit from silkworm and

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mulberry made areas such as Huangsi Bank of Yinan in Danyang county the most famous”.171 Zhenze county of Suzhou Fu was to the south of Taihu Lake, bounded by Huzhou Fu, in which “the mulberry were planted” during the reign of Qianlong; in particular, “the mulberry planting was so popular that there was hardly any land left vacant” in the southwest of Wucheng county; “the green mulberry trees filled the landscape” at the end of spring and beginning of summer, “and could be classified into 20 to 30 species”.172 In the suburbs near Guangzhou of Guangdong province, mulberry planting and silkworm raising came to be one of the important economic activities for local farmers. In Nanhai county farmers kept fish in ponds and planted mulberry by the shore; in other words, they “lived on mulberry and fish”. 173 Around the mulberry garden of Shunde county, “there were more than ten thousand residents and a thousand hectare of land was used for planting mulberry in order to raise silkworm”.174 There were two possible reasons for such large-scale mulberry planting: one was that the silk was reeled off from cocoons for sale; the other was that the mulberry leaves were directly sold as a commodity. At that time, mulberry planting in some areas had been generally commercialized and the growth in mercery boosted the increasing need for mulberry leaves, therefore mulberry planting could win bigger profits than grain cultivation. For instance, in Changxing county of Huzhou Fu, the yield per mu of mulberry “produced eighty mulberry leaves” (each leaf weighed nearly ten kilograms) during the reign of Qianlong. Even though the per mu fees for cultivating land, heaping fertilizer and earthing up were more than two liang every year, “the profit would double”175 after selling the mulberry leaves. In the early Qing dynasty, the income from mulberry per mu of land in Tongxiang county of Jiaxing Fu was equal to that from grain on four or five mu , and sometimes even ten mu or more.176 The price of mulberry leaves was mainly determined by the relationship between supply and demand at that time. For example, in the year of the mulberry leaves harvest, if there were few people raising silkworm the mulberry leaves would be cheap, which was of advantage to the silkworm raisers; on the contrary, if there were few mulberry leaves but a lot of people raising silkworm, the price of the leaves would be high, which was disadvantageous to the raisers. Consequently the silkworm raisers “who owned much more silkworm than mulberry leaves” would row their wooden boats to purchase leaves every spring when “the leaves were in season”. Silkworm raisers who did not plant any mulberry “would gain profits by good fortune when the leaves were cheap”; 171 otherwise, they had to borrow money from usurers to buy leaves

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

when the leaves were expensive. In Nanxun Town, some silkworm raisers “borrowed money from well-off tenants till the silkworm died; at the same time, they were required to pay interest of one hundred coins on one thousand coins”,178 an interest rate as high as 10%. There were some silkworm raisers who had so many debts that they “could not repay, even risking the ruin of their families and the loss of their fortune”179 just due to the high price of mulberry leaves. During the reign of Kangxi a man called Cao Sheng in Guanzhuang of Tongxiang county planted a large number of mulberrys and also raised thirty baskets of silkworm. The mulberry leaves were expensive in that year, so he dumped all of the silkworm into the river as they could not bring him a bigger profit than mulberry leaves; in fact, he did make a big fortune out of mulberry leaves.180 The above two examples at polar opposites show that the commodity and money economy as well as usurer’s capital had reached deep into several areas of the countryside in the regions south of the Yangtze River. The production of tobacco was also a prosperous sector in the Qing dynasty. Tobacco, which originated from foreign countries, was introduced into China in the middle Ming dynasty. The tobacco takers were on the increase day by day during the early Qing dynasty so that tobacco was planted in almost all provinces in north and south China. At that time Wang Shizhen wrote that: “Not only senior officials but also common people are addicted to tobacco with no exception”.181 In the reign of Jiaqing, Bao Shichen claimed that: “There were two or three people in ten taking tobacco more than ten years ago while now there is no one that does not take tobacco”.182 Even in Huaining county of Anhui province, smoking became one of local people's habits and “tobacco was regarded as a necessity in their daily life”.183 In the eight towns under the command of Tingzhou Fu of Fujian province, “there were three or four people in ten planting tobacco and the profits they made were sometimes as big as that from grain”. 184 In counties such as Hanzhong, Ankang, Nanzheng and Chenggu of Shaanxi province, “all the fertile farmland were used for planting tobacco; the fields was filled with the plants in the height of summer and also abounded in it at the time of its harvest”.185 In the reign of Jiaqing, “tobacco planting gained great popularity in every place of Jiaxing Fu in Zhejiang province; the yield of it there was roughly the same as that in Fujian and Guangdong provinces, excluding that used for sacrifice to aborigines”.186 During Qianlong’s reign, “half of residents in Guangxi province planted tobacco which was up to ten to twenty thousand in big a family and at least two to three thousand in small family”. 187 In Yuezhou Fu of Hunan province, “most of tobacco was planted on the hillside or on vacant land and sold to Changsha and Hengyang”.188 A similar situation occurred in “provinces

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like Jiangnan, Shandong and Zhili, that is, there was no vacanct land with rich soil that was not used to plant tobacco”.189 Why was tobacco planting so popular? It was true that the increase in smokers led to the growth in needs for tobacco; however a more crucial reason was that planting tobacco could bring farmers a considerable profit. As a result, Fang Bao pointed out that: “the profit from tobacco was twice as big as that from vegetables and three times as big as that from grain”.190 In 1727 (the 5th year of Yongzheng’s reign) the civil and military governors from Fujian and Guangdong provinces censured “people in Guangdong for overvaluing profit”191 because most of the people there cultivated industrial crops such as tobacco in order to make a big fortune. The farmland of Tong Xiang county in Zhejiang province was extensively used for planting tobacco. In 1785 (the 50th year of Qianlong’s reign) it faced a severe drought and the grain seedlings almost all withered. But the tobacco seedlings were tolerant to drought and thus “the people planting tobacco earned more money than those planting crops, which urged more and more people to plant tobacco”.192 In the reign of Daoguang, “the profit from a mu of tobacco is bigger than that from a mu of rice”93 in Huaining county of Anhui province. Tobacco, which was planted on a such large scale, was not just supplied for local residents to smoke but transported to other places to make profits. For instance, tobacco produced in Ankang Fu of Shaanxi province which was purchased by the key merchants at a low price was then “shipped to Xiang, Fan, E Zhu etc. and brought the merchants more than ten billion jin 金 in a merely one year”.194 Furthermore, in Huaining county of Anhui province, “the tobacco merchants from Yangzhou came to occupy Hongjia Pu and Jiangningya shops between June and July of each year; the trading in tobacco was so excellent that the profit from tobacco was nearly equal to that from rice, salt etc.”.195 The gradual expansion of land for planting tobacco stimulated the emergence of tobacco processing and marketing. For example, in Hanzhong county of Shaanxi, “there were three to four shops in ten selling tobacco”. 196 In Guangxi province “there were twenty to thirty tobacco shops in a big city while ten or more in a small or medium one; twenty to thirty workers were employed in a big shop and seven or more in a small or medium one".197 During the years between Jiaqing and Daoguang there were six tobacco shops in Jining county of Shandong province where “tobacco was the staple crop” and “they earned two billion liang in silver every year, which employed more than four thousand workers”.198 In Yushan county of Jiangxi province, “tobacco produced in Yongfeng was well known for its ingenious production but its color and flavour was not on a par with that of tobacco produced in Yushan”. Therefore

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

“thousands of workers were needed in Yushan every day and people from various regions came to carry on trade in tobacco with the tobacco merchants of Yushan”.199 Workers employed by each tobacco shops were respectively engaged in “producing tobacco, bundling, packing” etc.200 In accordance with the season for picking tobacco leaves and the quality of the leaves, they could be classified into diverse species and grades such as tobacco produced in summer, tobacco produced in autumn, high-quality tobacco and poor-quality tobacco. 201 The renowned “Heng Tobacco” (produced in Hengyang Fu), were packaged into “Jing Bao and Guang Bao” and then “sold to each province”.202 Besides the products above, economic crops such as tea, natural indigo, ramie, Chinese fan palm and sugarcane were planted for sale in several areas, and held a significant position in economic life at that time. The development of the production of economic crops in the agricultural sector led inevitably to the dilemma about land for economic crops and grain. That is to say, if the land for economic crops was expanded, that for growing grain would get smaller; the more developed the region planting economic crops was, the more the grain was needed. provinces such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu suffered from such a situation. Long before, both Jiangsu and Zhejiang were the granaries of our country in which the fertile land, pleasant climate and rich water resources were beneficial to the growth of crops and thus the yield per unit area usually remained high. Just as a Song dynasty Chinese saying goes “if Suhu has a good grain harvest, the whole nation will be well-off”. In the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, the extensive planting of economic crops especially cotton and mulberry seriously hindered the production of grain; at the same time, the increasingly prosperous businesses in the area led to a denser population so the local people had to depend on food from other areas. Take Suzhou as an example. The double-crop rice was popularized in a large scale in Kangxi’s reign and the growth rate of grain increased several times. However the need of local people for grain still could not be satisfied. Take Songjiang Fu as another example. In Qianlong’s reign there was a little land for planting rice so that people living in such an area who faced a great shortage of grain were dependent on grain transported from the other places every year. In Chongming county the grain transported from the other areas each year “was no more than 200 thousand dan “before 1755 (the 20th year of Qianlong’s reign) while it was “on the increase year by year” from then on; by 1775 (the 40th year of Qianlong’s reign) “the grain transported from the other places totaled more than 300 thousand dan ”,203 an increase of one third through twenty years. In 1685 (the 24th year of Kangxi’s reign), “beans and wheat transported from Guangdong

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to Shanghai exceeded a hundred billion dan every year”.204 During the reign of Jiaqing, “rice transported from regions such as Zhejiang, Guangdong and Anhui was at least ten billion dan every year”205 in Suzhou whether there was a good or bad harveast. At the end of Yongzheng’s reign and beginning of Qianlong’s reign, Fujian province made use of most of land to plant economic crops whereas the rice and wheat that people needed “were transported from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Taiwan”.206 In 1727 (the 5th year of Yongzheng’s reign), people in Guangdong province made profits by planting tobacco while relying for a great amount of grain on Guangxi province. In the early Qing dynasty, products in areas such as Hunan, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Hubei were not abundant due to the long-term chaos caused by wars as well as the vast land and sparse population. In the reigns of Yongzheng and Qianlong, agricultural production underwent a remarkable expansion after a period of recovery and those areas took the place of Jiangsu and Zhejiang as the key bases to supply grain. Li Wei in 1726 (the 4th year of Yongheng’s reign) talked about the situation of each province of South China. For instance, in Zhejiang, “there were so many residents that the local grain could not meet their food needs”. 207 A similar phenomenon occurred in other provinces: “the rice of Fujian was transported from Taiwan and Zhejiang; the rice of Guangdong was mainly supplied by Guangxi, Jiangxi and Huguang; the rice of Jiangsu and Zhejiang was purchased from Jiangxi and Hunan-Guangdong”.208 Therefore the past saying that “if Suhu has a good grain harvest, the whole nation will be in a well-off state” changed into “if Hunan-Guangdong has a good grain harvest, the whole nation will be in a well-off state”.209 A lot of markets for commodities such as grain appeared in those areas that abounded with rice. For example, Chongqing was a center of Sichuan for collecting and distributing rice. All of the merchants from other provinces who wanted to purchase rice in Sichuan arrived in Chongqing “one after another” and then “shipped the rice they bought to the lower reach of the river”. Consequently, Chongqing, which “was thickly populated”, 210 became a crucial county in the southwest of China until Yongzheng’s reign. Moreover Xiangtan and Hengyang were centers of Hunan province for collecting and distributing rice; at the end of Kangxi's reign the two regions were well known as “big shops, because the local rice and that produced in areas around the two counties were all sold to other places and most of trade in rice was carried on here”.211 By the reign of Yongzheng, ships of Xiangtan for transporting rice “surpassed one thousand; merchants from various areas came for rice business; meanwhile, the county including areas around it was filled with rice to be traded”.212

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Rice produced in provinces such as Sichuan, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei passed through Hankou on the way to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, therefore Hankou came to be the traffic hub in southwest China. For example, Li Wei in 1726 (the 4th year of Yongzheng’s reign) stated that: “Hankou collected the most rice which was transported from Sichuan”. 13 Wang Jinghao also said:“rice of Jiangsu and Zhejiang was always supplied by Hunan and Guangdong while rice of Hunan and Hubei was transported from Sichuan”.214 However rice merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang seldom went to Hunan to purchase rice in person; instead they “bought in Hankou” rice which would usually be transported from Hunan to Hankou, which meant that “rice transported from Hubei to Jiangsu and Zhejiang was just the rice transported from Hunan to Hankou”.215 From November of 1731 (the 9th year of Yongzheng’s reign) to February of 1732, “there were more than four hundred boats used for shipping rice from Hankou to other places”216 during the three months. Thus it could be calculated that there were at least 1,600 boats shipping rice from Hankou to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in a year. In May of 1726 (the 4th year of Yongzheng’s reign), “rice transported from Hunan and Hubei to Suzhou in each day was uncounted”. 17 In 1734 (the 12th year of Yongzheng’s reign) Mai Zhu, the governor-general of Hunan and Hubei, claimed that: “Merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang had already purchased more than 5 billion dan of rice”.218 Farmers from Hunan and Hubei, which abounded in rice, often sold off surplus grain to merchants and intermediary businesses who made a profit by selling the grain on again at a higher price. In Changsha of Hunan province, “merchants who were employed by richer ones with a large sum of money took several people to purchase grain from door to door”219 every autumn harvest. In order to make more money, each merchant intercepted boats freighted with rice and pressed for the purchase of rice, which always caused panic buying and brawls. In the early reign of Qianlong it was common in “the lower reaches of the Hengxiang River” that profiteers “forced their way onto boats to buy rice”. “As soon as they saw a boat pulling in to the shore those profiteers would either jump onto that boat and purchase rice by force or employ thugs in their place to press for a purchase; furthermore, the thug sometimes jumped with a bamboo bar to purchase rice for his employer even when the boat was several zhang away from the shore; they would also row a small boat to intercept the riceboats so that the rude merchants collected almost all the rice, leaving the weaker ones on the shore getting nothing”. 220 Although this was strictly prohibited, this had no actual effect. After transporting rice from Hunan to Hankou, “the merchants would be intercepted by the intermediary businesses which did much

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harm to the merchants such as colluding with ruffians, inveigling merchants out of commodities and so on”. 221 Apart from this, some intermediary businesses also stored up goods to raise the price at will; and others spread rumors such as “the wind foreboding the drought and rain meaning flood”, so that “the value of goods upgraded over a day and the price went up in succession”. 222 Boats freighted with rice were intercepted all the way so the price of rice increased several times when transported to Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It was true that people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were the most severely exploited. Nevertheless, if “not purchased from Hunan and Hubei” the rice in Zhejiang and Jiangsu would be “invaluable”223 at once. Some of the rice transported from Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei to Jiangsu and Zhejiang would also be sold to other provinces. During 1727 (the 5th year of Yongzheng’s reign), over 20 thousand dan of rice transported from Hunan and Hubei to Suzhou were resold to Fujian so that “the rice in Suzhou was too expensive for common people to afford”. 224 The rice of Zhejiang and Jiangsu was mainly supplied by Hunan and Hubei. However, in the five counties of Huizhou, there were “much more mountains than fields along with a dense population” and thus the rice harvest of one year could not meet people’s needs of half a year and much more rice had to be “purchased from Zhejiang and Jiangxi”.225 What is more, in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, “the barren land and dense population led to a serious shortage of rice even in an abundant year; as a result, all the rice needed in such areas had to be bought from provinces in the southeast of China”. 226 It can be concluded that the commercialization of agricultural products not only promoted economic communication between various areas but also furthered the chain reaction and interdependence among agricultural sectors.

Feudal Land Tenure and Rent Exploitation The feudal land tenure system In feudal society, the land tenure system pursued by the squirearchy was the foundation of the production relationship. To be specific, the landlords possessed most of land and drove farmers to cultivate, ruthlessly squeezing farmers. Meanwhile land was not equitably distributed; particularly in the late Ming dynasty, and the annexation of land enjoyed a great currency for the royal clan, bureaucrats and landlords. The peasants’ revolt at the end of the Ming dynasty was a heavy blow to then imperial clan, bureaucrats and landlords; furthermore, it broke down the feudal land tenure and a part of the land was owned by farmers. Therefore the land

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A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

distribution in the early Qing dynasty tended to transform from centralization into decentralization. As the squirearchy was not able to seize all the land back from farmers over quite a long period, the owners of small areas of land and the land-holding peasants gained the upper hand. According to many letters and fish-scale booklets in Wanan at that time, the land the squirearchy held was usually around 100 mu , rarely exceeding hundreds of mu . Fang Bao stated that: “in terms of a county or town, there were merely ten well-off tenants or more who possessed surplus capital; the average ones who owned more than 200 mu of land were able to get a short-term loan; the paupers having ten mu of land or so could but live on selling wood chopped by themselves for they did not have enough grain”. 227 It was obvious that there were few rich landlords and relatively more average ones while paupers owning a small amount of land or nothing, i.e. farmers, constituted the majority, who experienced hunger and poverty all the year round. Such phenomena was also described in Shandong's records. For instance, in Putai county of Shandong, “most people made their living by cultivating and weaving; the rich tenants did not have a large scale of land, no more than 10 qing or merely around 10 mu ... All of peasants worked hard throughout the year but took chaff only as their staple food; although cultivating silk cotton and being busy with weaving, they wore only plain clothes”.228 The existing statistics relating to land owned by 91 jia 甲 of Huolu county in Zhili in the early 18th century is regarded as precious data of the extensive land counted in the end of our feudal society. The statistics involved over 20,000 families, 310,000 mu of land, the proportion of families of various types to most of families in Huolu, and the proportion of land occupying different areas to most of the land in Huolu. Moreover, it mainly refers to the situation in Yongzheng’s reign, with a little related to the end of Kangxi’s reign and the beginning of Qianlong’s reign. (as shown in the following table). As presented in the above table, we can see that there are 21,046 families and 315,229 mu of land. On the basis of the different areas of land owned by families, all the families can be classified into three types. The first type includes paupers having no land or less than 1 mu which total 6,219 and account for 29.5%, and poor families having one to ten mu which total 6,679 and account for 31.8%. This type covers 12,898 families which account for 61.3% of the total families and 33,594 mu of land, which accounts for 10.7% of the total land. The second type includes average families having ten to sixty mu , which involves 7,268 families accounting for 34.5% and 169,876 mu accounting for 53.9%. The third type refers to landlords owning more than 60 mu of land, which is eighty families accounting for 4.2% and 111,759 mu of land accounting for 35.4%.

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Table 6.2. The classified statistical table related to land owned by 91 jia of Huolu county in Zhili Area of land mu

%

–

–

Number of families

%

Families with no land

5,331

25.3

Families with 1—5 mu of land

3,507

16.7

10,207

Families with 10—15 mu of land

2,137

10.1

26,157

Types of families

Families with less than 1 mu of land

Families with 5—10 mu of land

Families with 15—30 mu of land Families with 30—40 mu of land Families with 40—50 mu of land Families with 50—60 mu of land

Families with 60—100 mu of land

Families with more than 100 mu of land

Total

Average of 91 jia

888

3,172 3,332 967 498 334

540

4.2

15.1 15.8 4.6 2.4 1.6

2.6

439

3.4

22,948

7.3

3.4 8.3

70,006

22.2

22,313

7.1

33,205 18,195 40,534

10.5 5.8

12.8

340

1.6

71,225

22.6

–

–

15.0

–

21,046 100.0 315,229 100.0

From the table, we can draw several conclusions. Firstly, the problem of inequitable distribution of land remained serious. The poor families accounting for 61.3% of the total population had merely 10.7% of the total farmland whereas the landlords accounting for 4.2% of the population held 35.4% of the land, which reflects the general state of inequitable distribution of land in feudal society. In such circumstances farmers having no land or little land have no choice but to be exploited by landlords. By diverse means the squirearchy continues to annex land; however farmers will inevitably revolt if the concentration of land exceeds a certain limit, which is not only the economic basis for the uprising and revolution but also the key to understanding the politics and history of the feudal society of China. Secondly, the average families, owning over half of the total land, occupied a dominant position in the rural areas of China. Such ownership of small areas of land or the landholding families would not be in a stable state in the economy, which is the supplement to landlordism. Moreover land is the essential object the landlords annex and plunder. Once there is a disaster, they will lose their land. Therefore, the poverty or bankrupt of poor families, owners of small land, land-holding farmers becomes the sign of a political storm. Thirdly, the landlords who accounted for 4.2% of the total occupy as much as 35.4% of the total land since

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they ruthlessly exploit poor farmer’s land and the labor force to increase their fortune by economic and super-economic means. On the whole, the average landlords, each of which owned 100 to 300 mu of land, make up the majority of the total landlords while there were less than 10 landlords owning more than 500 mu of land in Huolu. Nevertheless, there were also a lot of landlords owning vast lands in the early Qing dynasty, among which the emperor of the Qing dynasty was a landlord having the largest amount of land. According to incomplete statistics, his imperial palace had more than 1,000 manors which covered 3.93 billion mu .229 The imperial clan also occupied a large number of manors. For example, the manors belonging to the imperial clan in Zhili and Dongbei reached 1.33 billion mu . 230 Furthermore, in South China, Wu Sangui purchased 3,000 mu of land in Suzhou for his son-in-law Wang Yongkang; Gao Shiqi “purchased thousands of qing in Pinghu county”, Zhejiang;231 Xu Qianxue “bought 10,000 qing of farmland from Tian Muyan in Wuxi“;232 the Confucius Family Mansion covered 38,000 mu in counties in Zhili including Wuqing, Xianghe, Dong’an and Baodi.233 All the land was exploited by aristocrats and bureaucrats by right of their political power. However the political privilege of the average squirearchy in the early Qing dynasty was weakened, hence such squirearchy became less than that in Ming dynasty nationwide. Meanwhile, agricultural productivity in the early Qing dynasty had not yet recovered, and consequently the sparse population, vast wasteland, low yield of land as well as chaotic taxation and heavy taxes and corvée resulted in the fact that landowners could not make a big profit from land, which were also the reasons why the annexation of land was not violent at that time. Meng Qiaofang in the tenth year of Shunzhi’s reign said “most of the land in counties of Shaanxi such as Zhen’an was left uncultivated; even if provided with cows and seedcorn by officials, there was still nobody willing to undertake the cultivation, let alone people who bought land and paid taxes”. 234 In Kangxi’s reign, Wei Yijie also said: “The situation had just settled down after the successive years of chaos and the farmland began to be cultivated again; apart from it, the area was vast and sparsely populated, thus there were only a few tyrants annexing land”.235 Due to the heavy taxes and corvée, some landlords and land-holding farmers regarded land as an encumbrance. For instance, in regions south of the Yangtze River during the early reign of Kangxi, “as for small families with three to five mu of land, the tax was to the accuracy of one li or hao while those with middle-size property would fall into ordinary ones ... People there were afraid to owning land, gave covenant bond to the gentry and pleaded with the big families for a land annexation; otherwise, they would abandon their land and

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flee to another place”.236 In Hunan province, the ordinary landlords and land-

holding farmers also “sent their land deeds to big families just because of the heavy taxation”.237 As written in a poem, “those who wanted to flee had their

residence still left in the government; those who wanted to sell the land did not

know where to sell. It was really inconsiderate that the grandfather left his land as the legacy to his descendants”.238

However, such a situation soon changed. In line with the recovery and

expansion of the social economy, agricultural productivity improved; the system

of taxes and corvée underwent a series of reforms; the profit from land was on the increase, as was social wealth. All the achievements above were dependent upon the hard work of numerous farmers but the first to reap the benefits were the powerful squirearchy and bureaucrats, who took advantage of their

political and economic privileges to purchase and annex land in a mad rush.

The concentration of land started from the middle reign of Kangxi. For example, in Qinghe county, “people who owned land were not willing to do farm work but employed displaced person from Haishu to cultivate the land for them”; 239

in Tangxi county of Zhejiang, “farmers with no land usually rented land from

rich families for cultivation while only one tenth of land-owners cultivated the

land themselves”;240 in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, “there were a few small families

holding land but tenants constituted the majority”;241 in Shandong province, “it

was different from the other provinces for the ordinary farmers cultivated land for the owners”.242 In addition, the concentration of land also led to the increase in the price of land. As recorded in the 52nd year of Kangxi’s Reign, “there was

a sparse population and extensive land in previous years so one mu of land only

cost a little; now, the dense population means one mu is worth several liang ” .243

Generally speaking, the peasants’ revolt at the end of the Ming dynasty

and the beginning of the Qing dynasty did not have a direct impact on the regions south of the Yangtze River and the coastal provinces, and the feudal

relationships of production were not severely damaged. Therefore the concentration of land there occurred much earlier and more violently. In the

reign of Yongzheng this process accelerated further and the class contradiction became more and more fierce. From then on economic annexation was prevalent

throughout the whole nation, followed by increasing turbulence in politics. The related situation will be described in detail in the third volume of this book.

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The Feudal Exploitation System as Mainly Reflected in Tenancy Relationships In the Qing dynasty there were diverse forms of exploitation in rural areas, including the serf system in the banner land of North China, the tenant-servant system in several areas of South China, and a variety of tenancy systems and employment systems. Such various exploitation forms coexisted all over the country, which represented the serious imbalance in economic development of different areas. With the strong or weak force from the super economy, there was a relationship of administrative subordination between the squirearchy and farmers to various extents. Nevertheless the general trend was: the backward serf system and tenant-servant system were on the decline; the tenancy system was popularized nationwide, as was the employment system in agriculture; the feudal relationship of administrative subordination gradually disappeared; moreover the pure rent relationship between farmers and landlords expanded further. In North China, the feudal serf system was put in force in the banner lands of Manchu aristocrats. The able-bodied adults and Han people serving the Manchu were feudal serfs who did not have personal freedom and were always maltreated even to death. If the able-bodied adults were in arrears with land rent or , they would be subjected to severe torture. Particularly in the piercingly chilly winter, “they would be sprinkled with cold water; at night, they would even be fastened with rope at the bedside, not allowed to urinate and defecate so that they were unable to go to sleep”. “Although no people in the mansions had the right to convict anyone of a crime, illegal punishment such as detainment was put into force for over 200 years and the number of detainees tortured to death was uncountable”.244 The able-bodied adults led a miserable life. In addition, landlords and bureaucrats had a large number of slaves and maids who had no personal liberty; however, all the slaves and maids were usually not engaged in production but exclusively used as servants in the home. “There were many governors purchasing servants, some of which even bought as many as thousands of servants”.245 Rongguo Fu and Ningguo Fu in the novel Dream of the Red Chamber were jails imprisoning many servants. The backward serf system was not able to keep in line with the level of productivity at that time. As a result, serfs began to flee from home or revolt when the banner land had just been established. At the same time, the farmland lay derelict and the output soon decreased. The Qing Government drew up a strict law on fleeing persons in the very beginning but the decline of the serf system in the banner lands could not be avoided. Just during the 27th year

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of Kangxi’s reign, “the number of people from the ‘Eight Banners’ (militaryadministrative organizations of the Manchu nationality in the Qing Dynasty) fleeing reached 8,814” 246 while “4,000 to 5,000 servants would flee from the banners each year” until Yongzheng’s reign.247 Such an immense and continuous wave of escapes not only weakened the foundation of the serf system but also caused a serious shortage of labor force in the banners. Numerous soldiers of the Eight Banners had to sell their small piece of land, which gave birth much trans-banner trade and mortgage of banner land. Even though the Qing government used a considerable amount of money from the national treasury to redeem the banners, it was impossible to preserve the serf system in the banners. Hence other landlords of in the banners were forced to change their way of operation. They let out the uncultivated land to farmers and collected a fixed rent every year. This was called “farmers cultivate land while bannerowners collect rents”.248 So we can say that the serf system in the banner land was transforming into the feudal tenancy system. Various serf systems also had a certain power in some areas of South China. For example, in Macheng of Hubei, “the rich landlords bought servants to cultivate land and the descendants of servants were also forced to be servants when grown up”;249 in Jiangxi, “it was a custom of Jigan that the tenant farmers were taken as servants whose descendants were not allowed to take imperial examinations”250; in areas south of the Yangtze River, “the tenants were resold along with land, and ordered to do corvée labour without personal freedom”.251 All the above were the reflection of the remaining serf system. Serfs and tenants revolted against exploitation many times. In particular in the early Qing dynasty, “Cangtou (the servants) rose up in swarms, involving tenants, servants and those discontented with oppression”, 252 which weakened the remaining power of the serf system to a great degree. From then on, “no aristocrat dared to keep servants in Kangxi’s Reign”.253 In 1727 (the 5th year of Yongzheng’s reign), the Qing government issued a decree that the legal status of each servant who attached himself to the landlord be improved, which meant that the change in identity and legal status of servants was affirmed and the remaining power of the serf system was further weakened. There were also people of a lower social status than common people in the Qing dynasty who were deprived of various rights and at the bottom level of society. In the reign of Yongzheng, some of the people so classified for diverse reasons broke away from such an identity and acquired the same social status as the common people. In April 1723 (the first year of Yongzheng’s reign) the Qing government ordered the abolition of “the household register of musicians in Jiao Fang of Shanxi and Shaanxi”, and “the register of beggars of Shaoxing

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Fu” in September. By 1729 (the 7th year of Yongzheng’s reign), some of boat dwellers in Guangdong“ were allowed to live in villages near the river and to be registered with other common people”. In 1730 (the 8th year of Yongzheng’s reign), paupers from Changshu and Zhaowen “were registered in accordance with the customary rules for treating duomin (惰民)”. These measures which the Qing government had to take to go with the trend of development also revealed both the social advance and the decline of the feudal serf system to a certain extent. From the perspective of the whole nation, the tenancy system became the major form of feudal exploitation. By virtue of the feudal ownership of land, landlords let out their land to farmers who had no land or only a little land in order to collect rent. In such circumstances the tenant farmers still suffered the cruel exploitation of the squirearchy and had a relationship of administrative subordination with landlords to various degrees. Nevertheless, the pure rent relationship between farmers and landlords was gradually replacing the strong relationship of administrative subordination. On the whole the tenancy system was relatively advanced, on the basis of which farmers were able to have much more personal liberty along with the right to run farmland by themselves. According to the subordination of farmers to landlords, landlords’ intervention in affairs related to farming as well as the way of paying rent, the feudal tenancy system can be divided into two types. One is the metayage system i.e. the landlord and farmer shared the crops in a proportion directly related to the yield of agricultural products and rental. The landlords always provided farm implements, farm cattle and seeds as well as houses and the means of livelihood to farmers. Such a system prevailed in the undeveloped North China. The other is the quota rent system i.e. the landlord collected a fixed amount of rent from the farmer. Regardless of whether the harvest was good or bad, the landlord was divorced from agricultural production. Such a type of system was current in South China. In the light of historical records, “the tenancy system in Zhili is different from that in areas south of the Yangtze River. Landlords of areas south of the Yangtze River only collect rent while the farm tools and seeds were all prepared by farmers themselves. But in Zhili, landlords usually offer farm cattle and seeds to farmers and after the autumn harvest they share the crops and profits with farmers equally”. 254 “Tenants in North China live in houses of the landlords and most of the farm cattle and seeds are supplied by landlords.... While tenants in South China, who live in their own houses and provide farm cattle for themselves, just rent a small piece of land from landlords for cultivation; they have no direct connection with landlords except for paying rent.” “In North China, the landlord and farmer share crops

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equally while the landlord in South China collects rent in terms of the area of land”.255 The transition from the metayage system to quota rent suggests the development of agriculture and social progress. Based on the metayage system, the landlords had a lot of power to intervene in issues related to farming; and for farm tools, farm cattle and means of livelihood, farmers were almost entirely reliant on landlords. As a result, the farmers had a comparatively lower social status due to their shortage of capital, means and freedom to administer the land. For instance, in Cangzhou of Zhili, “landlords usually rent land to farmers and share the crops with farmers after the harvest; the relationship between landlord and farmer is slightly similar with that between owner and servant”.256 “There is an explicit distinction of status between landlord and farmer, namely owner and servant, in North China while it does not exist in South China”.257 “Tenants in North China are always oppressed and exploited by the landlords rather cruelly”.258 In line with the economic development and the upgrade of farmers’ status, people’s capability to overcoming disasters and fight against nature became increasingly strong and the agricultural yield also became steady year by year, which gave the possibility of transition from the metayage system to the quota rent one. The quota rent system not only gave full play to farmers’ initiative in production but also contributed to the growth of agriculture; additionally, the fixed rental provided a reliable guarantee to landlords. “There is no rental owing whether drought or flood”;259 “the rental also should not be decreased whether a good or bad harvest”.260 In other words, the labor intensity of tenants increased and the exploitation by landlords was more serious. It should be noted that the exploitation by landlords was on the whole ruthless no matter what tenancy system was pursued. Farmers had to offer a half to seven tenths of crops, or even eight tenths or more, as rent to landlords. Furthermore the squirearchy deprived farmers of all surplus labour and even a part of necessary labor. For example in Zhili, “the tenants rent land from landlords but the crops are shared equally by tenants and landlords”; 261 in Anhui, “the tenants also share the crops equally with the landlords”. 262 In a deed of land of Qian county in Shaanxi, it was stipulated as follows: “The crops are divided evenly after the autumn harvest”; in Qianxi county of Guizhou there was a land agreement stipulating that “the landlord and tenant are respectively distributed a dan of crops”.263 In Nanjing, the landlord owned 10 mu of paddy land with an output of no less than 30 dan of crops in the harvest year, but “a half of the crops are given to the landlord”.264 In the above cases of tenancy, the rate of exploitation is as high as 50%. In Yuyao of Zhejiang, “the landlord takes six tenths of the crops while merely four tenths are left to the

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tenant every year”.265 The tenants in Shanghang of Fujian “obtain four tenths of the crops while the landlords get six tenths”.266 In Huai’an of Jiangsu, the crops are “divided into three parts”267 and the landlords have two thirds of them. In Yuxian county of Shanxi it was also prescribed that “the tenant has one third of the crops while the landlord gets two thirds”. 268 In these areas, the rate of exploitation reaches 66.6%. In Ji county of Henan, rent was paid respectively in summer and autumn. In summer there was a wheat harvest and “eight tenths of the wheat is offered to the landlord”, while in autumn it was the harvest season for crops and “seven tenths of crops are given to the landlord”; moreover, “the farm tools should also be left to the landlord”. 269 Therefore the rate of exploitation surpassed 80%. In the Qing dynasty the employment system also existed in agriculture as well as the serf system and tenancy system. According to a copy of the archives about the Ministry of Penalties collected by the Institute of Economics, there were 708 cases related to employment in the various provinces in the reigns of Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing, of which 12 cases took place in Yongzheng’s reign, 259 in Qianlong’s reign and 437 in Jiaqing’s reign.270 On average there was less than one case in each year in Yongzheng’s reign, nearly five in Qianlong’s reign and over seventeen in Jiaqing’s reign. The increase in employment cases may have been led by the sharpening of employees' revolts and the generalization of employment in agriculture. At the end of Qianlong’s reign Macartney, an English envoy, came to China and observed that except for the tenancy system, “the landlord usually employs farmers to cultivate land and distributes a part of the crops to the employees; all the employees crops belong to themselves, a part of which will be drawn by the landlord to pay tax on agricultural products”.271 The employment in agriculture included long-term labor and casual labor. To be specific, “the long-term laborer is hired to cultivate land all the year round whereas the casual laborer works by the day”; 272 “people who have no land and are employed to do their utmost on cultivation are regarded as long-term laborers while people who are just hired for the summer and autumn harvests are classified as seasonal laborers”.273 The long-term laborers had no possessions at all and both the farm implements and means of livelihood were provided by the employers, thus they depended on their employers to a great degree. Casual laborers were only hired in the harvest seasons and therefore did not have a constant employer. They were usually the tenants or land-holding farmers and thus did not separated from the land completely and would cultivate land with their own farm tools sometimes. The salary of employees in agriculture varied with types of work, areas,

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seasons and labor intensity. Hence there was an obvious difference between various areas and the labor force saw a great fluctuation in price. Based on the materials about land debt recorded in the copy of the archives about the Ministry of Penalties and an autographed copy about office of scrutiny for punishment, the monthly salary of an employee in agriculture was 200 to 500 wen , which was too meager to make a living from and rather lower than that of employees in industry. Nevertheless there were some employees receiving a comparatively higher salary, who undertook the more technical work and work of high labor intensity. For example, in Pengxian county of Sichuan, an employee who gathered herbs earned 600 wen ; in Tangxi of Zhejiang, an employee planting indigo earned 700 wen ; in Haicheng of Fengtian, the salary of an employee who raised silkworms was as high as 1,700 wen . The less developed economy resulted in unstable employment in agriculture. The poor people who lived on selling their labor were often out of work, even suffering hunger and cold. Especially when there was a flood or drought, many of them would be unemployed and lead a vagrant life, which caused serious social chaos. There was a feudal relationship of administrative subordination between employer and employee, thus the employees were not absolutely free. In the laws of the Ming and Qing dynasties such an employment relationship was brought into the feudal ethics relationship of the patriarchal clan system, where employers were described as “parents” who “reared” employees. In this way the ruling class reversed the issue of “who raises whom” and took “employees who have signed contacts and fixed the length of service” as children of employers so as to deprive employees of freedom and rights. In law, “employee” means that the employers could not employ labor freely. As stipulated in law, employers who killed an “employee” would received a light sentence, but if an “employee” assaulted his employer or employer ’s family members he would be subjected to a exceedingly severe punishment. When lodging an accusation against an employer, the employee would be either hung if they lodged a false accusation or be punished even if telling the truth.274 In other words, employees and employers were not equal under the law. In pace with the generalization of employment in agriculture, the uprising of employees became more and more fierce and the employees’ status was upgraded day by day. Real life broke down the articles of the law over and over again so that the legal provisions had to be amended repeatedly. In the laws of the late Ming dynasty, casual laborers “who are hired by the day and receive a little money” were excluded from the class of “employee” and were treated as “common people” in court trials, that is, the casual laborers won equal legal

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status with employers first. In view of the changing real situation, the Qing government revised the laws relating to “employee” many times, narrowed the field of application of such laws, and enabled a great number of employees in agriculture to shake off the fetters of these laws. In particular in 1790 (the 55th year of Qianlong’s reign), there were several articles revised as follows: “People such as cart drivers, cooks, boatmen, firemen, chair men and handy men ... who are taken as servants by the owners are regarded as employees whether they have a contract or not, while people such as tenants who are hired to cultivate land for landlords but are equal with employers are treated as common public whether they have a contract or not”.275 Such revision of laws canceled the original way of judging whether a hired person was regarded as an “employee” from if they had a contract. People who did domestic work were still categorized as “employees” while those who were engaged in agricultural production and commercial service but “equal with employers” in daily life were treated as “common people” in criminal law. Hence even the long-term laborers who signed contracts and fixed the length of service with employers were on equal footing with employers. The content of laws was influenced by social life but could not change with it. The employees in agriculture were being divorced from the administrative subordination to employers. The emancipation of casual and long-term laborers was a slow, tortuous and painful process in reality. However employees in agriculture tended to sell their labor force only, which was a transit to becoming free hired laborers.

Rent in kind in the Qing dynasty In the Qing dynasty, rent in kind was the most popular form of land rent. Under the rent-sharing system the landlords received grain from tenants as their share according to a certain proportion, and under the quota rent system, in-kind rent had already been adopted in many areas. The advantages of inkind rent are generally reflected in the 139 cases concerning land rent recorded in the duplicates of preserved files of the Ministry of Penalties for economic study. Among the 139 cases, 102 concern in-kind rent, which accounts for 73%, whereas only 37 concern money rent, 27% of the whole.276 The prevalence of in-kind rent corresponded to the feudal self-sufficient natural economy and showed that the monetary relationship was not fully developed at that time. Agricultural products were mainly used not as value but as use value and were rarely put into commodity circulation. “The form of in-kind rent was necessary for the combination of agricultural economy and household industry, as farm households led totally self-sufficient lives and did

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not depend on the market or production campaigns and historical movement outside their society. All in all, due to the nature of the general natural economy, the form of in-kind rent was suitable to provide a foundation for a stable social state of the kind we see in Asia.”277 Further development of the commodity economy could be seen in some areas during the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns. The surplus products of peasants flooded into the market and were changed into currency. Meanwhile landlords wanted money and as a result, more money rent occurred, that is, farmers did not hand in products as rent but priced the products and turned in land rent in the form of cash, which was more favored by landlords. During the years of the Yongzheng’s reign, in Shanhua county Hunan province, “top-grade lands were sold at one thousand and four hundred to two thousands liang of silver, and the cost of rental lands varied from one to two liang of silver”. 278 Money rent was universal for farmland growing cash plants. For instance, in the villages planting Chinese fan palm in Xinhui district of Guangdong province, “there were more than six thousands mu of farmland extending over twenty miles long, and the rent fee for them was 14 to 15 liang each year.” 279 For convenience, the rent for collective and government farmland was mostly collected in the form of money. An example is a landlord surnamed “Zhou” in Zhenjiang city. He inherited his ancestors’ tomb fields of 2 mu 2 fen and 3 li , and rented them out to tenant peasants. The rent was collected as “five dou of dry wheat in summer and five qian 錢 in autumn according to seasons”280 and rent of another two fen and five li of land was used to offer sacrifices which were 7,400 wen each year.281 The transformation from in-kind rent to money rent was a tardy and arduous process, but was necessary because growth in productivity and stability of agricultural production were indispensable and a market price for agricultural products was also a must. Such a transformation was realized in some areas during the Qing dynasty, with the two rent forms coexisting around the country and the former gaining the upper hand. In the Qianlong period, the grand secretary (da xue shi ) Na Qin proposed that: “owners of land properties have the privileges of sharing part of the harvest or collecting rent; tenants shall turn in grain or money as land rent”,282 from which we can conclude the coexistence of the two kinds of exploitation — harvest-shared rent and fixed rent as well as the two forms of rent — in-kind rent and money rent. In spite of the little progress made in agricultural production in the Qing dynasty, the position of laborers was advanced to some extent and the forms of exploitation and land rent experienced some changes. However it was still a feudal agricultural society and the exploitation by landlord class was built on a system that exceeded economic rules.

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Besides land rent, the landlords squeezed the peasants through additional exploitation of various kinds by violent means, such as: (1) “Rent deposit” (Ya Zuqian 押租錢). This was called by different names in different areas. In Du county, Jiangxi province, it was called “Pi Tianyin (批佃銀)”; in Fujian, “Gen Zu (根租)”; in Jing county Anhui province, “Ding Shoudao (頂手稻)”; in Jingjiang county Jiangsu province, Ji Jiaoqian (系腳錢); in Shanhua county Hunan province, “Gui Liyin (規禮銀)”; in Daozhuo county, “Xie Tianqian (寫田錢)”; and Sichuan province, “Ya Tian (壓佃)”. Unlike names held connotations very much alike. The aim of the rent deposit was to collect money before the land was rented in case the tenant peasants could not afford or refused to pay the rent. It is recorded in The History of Ping Jiang (平江影志) in Hunan that tenants were required by landlords to hand over a rent deposit in advance to “prevent acts of resistance against rent”.283 In Ba Ling county, tenants repaid with interest if they borrowed money from the landlords, otherwise the money would “be deducted from the guarantee deposit”.284 Landlords in Ting Zhou county Fujian province did not return the guarantee deposit to the tenants at all; they embezzled it by changing the leaseholder every year. 285 The size of rent deposit was quite different in different areas. Ting Zhou county Fujian province collected “three to four qian for each mu of land in variety” which was a smaller amount; in Hunan’s Shanhua county, “tenants turned in thirty liang of silver or so for each dan of farmland”; 286 in Sichuan, every 5,000 min (緡), amounts to a string of 1,000 wen copper) was collected as deposit for one mu of farmland, 500,000 min could mortgage 100 mu of land accordingly,287 which equaled ten percent of the selling price of each mu ; In Jingjiang county Jiangsu province, in 1745 (the 10th year of the Qianlong’s reign), 1,366 mu of rental farmlands gathered 6,000 qian of rent deposits each year; 288 and in Fujian’s Zhenhe county, only grain was received. In the 11th year of the Jiaqing reign, a landlord owned 11 mu and 11 fen of farmland and rented it to Chen Jingliang and his two brothers separately. The three brothers handed over more than 600 grams of Ding Shoudao (rice for deposit) to the landlord in advance.289 (2) “Depriving the original tenants of their rental farmlands and renting to others”, which was also called “depriving land for more rent” and was one of the means of raising the rent for no reason and thus exploiting the tenant peasants more. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, wasteland could be seen everywhere and as poor peasants opened up these wastelands to make a living, they were allowed to turn in less rent. However, after years of hard working, when the original wasteland had been turned into fertile soil, landlords began to increase the amount of rent and when they were refused by the tenant peasants, “depriving land for more rent” occurred. For example, in 1745 (the

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10th year of the Qianlong’s reign) Zhangzhou county, 99 mu 3 fen 1 Li and 4 qian of Xuetian (farm lands belong to schools or academies) were originally rented to the tenant families of Xie and Chen at the price of 73 dan (each dan equaled to 10 dou ) of grain, costing more than 7 dou of grain for an average mu of land. In 1750 (the 15th year of the Qianlong’s reign), after five years of intensive cultivation, the rent was raised to 83 dan without any reason and 8 dan of grain was needed for every mu of land. Refusal to pay the higher rent would result in the landlord taking back the fields. 290 In Shunde county Guangdong province, “the leaseholder was changed by the landlord in the rental seasons”. “If the tenant cannot satisfy the owner with increased rent, the land will be taken back and rented to others who can”. 291 In Jiangxi province, before the time of transplanting rice seeding, landlords often “sought to seize seedlings of superior quality”. Although it was the tenants who had irrigated the fields, ploughed the land and sowed the seedlings, the vicious landlords were pitiless in “destroying the seedlings, seizing the farm cattle and robbing the tenants of their tools” or “gathering a gang of bandits to rob grain at harvest time”. All this outrageous behavior was to increase rents or “rent to others at a higher price”. (3) “Input with big bowl, output with small bowl”. This was another way the landlords used to exploit tenant peasants. When the landlord class collected land rent, not only was top-class grain demanded, but also impurities in the submitted grain were “blown away by fan or double fan to shrink the peasants’ turn-in”.292 The landlords also extorted the tenants by “measuring input with big bowls and output with small bowls”. For example, in Tingzhou county Fujian province, landlords measured the submitted grain by “rental barrel”, that is, one barrel could hold 21 liters of weight, but when calculated as rent the grain was measured by “government barrel”,293 namely 16 liters to one barrel, so every barrel meant 5 liters more of grain for the landlords. In Shanghang county, the landlords collected rent by “seeking all sorts of tricks to overcharge the rent, they made bigger bowls to measure grain, increasing each bowl by 4 to 5 liters of grain”.294 In Shicheng county Jiangxi province, “one dou of loss was added to a dan’s (a dan equals 33 dou ) rent called Tongmian (桶面)”.295 In Jianchang mansion, “the rich family used to increase in-kind rent submitted by tenants by collecting the imput in big bowls and measuring output by small bowls”.296 In Huizhou mansion Guandong province, “the measuring bowl was enlarged to take one, two or even five to six litre more of grain”. 297 In Baisha country Fengxian county Jiansu province, a squire used a large Hu (a kind of measuring tool) for measuring grain and was greatly hated by the local tenants”. 298 In Wuxing country Zhejiang province, “the measuring hu 斛 was

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usually made bigger to take 3 liters more grain; land rent was greatly increased by this means”.299 Because “different areas used measuring tools with different capacity, tools were intentionally enlarged, and excessive additional loss was demanded to deduct from the submitted grain”, the Qing government made some rules as early as 1704 (the 43rd year of the reign of Kangxi). For example, “the measuring tool of the iron Hu shall be made according to uniform criterion which shall be carried out throughout the country”. 300 However, due to the greedy nature of the landlords, they would not follow the “criterion”. (4) “Extorting gifts from tenants”. The reason why tenants gave gifts to landlords was that they were afraid of “being deprived of leasehold of land”. Later, in some areas, this phenomenon became an unwritten “established rule”.301 During the reign of Qianlong, in Congming county Jiangsu province, it was common that if tenants wanted to rent land from the owner, they must send chickens and ducks as gifts to the landlord in advance. If they did not, the tenants might lose the leasehold. In Songjiang, a landlord of a “notable family and great clan” called Dong Kuichu rented land to a tenant for 1 dan of rice, and as the tenant peasant planted some vegetables in other places around the land, another 1 jin of dried melons together with the rent was required,302 which was also a form of extortion. In Wuhu county Anhui province, tenants made grain pie to send to the landowners at Chongyang festival (also called the Double Ninth Festival, the 9th day of the 9th lunar month), which was called “Songjie (送節)”. 303 In Shaoxing county, when “Qi’nianbaosai (祈年扱賽)” (an ancient ceremony in which people sacrifice offerings to the gods and pray for harvest) came, all the tenants sent ducks and piglets to their landowners as gifts. 304 In Minqing county Fujian province, peasants send chickens and ducks in harvest season to landlords which were called ‘Tiansheng’”.305 In Xianyou county, after turning in a year’s rent, tenants had to send “a chicken and 2 or 3 dou of topclass white rice to landlords to imply next year’s “renewal”.306 In Henan, tenants delivered chickens, piglets, cloth, silk and everything available to landlords for fear that land owners would plunder the land and rent to others.307 In Daozhou county Hunan province, landlords extorted “a first-year chicken” from tenants and the number of chickens increased by 1 or 2 to 3 when every ten mu of land was rented. Moreover “eggs of chickens and ducks, firewood, sticky rice and meat” were claimed by the landlord, and layers of exploitation also included benefits for the henchmen hired by landlords for “guarding their business and collecting rent”.308 The situation in Yunnan was more serious. In addition to rent, “a fee for guarding the land, and properties such as pigs, goats, chickens and wine were also required to be delivered by tenants”. If a tenant’s daughter got married, the landlord would charge “Chucunli (出村禮)” (gifts for allowing the

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newly married woman to come out of the village). “If a tenant’s family conducts a funeral”, “the money of dying” had to be delivered to the landlord. After a tenant died, “cattle and some other properties of the death” were robbed by the landlord.309 All these went far beyond the limit of “extorting gifts”. (5) Corvee without pay. This phenomenon was the remains of labor rent in the in-kind-rent-dominated stage, and also reflected the humble political position of tenants in some areas. The Qing government ruled that landlords and tenants “are equal and tenants should not be ordered as servants”, and “there is no classification of master and servant between the two”. But in spite of these rules, in many areas, the relationship between landlords and tenants was still unequal. In addition to rent, tenants had to do various odd jobs, wash, cook, and carry sedan chairs etc., which was a specific embodiment of the unequal political status. For example a squire surnamed Ji in Taixing county Jiangsu province ordered 60 tenants to guard his courtyard and watch his family every night without pay. 310 In Chongming county, as well as the rent delivered in summer and winter, tenants had to carry sedan chairs, pay for meals, serve the landlords’ families, and deliver petty expenses etc. 311 In Daozhou county Hunan province, “when a landlord’s family had a wedding, funeral or some other event, tenants were ordered to carry sedan chairs, help with housework and served as handymen and servants. If landlords became dissatisfied, tenants would be arbitrarily abused.312 Landlords in Ningdu county Shanxi province demanded that “tenants to deliver a Cao Xie (草鞋) fee”313 (a fee exploited by landlords as surcharge on tenants for renting farm lands) according to the amount of rented land.314 In Henan, “landlords were more rampant, they enslaved tenants and overcharged land rents, they even forced tenants’ wives to serve them. In spite of the landlords’ savage behavior, tenants did not dare to resist”.315 Cases like the above were numerous.

Infiltration of usury capital into rural areas Usury was an old form of capital which existed long before the capitalist model of production was founded. Usury capital appeared primarily in cities. In the late feudal period, with the development of the economy of commodity money and the further commercialization of agricultural products, usury capital gradually penetrated from the city to the rural areas. The exploited objects of countryside usury were yeoman and vast numbers of poor peasants, whose economic base was not stable. The yeomen owned a tiny amount of land, so due to their weak economic forces they could not cope with the exploitation by the feudal rulers together with surprise attacks by natural calamities and

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man-made misfortunes. Engels pointed out that when it was the time to collect taxes, usurers and rich peasants (they were often from the same community) appear and lend their money for interest. Peasants need money, so they had to accept the usurer’s demands.316 Usurers seized the opportunity to penetrate into the countryside and reaped staggering profits by lending money and through foodstuffs. In the early and middle stages of the Qing dynasty, usurers were very active in the rural areas. In the countryside of the Prefecture of Songjiang, Huating county, Jiangsu province, landlords, merchants and usurers combined together to force usury on the peasants. “The rich took out the capital and the poor took out the interest.” The rich lent grain or money to the poor when spring was changing into summer (when there was a shortage of food before the new harvest), and the poor paid this back in winter (the season of harvest). “It is like this every year”.317 Peasants in Qingpu county borrowed grain for spring ploughing and paid back after the autumn. “The interest was very high, even someone who had borrowed one dan had to pay back two dan ”. 318 They had to pay back twice. The usurer in Jiangyin county, “taking the peasant at a disadvantage”, blackmailed and imposed exactions on them. For example, when a peasant borrowed ten liang of silver, the usurer just gave them eight or nine liang silver as ten liang . “The contract was still written as the full amount”, “or collected interest at five fen or six fen ... In the twinkling of an eye the interest was more than the capital.” If peasants did not pay back on time, “the interest would be put as capital, and then the whole amount of principal and interest would be seen as the new capital on which to calculate interest.” “We can see that several months later the amount the peasant has to repay becomes many times the capital borrowed.” This was named “snowballing usury”. Poor peasants “burned themselves out and have no choice”, so they had to “pay back with farm land and houses, even with their children”.319 During the Qing Emperor Kangxi’s reign, among the people the rich lent silver and the poor had to pay back with grain in Zhejiang province. The interest was many times more than the capital and the interest would be added to the capital. The total principal and interest would be seen as a new capital on which to calculate interest.” “When spring was changing into summer (when there was a shortage of food before the new harvest) and the poor did not have enough to eat”, usurers “seize the opportunity to urge the poor to pay back the debts pretending they had met an emergency.” “Regardless of the price at that time, if they lend one liang silver, the poor had to write a contract that they would pay back with grain at ten dan , or even with eleven or twelve dan

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when the autumn was arriving.” Poor peasants “had to be obedient to the rich and got back the silver with hatred”. 320 Usurers in the Prefecture of Huzhou set provisions that for anyone who borrowed more than ten liang of silver the carried interest was 1.5 fen per month; for anyone who borrowed more than one liang , the carried interest was 2 fen per month; for anyone who borrowed less than one liang , the carried interest was 3 fen per month.321 That is to say, the poorer the peasant was and the less silver they borrowed, the more interest they had to pay back and so the more ruthless the exploitation. At the early years of the Qing Emperor Qianlong, in Anhui province, a yeoman who had several mu or dozens of mu would be put in an awkward position in that they had nothing to pawn and nobody to borrow from when spring was changing into summer (shortage of food before the new harvest) and at the same time the government collected tax and the landlord pressed for land rent. Therefore they had to “give young sprouts as a security for the debt and calculate the rent according to the quality and quantity of the farmland”.322 Usurers often made use of usury to engulf the yeoman’s farmlands. “After one year the interest on the debt was as much as the capital, therefore the usurer could annex many families’ farmlands”.323 During the Qing Emperor Yongzheng years, in Nanhai county Guangdong province, “the way of the world and the heart of a human being” are “meanly avaricious and mercenary and social conduct were very frivolous and thoughtless”. The “greedy men collect much interest when someone is in critical shortage”. When the peasant were “sometimes poverty-stricken” they would “think only of the present” and borrowed grain from the usurer. “The carried interest was three fen , or even five fen or more”. That is to say, peasants worked hard the whole year but “in the harvest season they were not in the possession of the grain”. Even in a good harvest year, “the amount of grain was close to amount of their debts”. When they had a bad harvest they “could do nothing to help”, so they could not pay back their debts. “Then it resulted in snowballing usury and the peasants could not settle accounts for many years. Furthermore, they would incriminate their descendants”.324 In the third year of the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, in Henan province usurers collected interest in violation of all rules. “The usurer would collect interest at five or six fen and the highest interest was up to fifteen fen. The poor were exploited wantonly”.325 In the fifth year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, merchants in Shanxi province colluded with the landlords in Henan province. They “major in lending money for interest”. They lent at 20% discount and “calculate snowballing usury monthly. When the autumn harvest was arriving, the debt would be discounted to grain and the interest would be more than

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double. The life of the poor peasant became harder and harder and the harm done to the poor was too great to enumerate.”326 Most of the usurers in Xingtang county Hebei province were “rich merchants from other areas. They had money and lent money for interest.” “Decreasing the debt in the open, they increased the amount secretly. In addition they illegally collected too much interest and the size of the poor peoples’ debts accumulates day by day and month by month. Not only did usurers collect interest, they also put the interest as capital and calculated using snowballing usury. Eventually the interest is more than the capital. If the poor are in arrears with the rent to some degree, they would be forced to pawn their farmlands or house”. The poor peasant “worked for the whole year, but they could not pay back their debts”.327 In Wuji county and Mancheng county, most usurers were merchants from Shanxi province. “They had money and came there to make interest by lending money”. The monthly interest was four or five fen and sometimes up to six or seven fen ”. Some peasants borrowed seven dou of grain from the usurer, but “five years later, they had to pay back twenty dou ”.328 The pawnshop was one form of usury, which raised a mortgage on goods. There were written records about it in the Tang dynasty (the middle stage of feudal society in Chinese history). The original pawnshops were mainly set up in the cities where industry and business were prospering and which were densely populated. By the late stage of feudal society, circulation of commodities extended into the countryside. As a form of usury, pawnshops gradually extended into towns near the countryside. In the early period of the Qing dynasty, pawnshops existed throughout the country’s cities and countryside. According to E Ertai in 1744 (in the 9th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong), there were a total of six or seven hundred pawnshops both official and private within the capital and without.329 It is clear that there were many pawnshops at that time. During the Qing Emperor Kangxi years, cities and towns were covered with pawnshops in Jiangxi province. The usurers exploited the peasants cruelly through the pawnshops. “Among the people anything pawned that was worth one liang could only be pawned for three qian in the pawnshop.” Moreover, “the poor had to pay interest at seven or eight qian to redeem their mortgages”. And “they could not redeem their mortgages if any demand of the usurer was not met”. Moreover usurers wrote numbers vaguely and hastily on the pawn ticket deliberately, in order to ensure the poor “could not recognize it clearly”.330 Like fishing in troubled waters, they could swindle the poor out of their money. During the Qing Emperor Jiaqing years, there was one form of pawnshop called “Zhipu 質鋪” in Jiangxi province, “where peasants took goods as the mortgage

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in order to borrow grain”. The form of pawnshop that lent grain for interest was set up especially for the peasants who were short of food during the period of food shortage between the two harvests. Most of the shopkeepers of the “Zhipu” were “the rich” in the countryside. These usurers were had plenty of capital. The poor among them had more than one hundred dan or hundreds of dan , and the wealth of the richer among them reached thousands of dan . “All their exploitation objects were the nearby peasants. The peasants worked hard and calculated the costs very carefully in order to have food every day”. Every time the amount of grain they borrowed was several dan or more than ten dan. Mortgages in this kind of pawnshop all were “clothes made of coarse material”, farm implements, house furnishings and so on. They were pawned at a low price. Moreover, “peasants had to bear the shrinkage of pawning and redeeming the grain together with shrinkage by mice” 331 and balances between the two periods of pawning and repayment. Fig. 6.6. A pawn ticket from the 59th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong

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As early as in the reign of Qing Emperor Kangxi pawn broking was highly developed in the countryside of Hunan province. The pawnshops’ interest rate was very high in Hunan. It was laid down in the pawnshop that although the weight could be heavy or light when pawning and repaying the silver and the relative purity of the silver was different, the money was calculated in spite of current prices”. The pawnshop collected interest by the month. And if it was in excess of five days, interest would be calculated as one month. In addition if the date on which a peasant paid back exceeded the time limit, they were not permitted to redeem the pawned goods. The pawnshop then sold them at a higher price immediately.332 In the 42nd year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi, when Yu Chenglong was governor-general of both Hubei and Hunan provinces, all counties’ pawnshops in the prefecture of Changsha exploited the poor peasant. “When the poor pawned something, the pawnshops gave them less money than it should. However when they redeemed their pawned goods, the pawnshop collected more money than it should”. Nominally the interest rate should not be more than three fen but in fact it was much higher than three fen. “If the running month if the day they redeem their pawned goods is in excess of one or two days, this period’s interest would be calculated as one month”. When the pawnshop lent money, the content of silver in their silver used as currency was 94–95%. Therefore this meant that every liang was two or three fen less than it should be. However when the poor paid back with silver used as currency, it had to be 100% silver. “This meant that every liang was two or three fen more than it should be”. Because of this manipulation with the silver, “the interest rate of a pawnshop was three fen nominally but in fact it was up to four or five fen”.333 In Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces where the commodity economy was comparative developed, pawnbrokers colluded with dealers to hoard for speculation and exploit the peasants doubly. Pawnbrokers funded the dealers hoarding for speculation to help the dealers buy agricultural products such as grain, silk and cotton from the peasants when prices were low. “At the same time they also lend the products they bought to peasants”.334 They could easily make large profits. During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, “all pawnbrokers were from rich families” in Jiangsu province. The pawnshops could “make a large profit and all of them are very rich”.335 All peasants from the counties of the Prefecture of Changsha took clothes as the mortgage when they borrowed money from the pawnshop, which were worth only a little. If the date that the peasant repaid exceeded the time limit, they were not permitted to redeem the pawned goods. “It was always happening that the peasant exceeded the time limit and was not permitted to redeem the pawned goods. 33 In Taixing county

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Jiangsu province, “there were pawnbrokers in the Five City gates and all the towns”, who “could decide which kind of coin is the criterion”.337 During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, in both Wuji county and Zhili county, Nanjing city, pawnbrokers “exploited the poor peasants by demanding high interest”. The working people took their cotton-padded clothes as mortgage and borrowed a small amount in spring, then “redeemed the mortgage to keep out the cold in winter”. On the arrival of winter, the poor redeeming their cottonpadded clothes stood in a long queue at the gate of pawnshop. “Until dawn the poor came and went continuously”.338 In the 13th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, “during the period of farming peasants’ belongings were not in their own storage” in Guangdong province and Guangxi province. After the harvest in autumn they “organized or arranged what they could to fend off the cold one by one”. The working people “switched grain for cotton-padded clothes in winter and switched the cottonpadded clothes for grain when spring arrived”.339 They did this almost every year. During the Emperor Yongzheng’s reign there were more than “seventy pawnshops” 340 in Xianyou county Fujian province. Their major exploitation objectives were the tenant peasants. Pawnbrokers made use of pawnshops to explioit the working people cruelly and obtain money from them mercilessly, which resulted in violent revolt against pawnbrokers. Therefore in the early stage of the Qing dynasty, incidents of plundering and setting pawnshops on fire happened all over the country. For example, in June the 43rd year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi more than three hundred working people, ”plundered all the pawnshops and forced the officials to square accounts” in Huguang Town”. 341 In November the 46th year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi, many working people “plundered the house of Lu Sanjiu who had set up the pawnshop. They fired when entering the gate and everything of high cost or value was taken” in the region of Liu River, Taicang Zhou Jiangsu province.342 In April the 13th year of the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, the working people set fire to mega-pawnbroker Wang Zhengtai’s “eighteen rooms of pawnshop storehouse” in Kunshan county. 343 On the midnight of 18 December in the 11th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong the public from inside and outside the city “forced their way into the pawnshops and plundered them” in Guyuan county.344 In the 16th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, the public burned out one pawnshop named Jin Xinghao in Shangyuan county, Jiangsu province. Some people such as Zheng San, whose fields bordered on this pawnshop, undertook the whole thing and thought of a way of making compensation”. Zheng San earned profit by “giving

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short measure”. He aroused public indignation, so the public “lashed and locked up” Chen Zizhong,345 who was the shopkeeper of the pawnshop named Jin Xinghao. In addition, the public burned out Zheng San’s house. In the 50th year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, with Liu Zhende as the leader “some persons plundered pawnshops” in Zhecheng county, Henan province.346 In the 21st year of the reign of Emperor Jiaqing, a pawnshop owned by Cai Benyou was plundered by twenty-two persons at night in Zhangpu county, Fujian province.347 Landlords, merchants and usurers were three-in-one. They exploited the peasants cruelly through usury and made the yeomen bankrupt, and then many of those yeomen became tenants. The working people all over the country robbed pawnshops constantly, which represented revolts against exploitation through usury.

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Chapter

The Development of the Handicraft Industry and Commerce

A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

The Development of the Handicraft Industry and the Buds of Capitalism The Resumption and Development of the Handicraft Industry Chinese handicraft industry in ancient times had a long history, yielding a great variety of exquisite products. Its technical competence and technological level ranked among the first in the world. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, many important cities and towns were burnt, plundered and pillaged throughout a long and chaotic period. Some handicraft industry bases, developed in the Ming dynasty, were seriously undermined. In history Jingdezhen had already become a porcelain manufacturing center with an excellent reputation. Since the middle period of the Ming dynasty, stateowned kilns and private kilns in Jingdezhen had been developed, but the kilns were nearly reduced to ruins through the long period of war in the early years of the Qing dynasty. In the silk textile industry there were more than 3,000 textile machines in the last stage of the Ming dynasty, while by the 17th year of the Shunzhi reign only two or three hundred were left. Moreover the local feudal authorities exploited the weaving mills and the imperial government extorted tribute silk from them every year. “The mills had to work every day throughout the year to hand in the silk which the Mandarins in the local government and other provinces demanded”. “All producers burnt textile machinery and smashed their steles into pieces. They had to flee to alien places”.1 Shu Brocade was a world-famous textile produced in Chengdu, Sichuan, but due to the chaos caused by war “no workshops and designs survived”.2 Other famous handicraft cities, such as Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou, as well as Foshan in Guangzhou etc. suffered serious destruction and heavy losses. Since the middle of the Kangxi’s reign, the feudal social order had been relatively stable and the nation’s economy had been restored and developed; handicraftsmen also felt secure from scarcity and want. Every handicraft department, compared with the last years of the Ming dynasty, was improved and expanded. The first manifestation of the resumption and development of the handicraft industry was that tools of production were advanced and innovated to some extent. Take the satin industry in Nanjing as an example. The structure of the satin processing machine was rather complicated and exquisite. “There were more than one hundred types of stain processing machines”. “The machines were so precisely manufactured that they were used all over the country”. 3

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Fig. 7.1.

Ceramic industry in Jingdezhen in the Qing dynasty

Fig. 7.2.

Brocade processing machine of Sichuan in the Qing dynasty

“The silk processing machine was made up with shuttles, axles, treadles reed slabs, capstan, footsteps and heddles, assisted by cards, bobbin cases, reels and wheels. Just one machine could do all the jobs”. 4 The porcelain kilns, in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, were larger than those of the Ming dynasty and the technologies were advanced, therefore the production and quality of porcelain kilns were improved. The porcelain industry was highly compartmentalized;

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each kiln owner and each working procedure had their own skills and tools. Mallets, drilling tools, chisels, air boxes, lighting equipment, water-dams and other sorts of tools were used in the copper mining industry of Yunnan. Certain knowledge and experience of geology was needed in order to find the copper ore. “Mines had lead wires, which are called outcrops or mineral veins”. 5 A person who was highly experienced in mining could tell whether there was a potential mine or not. Different mining methods would be employed in the light of the physical features of the place; then chisellers would follow the ware line and sink pits. In the process of excavation the “mine-detector”, an important member of the technical staff, directed the production. He was responsible for the success or failure of the mine. “One ‘mine-detector’ was designated to each pit; he observed and examined the color of the newly-mined ores, dispatched the chisellers and gave them instructions”; “veneer wood should be erected providing the newly-mined ores were loose, the air box should be set up providing the color was gleaming. The water-dam was fixed providing there was water. When the ores were dug out, he would appraise and fix the ore prices. When someone opened a pit, he should recruit a ‘mine-detector’ first. If he chose the right person, the pit would surely achieve results”.6 The machines employed by the cotton textile industry in Suzhou achieved marked improvement. In Shanghai for example, “one skein of yarn was held with two fingers in other towns (handlooms), while in our town (Shanghai), one worker only used one hand to hold three skeins and they also were able to pedal the wheel with the foot (it was called a feetloom). The workers weaved more cloth and the machines were high-performance”.7 The loom was also improved and innovated. The waist-loom, which had been generally used in the past, required great labor intensity and worked slowly. In the early Qing dynasty the waist-loom was abandoned and replaced with sophisticated equipment. The textile machinery was manufactured by specialized shops, which constantly improved and perfected their machines. In Qingpu town there was a shop started by Mrs. Xu, at Huangdu, which produced textile machinery. The machines here “were sturdy and easy to operate, even if the price was a bit high”. They were popular in the households of weavers. In addition, spindles made in Jinze and looms from Mrs. Xie’s shop were well known far and wide and there was already a saying that “Jinze's spindles and Xie's looms are the best”. 8 In the well salt industry of Sichuan, both well-sinking and conduitfixing were extremely difficult and involved complicated engineering which demanded a high level of technology and cost a huge amount of money. A file would be used when sinking a well. It was one or two hundred catties in weight and about one zhang 丈 long. There were many sorts of files with different uses and methods of operation. “The big file was lifted by iron chains, the small file

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by one shoulder, they think robe by a fish knife. These tools were so ingeniously made that their performance was beyond description. The operation of the tools could be adapted in the light of specific conditions, and so did not rigidly adhere to the instruction”. 9 “The well was “from dozens of zhang in depth to three or four hundred zhang ”. “The chisellers were all from Guizhou province. They could pike up the article with a bamboo pole when it dropped in the well. They were able to stop up the hole and mend the well when there was seepage. These skills were definitely unique”.10 The brine was taken out of the salt well and then the workers delivered it to the gas well to boil it. At first the brine was carried by workers on shoulder poles or on the backs of animals, but in Qing dynasty Lin Qigong from Fujian province devised the bamboo water pipe, that is, brine was send by bamboo tubes. “The bamboo water pipe was hollow inside, the outside was applied with oil and lime, and it was tied up with hemp ropes..., When it was poured in to the bamboo, the salt water would be transported from one side to the other. Most pipes were buried under the soil. Some were erected along a mountain full of twists and turns, covering a distance of ten or twenty li . Some were fixed at the river bottom and were covered with stone, and the brine reached the other end under the water. This device worked brilliantly”.11 The manifestation of the resumption and development of the handicraft industry of the Qing dynasty was that it had a fine division of labor and a wide variety of products. Its production scale was enlarged. The industry was increasingly subdivided into many specialized sectors or serial processes. For example the cotton textile industry was divided into ginning cotton, spinning, weaving cloth, dyeing and stamping etc. Mining and metallurgy were divided into excavating, smelting, and forging etc. The number of specialized departments was increased. The manufacture of porcelain was highly compartmentalized: one type of division was based on the classification of products among households. One household only produced a certain sort of porcelain. For example, a big workshop was used to produce big dishes and bowls, a small workshop to small dishes and bowls, a bulky workshop to make bulky china vases and vats, a carving workshop made porcelain figurines and ornaments, and a spoon-making workshop made spoons. This kind of division considered the household as the unit. Each household produced just one particular product and the household was called the workshop of the certain product. There was another division among workmen according to different processes in the course of production, such as “potters, mould-maker, mouldprinter, mould-turner, mould-painter, grey pounder, glaze-maker, glazer, mould-lifter, mould-blotter, fixer, kiln worker, kiln-opened worker”. 12 Such

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a fine division of labor promoted the quantity and quality of products. “The division of labor was getting perfect, and the products were more delicately made. Ordinarily ten thousand porcelain wares were produced in one year”. 13 Paper-making had an elaborate division of labor, consisting of pushing, brushing, spraying, sticking, pressing etc.14 As a saying went “paper does not come to us easily, it comes through seventy-two procedures”.15 Compared with the Ming dynasty, the number of the handicraft implements and the craftsmen of the Qing dynasty were increased and the production scale was expanded. In the years of the Qianlong’s reign, “almost every household in the north of Suzhou learnt textile weaving. At least ten thousand households took up weaving as a profession”.16 During the years of the Daoguang’s reign, in Nanjing “there were over 30,000 stain processing machines, as well as the machines which weaved yarn, silk, lint and twill-wave silk”.17 The silk textile industry of Hangzhou was also extremely prosperous. “Tens of thousands of men and women, on the northeastern outskirts of Suzhou, earned their living by weaving,” and “the textile mills were the most flourishing business and the craftsmen were the most prosperous workers”. 18 As for the cloth-stamping workshops of Suzhou, “in the regions outside the Chang Men, the foremen of the workshops counted about three hundred and forty. More than four hundred and fifty cloth-stamping workshops were set up. Dozens of craftsmen worked in one workshop. There could be found ten thousand nine hundred pieces of stamping-stones”.19 There were large-size handicrafts industries in mining and some certain trades, which applied enormous capital and used bulky and complicated production facilities, and employed masses of craftsmen. For instance, in the copper industry of Yunnan, “the number of workers in a privately-run large mill was in the tens of thousands while the number of workers in a small mill was in the thousands”. 20 In Guangzhou, “three hundred households would reside around an ironworks. Besides that there would be about two hundred blast-furnace men, three hundred excavating-iron men, three hundred drawingwater men and sintering men, two hundred head of pack cattle, and fifty cargo ships belonging to the works”. “One ironworks could therefore feed thousands of people”.21 In Shanghai there were a huge number of flat-bottom junks, each of which had a large carrying capacity; and most owners of junks enjoyed abundant financial resources. “About three thousand five hundred or three thousand six hundred flat-bottom junks gathered in Shanghai. The largest ones had a capacity of three thousand shi while the small ones had a capacity of one thousand five hundred or one thousand six hundred shi . The owners of the junks were native wealthy people in Chongming, Tongzhou, Haimen, Nanhui

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and Shanghai. One ship would cost seven or eight thousand liang . Some owners possessed forty or fifty junks”.22 Bao Shichen pointed out: “The well salt in the Sichuan province was complicated engineering, which took much time and cost huge funds. The large salt works in Jianfu and other towns had millions of laborers working there, including salt-boiling men, employers and peddlers. Even in some towns along the river, such as the towns of Daling, Kai, the works need tens of thousands of laborers.”23 The innovation of implements of production and the expansion of division of labor inevitably brought about an increase in the designs and colors of handicrafts. Take the silk fabrics produced in Nanjing province as an example. The silk supplied to the Imperial Palace fell into three categories: Nanjing satin, palace satin and bright satin. The satin was divided into figured satin, brocade, changeable satin, flower satin, printed satin, and five colors yarn-weaved satin. The satin weaved by the people was divided into number one satin, number two satin, number three satin, eight-yarn satin and plain satin etc.24 At first only plain satin was produced in Suzhou. The names of households included “Xi Tai Zi alley Li Hongxing, Gu Shi alley Hang Luji” until the years of the Qianglong and Jiaqing reigns. “The floral designs were woven into the cloth, new yarn products were developed, and meanwhile, the ‘one hundred children’ quilts and ‘san yuan (三元)’ satin were woven”.25 (one hundred children symbolized happiness; san yuan refers to academic titles conferred on the three candidates who came out first in examinations held at three levels in ancient time). The floral designs of Wu’s twill-weave silk, produced in Hangzhou, were of numerous varieties, including rig-stop drill, the unite a dragon and a phoenix design (a symbol of harmony and good fortune), and the seed design (a symbol used to avoid evil spirit).26 The silk mills in Hangzhou produced cotton cloth, velour, damask silk, bengaline, silk, yarn, chiffon, satin etc.27 Cloth produced Fig. 7.3.

Iron pan produced in Foshan, Guangdong in the Qing dynasty

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by Songjiang prefecture had different sizes and various sorts of floral designs. There was very famous cloth, such as velour, flimsy cloth, fei hua (飛花) cloth (also called Ding Niangzi cloth, a kind of cotton fabric named after a famous weaver Ding Niangzi), twill, suo (梭) cloth (a kind of cotton cloth made on a wooden loom), yao ban (藥斑) cloth (a kind of blue cloth with a design in white), zi hua (紫花) cloth (a kind of cotton cloth woven using purple cotton silk) etc.28 The manifestation of the development of the handicraft industry was that the market for handicrafts was extended. The products sold well all over the country and some were even exported to foreign countries. The satin of Nanjing was transported “east toward Beijing, north toward Liaoning province and Shenyang province, northwest toward the Xiang town in Shanxi, south toward Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Zhejiang. It was shipped from the Wei River (in Anhui province) and the Si River (in Shandong province) to the Ru River (in Henan province) and the Luo River (in Shaanxi province)”. “The merchants conveyed it across the world”.29 It was also exported to Japan, southeast-Asia and Europe. The iron wares of Guangdong province had a wide market whereas “the iron of Foshan spread all over the world”. “The iron pots were only sold in Hubei province. However merchants from throughout the country went there to buy it and resell it as iron ware was needed everywhere”.30 The porcelain of Jindezhen was the traditional export commodity. “The porcelain of Jindezhen spread across China and extended to overseas. Here gathered the business giants and tycoons”. Therefore Jingdezhen was praised as “potters come from all over the country, the porcelain spreads all over the world”.31 The cloth textile industry was a scattered domestic handicraft but a large number of textile products were exported in the early stages of the 19th century, and the quality prevailed over the cloth produced by Britain which dominated the capitalist countries. The amount of exports exceeded 200,000 on average. At that time, “the hand-woven cloth of Nanjing produced by Chinese, from the aspects of color and texture still maintained the advantageous position in which Chinese cloth would surpass the British cloth, so the price of Chinese cloth was from 60 yuan (元) per piece to 90 yuan ,”32 a foreigner criticized.

The Bud of Capitalism in Handicraft Industry The handicraft industry of Qing dynasty, compared with that of the previous dynasty, achieved progress and the bud of capitalism also grew to some extent. However, at that time, China’s feudal economy was still strong, the landlord class ruthlessly exploited peasants, and the natural economic structure was

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rather tenacious which was a combination of agriculture and small handicraft industry. The superstructure determined by such an economic base, including political power, guilds and ideology, protected and strengthened the feudal economy from all aspects and held back the growth of new economic elements. Before the outbreak of the Opium War, Chinese feudal politics and economics, due to its internal and external contradictions, underwent persistent and serious crises, but the bud of Chinese capitalism was yet immature. It seemed like a delicate flower or a weak blade of grass struggling against the oppression of grand stones, like a small oasis in a vast expanse of desert. It was impossible for it to defeat and replace the mammoth feudal economy. The storm of the bourgeoisie revolution, from the 17th century to the early years of the 18th century, swept across the Western European countries and smashed their corrupt feudal system. The capitalist modern industry was developing at a tremendous pace, while China still entangled in the network of various feudal relationships. Its handicraft industry made slow progress, lagging far behind that of Western European countries. But history keeps moving forward. In the ultimate analysis all new things cannot be defeated no matter how grave the oppression or obstacles. The capitalist relationship, in the embryonic stage, still continued to survive, grow and struggle. It washed against the body of feudalism unceasingly. One day it was bound to triumph and come to the fore. “The development of the commodity economy in Chinese feudal society was already been pregnant with the bud of capitalism. China should have slowly entered into capitalism without any influences exerted by foreign capitalism”,33 Chairman Mao said. Owing to the fact that different handicraft industries had different internal and external conditions, the capitalist buds of various industries existed in distinct forms and developed along dissimilar paths. It is a universality that the development of the feudal economy inexorably leads to capitalism. However it is of particularity that the way of development of a certain industry depends on how great a resistance it meets, and the speed of development of different industries differs. Textiles, and mining and metallurgy, the most well-developed handicraft departments at that time, have typical significance. We will cite examples of cotton weaving satin weaving and ore excavation and smelting to study the concrete form of the bud of Chinese capitalism. The cotton textile industry, providing clothes to hundreds of millions of people throughout the country, had a huge market and took first place in the handicraft industry. Moreover the innovations of the machines were simple and convenient, and did not require much money. In world economic history, the capitalist cotton textile industry was the first and the fastest developed.

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By contrast, the Chinese cotton textile industry existed in the form of rural household sideline production. For instance, “in the town of Shanghai every household could, by weaving after autumn harvest, pay the state tax and raise their families”.34 “Farmers not only cultivate the fields, but also weave cloth”; and the “textile industry serves as a supplement to agriculture”. This clearly shows the distinctive features of self-sufficient production. Such an economic structure demanded little cost of production and simple tools. Farmers would not buy cloth which they could weave by themselves in slack farming seasons; they could even supply a few products to the market. Therefore capitalism was unable to compete with the Chinese textile industry and found it hard to make industrial profits. “In India and China, the unity of small-scale farming and household industry formed a broad foundation for the model of production”. Marx pointed out, “it was the direct combination of agriculture and handicraft industry that greatly economized manpower and material resources and time. Industrial products met with the most stubborn resistance here”.35 Before the Opium War, therefore, there were few workshops of the cotton textile industry to be found. The situation in Foshan in 1833 was the only example. “About 50,000 workers were involved in producing a great variety of cloth, the number of workers would increase when products were urgently needed”. 36 The emergence of large-scale production that made weavers gather together in workshops was perhaps stimulated by the export of enormous quantities of cloth before the 19th century. Numerous cotton industries belonged to household sideline production and the small commodity economy, while commercial capital was extremely active due to an increase in market demand. A breach in the field of circulation was opened and merchant employers who controlled production appeared. These merchants, possessed of large funds, linked up cotton producing regions, small producers of cotton cloth and distant markets. At first they did deals just for commercial gain. They bought in cotton and cotton cloth to sell. Gradually they monopolized the provision of cotton and the purchase of cotton cloth, bringing small producers under control within the economy. They began taking the surplus value produced by weavers into their own pockets. Weavers, still based on the original scattered model, continued to work but only worked for merchant employers were ruled and exploited by these employers. “It did not change the mode of production, but directly worsened producers’ situations, making them become hired workers and proletarians”.37 There were many cases where merchants monopolized the provision of cotton and the purchase of cotton cloth. In fact the cotton textile industry in some areas was professionalized to some extent. It could not work without

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commercial capital which fulfilled the intermediary function. For instance, merchants purchased a huge amount of cotton around Shanghai, “the sky was not light yet, and flower firms would hang up lanterns from bamboo poles to invite purchasers when cotton was on the market. It was called the lantern collection”. 38 “Dealers from Fujian and Guangdong carried white sugar there and sold this in February and March. In autumn they did not buy any cloth; they only purchased cottonseed since they could weave the cloth themselves. They produced so much cotton cloth that thousands of hundreds of ancient towered ships were used to store these products”. 39 Even some merchants of Shanxi also hoarded cotton, and as a result weavers were unable to work for lack of material resources. “Six or seven rich merchants purposely bought cotton at a fancy price to monopolize the cotton trade. Then they sell it at 60,000 or 70,000 liang per tuo (駝). If there were six, seven or eight merchants who paid high to collect and corner cotton, the cotton textile industry of one town would be held up and no cloth would be produced”. 40 Merchants further monopolized the cotton trade by allocating cotton and cotton yarn to textile workers in exchange for fabric products. An illustration of commercial capital dominating handicraft production appeared in the Prefecture of Songjiang in Jiangsu, the town of Nanxun in Zhejiang, and in Guangzhou. In Songjiang, this situation immerged as early as in Ming dynasty: “spinning appeared in both villages and cities. In the morning, women took gauze to the market and exchanged it for kapok (silk cotton). They did the same work next day without a moment’s leisure”. 41 In Nanxun, “when cotton was harvested in the east, merchants would make cash transactions with people from the east and then they would store it. In frosty or snowy weather, some would deal in cloth here. The merchants would measure the cloth and appraise it by the official price currency assessment system. Gradually the exchange of cotton for cloth disappeared. Then some businessmen from the west priced the value of cloth, and if the price was accepted by both the local merchants and those from the west they would enter into contracts and make crash transactions. The Cheng family had been engaged in such business for a long time”.42 In Guangzhou, “proprietors of cotton textile mills usually gave one weaver two catties of cotton; in return, they recalled one catty of cotton yarn. The price of cotton and cotton yarn was quite low”. 43 In this way merchants exchanged finished products for raw materials, which cut down the relationship between weavers and the markets of the end products and between the workers and the markets of raw materials. Workers had to submit to the authority of commercial capital. It meant that “the capitalist relationship took a great step forward”. “In the supreme commercial capital structure, merchant employers directly offered material to ‘handicraftsmen’, making

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them work for a certain reward. Handicraftsmen, working in their own houses, became employees hired by capitalists and the commercial capital here was the industrial capital. Hence the household labor of capitalism was formed”.44 The main difference between the cotton textile industry and the household handicraft industry was that small mills appeared in the cotton dyeing and stamping sectors. The dyeing and stamping sectors were not dependent production departments, but branch operations were set up by cloth merchants. They were two links in the production of processing black-blue cloth. In the Chang Men cloth store of Suzhou, “several workshops were involved in the processing of cloth from blenchinging and dyeing to examining and transporting cloth”.45 On a tablet inscription of the dye house in Suzhou in the last years of the Kangxi’s reign, 64 names of dye houses were found and among them were 16 names of shops, such as Wu Yi You and Cheng Yi You, which also separately appeared in other inscriptions of the cloth industry in the name of cloth merchants. Thus it is clear that all these 16 dye houses were operated by cloth merchants.46 The shop of Cheng Yi Mei was formerly named Wang Yi Mei and was started by a cloth businessman named Wang in Xin’an in the early years of the Qing dynasty. But for some reason it was swallowed up by another businessman Wu, so its name was re-designated “Cheng Yi Mei”. The black-blue cloth produced by the Yi Mei workshop “goes to all corners of the country,” and “millions of bolts of cloth” were sold in one year. For about two hundred years people from the south of Yunnan to the north of Mongolian all thought highly of the cloth of Yi Mei. 47 The cloth-stamping workshops, like the dye houses, were within the cloth merchants’ business scope. An inscription in 1670 year (the 9th year of the Kangxi’s reign) recorded: “Decrees shall be learned by Hui Merchants, cloth merchants, craftsmen in stamped-cloth workshops and so on: all craftsmen in cloth-stamping workshops shall be supervised by foremen, and the foremen shall submit to the shop keeper’s regulation”.48 According to the record of 1723 (the first year of the Yongzheng’s reign), “craftsmen in dye houses and stamped-cloth workshops are employees hired by shop keepers”. 49 This clearly demonstrated that the relationship between cloth merchants and dyers and stamped-cloth craftsmen was exploitation. As the cloth dyeing and stamping industries developed, some of their workshops gradually shook off the cloth merchants’ control and became independent. In the years of the Yongzheng’s reign there were about four hundred fifty cloth-stamping workshops and more than ten thousand craftsmen. Some of the former foremen became the owners of workshops—— the heads of contracted laborers. Some heads opened a couple of workshops, exploiting “several craftsmen from some other places”. 50 These heads held

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many tools of production such as wood rollers and yuanbaoshi (an instrument made out of stone used to stamp cloth). Holding the means of production, they exploited three qian and six fen silver (as currency) from each craftsman every month, which was equivalent to the labor cost of stamping 33 bolts of cloth. The money was “regarded as a repayment for rent and expenses”,51 as the heads offered houses, firewood and meals to stamped-cloth craftsmen. The dyers and craftsmen who lived by selling labor and were ruthlessly exploited were “single men”52 “with no family in Suzhou”. They were proletarians who did not own a thing in the world. They were exploited by both cloth merchants and the heads. They received low salaries and led impoverished lives, but they were full of rebellious spirit. The exploitation relationship is evident here. The specialized cloth dying and stamping industries in Suzhou were gathered together in workshops, which created disadvantageous prerequisites for the development of capitalist production. However the function of capital here fell into two parts: cloth merchants just provided wages and tools of the trade; the heads offered production facilities and managed workers; both shared the surplus value. But the production process and manufacturing process of cotton cloth were not unified, which was controlled by one capitalist. The heads, more like gangers, kept a tight rein on stamped-cloth workers, dependent on the support of the local feudal authorities. Bao and jia were chosen and organized (units of an old administrative system, each jia consisting of 10 households, and each bao consisting of 10 jia ). “One cloth-stamping craftsman was not allowed to work in a workshop until the head ascertained his antecedents”. “He could enter the workshop only when four craftsmen would be his mutual guarantors”. Even “if the craftsman worked in the daytime, at night he was locked in the workshop”. 53 Under the jurisdiction and supervision of the heads, the trammels of feudalism imposed on the craftsmen were quite serious. The silk textile industry was more intensive and specialized than the cotton textile industry in the areas south of the lower reaches of the Yangzi River. Handicraft mills started by proprietors emerged beside the large-scale government-owned textile mills and the household handicraft industry which remained at the stage of “every household weaves silk.” In the early years of the Kangxi’s reign, the Qing government stipulated that “each proprietor is not allowed to possess more than one hundred textile machines; every machine shall be taxed fifty gold (as currency)”. Thereafter Cao Yin, an official in change of the textile industry of Jinagning, petitioned the emperor for exemption from taxation on textile machines. As this petition was allowed, the number of machines increased greatly. “In the years of the Daoguang’s reign there were proprietors who held five and six hundred textile machines”. 54 A silk textile

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industry of this kind hired many workers and was managed by one capitalist. “Most proprietors in Suzhou employed handicraft workers to weave silk. The proprietors financed the operation, and paid the craftsmen in accordance with their work, … As for the salary, the craftsmen got their wages by the piece. The amount of salary relied on the quality of the finished products, and whether the salary was increased or not was determined by the professional competence”.55 At that time Li Piandan, Chen Caobao, Li Dongyang and Jiao Hongxing were famous individual proprietors in Jiangning. They “all possessed four or five hundred”56 textile machines. Most proprietors “supervised the workers weaving silk by themselves. They also gave warp and weft to weavers, and these weavers would hire craftsmen to do the job in their own houses”.57 Some of them did not open workshops, they just “handed warp to households and paid them salary by the piece”.58 Judging from this, there was little workshop handicraft with the character of capitalism in the silk textile industry south of the Yangtze River except for some controlled by the Textile Bureau. Some small households among the people had a few textile machines and not much capital, but they processed the ordered goods for the workshops under the control of its capital, becoming “the outside part” of the big mills. The workshop handicraft was the ornaments of the natural economy, towering on the basis of the vast natural economy; meanwhile, it was the opposite of the natural economy, disintegrating and hitting the feudal politics and economy. “In the workshop handicraft… The social production organization, consisting of many the local sole worker, belongs to the capitalists. Therefore, the productive forces, produced by the combination of all kinds of labor, were the productivity of the capital”. 59 The further development and expansion of the workshop handicraft was certain to clash seriously with feudalism, which led to the collapse of feudalism. The workshop handicraft of the Qing dynasty was not so powerful that it could contend against the feudalism. On the contrary, the proprietors who started the silk mills showed strong characteristics of feudalism. They were obliged to be controlled by the feudal authorities and moreover under the wing of the government they suppressed the workers to preserve the right to exploit them. Here was presented an extremely complicated and contradictory economic relationship and class relationship. On the one hand, the proprietors exploited workers through capital and with the help of the feudal regime they violently oppressed workers. The authority was always on the proprietors’ side when labor disputes appeared repeatedly. In 1734 (the 12th year of the Yongzheng’s reign), the Qing government erected a tablet in Suzhou to prohibit the craftsmen in textile mills from striking. The tablet inscription said: “if there

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are any lawbreakers (this refers to weavers) who call for the public to stay off the job (strike) and extort money from such an event, their proprietors and others in the neighborhood should be allowed to seize them and deliver them to the local authority. These lawbreakers shall be punished by the law of ‘illegal control of the market’. These lawbreakers must wear Cangue for one month, in order to warn the public”.60 In 1822 (the 2nd year of the Daoguang’s reign), through investigation into the proprietors among the people, it was found that: the proprietors hand warp for the craftsmen to weave silk. The cost of production is huge, while the profit is rather low. There are always some bandit craftsmen who lead the workers to demand a rise in wages. “If not all their requirements are fulfilled, they would immediately threaten to stop working … such kind of evil practice is utterly detestable … If the craftsmen purposely break the law, take the initiative in making trouble and incite the good craftsmen to strike or hinder production, every proprietor should be allowed to report them to the local government to punish them for the crime”. 61 The proprietors’ political dependency on the feudal government demonstrated that their economic power was still weak. On the other hand, the proprietors were arbitrarily exploited and severely constrained by the feudal authorities and the guilds. The Qing government, in the early stages, continued to use the “machines and textile-weaving system” of the Ming dynasty: all the silk fabrics which were required by the authorities were woven by craftsmen hired by the proprietors who received silver (as currency) from the government. After finishing these required fabrics, the proprietors took the end products to the authorities and settled the expenses. The government later applied the “machines and appointment” method: the Textile Bureau offered its textile machines to the weaving households and sent official documents of appointment to them. Then “the weaving households’ names were affiliated to the officials’ register”. For a textile assignment the proprietors would get the raw material and silver (as currency), and then they would hire workers to do the job. The proprietors had to process the ordered goods for the authorities. They were unable to operate the business dependently and develop it freely, and were seriously exploited by the authorities. “The proprietors handed in the fabrics to the officials. Sometimes they did not produce enough fabric so that they owed a debt to the government. It was no use to make appropriation to these proprietors”.62 There were profound contradictions between the proprietors and the authorities. Besides that, the proprietors and the craftsmen were cramped by all sorts of limitations of the guilds; they were unable to develop themselves freely. The mineral industry was an important department of the handicrafts industry with a long history. It concerned the supply of people’s tools of

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production and articles for daily use, but also the national military and fiscal needs. In the mineral industry of the Qing dynasty, wage labor, large-scale workshops and the bud of capitalism emerged. The mineral industry of the Qing dynasty, compared with that of the Ming dynasty, was improved greatly in the aspects of production scale, output and its inner relationship. In the Ming dynasty, the state-operated mines occupied a very important position while the private mines were tightly controlled by the government. Moreover most laborers were allowed no personal liberality and the the forced craftsmen were servants or even prisoners. Most mines were exploited by businessmen. The exploitation of copper ores in Yunnan, which was under the strictest control of the government, applied the policy that: “the government borrowed the cost and collected the spare copper”. The managerial authority of the mine fields still belonged to the private sector, not the government. It was common that coal-stations and ironworks were invested in by businessmen. The penal servitude system in the mineral industry in which guards and craftsmen were used was abolished. The institutions of the guards did not exist anymore, and the craftsmen servants were widely abolished. The hired labor system — “the rich invests in the operation to make a profit, the poor work in the factories to eke out an existence”63 — was employed in the mineral industry. The mineral industry of the Qing dynasty, with a strong character of feudalism, was not fully developed. The feudal government stretched its feelers into the mineral industry. The processes of mining, smelting and circulating were still rigorously controlled and interfered with, which meant the mineral industry was unable to develop normally and rapidly. It was Yunnan copper that held the biggest capital, the largest production scale and the highest yield. “The big mine fields frequently hired about one million workers, and the small fields hired at least ten thousand. The coolies, from the locality and from Zhejiang, Guangzhou and Guangxi, came here to eke out an existence”.64 The investments in the exploitation of copper ore were made by the landlords and wealthy merchants across the country. “It was the business giants of Zhejiang who opened up the enterprises, which cost one or two million liang of silver (as currency)”.65 Some of miners were “brothers of the family” who gained products proportionately and not a fixed salary, having a strong attachment to the factory. Others were called “monthly laborers”, who were employed all the year around. They drew regular salary and had personal freedom, “the salary was paid per month, and the decision as to whether to stay or leave was made by the workers themselves”.66 Hired labor of this kind had the character of capitalism.” The production of copper involved a fine division of labor and careful organization. The basic unit of production was the “pit”,

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the process of mining was called “digging”, and the unit of smelting was the “furnace”. The three were gathered in one zone, which made up a big mine field. The administrative setup of the mine field was directed by the “seven heads” elected by the workers as well as government officials sent by the authorities. (The “seven heads” refers to the head of the non-native workers, the management, the head of the smelters, the head of the furnace workshop, the head of the copper-pit, the head of the imbedding workshop, and the head of the charcoal kilns.) The heads of the smelter and the furnace workshop were the businessmen who had invested in the extraction of the copper. The heads of the copper-pit and the imbedding workshop were engineers and technicians. Even though the scale of the copper industry in Yunnan was quite large and the organization was relatively complete, it was developed to suit the Qing government’s needs of minting coin and so it was vigorously fostered by the government. When the “Revolt of the Three Feudatories” was put down and Yunnan was recovered by the Kangxi Emperor, the government encouraged the mining of copper and implemented the policies of “letting the masses mine”. The government charged only 20% tax on mines. Later, as the mint required more copper, the policies of “lending the capital and recalling the copper” were carried out. The government allocated one million liang of silver, as the funds for the mining of copper to each copper ore enterprise. The government would then collect the copper extracted by these enterprises. Owing to a huge sum of money from the Qing government, the copper industry developed quickly and its yield increased rapidly, the maximum annual output reached one thousand million catties of copper. Because of this policy, the feudal political power penetrated the copper industry which made this industry take a lopsided road of development. The businessmen would hand in the copper on the condition that it was sold to the government at a fixed price. Such copper was regarded as “government-owned copper”. Only a tiny amount of copper, as “commerce copper”, was allowed to enter into the markets and could be bought and sold freely. However the government collected the copper at a very low price. At first, the price of one million catties of copper was three or four liang silver. Later it reached six liang four qian of silver. By contrast, copper in the market was sold at more than nine liang . It cost a lot of money to extract the copper ore, which included the expenses of board for the pitmen, mining and smelting. Moreover there was a huge charge for carriage to deliver copper to the stores in the province. But the price given by the government was not enough to pay off these expenses. 67 “Apart from the price six liang four qian given by the government, the factory owners themselves had to pay one liang eight qian or one liang nine qian to make up the deficiency. The enterprise owners recouped

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the former through taking the money from the next funds for mining of copper, which was not sufficient either. Some enterprises were, gradually, unable to afford it. The copper funds were not sufficient and the enterprises were financially embarrassed. The situation of the copper industry was therefore in such a plight that”68 the products handed in by the enterprises were not enough to pay back the funds for the mining of copper received in advance, which burdened the enterprises with many debts. The Qing government extracted all the surplus value produced by the pitmen, and grabbed the profits from the copper merchants. These enterprises could not accumulate funds, renovate the technologies, or expand the production; they even could not maintain the simple production. “The enterprises made no profits” and as a result, the pitmen were debt-ridden; they extracted and sold the ores secretly, or stopped working and ran away, or rose in revolt. The Qing government’s power penetrated the copper industry, which brought grievous harm to the enterprises. But the copper industry had to be maintained since copper, as the raw material, was needed to mint coins. The government sometimes increased the copper price, sometimes trimmed and forgave the debts, and sometimes relaxed restrictions on “commerce copper”. But these small reforms could not heal the deadly wound dealt to the copper industry of Yunnan by feudalism. The imperial edict of the Qianlong Emperor pointed out: “copper is procured in Yunnan. But in recent years, the situation of the copper industry there has becomes sluggish and effete. I have commanded that the governor of Yunnan find solutions to change the situation and map out strategies for the development of the Yunnan copper industry. But no result has been achieved”. 69 After that the waves of the people’s struggles surged forward dramatically, the Qing government was becoming corrupt, and the national treasury was incapable of releasing the huge funds needed for mining copper. The Yunnan copper industry became more ineffectual, “the production of the copper enterprises in Yunnan declined every year”.70 The industry suffered prostration and collapsed. The mining and smelting of iron provided people’s tools of production and articles for daily use, but also the raw materials for the production of weapons. They were two extremely important sectors of the national economy. The feudal government’s capital did not infiltrate into the iron industry. Iron was mined and smelted by businessmen voluntarily. There were many large-scale ironmining and iron-smelting works all over the country. For example, in Foshan, Guangdong, “there were about ten iron-forging furnaces and more than one hundred iron-casting furnaces. Workers forged and smelted iron day and night, and the flames lit up the sky”. 71 “There were about ten ironworks, with thousands of workers. One ironworks had ten anvils, and each anvil, which

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referred to a small furnace, had about ten workers”. 72 During the Emperor Yongzheng’s term of office, “in Guangzhou, there were fifty or sixty ironworks. There were also a great many workers who excavated coal and did woodwork. The number of hired laborers was not less than ten thousand”.73 In the years of the Jiaqing reign, in Hankou, Hubei, “there were thirteen ironworks and more than five thousand blacksmiths... Iron was purchased from the ironworks. Under supervision, the ironsmiths hurried to manufacture ten thousand farming implements, about 50,000 labor payment”. 74 Wuhuo in Anhui was also a famous center of iron-smelting and steel-smelting. “The ironwork was different from that of other towns. There were about ten households making steel in their houses, which needed more than one hundred steelworkers every day”. 75 In Lutou town, Tongxiang city, Zhejiang, “the residents treated ironsmelting as an industry. Here they produced cauldrons, steamers, iron tripods and big tripods, which were counted on by people across the country”.76 There were iron-smelting furnaces in Zhenghe town, Fujian. “One furnace required hundreds of laborers, including chisellers, coal-burning laborers, and firefanning laborers. There were some other sorts of work, such as to inspect the furnace, to carry coal and ore, to peddle rice, or to peddle wine etc., each work demanded ten laborers. So hundreds of laborers were gathered together at one furnace”. 77 The iron-smelting industry was well-developed in Shaanxi. “One furnace demanded hundreds of workers. If there were six or seven furnaces, more than one thousand ironsmiths, as hired laborers, were required. Iron was forged into sheets or, if in the neighborhood, it was made into pots or farming implements. Hundreds of porters were required as well. Therefore the large iron-smelting works had three or four thousand workers. Small works held four or four furnaces, with hundreds of workers. People eagerly went to the places, where the profits could be gained, to grub for profits”. 78 In the iron-mining and iron-smelting industries, some were the mill owners who held huge funds to take change of iron production. Some were the hired miners and smelters. Two social sectors were thus established. For instance, in the town of Foshan, “Here crowded businessmen and poor people from across the country; one out of ten persons was the businessman, while the other nine were the barehanded looking for a living”.79 The mining and smelting of iron differed from the Yunnan copper industry. The capital of the feudal authority was not involved in this industry. The government kept a lax check on it, but this did not mean that the government allowed it to be developed unrestrainedly and imposed no interference. On the one hand, ironware was an indispensable utensil for production and everyday use. The Qing government had to tolerate the mining and smelting as well as

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the circulation of iron to some extent. On the other hand, the Qing government also worried that, as iron was used widely and circulated freely, the oppressed people were able to get weapons for struggles easily. So the government tightened surveillance on the mining and smelting and on the transportation of and the market for iron. The Qing government provided that, apart from the 20% tax on iron, in the places where iron was mined and smelted, the number of furnaces, the production, the names of the mill owners, pitmen, and ironworkers, and their personal records, should be reported in detail to the local officials. The mill had to secure the license issued by the government. If iron was brought and sold, the dealers had to submit a detailed list to the local government. The list should present who did the deal, who sold the iron, and which place and which shop the iron would be delivered to. The list must be examined when the dealer made his way though passes. Trading in iron without a license was strictly forbidden. In the years of the Emperor Qianlong, the government of Hunan ruled that “when a furnace is set up, only the local laborers are allowed to be employed by the mill owners, the laborers from other places must not be hired. The dealers should not create disturbances. The real number of laborers in the iron mine field, the sand-washing workshop, the ironforging workshop and the iron-smelting workshop, and the names, ages and appearance of these laborers should be recorded. The certificate of the record should be jointly written out by the steward of the mill and the head of the households in the neighborhood. Moreover, the certificate must be sealed by the local army group. The certification should be submitted to the local authority and kept on file. Then the government can approve the mill to work an iron mine”.80 The imperial edict written by the Emperor Jiaqing, said, “The purchase license should be given to the dealers who transport iron by water. The license must be returned and destroyed when the cargo ship comes back. The purchase of iron without a license and purchase beyond the license are not permitted. If the license is not handed back, the dealer must be investigated and prosecuted immediately”.81 The prohibition on iron ware which was shipped oversea for sale was tighter. Iron pots were not allowed to be exported; even the pots and kettles used in the ship by the crew had to be replaced with copper-pots and earthenware pots. Before the freight went aboard the local government had to ascertain that there was no iron in the ship and issue the certificate of “no iron to be out at sea”. Such close control and supervision greatly retarded the growth of the iron-mining, iron-smelting and iron-casting industry. The extraction of coal was also exceedingly popular in the Qing dynasty. There were many coal-pits in various localities. The government taxed coal in accordance with the land tax law; no special tax was collected on coal mines.

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Fig. 7.4. Mining license of Xu Yousong, the coal mine boss in Mentougou in Beijing in the 49th year of the Qianlong’s reign

The control of coal was more lax than that of copper and iron. Hebei and Shanxi were the main coal-producing areas. The population of Beijing was particularly large, and the demand for coal was quite great. A large number of coal-pits were therefore established in the suburbs. According to the report issued by the office in charge of the nation’s engineering affairs in 1762 (the 27th year of the Qianlong’s reign), there were altogether seven hundred and fifty old coal-pits and two hundred and seventy three coal-pits which were still being mined.82 It is thus clear that the number of the coal-pits here was huge. “Millions of households of Beijing were dependent on the coal from the Western Hills. Just because of the Western Hills, they never worried that they would be short of coal for hundreds of years”. 83 In other places, such as Cizhou “all coal-pits were mined by businessmen with their own capital”. 84 In Jingxing, Shanxi, “the coal-producing areas were allowed for a long time to be mined by the people for cooking”.85 In Rehe, Chengde, “Some places, which were resources of coal, had already been examined and named by the government”. The official proclamation was published to invite investments in the local coal mines”.86 In Baishui, Shaanxi province, “there were forty coal shafts in the villages of Xi and

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Nan, with about three or five hundred pitmen and coal-mixing laborers”.87 In Henan, “the town of Gong was a resource of coal and thousands of hundreds of people gathered in groups here to open coal-pits and sink shafts”.88 There were also many coal mines in Shandong. For instance the scale of coal mining was quite large in the town of Feng and the local government did not interfere in the extraction of coal, so there appeared coal-pitch owners with huge capital. It was recorded that the town of Feng, “abounded in coal, coal mines could be found everywhere. The people who started coal-stations managed the business on their own, having nothing to do with the authorities. In the years of the Qianlong’s reign, more businessmen converged in the towns which had excellent communication facilities, and new coal kilns were added there from time to time. Thousands of ships sailed northwards, transported millions of hectoliters of coal by water to support the capital. The coal industry was, consequently, thriving vigorously. The clans of Liang, Cui, and Song in the town made their fortunes through the coal industry and were as wealthy as the nobility. The coal-pit owners secretly sent money to the local government official, which was regarded as the regulation of the coal industry. Every year the money offered to the officials was beyond count; and the owners were never required to pay tax on coal”.89 Taking the coal industry in Mentouguo, Beijing as an example; most coal-station’s capital applied the shareholding cooperative system. The preliminary capitalist relationship was established in the coal-pits owned by the businessmen. On the one hand, there were “the coal-pit owners” who “brought their capital and worked on the coal mine”, and “shopkeepers” and “accountants” who assisted in managing the coal-pit. On the other hand, there were a huge number of hired coal miners and “foremen” who implemented technological guidance. Moreover the coal, as a commodity, was sold freely on the market. The coal-stations competed with each other; while sometimes several of them were jointly managed. Rules and regulations were established between the coal-stations and between share holders, and any violator was to be punished. Through long-running development the coal-pits tycoons emerged, such as the families of Jiao and Yan. By the years of the Qianlong’s reign, “monopolization” and “annexation” were found in the coal industry. These tycoons swallowed up many small coal-pits and their capital exhibited a tendency of accumulation and centralization to some extent. The Qing government relaxed control over the coal mines but it feared that, as the coal-pit required a large number of laborers, the laborers could easily band together to make trouble and rise up in rebellion. So the extraction of coal was often forbidden for no reason at all. According to the historical records,

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“in north China there were many coal mines in the registered prefectures of Tai'an, Laiwu and Jingyang. Administtators were familiar with the situation in these areas. So the central government did not give any explicit instruction to control the coal industry. The local officials were afraid that the laborers would assemble as a crowd and cause trouble. Consequently, the extraction of coal was banned. A large number of people had to give up their wealth”. 90 Obviously, the ban enforced by the Qing government was still a big obstacle to the development of the coal industry. In addition coal-pits were common in various places, but most remained at the stage of the small commodity economy with little capital, basic machines and poor output. For instance in Hanyinting, Shaanxi, “there were just several charcoal kilns and quicklime kilns, with only three or five workers in each kiln”.91 In Longzhou, “there were seven coal-pits, with few hired workers”. In Weizhou, Shanxi, “the coal-pits were small, and produced little coal every day”.92 In Hua town, Guangdong, “coal-mines here were small and produced scanty silt coal”.93 The small-scale coal-pit of this kind needed to accumulate capital, renovate the technologies and step up output. To be a big-scale coal-pit, it clearly needed to traverse a long and tortuous course.

The Pressure from Feudal Officials and the Constraints from Guilds In summary, the bud of capitalism existed in the handicraft industry of the Qing dynasty and the phenomenon of this capitalism was greater than in the Ming dynasty. Scientific circles held two different opinions toward the degree of the bud of capitalism in China. One of the opinions overestimated the growth of the bud of capitalism and believed that the growth of the bud was “surprisingly rapid”, “except for the non-developed technology, all material requirements needed for the model of capitalist production were there” and the feudal society had undergone “changes in nature”. Another was underestimation and held that there was little, almost no, growth of the bud of capitalism. The cotton textile industry was a family handicraft industry characterized by self-sufficiency; the silk manufacturing industry was a guild handicraft industry of the feudal society; and mining and metallurgy and porcelain making were completely under the control of feudal officials. There was no foothold for a capitalist relationship in any of these industries. The relationship of hired workers was one of personal dependence, not a free employer-employee relationship. We disagree with the above-mentioned two extreme opinions. The former opinion exaggerates and overvalues the advanced economy factor which remained in the minority, and uses locally advanced areas, trades and handicraft industries to represent the overall situation, the non-mainstream

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to conceal the all-round mainstream. The latter opinion disregards some new things which appeared in economic life at that time, taking the comparatively complete capitalist industry in modern times as the standard to measure the bud of capitalism which was still within the feudal society and regarding the necessarily strong feudal vestiges as the unchangeable nature of this handicraft industry, considering the control by feudal official as shackles that could never be broken. This is also not a comprehensive, dialectical, developed opinion. It is without question that the natural economy combining agriculture and small handicraft industry made great progress in the Qing dynasty. Agriculture produced grain and other articles of everyday use which were mainly used as food for the workers themselves and as rent for paying the land taxes to the landlord. Except in the areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, the contact between peasant and market in the majority of places was occasional and sparse. Self-sufficient agriculture and handicraft industry with the characteristic of small commodity production took up the most part of social production. The land of the whole nation was divided into countless small productive establishments. The peasants were fettered by the small amount of land. They work arduously and were beset by disasters. Meanwhile the handicraft industry was strongly linked to the production of agriculture, which hindered the improvement of technology and the development of division of labor. At the same time, China had a vast territory and thus the economic development in various areas was unbalanced. The bud of capitalism had appeared in a minority of advanced areas but the economy in the extensive central region and border areas was underdeveloped and in some places still remained at the phase of slavery and the primitive commune. By only looking at the of minority advanced areas and trades, and failing to see the extensive ocean of feudal natural economy surrounding them, we cannot make a practical and realistic estimate of the overall circumstances of the economy in China at that time. Without a relatively wide margin of development in the economy and improvement in culture, it was impossible to break through the barrier of feudalism by depending solely on the advanced coastal regions and areas along the Yangtze River. But China was not destined to stagnate forever. Although history walks haltingly, it still moves forward. In the Qing dynasty, we have already seen the progress and changes in economic life, capitalist activity in the rudimentary stage, the impact of the commodity economy on the feudal barrier, the development in division of labor, technological improvement, hired labor, handicraft workshops and so on. We have seen small billows rippling in a stretch of motionless stagnant water. “Glaring things come from the invisible”. The initial changes of life are

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always very quiet; always start with a subtle, separate, undetectable quality. Once the change starts, it is inevitable that it increases hugely and is not likely to stop. In the end it will surely give rise to a powerful revolutionary storm which will imperils the domination of feudalism. This is an objective law of history independent of man’s own will. In the Qing dynasty, the bud of capitalism had just emerged. A continuous, powerful historical activity which could absorb the old economic system had not occurred. On the road of economic development, the government of the Qing dynasty was one of the most serious obstacles. This government safeguarded the old economic basis desperately, adopted a hostile attitude towards everything new such as by manipulating, suppressing, and cracking down on industry and commerce, regarding it as “lowly trade”, and deliberately depreciating its status in the national economy. All of this was decided by the feudal nature of the Qing government. The Emperor Yongzheng once said, “Agriculture is the basis of the whole world, while industry and commerce is the last. If we now pay more attention to daily goods such as house implements, clothes and toys, and then compete for their gaudiness and elaboration, more artisans will be employed. One more craftsman working on the market means one less peasant working on the arable land. Moreover when the lower-class peasants find that the interest from working as a craftsman is more than that from working as a peasant, they will take on jobs as craftsmen in groups. If they turn to work as craftsmen in groups, the goods manufacture will increase. The more goods they produce, the less they can sell. Finally a lot of excess goods will be sold at a very low price. Consequently if people engage in industry and commerce as the most important trade, this phenomenon does harm not only to agriculture but to the industries as well. Lower-class people prefer huge interest to small, so it is easy for them to pursue the least important trade and difficult to work in the basic one. It is hard for us to constrain them by law, since they do not like to do farming from the bottom of their hearts. We can only try patiently to talk them round, let them know the importance of farming and learn the loftiness of the plain, and not to be influenced by the gaudiness and elaboration of goods. Accumulated over a long period like this, one custom can be formed. It is not necessary to make all the craftsmen turn to work on agriculture, but this can prevent the farmers from becoming craftsmen one after another”.94 The emperor was worried of the corrupting effects on the feudal natural economy caused by the commercial economy and the possible damage to the feudal government caused by the handicraft industry. On the basis of the feudal natural economy, this economic theory reflected the interests of the landlords and correspondingly was implemented through government decree and policy.

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The government still kept a tight grip on some profitable handicraft industries with political importance in order to establish some workshops run by the government itself. However, with regard to the majority of non-government handicraft industries, the government carried out certain economic strategies such as collection of large taxes, purchase at low prices, and apportionment without compensation; and certain political strategies such as restricting their establishment, circulation and workers strictly and assigning merchants through special permission. In short, the government used all ways and means to oppress and obstruct the development of industry and commerce. Under the despotic power of feudal government, the industrialists and businessmen were only able to lie prostrate before its political power, leaving them powerless to undertake public confrontation. But no matter how great the political power was, the historical trend cannot be resisted completely. The emperor also understood that prohibition of economic development through the force of law was “bound to fail”. Thus he did not seek to totally prohibit industry and commerce, but only hoped to maintain the status quo, “There is no need to make all the workers turn to agriculture, but it is possible to avoid the peasants one after another becoming workers”. This hope could not be realized, because industry and commerce were growing and developing tenaciously in the cracks of political pressure. During the soundless and lasting battle the industrialists and businessmen progressed by taking a round-about route or employing an outflanking strategy, and at last and unnoticeably took over the positions one after another from the control of political power. Compared with the preceding dynasty, the power of government in the field of industry and commerce was receding slowly and thus the government had to give up direct management and intervention by force, and had to use more concealed and clever controlling means and forms and cede a bigger activity space to the industrialists and businessmen. In the preceding dynasty, handicraft industry run by government was very common. But in the Qing dynasty, government-owned industry was limited to the fields of weapon casting and coin minting, weaving and porcelain used by the royal court, and different kinds of workshops subordinate to the office of the imperial palace. In these government-owned handicraft industries it was not the persons engaged in administering the army, artisans, mining and smelting, but the employed workers who accounted for the majority. Although there were a lot of government-owned mines before the Ming dynasty, in the Qing they became rare. The government could not even take over the very financially important copper mines but only adopted the policy called “government borrowing the copper as capital”, which allowed private management to a certain extent on

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the condition that it purchase all products and the mine served the government completely. Because economics has its own law of development, and at the same time the feudal government had its own method and code of activity, it was impossible for the Qing government to abandon its own method and code to fit in with the law of industrial and commercial activity. Therefore faced with reality the government had no choice but to retreat from the field of industry and commerce step by step and allow the businessmen to do business. Since most coal and iron mines were privately-owned, the coal used by the royal court and yamen (government office in feudal China) depended on the non-governmental coal pit in the Western Hills. The remaining craftsmen in government-owned weaving mills in Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou numbered no more than five thousand and there were more than ten times that number of nongovernmental weavers. In the field of porcelain making, imperial and governmental kilns still managed to survive despite corrupt management and sagging production. The royal court needed of a large amount of porcelain, so it took steps called “connected by government, produced by non-government” to have non-government kilns complete production. The Qing government was unable to monopolize even the most important and profitable foreign trade and recover the past yamen system promoted by the ship market, but carried out a public system and handled business with the aid of thirteen practices. Certainly, the concession of political power did not mean its defeat and total collapse but it changed some ways and means of control. In the contradiction between economic progress and existing political power, the state power still enjoyed indisputable authority and absolute superiority. However the sound of advancing footsteps in the economy had disturbed political power and made it unable to handle matters in accordance with its subjective wishes. The mineral industry was a good example. On the one hand, since the development of the nongovernmental mining and metallurgical industry was in conflict with the interests and concepts of the feudal class, the Qing government was particularly afraid of the gathered miners rising in rebellion; on the other hand, because more and more types of minerals were badly needed for social life and government events, it was impossible for the government to ban mining, turn all mines into government-run mines and give them full freedom without worry. Hence the policy of the Qing government sometimes allowed mining and sometimes strictly forbade it. “Meetings on mine opening and closing happen more than once”. 95 This policy was in a state of hesitation, a contradiction between not daring to open up and not daring to prohibit. Some people in the ruling class proposed to ban the mining industry, such as the famous scientist

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and grand Secretary Li Guangdi who in the 52nd year of the emperor Kangxi opposed businessmen opening mines through fund-raising in a meeting about mining: “Please order that each unemployed local person is allowed to hold one hoe, but the people who crossed this boundary would be killed so that the wicked people could not get together on mountains or islands and to prevent them from making trouble. Once the view was advocated, all persons who lead to earn lots of money would come to repent”. 96 In the rule of the Yongzheng Emperor, some officials advocated mining investment in Guangdong. But the Yongzheng Emperor disagreed, “if we encourage the mining industry, there will be good and bad people in the gathered crowd. It is hard to inspect and restrain the mining behavior and it may trouble the life of the common people. Moreover the localities have much land if we persuade people to cultivate it then the people could not only conduct their own basic work but also could devote themselves to the land in the south. There is no need to create the desire for great interest, because this would make people likely to compete with each other”. 97 But other officials suggested opening up the mining industry, such as grand secretary Zhao Guolin who in the early reign of Qianlong presented a memorial to an emperor stating that, “all places which can produce coal, no matter whether cities, dragon veins, tombs of the emperors and sages, should be at liberty to mine coal as the non-government institutions need it for cooking”.98 In the reign of Jiaqing, Yan Ruyu said “if mining is forbidden, the miners cannot make a living, and hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs. It cannot be said for sure that they will not rise in rebellion by following others, so we can only allow them to operate mines without interference”.99 In general, the Qing government was forced to relax the ban of mining within its authority and sometimes even encouraged and fostered some mines against its own will. For example, during the reigns of Qianlong and Jiaqing, because of the reduction in coal output from the Xishan mine and the consequent expensive coal in Beijing, the civilians as well as officials and landlords felt the threat. Therefore, under the pressure of market demand, the Qing government ordered several times to prospect for coal mines, “properly according to the rules, nearby villagers are permitted to exploit mines for their use”.100 Moreover it gave the order to cut the mountain for roads near Xiangshan for coal transportation, and appropriated money from the state treasury for miners for building drainage in various coal pits. From this we can see that the Qing government could not suppress the development of privately-owned industry and commerce, because the relentless force of economic laws was forcing the feudal regime to retreat. Besides repression from regime, the shackle of feudal guild was another obstacle to economic development. Feudal guild resulted from the mid-feudal

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society. When the industry and commerce had developed in some degree, it generated under historical condition of more active commodity economy. In early stages, it was not only an organization for protecting the industrials and businessmen themselves from invasion forces, but also the production of the relatively unbalanced development between this trade and commodity production. China guild began in about Sui and Tang dynasties. In Tang and Song dynasties, it called “Hang (行)”; from the Song and Yuan dynasties to the early stages of Ming dynasty, called “Tuanhang (團行)”; from the middle period of Ming dynasty, called “Huiguan (會館)”, and later named “Gongsuo (公所)”. Although the names are different, they are essentially the same by their nature. Although the Qing dynasty was in the later period of feudal society, guild organization in some cities with more developed industry and commerce was very flourishing. According to incomplete statistics, Suzhou had about eighty guild halls and village offices during the period of the Opium War. 101 To our knowledge, in the early Qing dynasty, the guild halls for industry and commerce in Beijing numbered nearly more than forty. In the reign of Emperor Qianlong, Hankou the business center of Wuhan province was popular: “salt, pawnshops, rice, wood, figured cloth and medicinal materials are the most prosperous trades, at the same time many guild halls were set up in every province”. 102 During the reign of Emperors Jiaqing and Daoguang, “Jinling is inhabited by people from all parts and the number of guild hall here is the biggest”.103 A bit later, twenty-six guild halls were established in Jinling, such as Xin’an, Zhejiang, Huizhou and Shanxi.104 In the Daoguang period, Foshan town had a total of nineteen guild halls, for example, trade in wrought iron, gold, ceramics and faceplates, and the Xing Ren east and west hat and silk trade. 105 Thus we can see the development of the Qing dynasty. The guild was a kind of organization composed of feudal businessmen and handicraftsmen. Its feudal characteristics were mainly exhibited in the following aspects: first, the class relationship within the guild was very complex. It was formed by three kinds of people - the owners who had funds, master workers (usually the masters) who had mastered techniques, and apprentices who were deprived and repressed. The relationship was one of exploitation; second, since the guild was often closely connected with the association of fellow provincials, it had the nature of locality and exclusiveness; third, the guild had many relationships with the feudal bureaucrats and accepted fund donations and protection from them; forth, the guild was tightly integrated with feudal superstition. It was not only the place for industrialists and businessmen to hold a meeting, but also the site for offering sacrifices to the gods or ancestors (the founder of their own industry).

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Fig. 7.5.

In the 22nd year of Jiaqing “Monument for Medicine Guild Hall”, rubbing from the inscription

The feudal nature of the guild determined its role. The professional specifications of guild were: first, to sideline non-local guilds and merchants and restrict people engaged in the same trade from expanding or opening new businesses. The pork trade in Beijing provided that: “anyone who opens a new pork shop should invite people to dinner and offer them to see a whole day play before the temple for the God of Wealth”, as otherwise “people engaged in the same trade will not allowed the new shop to be listed on the market”. 106 The wood trade in Suzhou specified: “if people who are from other industries want to do our business, they should

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Fig. 7.6.

2 5th year of Guangxu reprinted “Guild Regulations for Ceramics and Faceplates” from the 6th year of Qianlong

hand in four liang and eight qian in silver in advance as payment for entering this trade”; “people of our town who have finished their apprenticeship and open a business should hand in two liang and four qian of silver”, “if anyone is reluctant to deliver the money and opens a business privately, the money according to the professional specification will be doubled”. 107 Second, to restrict people of the same trade in recruiting apprentices and forbidding those apprentices from taking part in the guild. The guild regulations of the Beijing candy and cake (pastry) industry not only demanded a lot of money for entering the trade from the recruited apprentices, but also limited the number and years for people to study. During the period of the Emperor Daoguang it specified that “apprentice recruiting will be suspended for five years provisionally”. 108 The Chongde book-printing hall stated that not only should it “dominate every shop, recruit apprentice and shop assistants, and increase the price of printing” and “every shop should recruit more apprentices and get more cash gifts on festivals”, but also “extort money from outside printers for entering the trade”.109 Third, to set the workload and wages of workers, and enhance the exploitation of apprentices. For example, in the reign of Qianlong, the guild hall of Xianweng paper industry in Suzhou stipulated that “for the paper maker, six hundred papers a day can be regarded as a workday, the wage of every paper maker is “seven qian , two fen of silver”.110 The guild regulation for craftsman

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in Hangzhou silk weaving industry was “if the artisan wants to change his job, he should clear the prepaid account and then be approved by the master”. 111 The guild organization also performed the function of controlling prices and formulating unified measurements. From the nature and function of guild organizations in the early stage of the Qing dynasty, their existence as well as the feudal regime played a role in restricting and postponing the development of handicraft industry. Marx said, “The guild is required to restrict the number of workers to its smallest maximum, in order to prevent the boss of the handicraft industry from becoming capitalist”.112 Engels also said, “The production of handicraft industry in the medieval local guild made the monopolist and lifelong employed worker become impossible”, 113 “the production is still fettered by the form of the complete handicraft industry, so it retains a feudalist nature”.114 But some figures in the academic community have overstated the solidity of the guild organization and its restricting role in industry and commerce, which underestimates the bud of capitalism in the Qing dynasty. They took the guild as a sheet of iron which could not be changed from the inside or broken from the outside. They believed that there was a completely exclusive relationship between the guild system and the bud of capitalism. The bud of capitalism definitely could not co-exist in any industry with the guild system. We disagree with this inflexible and rigid perspective. It is necessary to see the contradictions inside the guilds. It was impossible for the guild to obstruct free competition between enterprises and the class struggle inside them. The guild of Nanjing silk weaving industry was an example. The guild could not restrict the manufacturing scale of the local silk weaving industry to a fixed quota, so the number of non-governmental weaving machines rose up to tens of thousands unexpectedly; some owners even possessed five to six hundred machines. All the above is clear proof that the power of competition broke the rule of the guild and the guild was powerless to intervene. The industry and commerce guild halls in the Qing dynasty generally “restated” and “reiterated” the professional rules, and engraved them on stone tablets, attempting to make them “everlasting”. This was not a powerful and solid representation of the guild. On the contrary, it showed the weakened role and disordered character of guilds in the current state of economic development. Therefore cases which disobeyed the professional rules were universal. The decline of power of the guild was also manifested in the intensification of class struggle inside the guilds and the appearance of helper guilds. Helpers and apprentices were the lower-level exploited people in the guilds of industry and commerce. So they united to set up their own organization to fight with

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the industrialists and commercialits and the feudal governments. The guild organization was unable to retain dominance, as was shown by the antagonism between the “East guild” and “West guild” in Guangdong, where the owners and workers both established their own organizations. Beijing had a union for workers in the handicraft industry, the “Nine Emperor Union”, “most of the carpenters and bricklayers in the capital are from Shenzhou and Jizhou, to the east of Beijing, so their rules are quite rigorous. All apprentices have guild halls and the total is called the Nine Emperor. The opening day of this union is the time for rest routinely, which is called business-stopping day”.115 There were numerous Chuaijiang in Suzhou with a strong tradition of fighting. They prepared several times to set up a guild hall for Chuaijiang. This was a great threat to the industrialists and commercialists. Since they could not suppress the struggle of the Chuaijiang by using the force of the guild, the owners turned to the Qing government for help over and over again. As another example, Chuaijiang Xing Chunlin, Wangde and so on in 1715 (the 54th year of the Emperor Kangxi) “proposed to open the guild hall of Chuaijiang” and “took the increase of labor costs as a pretext to delude all the craftsmen”. Seventytwo businessmen who sold cloth in Suzhou petitioned the Qing Government jointly: “once the guild is set up, the vagrants will come in groups and then the harm they bring will be unpredictable”.116 The Qing government punished them: “everyone was flogged with a stick” and “expelled to their native home”. Afterwards the industries of candles and leather in Suzhou both “established the head group” to resist the guild organization controlled by the business owners. They were also suppressed by the government. From thise we can see that the class struggle inside the guild was sharpening, the ruling power of the guild was wavering, and its control of the development of industry and commerce and restrictions on the helpers and apprentices was becoming weaker.

City and Commerce The Prosperity of Major Cities As the social division of labor expanded and the commodity economy developed, cities and some towns were becoming more prosperous. In the reigns of emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, some places such as Yangzhou, Suzhou, Jiangning, Hangzhou, Foshan, Guangzhou, Hankou, Beijing etc. developed into good-sized industrial and commercial cities. Since the Sui and Tang dynasty, Yangzhou had been a thriving city famous

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for the salt industry. In the early period of the Qing dynasty people in Yangzhou carried out a struggle against the Qing government resolutely. As a result, a large number of people were killed; the formerly prosperous city of Yangzhou was turn into a waste of tumbled walls. At the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, the salt and other industries in Yangzhou not only resumed, but also had more flourishing development. Located north of the Yangtze River and south of the Huaihe River, Yangzhou faces the Grand Canal to the west and the ocean to the east. Hundreds of kilometers around it were crisscrossed by rivers and lakes, so the amphibious transportation was very convenient, especially for the salt and fishing industry. The city of Yangzhou was not only the salt-supplying base for all the provinces in central China but also the gateway between the north and south shipping transports of the Qing government. In the years of the Qianlong’s reign, both the region of Huainan and Huaibei were described with the sentence, “Since there are more salt-boiling factories, more people prefer salty food, and there are more places selling salt, so this area is the most profitable one.” Therefore, “wealthy businessmen and merchants are densely gathered here. The resident population was no less than hundreds of thousands here and in other places”.117 The “government-run salt” was transported and sold to all provinces in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The salt-dealer gained huge profits and accumulate abundant capital, “the riches are counted by tens of millions “by the way of brutal exploitation”. 118 By the period of Yongzheng and Qianlong, the salt dealers in Yangzhou had cornered the market and it had become one of the biggest commercial capitals with a monopoly. The salt dealing in Yangzhou was closed related to the political power of the Qing government. For example, during the Kangxi’s reign Xu Qianxue, a high official in the Ministry of Penalties, gave a hundred thousand liang of silver to the big salt dealer Xiang Jing for speculative trade activities. Another big salt dealer in Yangzhou was the son of a servant in the family of grand secretary Ming Zhu. In 1786 (the 51st year of Qianlong), when the Qing government suppressed the uprising led by Lin Shuangwen, the salt dealer Jiang Guangda contributed two million liang of silver as a “reward”. During the Jiaqing reign the Qing government was extremely pressed for soldiers’ pay, because of the White Lotus uprising in the provinces of Hubei, Sichuan and Shanxi. The salt dealer Bao Shufang “contributed money” to the government actively, so he was given the title of envoy of salt-transportation. When the government lacked money for regulating rivers and watercourses, salt dealers donated three million liang in silver to assist the government in the project.

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Fig. 7.7. In the 51st year of Qianlong, a rice trade contract of a boatman in Dantu county

These majestic and powerful salt dealers were “living a luxury life with many beautiful clothes and houses”, “regarding jewels as gravel”,119 even spent two hundred thousand liang of silver in building the temporary dwelling palace of Qianlong for his inspection trip in the south. It is said that Jiang Chun, one of the richest Yangzhou salt dealers, built a white pagoda120 “Magnificent Rainbow Garden” in one night in order to please the emperor. This story may be exaggerated, but we can see the abundant financial capabilities the big salt dealers. With the development of the salt industry and the water transport of grain to the capital, the business of Yangzhou was very prosperous in the reign of Qianlong. The silks and satins shops provided the big businessmen, high officials and noble lords with clothes and were grouped in the street full of satin goods; restaurants and teahouses entertaining the leisured class were mainly centered near the areas of the North-door and the Rainbow-shaped Bridge. 121 There was a verse “Guangling is prosperous with lasting scenery”, “the prosperity of today in Guangling is as several times as the past” composed when the emperor Qianlong was making an inspection trip in the south.122

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Fig. 7.8. In the 29th year of Qianlong, the license to salt dealer Wang Xiuyun which was conferred by the salt-transport ambassador in Zhejiang

Fig. 7.9.

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Flourishing Suzhou (part) (by Xu Yang in the Qing dynasty)

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In the period of the Qing dynasty Suzhou became one of the cities with most developed industry and commerce in China, and wasespecially famous for silk production. Because of the rapid development in industry and commerce, Suzhou was been a big city between the Qing and Ming dynasties, “Su city is five li in width, seven li in length, and 45 li in circumference”; 123 by the Qianlong’s reign, “inside the city, there is hundred thousand households, if the suburban households are counted, we will have no less than 1 million”.124 Not counting the suburban district, if every family contained five persons then the population in the city alone was no less than half a million. Water and land transportation was very developed in Suzhou city. “Since Suzhou across five lakes and three rivers which finally flow into the sea, the geographical position of this city is superior. Goods were piled up inside and outside Suzhou city. Pedestrians passed quickly in an endless stream. There were various colorful shops and workplaces. As to its prosperity, even the capital cannot compare with it”.125 In 1759 (the 24th year of Qianlong) a famous Suzhou painter Xu Yang painted a scroll named Picture of Prosperous Times Uprising , which contained more than two-hundred and thirty shops and covered fifty industries and more. In addition to local products the specialties of nine provinces such as Sichuan, Guangdong, Yunnan, Guizhou, Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Suzhou, Shandong were well known both in China and abroad. The products are too numerous to mention but included the pongee of Shandong, nankin of Puyuan, basi of Hanfu, cloth of Chongming, banner cloth of Songjiang, shuttle cloth of Nanjing and Wuhu, ham of Jinhua, wine-preserved fresh water pomfret of Ningbo, dried salted duck of Nanjing, groceries and crude medicine of Sichuan, Guangdong, Yunnan and Guizhou etc. By the Kangxi’s reign, due to the convenient overseas transportation, was China exporting a large amount of traditional silk, tea and porcelain. In the 55th year of Kangxi, in Suzhou alone, there were “more than a thousand” vessels used for sea-trading each year. The massive exports of Chinese goods was accompanied by a large number of imported foreign goods. So in the Qianlong times, Suzhou was a place with “rare objects from mountain and sea, treasure from foreign countries, and merchants from all directions thousands of miles away shoulder to shoulder”.126 We can see two shops with the signboard “Firm of Foreign Goods” in Xu Yang’s painting. In the middle reign of Jiaqing, Suzhou foreign goods had developed into an industry: “Yong Qin Hall”. With the prosperity in domestic and foreign trade and rapid population growth in Suzhou city, the phenomenon of urban expansion emerged. In the Ming dynasty Huang Jiagang of Nanhao outside the Heaven Gate said “since it was still an open area near the city, so the population there was sparse”; while

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in the Qing dynasty, there was “a daily increase in population, people with great wealth and common people are nearly a thousand, row upon row”. 127 In the late Ming dynasty Nanhao was not a lively area with “few goods”; after the early years of the Qing dynasty it gradually became “populated densely with all kinds of people”, even to the degreethat “the ground is valued as gold”. 128 When the Emperor Kangxi went on his south tour in 1685 (the 24th year of Kangxi), it was area with the most prosperous industry and commerce. “Nanhao is the most flouring area in Suzhou abounding with general merchandise, and merchants converge here”. 129 There were other places such as Panmen (the southwest door) and Fengmen (the east door) of Suzhou which were not bustling with noise and excitement in the first few years of Qianlong. Some people even “discounted for sale” their luxurious houses but failed to sell. However, after about fifty years or more, namely by the end of the Qianlong’s reign, these places had become “a myriad twinkling lights” and as before, the luxurious houses were “the most desirable ones”.130 Nanjing (named Jiangning or Jinling in Qing dynasty) developed into China’s famous center of the silk industry very early in history. By the early years of the Qing dynasty, the silk industry was even more developed. It surpassed the cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou between the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns. “Non-government products are all inside the Door of Treasure inclined to the east and west side; the people engaged in this industry number thousands of hundreds”.131 There were many different kinds of silk products in Nanjing, such as silk fabric, satin, yarn, thin and tough silk, a kind of silk gauze etc. Since they were of high quality, these products were not only used for the royal or imperial court but were also mostly supplied for the domestic and foreign market, enjoying a good reputation: “Jiang silk and tribute satin is the best in the world”. ”The more prosperous the silk weaving industry, the more kinds of goods assembled”. Due to the development of the silk industry, some other types of industry and commerce as “the dependency of silk weaving” developed accordingly. For example, the silk packaging industry as well as the paper making industry related to packaging; the bleaching and dyeing industry related to silk dyeing; shops of machines, shuttles, reeds, spinning utensils and shuttle bamboo for the weaving machines; and the industry of cross-stitching, pulled flowers and sideline works to silk weaving and other industries were all well developed.132 Bookshop are a good example. “Shops like this number more than in the twenties”. They were all run by people from Jiangxi province, and “although all of them are bookshops with shelves of wonderful books, specialties can still

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be found”. As another example, Nanjing’s paper fans also “have long enjoyed a high reputation” so there were more than ten fan shops all over the city. However, “the Hall of Zhang Qingyun” was known far and wide. It engraved words and paintings on the ribs of the fan which then were named after girls in a brothel. Although the price was extremely high, people came from far away to buy them.133 According to statistics, nearly eighty thousand households, forty to fifty hundreds of people lived in Jiangning at the time of the Qianlong’s reign, and “people from Anhui and Guangdong provinces accounted for seventy percent, while the total number of Hui people and natives was one in the three”.134 By the Yongzheng’s reign, Jiangning had become a place with “people from all over, broad streets and markets, extended roadways in all directions”.135 Every night, “until the first and second watches, downtown was brilliantly illuminated to buy or sell food”. On Qinhuai River, “the passenger ships and pleasureboats came and went continuously”. There were “many teahouses and bars standing in great numbers east and west”136 between the two bridges Lishe and Wuding in Jiangning during the period of Qianlong. By the early Daoguang’s reign people at Five-mu Park had “opened a great number of teahouses, and hundreds or tens of people gathered chattering and tea-drinking. Moreover, they hung some cages of birds and sold water pipes”. 137 When describing the prosperity of Jiangning, Wu Jingzi pointed out in his book The Scholars that “there were tens of streets and hundreds of alleys crowded with people and magnificent buildings”, “there were a total of six to seven hundred restaurants, big and small, and thousand or more teahouses”. So we can visualize its prosperity. Hangzhou was not only the ancient capital of Wu and Yue (states in the Zhou dynasty) but also the capital of the Southern Song dynasty. Since the Song and Yuan dynasties it had been one of the three biggest centers of the silk industry. The prefectures of Hang, Jia and Hu were “abundant in fertile soil for mulberry” and “known by the most production of silk”. Since the above good conditions for the development of the silk industry existed in Hangzhou, Hangzhou became “the best all over the country with the advantage of being like the shuttle and axis, and at the same time is a city with much more businessmen in this industry”.138 The silk industry of Hangzhou was concentrated at the eastern part of the city. “Both officials and the ordinary people were all engaged in producing silk fabrics”, and “men and women from several thousand households in the northeast of city were all dependant on this to earn their living”. By the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns, “the number of craftsman and silk shops became

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the most in the history”. The government silk industry was run by “officials of internal affairs”; the silk production of non-governmental silk manufacturer was usually transported abroad so that “the trader who shipped the silk products across ocean earned a lot of money”.139 Therefore, “the sound of the loom could be heard from every household”140 in the east of city and it was said that “the sound of working machines lasted all day and night in the east part”.141 Hangzhou was also well-known all over the country for its foil industry. By the time of the Emperor Kangxi various places in the city such as Babe Lane, the rear of Gongyuan and the west of Wangxin bridge had “no less than million” foil-manufacturing industries. The phenomenon was “three strikes will cause tens of thousands hand to thunder”. The foils were superstitious supplies and so “they were drawn from not only the capital, but also every prefecture”. 142 “There are two foils: one is silver foil, as white as silver color; the other is gold foil (also known as yellow foil), the color is as yellow as gold”. The gold foil was produced by “putting the silver foil on a pole and then smoking it in some degree with grass or pine”.143 In the early years of Qianlong most machinists, dyers, tinsmiths, bridge or port porters were from the outside, “non-local people earning a living by weaving, foil-hammering and manure-carrying accounted for the majority of population in Hangzhou”. The exploited and oppressed working people revolted from time to time, so the landlords and officials were extremely frightened. Other businesses had also developed very well, such as tea, lotus root starch, chiffon, spinning fans, scissors etc. There were many products transported from other places, such as Chinese brush and crape from Huzhou, copper stoves from Jiaxing, ham from Jinhua, kumquat and dried fish from Taizhou “by making use of their soil, which was cherished by people from all directions”.144 Since “it next to Fujian and Guangdong in the south, and the Yangtze and Huai river in the north”, merchants from Fujian and Guangdong came Hangzhou to buy a great number of scarves, silk and other goods. “Sailing boats came and went in the mist and clouds on theriver”,145 and then transported them to every place in the world. When the Kangxi’s reign started, Hangzhou had developed into “an important city of forty li in length and breadth”,146 with one hundred thousand households amounting to half a million people. By the Yongzheng period Hangzhou city had developed more rapidly, “with broad enclosures and, dense population”. 147 From the north to the south (the headstream of the Yangtze River) it was thirty li in length. Foshan was originally a small town near Guangzhou. By the Song dynasty

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it had developed into one of China’s four famous towns. In the Qing dynasty it turned into “one of the biggest cities in Lingnan”, 148 with very flourishing industry and commerce. Foshan is mainly a handicraft industrial town. Its most famous trade was the metallurgical industry, especially the production of iron pans which were wellknown at home and abroad. The iron pans were classified into “pan, tripod, three people pot and five people pot according to the size”. The iron pans were “not only sold to provinces in the south, such as Wu, Yue, Jin, Chu (all counties in the Zhou dynasty)”149 but also exported to foreign countries in large numbers. According to statistics, during the Yongzheng’s reign, a large number of foreign vessels were used for transporting Foshan iron pans for sale. Every vessel was “loaded by sometimes one to two or three hundred lian 連, even five hundred to a thousand lian ”. Each lian weighed ten ponds, taking three people’s pot or five people’s pot as one lian . According to this, each ship transported at least two thousand to four or six thousand, even one to two ten thousand jin , that is, “a large amount of the iron exported aboard”.150 Soon the Qing government ordered that iron pots were not to be exported. The iron string (iron wire) of Foshan was also famous. “The iron wire can be classified into various kinds, such as thickest cable, second thickest cable, more embroidered, less embroidered, embroidered with velvet figure, according to its thickness”. “Iron wire was everywhere, so businessmen from all around transported it by ancient carriage and then sold it”. After processing, the iron wire was manufactured into iron nails although “because these are produced by heated iron, the size is not always the same”. In the reign of Daoguang, “the iron string industry ... was the most prosperous, with up to thousands of workers”; “the iron wire industry ... was the most prosperous, up to thousands of workers”.151 Mei Xuanshu described the prosperity of the Foshan metallurgical industry and the industrious work of the iron-smelting workers at the early stage of the Qing dynasty: “the smoke coming from the casting post is continuous, so that the red light at the village side is like a candle light in the night sky. The most industrious poor blacksmiths sweated around the furnace and could not fall asleep”.152 Foshan also produced silk goods. But “the yarn was made from homespun silk with a printed pattern. The raw silk broke easily and the boiled-off silk was often lousy, Niulang silk fabric is weight and fine, weaving by needle work”153 “Since the silk of local is out of shining and its color is dark”. That was why “the merchants from far away stopped in Guangdong province and did not buy yarn in Foshan”.154 Besides the metallurgy and silk industries, other businesses such as small

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handicrafts developed very well. Businesses such as white sugar, longan, dried litchi, dried tangerine sugar, and plum sugar among other goods “filled the whole market with merchants”. Small handicraft industries “such as lime or brick furnaces, and soil, wood, stone and metal working”, “buttons, needles, shoes, hats”, “door-gods, lanterns, firecrackers” and so on “supported people who relied on these for their whole life”.155 In the early Qing dynasty, the market in Foshan was very flourishing “with ten thousands of tiles evenly settled, thousands of streets crossing each other, houses spread all over the place, the smoke and the dark could not be distinguished, and lights were bright until the daytime”. 156 In the Yongzheng period, it had “more than tens of thousands of households stretched out over ten li ”.157 In the reign of Qianlong and Jiaqing there were forests of shops and workshops, with six hundred and twenty-two streets and alleys in total.158 Guangzhou was a city dealing with foreign trade. “All the trade of imperial China and the western nations was gathered here. Products were shipped here from all over China, and the commercial warehouses of every province operated very lucrative business. Commercial goods from Tokyo, Cochin China, Kampuchea, Burma, Malacca, Malay Peninsula, East Indies, all Indian ports, European countries, countries of North and South America and the Pacific Islands also gathered in this city”.159 Chinese goods exported from Guangzhou were mainly tea, silk and hand-woven cloth; imported foreign goods initially were wool, cotton, metals, spices etc, and then in nineteenth century opium became the most important import. Many foreign ships entered Hong Kong only from Guangzhou. In the later eighteenth century dozens of vessels, up to eighty-three (in the 54th year of Qianlong) arrived each year, while in the early nineteenth century the number was one or two hundred. There were also many Chinese merchant ships sailing out from Guangzhou to various trade areas in Southeast Asia. Due to the flourishing trade Guangdong earned the reputation that “the gold mountain of Zhuhai was the southern treasury of the emperor”, and “big and rich merchants all use the advantage of their own places and earn lots of money”.160 The silk industry in Guangdong was also flourishing, because skills were passed on by master workers from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The silk product was made from a mixture of some silk transported from south of the Yangtze River and local silk. The quality of “Guangdong yarn” and “Guangdong satin”, “feels dense, uniform, is smooth with bright color”. “The goods of Suzhou and Hangzhou are not as good, only the silk produced in Wu is brilliant without color-fading, stains or ripples”.161 The silk factories in Guangzhou were concentrated in Shangxiguan, Xiaxiguan, Xiajiupu and other places.

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All the goods produced in the Guangdong period were collectively called “Guangdong cargos”, enjoying a good reputation at home and abroad. The “pearls”, “glasses, jades, corals” were not only used to serve the feudal nobilities but also sold in large amounts for foreign exports. The west side of the city was the most prosperous area. It was “full of buildings and pavilions, and only people from Yi (a name for the ancient tribes in the east) lived here”. 162 In addition, “people from various provinces lived here together”, 163 especially Fujian merchants who sold Fujian goods there. The south part “was used mostly by traders, landlords and despotic gentries for amusement”.164 The west corner was the amusement section for landlords, despotic gentry and big merchants since “it is a place with Haoshui on the south, full of red buildings with paintings studios and lived in by actresses, singers and beauties in rows”. The other side of west corner “had various shops and markets, where gathered merchants from all over the world”165 and so there was a proverb: “east village, west pretty, south rich, north poor”.166 In the early years of the Opium War, foreigners estimated that the population in Guangzhou was as much as one million, “anyone who has the chance to go to Guangzhou, walk through its streets and look at the scene of bustling streets will think that the population in this city is never less than one million”.167 Known as the Three Towns of Wuhan, Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang formed a situation of tripartite configuration and later gradually integrated. They developed considerably in the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is recorded that “middlemen for merchants, shops of silk production, markets of fish and rice, fat wives, grand gates, skills from hundreds of households in areas such as soil, wood, food and so on, were close one after another”.168 The waterway transportation of Hankou was very convenient and can be called the “thoroughfare of nine provinces”.169 It was not only the key link for Hubei — all the freight from Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi, Shanxi and Jiangxi “were also transported here”.170 Hankou was the collection and distribution center of Huai salt. Large amounts of salt were transported to Hankou every year and then were supplied to the two lakes, Jiangxi, Sichuan and Henan and so on for the people to eat.171 At that time, “there were many salt producers and tens of guilds”. 172 Pawn broking was also well developed. During the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods, there were more than seventy pawnbrokers who exploited the laboring people. Hankou was also the collection and distribution center of rice and food. It collected rice from the two lakes and Sichuan and then met “the needs of the merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang”. 173 Other industries such as tung oil, iron and coal were also well developed. As early as the first years of Qianlong,

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the most significant industries in Hankou were “salt, pawn broking, rice, wood, cloth and herbal products” 174 and merchants from different provinces established some guilds there. Because of the development of business, during the nine year of Qianlong, there were “more than hundreds of brokers”175 as the middlemen to exploit the labor. During the Qianlong’s reign Renyi and Lizhi were “the place of frequent thoroughfare of different provinces. Various merchants came together to this place which was inhabited by people from all walks of life”. 176 Wuchang was more prosperous with land and waterway transportation and many different vessels and vehicles, where general merchandise gathered and merchants assembled. Other than Nanjing and Beijing there was no similar places.177 During the early years of Qianlong, Hankou already had two hundred thousand residents. The rice and corn they consumed every day amounted to thousands of shi 石. 178 In the last years of Qianlong a fire broke out which lasted for more than two days and burnt more than one hundred ships which transported rice and corn, plus three or four thousand business ships. In the April in the year of 1810 (the 15th year of Jiaqing), there was another fire which lasted for three days and nights and which “burnt about eight hundred thousand houses and shops of merchants and residents”.179 Thus it is possible to see the prosperous and developed conditions in Hankou. The historic city of Beijing had been the capital for the four dynasties of the Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing for nearly eight hundred years. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, Beijing was not only a political and cultural center but also a famous business and trade city in north China. At that time, the transport in Beijing was very convenient and formed a sea and land transport network accessible from all directions across the country. This provided very favorable conditions for the industrial and commercial development in Beijing. The busiest area of Beijing was not the inner city where dignitaries gathered but the region outside Xuanwumen, Zhengyangmen and Chongwenmen. With tens of thousands of capital, rich merchants operated industry and commerce outside the three gates. By the Qianlong period the large enclosed area outside Zhengyangmen had been shaped into a bustling place with forests of commercial buildings, many signboards, crowded small business vendors gathered like bees and ants, and restaurants and teashops row upon row. Almost all the industry and commerce of Beijing was under the control of businessmen in trade associations. These merchants attempted to keep the market monopoly, prevent people from other places and trades from competing, and establish merchant guilds in order to set up guild regulations and uniform weights and measures for holding a meeting and storing goods. At the time of

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Qianlong, “every province competed to establish a guild hall, and even each big county had one guild”.180 Hence the price of house foundation outside the three gates soared. With the development of industry and commerce, guild halls sprung up like mushrooms. At the beginning of the Opium War, “the number of guild halls in Beijing is no less than hundreds of times the total in all the other provinces. The cargo firms and guild halls outside Xuanwumen, Zhengyangmen and Chongwenmen are no less than hundreds of times as many as outside other gates in the capital of the country”.181 Beijing was the political center of the whole country. From the royal household and nobles down to the bureaucrats, landlords, businessmen, people were all living a luxurious life. In order to meet the needs of the exploiting classes, industry and commerce in Beijing embarked on abnormal development. The most developed handicrafts in Beijing were the high-level luxuries, such as enamel, jade, lacquer, woollen fabric etc. In contrast, handicraft products closely related to the lives of the masses were seldom manufactured locally. The majority of these relied on other places all over the country shipping to Beijing. For example, homespun cloth was from Shandong province and Gaoyang in Hebei province, paper came from Anhui, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces, tobacco came from northeast China and Yi county of Hebei province. Therefore Beijing’s business was more developed than the handicraft industry; the handicraft industry exclusively for the consumption of the ruling class was more flourishing than that for the working people. In the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods, Beijing was not a city of production but one of consumption. What we have discussed is simply business development in eight comparatively large cities. In addition there were places such as Zhenjiang where, in the years of the Kangxi’s reign, “all merchants came here in groups in order to exchange goods”.182 Wuhu in the reign of Jiaqing was “an equal city to the prefecture, it is near the river and far from the mountains, with plenty of ships and carriages, and many people are engaged in business and aquaculture. Now in the city, markets and stores stand in rows and all kinds of goods are here. Painting and calligraphy, cloth, silk, fish and salt converge, and the noise from markets as loud as waves lasts through the evening”. 183 In Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, “the marketplaces and shops extended for over ten miles, the households number hundreds of thousands, the kilns and pawn shops account for seventy percent, the original inhabitants account for twenty to thirty percent”.184 In Chenzhou, Hunan province, “with Guangdong to the south and Hunan to the north, the city was a channel for trade contacts. More than ten big shops and inns were opened along the river. From the north, business passengers were exchange workers and workers in mule transportation; from

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the south, they were workers in ship transportation. It was the same with people as when a salt dealer brings salt here, and the Guangdong guest carries linen away. The time of June and July is harvest, September and October is the time of getting tea and tung oil. A continuous stream of passengers, merchants and visitors came here. It was really one biggest place in Chunan”. 185 In Shandong, Jining was “the goods-assembling city. Travelling traders put their goods here because if the market declined, it was easy for them to get silver through transferring goods to the local shops”.186 In Xuanhua, Hebei province, “the shops in the market were lined up one after another, and each had its own name as well. For example, Yunnanjing Grosgrain Shop, Suhang Grosgrain Shop, Luzhou Grosgrain Shop, Zezhou Grosgrain Shop, Linqing Cloth and Silk Shop, Knitting-wool Shop and Grocery Store. Along the river the shops and guilds extended to four to five li . Merchants competed to do their business here”.187 In Xiamen, “every prefecture or county was crowd by ordinary people, merchants and ships. The bustling marketplaces and beautiful villages made it into a big city”.188 These places had already developed into quite flourishing medium cities from the aspect of commodity economy. It is not just the development of the commodity economy itself which causes reform of the entire model of production. Commercial prosperity, urban development, exchange expansion, and large amount of currency in circulation are also of great significance. The commodity economy not only decomposes and corrodes the mode of production, but also plays a significant role in promoting its development.

The Rural Market Before the Opium War, the planting of cash crops had been extended constantly and commercialization of farming had also been developed to a certain extent within China’s rural areas. To sell the cash crops which served as the materials for the handicraft and the farm produce which served as the commodities to each rural area and some big cities of the country, the cash crops and the farm produce had to be collected by rural markets and then sold on to different places through many hands. Moreover the handicraft products which were made in big cities also needed to be collected and sold by means of the rural markets to the vast countryside. In this way, the rural markets became more active. There were many itinerant traders and shopkeepers, big and small, came into being. Cottage industries as well as individual workshops with a small number of trainees also were developed. This kind of rural market together with the cities spread all over the vast land, and thus the commerce net was formed.

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Within this net, many commercial exchanges such as buying and selling, and the adjusting of commodities that some had and others lacked, were carried out. It played an increasingly important role in the feudal self-sufficient society. In the earlier stage of the Qing dynasty, owing to the local situation and the degree of development, the content as well as the name of the commodity economy differedt in the nationwide rural markets. The rural markets in the prefectures of Suzhou, Songjiang, Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces were known as Shi (市) (in some places called Hang (行)) or Zhen (鎮). Generally speaking, shi and zhen differed in the development degree of industry and commerce. Shi usually referred to a minor commercial scale that was mainly centered on peddlers and itinerant merchants and zhen referred to a superior commercial scale that was mostly cetered on shopkeepers. As the development of industry and commerce in a zhen was advanced, the zhen was always of vital importance to the feudal rulers with regard to the economy. Thus government officials were appointed there to collect taxes and generals to suppress any uprising. Someone noted that a place with merchants was called a shi and one with government officials was a zhen .189 If the industry and commerce in a shi developed to a certain scale, the shi also become a zhen . For example, during the years of Jiajing’s reign in the Ming dynasty, Shengze, Bachi and Meiyan in Suzhou prefecture, Wujiang county were all called shi . But Shengze became a zhen during the twenty-third year of Kangxi’s reign in the Qing dynasty. Bachi and Meiyan also became zhen in succession after the mid-term of Kangxi’s reign.190 On the other hand, Zhenze zhen where the industry and commerce had been prosperous since the Ming dynasty was lined out from Wujiang county and called Zhenze county during the Qing dynasty.191 The development of the commodity economy in Suzhou, Songjiang, Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou was quite advanced in China. There were many rural markets that spread all over these places. Many famous zhens were experiencing a historical development. Some did not flourish until the Qing dynasty and then became the collecting and distributing centres of handicraft products and agricultural products. Wuqing zhen, in the prefecture of Huzhou, Zhejiang province, was jointly formed of Wu zhen in Wucheng county and Qing zhen in Tongxiang county. At a distance of 5 kilometers, Wu zhen was beside the river across from Qing zhen. Up until the Qing dynasty, since people had lived through a long period of peace and the transfer of residence transfer was increasing daily, people could maintain good contacts within 5 kilometers. Later the two zhen

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were consolidated into one that was called “Wuqing zhen”. 192 As the water transportation in Wuqing zhen was rather convenient, it became a traffic hub for Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, the three prefectures of Su, Jia and Hu, and seven counties such as Wuxing, Wujiang and Xiushui. By Emperor Qianlong’s reign, industry and commerce in Wuqing was becoming more and more prosperous. There was a big market and also displays of fireworks and a sea of lanterns; and so it was named “the Gateway with the South”.193 Huogang zhen in Gui’an county also should be mentioned. From the Song dynasty to the Yuan dynasty, Huogang was always regarded as a shi . But during the years of Jiajing in the Ming dynasty, it was burnt and robbed by Japanese pirates and the destruction was not recovered and further development was not underway until the Qing dynasty. Then after the Emperor Yongzheng’s reign, it became a richly endowed place with about three thousand families. Puyuan zhen, which was sited in Xiushui county in the prefecture of Jiaxing, 194 Zhejiang province, was called Yongle shi and was merely a small and irregular market before Jianyan’s reign in the Song dynasty. But until the years of Lizong in the Southern Song dynasty, it was renamed Puyuan zhen.195 During the years of Qianlong to Jiaqing in the Qing dynasty,196 it turned into a big town in which lived ten thousand of families. Here people were engaged in weaving silk and also in agriculture. A company of travelling merchants was always crowded together there. Fengjing zhen of Shanhua county also deserves to be mentioned. Its old name was Niu Village City. In the Yuan dynasty it was renamed Fengjing zhen. During the years of Kangxi’s reign in the Qing dynasty, it became a center of cotton and of dyeing and processing. By the reigns of Qianlong and Jiaqing in the Qing dynasty, the products were rich, the families were substantial, and merchants assembled there.197 Pingwang zhen, situated in Zhenze county of Suzhou prefecture of Jiangsu province, was called Xiang (鄉) in the Eastern Han dynasty. During the Song dynasty and the Yuan dynasty, houses and shops were put in order along the river banks so as to make things convenient for the travelling merchants. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty there was a spectacular scene presented with thousands of residents and trade contacts as continual as in a city. In the reign of Hongzhi in the Ming dynasty, Pingwang Town was becoming prosperous and the prosperity was retained into the Emperor Qianlong’s reign. At that time, various goods were prepared completely day by day with the majority being especially rice, beans and wheat. Thousands of ships and barges from far and near all assembled here. So someone named it “Little Maple Bridge”. Zhenze zhen was so dull that it contained only some dozens of families during the Yuan dynasty. During the years of Chenghua’s reign in the Ming dynasty, the number

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of the families increased to three or four hundred. In the reign of Jiajing, the figure was multiplied. By the Qianlong’s reign there were two or three thousand families. The buildings were crowded together and many goods were collected there. There was no day on which trading stopped. Yanmu City was named a village at the beginning of the Ming dynasty. There were buildings and shops then. But the residents were merely hundreds of families. In the reign of Jiajing, the number of family multiplied. The sort of goods traded became numerous and then Yanmu Village was renamed as a shi . During Emperor Qianlong’s reign, the residents increased daily and the trade also became more and more flourishing. Tanqiu shi had only forty or fifty families during the years of Chenghua’s reign in the Ming dynasty. Iron smelting was often the main work. By Jiajing’s reign, the work categories had increased. Every category such as bronze, iron, wood and the musical arts existed. By the reign of Qianlong, the number of residents was growing day by day and all different kinds of goods were collected here. A rather prosperous scene was presented. Meiyan shi was known as a village at the beginning of the Ming dynasty. In the years of Jiajing’s reign, the number of residents grew to about five hundred families. Then a marketplace came into being through its own trade activities. It was thus called shi , and then becauseof the increasing number of residents and the flourishing trade, it was renamed a zhen in Qianlong’s reign.198 Nanxiang zhen, located in the Jiading county, Songjiang prefecture, Jiangsu province, was formed in the period of transition between the Song dynasty and the Yuan dynasty. It was famous for its temples and was a centre of the cloth business and of dyeing and processing workshops. During Qianlong’s reign, Nanxiang Town was 2.5 kilometers from east to west and 1.5 kilometers from north to south.199 Merchants from all over the country gathered in Nanxiang so the families there were quite numerous. 200 Compared with a zhen , the trades in a shi were at an advantage. The merchants in a shi all tried to be the first to enjoy the extravagant life.201 Luodian zhen in Baoshan county was founded by Luo Sheng who was living in the years of Zhiyuan in the Yuan dynasty. Luodian zhen was named after Luo Sheng. In the reign of Qianlong, Luodian zhen made great progress. It grew to 1.5 kilometers from east to west and 1 kilometer from north to south. What it abounded in was the cotton and gauze. The merchants from Huizhou prefecture were all crowded in together and the trade became more and more prosperous.202 Xinchang zhen of Nanhui county was formed in the reign of Jianyan in the Song dynasty. At that time the department of salt transport which was attached to the Zhejiang areas was set up there. The tax commissioner from North Bridge also went there to collect the tax. Then Xinchang came into being. Before the Opium War, Xinchang zhen

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measured about 2 kilometers from east to west and also from north to south. The entertainment places were all around and the merchants were all assembled there. So it won the title of “super-Suzhou”.203 The above mentioned zhen in the southern area were mostly situated in the countryside. Industry and commerce in these areas was also oriented towards rural areas. Historically these were remote and minor markets, but in the Ming and especially in the Qing dynasty they became famous. The prosperity of these zhen marked the development of production and exchange in the southern area. It also indicated that the commodity-money relationship had increasingly penetrated into the rural areas. Along with the development of the commodity economy, the shi and zhen were gradually on the increase in this area. For example, in the years of Hongzhi’s reign in the Ming dynasty there were four zhen and three shi in Zhenze county of Suzhou prefecture, namely Pingwang zhen, Lili zhen, Tongli zhen and Zhenze zhen and the three shi of Xian shi, Jiangnan shi and Xinhang shi. All these were recorded in the Annals of Wujiang County (吳江縣志) that was edited by Shi Jiang . Up to the years of Jiajing, there were also four zhen recorded in the Annals of Wujiang County edited by Xu Shizeng. But the number of shi was increased to seven: Bachi, Shuangyang, Yanmu, Tanqiu, Meiyan, Shengze and Tun Village. In the 24th year of Kangxi, the number of zhen increased to five to include Shengze zhen which was previously just a shi . The number of shi also increased with the addition of Huangxi. So there were five zhen and still seven shi were mentioned in the Annals of Wujiang county edited by Qu Yunlong. After the mid-term of Kangxi’s reign, both Bachi and Meiyan became zhen so that there were seven zhen and five shi . Therefore, in the 11th year of Qianlong’s reign, according to such a change, someone noted that the people were rich and populous during the 300 years from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty and that the trades were all assembled there in this period. Changes occurred with each passing day and so the records in three annals also varyied progressively.204 There were just seven zhen — Nanxiang, Anting, Huangpo, Luodian, Dachang, Jiangwan and Qingpu (a famous high bridge) — in Jiading county of Songjiang prefecture during the Ming dynasty. After many years five shi were changed into zhen which were Jimiao, Loutong, Xinjing, Guangfu and Townru. Two hang became zhen , namely Xujia hang and Yangjia hang. After the initial years of the Qing dynasty three other zhen were created, namely Waigang, Gelong and Yuepu. During the Emperor Qianlong’s reign, Zhaqiao zhen and Fangtai shi emerged. There were altogether nineteen zhen in Jiading county during the years of Qianlong’s reign. 205 In the Ming dynasty, about eighteen

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zhen were recorded in the local annals in Shanghai county. The eighteen zhen included Wuhui, Wunijing, Xinchang, Zhoupu, Longhua, Sanlintang and Minhang. By the reign of Kangxi in the Qing dynasty, with the increase to seventeen zhen and shi such as Maqiao shi, Meiyuan shi, Yangjing shi and Caohejing zhen there were a total of thirty-five zhen and shi in Shanghai county.206 In the yeas of Jiading in the Song dynasty, according to the Annals of Chicheng Prefecture, there was just one shi in Haining county of Hangzhou prefecture. The Annals (Chicheng Prefecture was initially named by the Liang dynasty and retained the same name thereafter) were written by Chen Qiqing and Qi Shuo. By the early stage of the Qing dynasty, twenty-four places had become shi .207 There were just five shi in Xianju county of Taizhou prefecture as recorded in the Annals of Xianju county compiled in the Song dynasty. But according to the Annals of Xianju county edited by Gu Zhenyu in the 36th year of Wanli’s reign, the number of shi had increased to ten. In another Annals of Xianju county written by Zheng Luxun in the 19th year of Kangxi’s reign, the number of shi had increased to thirteen. Before the Opium War there were already sixteen shi in Xianju county.208 The rural markets in southern China, such as in Guangdong province, were not called shi or zhen but xushi (墟市). The connotations of xushi were in dispute. In the east of Guangdong province, “there is no difference between xu and shi ”. But in the middle part of Guangdong, the market on a big scale was called shi and that on a small scale was called xu . So “shi is first and then comes xu ”.209 But it was quite the opposite in some counties such as Dongguan county, where “the big market was called xu and the small was called shi ”.210 The trades between the peasantry and the merchants were carried on in the xushi . To the peasants, “the nearest and most important place was established as the xu ”. In the xu , “buying and selling fish and salt, cloth and the abundant grain are in circulation”.211 “Food supplies, cloth and silk as well as meat, wine and vegetables and so forth are traded in the xu ”. 212 Therefore the xushi was closely linked with the daily necessities of the vast peasantry. To go to the market to exchange was referred to as “taking advantage of xu ”. The date of exchange differed with the degree of development of the commodity economy. Most of the shi and zhen in the south of the Yangtze River were consistent and stable, “the trade proceeded in every day of a month”.213 But besides a few of the xushi in Guangdong province which were day-to-day, the others were commonly held at set intervals. Some were five-day intervals, some were three-day intervals set according to Yin (寅), Shen (申), Si (已) and

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Hai (亥) which were some of the Twelve Earthly Branches used in combination with the Heavenly Stems to designate years, months, days and hours. And some were four times on average in ten days. To sum up, the more dates the market was set the more frequent the exchange was going on. The more dates indicated that the commodity economy was increasingly flourishing. For the most part, either permanent or temporary constructions were built in the xushi for the trade between the merchants and the peasants. For example, there were shops built in the xushi in Dongguan county. In the 47th year of Kangxi’s reign, “the townee Chen Desong built galleries in Yuelai xu in Shunde county”. 214 Moreover about four hundred shops were built in the Huangbei xu in Fan county during the 19th year of Jiaqing. Shops approximated fifty in the Shigang xu. “In 1839 in Daoguang’s reign, a person who was surnamed Lu in Liangxiang built about forty shops in Huilong shi”. 215 In the reign of Jiaqing, “shops” which were used to store the goods were set up in the xushi of Sanshui county.216 Some xushi set up temporary and simple kiosks instead of actual shops to make things easy for traders. For instance, in Xidongzai xu of Puning county of Chaozhou prefecture, “when entering the market, there were no living houses but only some temporary and simple kiosks made with wood and couch grass to trade”. In Junpu xu, “there were no villages and shops but some temporary and simple kiosks were made when the market was held”.217 In the xushi of Conghua county, “to block the wind and rain, temporary kiosks of wooden beams and couch grass roof were set in a suitable place in the village”.218 Through the xushi , the feudal rulers not only extorted money from the traders but also imposed heavy taxes. The xu with ports in Yangshan county had to hand in “thirty-three liang and seven qian as the land tax to the government every year.219 During the reign of Qianlong, in the Liushaxi xu of the Puning county of the Chaozhou prefecture, “as long as it is a shop with some business, it must pay the tax to the government every year”.220 Up to the 26th year of Kangxi’s reign, the two xu in Hetou and Yongfeng in Dong’an county were charged a good fifteen liang as the tax on transfer of farm cattle.221 Taxes on shops in the xushi of Nanhai county had to be paid to the government every year. With a high degree of farm commercialization, industry and commerce in some prefectures such as Guangzhou, Zhaoqing, Chaozhou and Huizhou were very flourishing in the earlier stages of the Qing dynasty, particularly in fish and salt. In this area not only famous cities such as Guangzhou and Foshan were developed, but also the rural market xu was springing up. The big Jiujiang xu in Nanhai county in Guangzhou prefecture was on a

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par with the shi and zhen in the south of the Yangtze River. At the earlier stage of the Qing dynasty, industry and commerce in the big Jiujiang xu was quite flourishing, “the goods were mostly rich in fish, flowers and the native silk that were better than others in the town”. “Then was the grain, cloth, silkworm eggs, the six domestic animals (pig, ox, goat, horse, fowl and dog), the vegetables, all kinds of fruits, unitized silks, medicinal materials, vessels and sundries that were all for trade in one day”. In Ziyan xu most of the business involved native products such as “cotton cloth, jute, grain, peanuts, fried gluten, yam, ginger melon and bamboo cable”. Moreover there were many specialized xushi in Nanhai county, such as the zhu (referring to bamboo) xu which was known for its lanterns and bamboo materials. Some specialized shi were wholly devoted to selling melons and vegetables. There were also some other specialized xushi such as vegetable shi , pig and grain shi , piglet xu , Guanware xu , silk xu and mulberry shi in the county. 222 The famous flower shi in Fan county was described as “in the south of the Pearl River, a lot of land was used to raise flowers. To sell the flowers was the main work for hundreds of families. The flowers were sold in Guangzhou”. Besides the flower shi , there were three other cities: pearl shi in Hepu, medicine shi in Luofu and incense shi in Dongguan. These shi were known as “the four shi in Guangdong”.223 At the Shilon xu in Dongguan county, “the merchants all gathered together here in which was an important place of Guangzhou, Huizhou and Chaozhou. There were a great many houses”.224 By the reign of Qianlong, Shilon xu had developed into “the north door of the town that had transport facilities and numerous merchants. The profits from the fish and salt were very large and fruit such as banana, lichee, orange and pomelo were very rich. Shilong xu ascended to the first rank among the southeast towns.225 Traders from the xushi of Huang village, Shiyong or Niumian etc. often ran out of places to make money by sugar. 226 Organzie, thready, silk and pure silk etc. were especially sold in the Longjiang xu in Shunde county. By the reign of Qianlong, Dutou’an xu in Jieyang county in Chaozhou prefecture was where “the merchants and ships were assembled in the four towns including Hai (Yang) zhen, Chao (Yang) zhen, Jie (Yang) zhen and Cheng (Hai) zhen”. Mianhu shi was “densely populated and the place where various goods were gathered together”. At that time, there was a total of day-to-day shi in Jieyang county227. So many cities showed that the commodity economy in the rural market was quite flourishing. And the volume of business had also increased considerably. Commercial activities were performed everyday in many rural markets. During the years of Qianlong’s reign, Shishangbu shi in Dabu county was “the strategic pass of Fujian and Guangdong province.

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The traders from everywhere passed over the mountain from this place”. Ar Sanheba shi “water transports gathered together here … whatever you wanted in fish, salt, cloth, silk, grain, vessels was all sold in the shi ”. Changxing xu, was “a place abounding with charcoal. From here one can reach Fujian province and also can get to the stream”. In Taiping xu, “the village was thickly settled with numerous houses”. Connected to Fenglang (xu) and Tongren (xu), in Baihou xu “the villagers were all assembled here and the shops were all around”. By the reign of Qianlong, there were a total of eight markets that traded day-to-day in Dabu county.228 The South-Door-Street shi in Raoping county was described as “the merchants all gathered here and various goods were also collected here”. In Huanggang shi, “lying at the foot of a mountain and beside a river, Huanggang shi was rich in fish and salt. It was beneficial to its neighbors. The trades were quite prosperous”. In Dachengsuo shi, “the exchange was mostly in fish, shrimp, fruit, cloth and iron”. Jiaochangpu xu “already existed in the Yuan dynasty”. By the years of Qianlong’s reign in the Qing dynasty, “The place is so spacious that is referred to as the bull market. One can not only get to Jiangxi province but also to the sand bar of Fujian province. The merchants are always on business from the spring to autumn here”. In Shixitoubu, “overseas fish and salt were transported to this place. Then the villagers exchanged them for grain”. By the reign of Qianlong, eleven “day-to-day markets” existed in the Raoping county. There were also ten day-to-day markets in Chenghai county, three in Puning county, four in Fengshun county and eight in Huilai county.229 At the xu at Dongxin Bridge, Guishan county of Huizhou prefecture, “there were about twenty cargo ships were used to trade. So the trades here were very prosperous”. 230 At Pingyue xu in Longchuan county, “the trade was mainly in rag paper and lime”. 231 In Huangdong xu and Guopu xu, “the trade was in firewood and bamboo”. Hementan xu, “traded pine”. 232 Wu shi in Lufeng county mostly “traded marine products”. 233 Donghaijiao xu was “near the mountains and rivers. Gardens and houses were built; fish, salt and clams were all collected here. And based on the convenient transport and complete range of goods, the merchants from Fujian province and the merchants on the sea all traded here with huge profits”.234 Shigou xu in Guangning county in Zhaoqing prefecture was an important communication hub between Guangning and Sihui. This xu had been set up in the 48th year of Qianlong, “more and more traders were assembled here and the ships come and go continuously”.235 In various xushi in Guangning county, there were mainly the merchants from the counties of Nanhai, Shunde, Sanshui and Gaoyao etc. These merchants “exchanged goods such as silks and satins and cloth as well as the delicacies that were all transported from the ports of the

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provincial capital, Foshan and the southwest Chen village”.236 Furthermore Yangshan county in Nanxiong zhou was rich in coal. And the xushi near the mine grew day by day with the increase in coal workers. This was because the coal workers needed “daily supplies such as wine, rice, tea, salt, vegetables, fruit, fish, meat, oil etc. These things were sold in the nearby markets to provide convenience to the workers”.237 Dong’an county in Luoding Zhou was “a mountainous area which was rich in iron. Here the seat of the stove was always set. And the stove sometimes was fanned and sometimes was stopped. But the salt was sold by the general port. Neither the workers nor the persons in the general port were native”. The necessities of the people in the mine including “grain, cloth, meat, wine and vegetables etc. were all traded in the markets. In Yingbu shi of Ruyuan county of Yunzhou prefecture, “about five hundred families that were from different places were assembled here. Both on land and on water one could get to everywhere in Hunan and Guangxi provinces from this place. Cotton, sesame and maranta were the native products. The traffic here was very heavy. The traders here were mostly from the west of the Guangdong province”.238 Before the Opium War, the xushi in Guangdong province had been greatly developed. Such an increase showed that commerce in the rural area was increasingly active. The growth can be seen in the following table. The situation of the rural market in the northern part of China can be seen from that of the market in Shandong province. In the Qing dynasty, industry and commerce in Shandong province was quite prosperous. Many booming cities such as Jinan, Jining and Linqing appeared. Cash crops were widely grown in the rural market in Shandong. For example, tobacco leaf was planted in the southwest region of Shandong. Oak was planted and silkworm was cultivated in the middle part of Shandong. There were other places which were under cotton cultivation, such as in Qingping county where “the land was full of cotton. More cotton was planted than beans and wheat”. When the newly produced cotton was on the market, “the sellers and buyers from different places were all assembled here. A large fortune could be accumulated from the dealings in one day.”239 But in general, the economic situation was still lagging far behind that of the lower Yangtze valley such as in Suzhou, Hangzhou, Jiaqing and Huzhou. Moreover, it also could not catch up with the flourishing rural markets in the Pearl River basin. Some rural markets in Shandong province were called Market and some were called Fair. In the reign of Qianlong, the record in the annals of Linqing county was “the date which was set at regular intervals was ji (集). On the contrary, the fair was on irregular dates”. Like xushi in Guangdong, “ji which

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Table 7.1. The growth of Xushi in Guangdong province in the Qing dynasty

Time

The Prefecture of Guangzhou

172

Original Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Time

Increased Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Nanhai county

the 6th year of Qianlong’s reign

8 38 46

in the reign of Daoguang

51 13 64

Panyu county

the 25th year of Kangxi’s reign

22 51 73

the 39th year of Qianlong’s reign

22 60 82

Dongguan county

the 8th year of Yongzheng’s reign

12 37 49

the 3rd year of Jiaqing’s reign

25 58 83

Shunde county

the 13th year of Kangxi’s reign

4 39 43

the 15th year of Qianlong’s reign

7 42 49

Xiangshan county

the 12th year of Kangxi’s reign

4

the 8th year of Daoguang’s reign

21 12 33

Sanshui county

the 12th year of Kangxi’s reign

– – 10

Xinyuan county

the 11th year of Kangxi’s reign

12 4

16

the 3rd year of Qianlong’s reign

15 4 19

Conghua county

the 1st year of Kangxi’s reign

–

11

the 8th year of Yongzheng’s reign

– – 13

8

–

12

– – 30

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(Con'd)

Time

The Prefecture of Chaozhou

Original Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Time

Increased Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Xin’an county

the 27th year of Kangxi’s reign

5 23 28

the 24th year of Jiaqing’s reign

7 34 41

Chaoyang county

the 23rd year of Kangxi’s reign

– – 5

the 28th year of Qianlong’s reign

9 8 17

Jieyang county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 5

the 44th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 26

Haicheng county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 5

in the reign of Qianlong

– – 10

Huilai county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 2

in the reign of Qianlong

– – 11

Raoping county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 3

in the reign of Qianlong

– – 19

Dabu county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 3

in the reign of Qianlong

– – 20

Haiyang county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 9

in the reign of Qianlong

– – 9

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(Con'd)

Time

The Prefecture of Huizhou

174

Original Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Time

Increased Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Boluo county

the 27th year of Kangxi’s reign

– – 25

the 28th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 31

Guishan county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 13

the 48th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 13

Longchuan county

in the reign of Kangxi

No Record

the 27th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 13

Haifeng county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 18

in the reign of Jiaqing

– – 14

Lufeng county

in the reign of Kangxi

No Record

in the 10th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 13

Gaoyao county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 28

in the reign of Daoguang

– – 39

Kaiping county

in the reign of Kangxi

– – 10

in the reign of Daoguang

– – 26

Guangning county

the 14th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 6

the 14th year of Daoguang’s reign

– – 15

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(Con'd)

Time

Luoding Zhou

Nanxiong Zhou

Original Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Time

Increased Numbers of Xushi

Shi Xu Total

Dong’an county

in the 26th year of Kangxi’s reign

– – 11

in the 5th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 17

Yangshan county

in the 15th year of Tongzhi’s reign

– – 8

in the 12th year of Qianlong’s reign

– – 41

Notes: The numbers of Xushi in this table were based on the regional annals which were all about the prefectures and zhou in Guangdong province in the Qing dynasty.

was called xu in the south was set in every township in Shandong”.240 Ji or xu was a meeting or parting place that was used to trade in the countryside. In the southern part of China such as in Guangdong, the market named xu was after the habit of the people who were accustomed to “parting”. And in the northern part, as people were used to “meeting”, the market was called “ji ”. To go to the rural market to exchange goods was called “Gan Ji (趕集)” or “Gan Hui (趕會)” (the word “Gan ” means to go to a place). The regular date of the jishi in Shandong was often set on “the days with ‘one’ or ‘six’ in a month, or days with ‘two’ or ‘seven’, days with ‘three or eight’, days with ‘four’ or ‘nine’, days with ‘five’ or the days with the number of the multiple of ‘ten’ etc.”. The ji was always at five-day intervals or four times in ten days. For instance, during the reign of Kangxi, the Shijiadian ji in Qidong county was on “the days with ‘one’, ‘four’, ‘six’ or ‘nine’ in a month”.241 The Ji in Zhou village in Changshan county was described as “the ji on the days with ‘three’ and ‘eight’ in a month was small-scale and that on days with ‘four’ and ‘nine’ was large-scale”. 242 In the beginning, the extensive ji in Shentou Town in Ling county was “on the days with “two” and ‘seven”. But by the reign of Kangxi, the date was changed to “the days with “four” and “nine” by the

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country gentlemen because of the long interval between “two” and “seven”. The name was also changed to “small-scale ji ”.243 In the years of Daoguang’s reign there were about ten “extensive ji ” such as Zhangxia in Changqing county, and twenty-six “small-scale ji ” were in Pan village. Apart from the Renli ji that was called medium ji 244 and which was set on the days with “one”, “six”, “three”and “eight” in ten days, each ji in these places were held at five-day intervals. Besides the regular markets there were also “fairs” that were more bustling than jishi . In the reign of Daoguang, Wucheng county “not only had some ji but also some hui . The traders from different places were all assembled here. So the date of the ji and the shop had doubled and redoubled”. In fact, the “fair” was also held at regular intervals. But instead being at several-day intervals, the period between two fairs was one year, and the fair would go on for some days. Ji was very suitable for the frequent trades in the countryside for its small scale that was easy to turn goods around in a short time. And the “fair” was good for places where were inconveniently located and where the agriculture was seasonal. The “fair” was held one or two times during the slack season in one year, and the fair was long-period with a large scale. Take Wucheng county as the example, the Chenghuang Fair was “from the second day to the sixth day in February every year”. Ziyou Fair was “from the twentieth day to the twentythird day every year”. Niangniang Fair was “from the 22nd day to the twentyfifth day in April and from the tenth day to the 13th day in October”. 245 There were fairs which lasted three days, such as Shifang yuan and an other eight fairs in Pingyuan county, “all were three-day fairs every year”.246 There were some fairs that were set on the basis of the season. All the seasonal fairs were arranged either in summer or in winter which was the slack season in farming. For example, Xiguan Fair in Leling county was referred to as “Estival Fair” and was held “from the thirteenth day to the seventeenth day in May”. The date of the fair was just after the harvest of the wheat and the summer planting. Beiguan Fair was called “Hiemal Fair” that was “from the thirteenth day to the seventeenth day in October”.247 The date was just after the autumn harvest in the early winter. On the date of the fair, men and women, young and old, “who were from different places all gathered together here. The heavy curtains were laid on the land. The rows were demarcated by lines on the ground. The uncommon things were displayed to trade”.248 As well as the fairs, there were “Hill Hui ” in Shandong. The Bailongshan hui in Zhucheng county “was on the first day of February (the lunar month) every year and the fifth day of October (the lunar month). A variety of goods were all ready and the shops were all around here. The market will go on for five days incessantly. Such a market was known as ‘Hill Hui ’ to the local”.249

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The jishi in Shandong province included “Guan ji (官集)” and “Yi ji (義 集)”. The “Guan ji ” was the market that was decided by the government. It was “held with the payment of duties”. The “Yi ji ” was held without the tax by the ordinary people. The intermediary which was set up by the government to manage the Yatie (business license) was in the Guan ji that was also called the ji of “taking the business license”. But in the Yi ji , the trade was free. Instead of a department set up by the government, just some private intermediaries existed. No business license was needed. So the Yi ji was also called “ji without License”. According to the scale of the jishi and the volume of business, the jishi in Shandong province could also be categorized as big ji and small ji . Generally speaking, most of the big ji were Guan ji and most of small ji were Yi ji . But this did not mean that the Yi ji and Guan ji were invariable. Under certain conditions, the Yi ji also could develop into a Guan ji 250. Based on the volume of business, the jishi had to hand in the corresponding taxes to the feudal government. The taxes were referred to as “taxation” or “exchange money”. Take the sixteen jishi in Leling county in Qianlong’s reign as the example. The most tax paid by one ji in one year was “thirty-six liang , two qian , nine fen , seven li and five hao ”, and the least was “two liang , four qian , two fen , two li and five hao ”. In total, the tax paid by the sixteen ji in one year was “ninetyseven liang , eight qian and five fen ” 251. Nominally the Yi ji was stipulated as “without tax forever” that was to say it need not ever pay the tax to the feudal government. But in fact some Yi ji also paid certain “exchangie moneys” to support the expenses of the jishi . The exchange in the jishi had to go through the “discussion of the market prices” by the intermediary which was referred to as “Broker” or “Ya ren (牙人)”. Ya ren can be further divided into “Guan ya (官牙)” and “Si ya (私牙)”. The former had to be set up with the Yatie from the government. The intermediary was paid commission by the buyer and the seller during the trade. At the earlier stage of the Qing dynasty, the Yatie was issued by the Yamen (the government office in feudal China) of various zhou and counties. There was a set number of Yatie and the tax also was paid with dutiable quota. There were about ten ji including Fengqi ji in Changqing county which were regulated as “both cloth and flower need ten Yatie . And five pieces of tie were in need in the trade of cattle and donkeys”.252 Including the Garden ji, the six ji in Leling county paid a total of “sixty liang , seven qian and seven fen in the tax for cattle and donkeys” and “sixty-seven liang , eight qian and seven fen in commission” in one year.253 The totals for the jishi in Linyi county were “fifteen liang , eight qian , eight fen and one li in the tax for cattle and donkeys” and “three liang , three qian , eight fen and one li in commission” in one year. In colluded with the local bullies and

177

A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

loafers, the Yamen runners issued excessive Yatie .254 And they imposed the tax at will. Therefore the traders in these places all suffered deeply. During the years of Yongzheng’s reign, the Yatie in Linyi county was “increased year by year”. In the first place, “the grocers need not to go to the intermediary department to get the tie. Any department issue ties to the traders. So the local bullies and loafers seize the chance to extract some interest. Therefore “the more intermediaries, the more the hardship the traders suffered”. In order to avoid the malpractices of the lavish rise of the intermediaries, the Qing government specified that “the Yatie must be issued by the Fansi Yamen (administrative department in ancient China in charge of civil affairs). The zhou or counties have no rights to hand the Yatie out. This policy was to prevent the rise of random intermediariess so as to avoid bringing calamity upon the traders.255” Generally speaking, Guan ya was just set in the Guan ji . Since the Yi ji was the market without the tax, the Guan ya should not be set in Yi ji . But along with the increase in trade, the Si ya which was without the permission of the government appeared in the Yi ji . To prevent excessive tax and exploitation of the Si ya , the intermediary was always set by the Yi ji itself. For example in Shentou Town in Ling county, the ji on the days with four or nine was adopted in the sequence of “discussion of the people who were in the town. There were two scales of official dou (斗) (a measure for grain), one kind of balance and two intermediaries for draught animals”. And “the principal of the department had to be a dutiful person who was hired by the town members”. In this way, “there were no random taxes and official excuses to oppress the traders cruelly”.256 The Yi ji in Jiuhu zhen in Qidong county also “found the person to manage the dou and balance without the money of the ji market. For many years, the traders found payment of taxes in this place very convenient.”257 During the reigns of Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang in the Qing dynasty, it is indicated by comparison with the previous period that the jishi in Shandong province also increased slightly. But compared with the shi and zhen in the south of the Yangtze River and the xushi in Guangdong province, the increase in Shandong was more backward. In the 20th year of Qianlong’s reign there were forty-five jishi in Zhangqiu county. By the 13th year of Daoguang’s reign, this had increased by three. In Changshan county, in the 55th year of Kangxi’s reign, there were twenty-one jishi . By Jiaqing’s reign the number had increased to thirty-seven. In the 52nd year of Kangxi’s reign, Linyi county included fourteen jishi which increased to thirty-seven during Daoguang’s reign. In the 55th year of Kangxi’s reign, there were just five jishi in Gaoyuan county. By the 22nd year of Qianlong’s reign the number had increased to ten. There were thirty-six jishi in Zhucheng county in the 12th year of Kangxi’s reign. By the 29th year of

178

The Development of the Handicraft Industry and Commerce

Qianlong’s reign, the number had not changed. Wei county included nineteen jishi in the reign of Kangxi. In Qianlong’s reign the number increased to twentyfour. There were seventeen jishi in Pingyuan county in the 18th year of Wanli’s reign in the Ming dynasty. The number had increased to twenty-seven during the fourteenth year of Qianlong’s reign.258 Compared with the previous situation, the trade in the jishi in Shandong province was more flourishing and the population had also increased. But in comparison with the south of the Yangtze River and Guangdong province, the situation was still quite backward. For example during the reign of Kangxi, in Zouping county there was “no trade in the remote places. When meeting at the ji , the only exchange was in provisions and livestock”.259 The Yaowangzhuang ji in Gaoyuan county was described as “there were no goods to exchange except silk and grain”.260 Zichuan county was a relatively developed area in Shandong province. But by Qianlong’s reign it still had “no convenient transport and no frequent trade. In the market, there were just some exchanges of silk and grain.” 261 By the years of Qianlong’s reign, in Qihe county there was still “no regular jishi around the county. No trades in one day that was not the jishi . And there were no fancy goods only daily necessities such as chickens, pigs, provisions, fruit and vegetables”.262 This indicated that the economy in the north part of China was quite backward. The most obvious feature of the northern economy was that it was self-supporting and self-sufficient. That is to say most of the exchanges in the markets were limited to daily necessities. In some places, such as the remote places in Zhangqiu county, there was some working people who still “have never been to the city and have never seen the governors”.263 Shi and zhen also existed in Shandong province. The zhen and ji were separate. For example, apart from the Chengguan, there were about thirteen Towns such as Huihe zhen and Xiakou zhen in Jiyang county. In Huimin county there were sixteen zhen such as Qinghe zhen and Yongli zhen. During the years of Kangxi’s reign, there were about five zhen such as Shagou zhen in Feicheng county. By the reign of Daoguang, there were about eighteen zhen such as Jiujun zhen and Mingshui zhen in Zhangqiu county. But neither the scale nor the size of the population of these zhen was large, and the trade there was also not very prosperous. It was described as “if one counted in the casual houses in the jishi , there was still less than hundreds of families”.264 Only a few of the shi and zhen here were on a par with those in the south. For example Zhoucun zhen in Changshan county, which was known as the “mighty town in Shandong”, was rich in oak and silk. It was said that “the town has been formed for hundreds of years”. In this sense, it had been started since the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty period. By the reign of Jiaqing, Zhoucun

179

A Concise HistORy of the Qing Dynasty

became “a place with a large population and a properous area. So it was called the ‘dry horse head’”. This name was conferred on Zhoucun because “the connotation of the ‘horse head’ was that it was a place of temporary stopover for the traders. It was similar to zhen such as Hankou, Foshan, Jingde and Zhuxian.” Because there was no waterway to Zhoucun, so the risks of the transport by water were avoided and so the word ‘dry’ was added to the name. The most flourishing street here was the Xinglong street in Shixi. In this street, “the Taoist and Buddhist temples as well as the shops were all around. And the traders here in one day were not limited to hundreds and thousands”.265 In the 39th year of Qianlong’s reign the establishment of the Tianhou (the Queen of Heaven) Pavilion in Zhoucun zhen cost totally “about six thousand liang that was all collected from the traders who were local and from other provinces”.266 From this it can be seen that the traders were quite prosperous in Zhoucun zhen in the reign of Qianlong. Another more developed zhen was Zhangqiu zhen in Dong’e county. It was “next to Shouzhang and Yanggu counties. The traders from various places were all assembled here”.267 It was “linked with the three counties of Dong’e, Yanggu and Shouzhang. It was a key point between the South and North”. 268 Zhangqiu zhen was originally named Jingde Town during the Yuan dynasty. At that time, “just eight cities were written down in the local record”. By the reign of Hongzhi in the Ming dynasty, when the canal burst its banks, Zhangqiu zhen was badly flooded. After the reconstruction it was renamed Anping zhen, and in the late Ming dynasty its name was changed to Zhangqiu. During the reigns of Kangxi and Qianlong in the Qing dynasty, Zhangqiu zhen was already “a place with a vast territory. The watercourse ran through here from north to south.” In Zhangqiu zhen there were dozens of street included twenty-seven specialized streets. There were “more than twenty-five hang ”, and the intermediaries numbered “more than two hundred and eighty.” The taxes from the intermediaries in one year were “more than two hundreds strings of coins”. 269 In Nanjingdian street in Zhangqiu zhen, “there were silk shops that can be found everywhere in Jiangning, Fengyang and Huizhou during the prosperous time. Other goods also gathered together here. This street was the most flourishing place in Zhangqiu”.270 Moreover there were many other prosperous places such as Luokou zhen in Licheng county, Shentou zhen in Ling county and Yanshen zhen in Boshan county. In general, the rural market in the early Qing dynasty surpassed the market in the Ming dynasty considerably not only in the number of exchanges but also in the frequency of trade. Moreover it was more developed than the market in the Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns before the Opium War and also more developed than the market in the earlier Qing dynasty of Shunzhi, Kangxi

180

The Development of the Handicraft Industry and Commerce

and Yongzheng’s reigns. The rural market became active and the increase in exchanges was caused both by cash crops being widely planted in the rural areas and farm commercialization as well as the development of the city commerce and the handicraft industry. The countryside was not only a broad market for the city but also a base of handicraft material and the living preconditions for the city. Therefore the highly developed economy in the city was closely related to the development of the rural market. However we should also be aware that the development of the rural market in the earlier Qing dynasty was not in balance. Generally speaking, the natural conditions in the south-eastern provinces were better than those of the provinces in the north where there were frequent droughts and famine. The inland where there was a lack of the transport facilities (especially the remote minority areas) was more backward than the coast (especially the south-eastern areas). Within the imbalance to a considerable extent there were some smaller imbalances. Even in the counties in the south with good natural conditions and convenient transport, imbalance also existed. The rural market in some places was quite flourishing. But in some mountain areas, the markets were still primitive. The people ploughed and sowed by hand and conducted barter trade. Seen from the nationwide perspective, although the rural markets in various places had been developed in varying degrees, it went without saying that this did not break through the category of the natural economy. On the one hand, we should note that the commodity economy had developed and the rural market was increased, and on the other hand we cannot ignore the backwardness of some areas. It is not scientific to overestimate the rural market and to exaggerate the prosperity of the market with a one-sided view.

181

Notes ChapterS Qingshi gao, "Liezhuan JrJ 1l~ Vel. 36, ~Slleni .. JE. ~ Qing Shengm shilu, Vel, 23,

ZlungQin *jf,Kmgn.h",1lY'" al!liJltjlf, VoL 14, "DuJionXi, 'H1'$". ManWoumingchenzhuan, VoL 5, '"AoHaizhuan tnll", Qingshigao, "Liezhuan VoL 36, '"Ao Bai ..n~ h

,

ManWell mingchen zhuan, VoL 8, ~Su Nahai zhuan .Il'''*~ QingShengm shilu, vel, 18. Bolm... ii ..... Vol 63, "Kmgn _ dufu allllt! ••~ Manzhou mingchen zhuan, VoL 8, ·Su Nahal zhuan': Donghua 10, VoL 6 ofKangxi's reign. Ibid. BackhoUIJe, Edmund and Bland, Annals and Memoinl of the Court of Peking. Boston, 1914. zhao Lim, Xiaoting:talu, VoL 1, «Chu Ao Bai~ "Buka -1ti ..» means wrestling in Manchu. Wei Yuan . . ., Shengwu ii Jl:it; 1E, Vol. 2, '"Kangxi Kanding sanfan ji .~ IUt-=.jJ jE' (I),

Ibid. Ibid. See O:mam, Ruling from Horse Back (Chicago, IL.: Chicago University Press, 1975). LiuJian, Tmgwenln, VoL 4. Mingji baishi huibian, VoL 10. Pingding sanni fangliie, Vol. 1. Wei Yuan, Shengwu ji, vel. 12, "Wuji yushi~

Ibid. "Kmgn Kmding'onfim ii" (I). Nkh",rl""n (I), "WuSmguill""... J!o-">IIi~J.~ Mingji baishi huibian, VoL 10. Qing Shengm shilu, Vel. 94. Pingding sanni tangliie, VoL 1. Liu Jian, Tmgwen In, VolA. Lin Fang. Tianchao geji, Vol. 2, aYmman quxu", Qing Shengm shilu, Vol. 2, Zb.ng Qjn, Kmgn ,J,,,,1lY'" Vol 2, ·Zhongtl·. Qing Shengw shilu, vol. 275. Ibid., VoL 154, Zhao Lian: Xiaolingzalu, Vol. 1, "LunSanni .-=.i!~ QingW gw, -u.ro.....,VoL 55, "Mi silion llU!!1r. Q!ng Sheng:eu shilu, Vol. 163. Sun Yanling was the son-in-law of Kong Yuude. Generals who responded to the revolt ofWu Sangni were Zhang Guozhu, governor general of Yunnan, Li Benshen, governor genen! of Guizhou, ZhengJiaolin, governor general of Skhuan, and Wu Zhimao, Huang Zhengqing, Yang Lrijia, Zu Zeqing, Liu Jinzhong and Zu Hongmn etc. Zhao y~ Huangchao wugong jisheng, vol. I, "Pingding sanni shuliie~ Qing Shengzu shilu, Vol, 50. Ibid., Vol. 46. Ibid., Vol. 52. Pingding sanyi fanglue, Vol. 20, Mingjibaishihuibian, VoL 10, ·Siwanghezhnan \!!l.3:*1*': Slti Lmg,Ju,gh" iWti (I).

Notes

Qingohl goo, "LI.,Juw,', Vol. -I 7, 'Y~ q;.bmg lllit I: ~ Qing Shons>u .hII~ Voi.lI2. Manhan mingcben Uluan, Vol. 22. Qing She"!!,,, tingum glJII *-Allt N~ Ming Qing dang'an, Tihen __ -*. Bingbu dufu shilang shizhu ti A ••• ~~~UtAprilI6th, the 28th year ofKang:ri's reign. Baqi tongzhi AilUlit, VoL 10, Chiyu :4ttt, 4, an edict ofJune 13th, the 6th year ofYongzheng's reign. Qingchao jingshi wenbian, VoL 35, SunJiagan ~.lt, 1!aqi gongchan shu AJl4} ,l.lJf.~ MachengIian zhi, VoL 1, ilangyu zhi 7f -. iQ:~ B.,;,hi"n ii, vol. 81, sb.o Cb.oghimg liI*l;, "sb.o YonIingmubci liIIUt..... SunZongyi ~*"Aki tong.hiii I'

a

*'

*Jl••-,

_'iii."

*

KongDJ_ tnngzhi, vol. 65, "T"",ohlh.o I"uo.hu *.*."./Ji,~ Tongzhi Yong:rln:rian zhi, Vol. 15, "Wubei zbi Jt 11 ;&;-. Huang Pushi, Shengguo jiwen. SunJiagan, Sun Wending gong zoushu, VoL 8, juanmian ship shu .. :t.1:lf.~ Ming Qing dang'an, memorial written in red, Qjanlong'. reign, related to finance, presented by Na Sutu JlSiJ.1 the govemorgeneral ofJtangnan (jiangsu and Anhui nowadays) and Jtang:ri, the 6th day of Octoher, the 4th year of Qianlong's reign. Jifo tongUri • •">i, Vol. 71. Jiaqing Taiping:Dan zhi., Vol. 18, ilengm~ H....g Zhungjim it 'l'~, X"';'.. ii . . . . VuL 4, "Zhongmuyi 1It,1IJI1~ -Zhenjiang.Kie Zongyou cheng dianzhou fu shuitian qiyue .iI.tI* ~:ft1lfl.!(If m~j!r, March of the 4th year of Daoguangs reign. ChenFangsheng 1Ii;lf~,Xianyouji ~~. . Vol. 16, jiansimjlf.fi.:fl",No.40. Guangm JIfu tongzhi, VoL 71. Huangchao jingshi. wenbian, VoL 36, Li ZhaoIuo, ilengtai:rianzhi Iun sihuo .. ;t_.....-. Copy of archives about the Ministry of Penalties collected by the Institute of Economics, quoted from Ii Wenzhi., Zhongguo jindai nongyeshi zilia.o, VoL I, P. 72. FangBao, WangIi:rianshengwenji, Vol. 17, jiamn #.t1". Nung y, • ill, "Qingdoi yap"" ';"";''''g qion d, Wzu, .rumgygxWuinzhi, Vol. 15, Wu G"""g, 1in iliongli p.. bo l/i II ~JlU,t Qianlong Wuji:rian zhi, Vol. 6, rwu 1I(t.~ Donghua Ill, Vol. 20, October, the 9th year ofQian1ong's reign. Yuning ft.t, Xijiang zhengyao WiIJit Jt VoL 9, the 32nd year ofQianlong's reign. Huangchao jingshi wenbian, VoL 40. Zhao Shenqiao, Zhao Gongyi gong zizhi guanshu leiji, Vol. 9, "Jin dangpu weill qu:ri shi .......1JIJlIl"'ffi~ QjmIong Chmgobofu dll, Vol. 22, "Zhongzhi ~;t •. Humgqing "'u" Vol. 30, Tong Ping, "Qjngjin dong migo"'u It l/i f!' Jfl.lHJt~ Zhijiie chenggui ~)Jf JilJl,June andJuIy, the 21st year of the Qianlong's reign. TongW Huzhoofuzhi, VoL 95, "Zaduo .Il~ 1.

"]If.

:«

191

Notes

Jiaqing Taixing lianzhi,VoL 6, rengm~ Qianlong Wuji:danzhi, VoL 6, rulti. Qing Gaozong shilu, VoL 311, March, the 13th year ofQianlOng'I reign. Chm Sheng-lao !Ult!!, W""",lo IIllJll.ft VoU, ',"",you, ..r..m1ilill! . ~~,f,~ Qing Shengzu shilu, VoL 216, June, the -43rd year ofKangDs reign. "LiXuwou.. *,i!I.1I·,~41. Yongt.heng zhupi yuzhi, Letter 18, VoL I, April 18th, the 13th year of the Qianlong's reign, Jungnan Governor zhao Hongen All £ ,@,presentedamemorial to the throne. Qing Gaozong shilu, VoL 282,January, the 12th year ofQianlong's reign. Ibid., VoL 391, in intercalary May, the 16th year ofQianlong's reign. Ibid., VoL 1230, May, the 50th year ofQimlong's reign. Qing Renzong shilu, VoL 319,June, the 21st year ofJiaqing's reign.

Chapter 7 QianlongLu'anfuzhi, VoL 43, WangNai.3:.., -Qingfumjihushu • • 'I*.fI." ... (the 17thyearofShunzhi'sreign). Mingguo huayang :rlanzhi, Vol. 43, -Wuchan".

Chm Z=Un

-'11''' FengloxWnhi ",.,1-;1;, VoL 3, ·Zbi.hi ;t.~

Li E • •, Dongcheng zaji • • ale. VoL 2. Wu Qijun, Diannan kuangchang tushuo, appended "Liangqiong Wangsong kuangchang cailian bian ..."If .3:.;i!P'.U*".~ Ibid., appended "Tongzheng quanshu ziIun guochangdui .il~." .f..tt~ Qianlong Shanghai lian zhi, Vol. I. Guangm Qingpu:dan w, Vol. 2, "Tuchan ±.f~ Li Rong *,j$, c.ng mowu ""'8'0 :=C'UfJil.:t liIi, Vol. I, 'Zilio jingji i!I iilth If,~ Yan Ruyu, Sansheng bianfang bilan, VoL 9. Lu Jiaqing . . . . et aL, Minguo fushun lian zhi, VoL 5. Lan Pu, Jmgdezhen taolu, Vol. 3. noogoong foliongxWubi, VoL 9, Nhm Xiy>o, 'ChoogDu fmgh= .horuni.o bciji JUJ It!I!..If,'. SeeJiangsu sheng Mingqingyilai heRe zili.ao ruanji., p. 68. Guangm Jtmg:ri tongzhi, Vol. 49. Qianlong Changzhou:rlanzhi, Vol. 7, "Wuchan" ,1:".

•

sru..n

+

Jl.x

XumooJ""goingfi"hi, vol. 15, 'shibo jUI~ GuongmXionjoxWubi, Vol. 10, Zhwg Lim.og ll.l!t, ''''''g>hoo

j""" .....

bcl lItllHalt ..... Yongzhengzhttpi yuzhi, vol. 42, U et aL, the 7thlWlarmonth of the 8th year ofYongzheng's reign. Xu Yunnan tongzhi gao, Vol. 43, "Xnangwu • .{f~ QuDajun, GuangdongIinyu, Vol. 15, "Huoyu • •~ Baa Shicheng, Anwu si zhong, Vol. I, "Haiyun nan caoyi iI.~ Yon Ruyo, Smohong bW>foog b.;J,n, VoL 9. See Tongzhi ShangjiangliangIian zhi, VoL 7. Yo Mln~ "j.mgm mlrly< jinJow,g iUIilUI*"lIiiJt·, Gongolaog booyo. bn I iii 4' Il ~J, VoL 7, No. 12 (joly 1935). See Qianlong Zhem.e:Dan w, Vol. 4, "Wuchan~ See Kangn Hangzhou fu zhi, VoL 6., "Wuchan~ SeeJiaqing Songjiang fu. zhi, VoL 6, "Wuchan-; Qianlong Baoshan:Dan zhi, VoL 4, "Wuchan~ Jia:ring:rln:riuJImgIling fu. zhi, VoL 11. Qianlong Foshan Zhongyi Iiang zhi, VoL 6,"Wuchan-. LanPu,Jmgdezhen taoln, Vol. 8, -Taoshuo jibian "'ti;a.~ The Chinese RepOSitory, Vol. 2, No. 10 (Feb. 1833), p. 465. Selected Works ofMao Zedong, Vol. 2, P. 589. "Li Xu roo"', IUUf', 'Qing yuh , ..boo qinglm bup. j''}'in "', ltlllft.... it "IEllUUr, ~ 6. Completed Works of Karl Man: and Frederick Engels, Vol. 25, p. 373. The Chinese RepOSitory, Vol. 2, No. 7 (Nov. 1833), p. 305. Completed Works of Karl Man.: and Frederick Engels, Vol. 25, P. 374. Ymg Gumgpo j'I;UI, Soogom yudU il&illllllfnglmzhi, bud, clw>gdwngtinggong bciji :it*,lIioJl.lttlllJlf.lU\ . " ' " ~!tI"Je~ p. 13. Qjanlong zhongnu Yuanhe xian zhi, VoL 10. Huangchao jingshi wenbian, Vol. 52, nan Jun IB ~ "Chen Yu:li knangchang shu . . . l!H. . . .". Huangchao jingshi wen:mhian, VoL 49, Cen Shttying .$-.~ 'Zouchen zhengdun Diansheng tongzheng shiyi shu • • •tI •

•

M~.:i:"~

Tong)un .til!, Ch"'S"" 100"" ,;,1,,,,,, """po Jilt w;lt A II.'" It, ~ 2. Wu Qjjun, Diannan kuangchang tushuo, appended "Tongzheng quamhu zixun gechang dui 4Mil ~......f...ti~ Li Fu, Mutang chugao, Vol. 42, "Yu Yunnan Li canzheng lun tongwu shu~ Wu Qjjun, Diannan kuangchang tushuo, "Lun tongzheng libing zhuang M-• .itllJ AA.~ Qjng Gaozong shilu, Vol. 116, the 5th day of the lunar 5th month of the 45th year of Qjanlong's reign. Liang Zhangju, Tui'an suibi, VoL 7. Qianlong Foshan chongyi:liang zhi, VoL 6, "Xiangm zhi ;to. Qp. Dajnn, Guangdong:rlnyu, VoL IS. Huangchao jingshi wenbian, Vol. 55, E Erda, "Qingkaiknang caizhu shu • • • • • lA~ Bao Sbichen,Anwu si zhong, Vol. 34, "Chou Chubian dui . . . iltf. Jiaqing Wuhu:rlan:W, VoL 1. Jiaqing Tong:rlang lian zhi, Vol. 2MingguoZhenghelianzhi, Vol. 9, "Fwhui". Yan Ruyu, Sansheng bianfang beilan, Vol. 9. Qianlong Foshan chongyi:liang:w, VoL 5, "Xiangm:w~ Guangm Xingning:lian zhi, Vol. 6.

*'

.1§.

Ibid. Sec Qingdai chaodang, cited from Memorials to the Throne of Sbi Y"lzhi ct aL, the 11th day of the lunar 1st month of the 27th year ofQianlong's reign. Qingdai chaodang, Ha Dw ...... et al. Ministers of the Ministry ofWorb, the 9th day of the lunar II th month of the 5th year ofQi.anlong's reign.

Ibid. Ibid.

Ibid. Lu Kun, Qin Jiang shiltie, p. 20. QJanlong Kong:rlan zhi, VoL 7. Guangm Feng:lian Uri, Vol. 7. Qingdai chaodang, cited from Zhao Guoling's Memorials to the Throne Ha Daha et aL Ministers of the Ministry ofWorks, the 9th dayofthelunar Ilthmonth of the 5th year ofQjanlong's reign Lu Kun .Il11, Qm)""g _

• • • iIllI/f. ~ 60

193

Notes

Ibid., P. 48. Qingdai chaodang, Ha Daha et aI. Ministers of the Ministry ofWorb, the 9th day of the lunar 11th month of the 5th year of Qianlong's reign. Qingdai chaodang, Tho Yong reM et at Ministers of the .M.iJllstry ofWorks, the 12th day of the lunar 3rd mouth of the 32nd year of Qjanlong's reign. Qing Shizong shilu, Vol. 57, in the 4th of the lunar 5th month of the 5th year ofYongzheng's reign. Qingchao zhengdian leizuan, VoL 132, "Kuangzheng .it", 3, "liang Guang zongdu Na Sutu zou JJU'.!IS. II"~

m

pmgBuqrng-'i':iT1f,JOawaijunn•• m'liI,p,160, Donghua lu, VoL 26, in the lunar 4th month of the 13th year ofYongzheng's reign. Qing Gaozong shilu, VoL 109, the 1st month of the 5th year ofQianlong's reign. Yan &nyu, Sansheng bianfmg beilan, VoL 11, "Celii.e~ Qing Gaozong shilu, VoL 650, edict in the lunar 12th month of the 26th year of Qianlong's reign. SeeJiangsu sheng Mingqingyilai heRe ziliao manjL Huangcha.o jingn wenbian, VoL 4, Yan Sisheng, "Qingshe shangshe shu .tIt.UI:."~ Gan.Ii, Bawa suayan, vol. 2, p. 3. See Tong.dll Shangjiang liangnan zhi, VoL 5, "Chengxiang .)fi~ See Daoguang Foshan Zhongyi nang zhi, Vol. 5, "Xiangm .1§.~ In the 17th of the lunar 9th month of the 29th year ofDaoguang's reign. "Beijing zhuhang gongyi tiaogui bei

:!t:::« ..ff ~

.~

_.»t

Jiangsu sheng Mingqing yilai beike ziliao :wanji, p. 107. In the 9th of the lunar 6th month of the 28th year ofDaoguang's reign, "Beijing Mashenmiao tangbingbang hanggui bei :!t~ -'.fIJ

.iUftftf!l!"~ Jiangsu sheng Mingqing yilai beike ziliao :wanji, p. 72. Ibid., pp. 69-71. In the 9th of the lunar 6th month of the 28th year ofDaoguang's reign, "Hangzhou chousha rongduan liaofang yehu tiaogui bei tt

1li1'U'lil.lltiflf$""ll!l!.', KarlMau, Das Kapital, VoL 1, pp. 363-364. Selected Works oflCarI Man: and Frederick Engels, VoL 3, Engels, Anti-Duhring, P. 187. Completed Works of Karl Man.: and Frederick Engels, Vol. 21, P. 449, '1965 edition. Zhi Chaozi, jiujing suoji, VoL 9, "Shisi~ Jiangsu sheng Mingqing yilai beike ziliao :wanji, "Quzhu chuairan liugun jinbei all. "~·fiUt.~ p. 41. Qianlong Huai'an fu zhi, Vol. 13, "Yanfa _it-".

+

Qingcl=)""hi d.igoang, VoL II, "GuImg rlrl jiong ;1-.11. llJ;£, "Zbifong di. . .~ ,II!~ Vol. 1120, Wucl=g fu bu It II IIUI, "Huiho I.~ 6~ Qing Gaozong shilu, Vol. 247. Liu Xianting, Gnangyang zaji, VoL 4See HuangJunzai,Jinhulangmo, Vol. I, "Yanshang • •': Fan Kai,Jiangkou congtan, VoL 3. Qing Gwroog ohilu, vol. 247. Gnangm Wuchangnan zhi, Vol. 3, "Fengm': Van Sisheng, Chumeng shanf.m.g ji, in the 9th year of Qianlong's reign, "Qingli yahang'. Jiaqing Dantunan zhi, VoL 21. Van Sisheng, Chumeng shan&ng ji, in the 9th year of Qianlong's reign, "Qingli yahang". Huangchao jingshi wenbian, Vol. 4, in the 10th year of Qjanlong' reign, Van Sbisheng, "Qjngshe shangshe shu . . . . tr.jjf.': Qian Yong, LUyuan conghua, Vol. 14, "Hankeu men hoo .. P' ..k ~ Wang Qjshu, Shuicao qinglu, Vol. 10. The 18th year ofDaoguang's reign, "Beijingyanliao hanghuiguan bei :It:6!:JUHt'''i4~ Kang:riJiangnan tongzhi, VoL 9. Jiaqing Wuhu:Dan w, VoL I, "Fengm ..... Daoguang Fuliang:rian zhi, Vol. 2, "Fengm". JiaqingChemhouzongzhi, Vol. 21, "Fengm~ QianlongJining Zhili zhou zhi, VoL 2, "Fengm~ Kang:riXuanhuananzhi, VoL 15, "Fengm': Daoguang Xiamen zhi, VoL 15. See Qianlong Zhenze:Dan w, VoL 4, "Zhen &hi CUD #': Ibid. See Qjanlong Wujiang:Dan zhi, VoL 4, "Zhen shi CUD~ Tongzhi Huzhou fu zhi, Vol. 22, "Coo men ft.':

.1fi

195

Notes

QIWo"l! WoqiDg .... ,Ju, YoU, "XiDgo!U ~.'. Toogzhi Huzhou fu zhi, Vol 22, Menn mm~ Pu)"W' ~_ Vol I, 'Zoogm • •' ji'qlngjiulngN,Ju, Vol', ·Shi .... "'., Ibid. Qianlong Zhcme nan zhi. Vol. 5, ·Zhen shi CUD",

QianloncJiadiog:dan zhi, VoL 1, ·Shi zhcn~

Cling Caarong shiJu, VoL 834, in May, the 34th Year of Qjanl0D3'I reign. QlanlongJiadingIian w, VoL 12, "Fengm",

Ibid" Vol I, iltnpli. QianlongNmbuai:danzhi, Vol. I, ''Jtangyuzhi .:IIl.;t~ Qianlong Zhemc xian zhi, Vol. 4, "Zhen shi cuo", Q1anIongJiadingIian W, Vol. 1, ·Shi zhm~ See Qjanlongenhi emian Shanghai nan ziti, VoL I, £hen &bi~ GuoogmlhiniDg_,Ju, VoL~ ·Shi ....•. Se< Goanpu """iu>rim,Ju, Vol 7,'jWuh;, fmg.hi Itt: ' ~ 1!" Daoguang Xlnhui Iim zhi, Vol. +, ~whi .. $''': Jooqlng Doawmxwuhi. Yol.,. 'Fmgdu N mdU lIi.IfI .... ' IW>gd Loogm.. _ >hi. Yol. 1, ']longyu •••. QIWo"l!Dong'.. _,Ju, VoL I, 'Penpu' GuoogmlhiniDgmn,Ju, Vol3, 'Shi ...... Xianfeng Sbundexian w ,Vol. 5, "Xushi", Tongzhi Panyu xian zhi, Volt8, "Xnshi-: Jlaqing Sandl\U Dan w, Vol. I, "Xushi': QianIong Chaozhou fu zhi, Vol. 14, "Xushi": Yoagz.bengConghuaiiruhi., Vol. I, "Jungyu': Qianlong Yangsban:Dan w, VoL 5, '"Xubu • •", Qianlong Chaomou fu zhi, Vol. 14, ''Xusht Set Kanpl Dong'an Iian zhi, VoL 4, 'Sihuo", See Inogumg Nwai:dan zhi. Vol. 13, "Jianzhi we': See QjanloD( Pmyumn zhi, vol. 17, "Fengm", YongtbengDongguannanzhi, Vall, '"Fengxu': QIWo"l!Guouph~N,Ju, VoL 1, "futu JIll'. Ibid., vol. 10, "Fengxu", QiaolongChaozboufudu. vol 14, ~•.

Ibid. Ibid. IW>gd Gw.b....im,Ju, Vol. 9. 'Zhmfjing >hi ':UI!~' QIWo"l! Lougd."" ""',Ju, VolS. 'Penpu' Q!anLong LWengIian W, Yol. 2, "Xusbi",

Ibid.• Vol 9,

'F""

.i!t~

DaoguangGuaDgDing:Danzbi. VoL 16, "Chaoluzaji ~• • Ibid" Vol. 12, "Fcngm~ Qtanlong YangtbanIian zhi., Vol. 6, "Kuangye .;.&~ Qlanlong Oong'anIianzhi, Vol I, "Fengm", ~RuyuanDanzhi, Vo\.4, "Jieshi.iff~ jioqlng QiDspmgmn,Ju, "Hu.hu?" QianJong Linqlng Zhili zhou zhi, Vol 2, ·Shiqu Kanp:I Qjdong:lia.n zhi. Vol. I, "Zhenji • •~ ]iaqlng Changdwl Iian zhi, vol. I, ·Sbiji",

1I1.r

*'Ii'

D_LiDg_,Ju, vol 17, 'jm.hi D_~iDg_,Ju, Voll, 'Penpu' D_""""""smn>hi, VoL 1, ~ QIWo"l! PIngyum """ un.Vol. 1, '[om.bi' QIanLong Leling Dan w, YoI, I, "Sbijr:

196

ll"'·.

*',

Notes

Jiaqing Yuthengxian un, VoL 4, lieshi".

Qionlong Zhud>ong_.ru, Vol. 5, J""gyu 8J£~ Kangn ChangshanIianzhi, VoL 1, WShiji~ Qianlong Leling.nan zhi, VoL2, "Huoshw _flo. Daoguang Changqing:rian un, Vol. 5, ·Zashw .«~ Qianlong LelingIian zhi, VoL 3, lfuoshw~ Daoguang LinyiIian zhi, VoL 3, wZashw"'.

IbU!. Daoguang Ling:rian un, Vol. 17, linshi un • =5 ;t~ Kangn QidongIian un, VoL 8, iGangwen if.X". The numbers of the Jishi in Shandong province were all based on the local gazetteers ofvarious counties. Kangn Zouping.nan zhi, Vol. 7, wXiangwen .. :t~ Kangn Gaoyuan Iian zbi, VoL 2, lishi .lff~ QianlongZithnan.nan zbi, VoL 2b, iGangcun Jill#". Qionloog Qilio _ dri, vol, ~ "oh; iii W", Daoguang Zhangqiu.nan zhi, VoL 5, "Puyi~ Kangn Rizhao:rian zhi, Vol. 3, "Xiangli • .I.~ Jiaqing Changshan :J:ian mi, Vol. 13, "Ji lE". In the 3rd year ofJiaqing's reign, by Wang Yanlin ~fffa. ·Zhoucun chong.nu Xioglongq"" bcij' JII#••_Il."le~ IbU!., th039th Y'" ofQionlong'''''gn, by y, Gu"",,, jUll.iIJ in Yiling Min i'\ -+- IlQ County, Twthougo j. ;t,,1IIl le, Daoguang Donge Iian zhi, VoL 2, wzhen ji • •~ Written in the 9th year ofKangn's reign, and revised in the 32nd year ofQianlong's reign. Zhangqiu zhi U;t, ·The Preface of Linp,"g*Jt!l'~

Ibid., Vol. 6, "Huoshw". Ibid., Vol. 2, "Jieshi ltiiff~

197

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204

References

Qianlong Wuqingxian zhi 乾隆武清縣志 (Gazetteer of Wuqing County in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Wuqingzhen zhi 乾隆烏青鎮志 (Gazetteer of the Town of Wuqing in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Xin'anxian zhi 乾隆新安縣志 (Gazetteer of Xin'an County in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Yangshanxian zhi 乾隆陽山縣志 (Gazetteer of Yangshan County in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Yuezhoufu zhi 乾隆岳州府志 (Gazetteer of the Prefecture of Yuezhou in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Zhejiang tongzhi 乾隆浙江通志 (Gazetteer of Zhejiang Province in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Zhenzexian zhi 乾隆震澤縣志 (Gazetteer of Zhenze County in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong zhongxiu Yuanhexian zhi 乾隆重修元和縣志 (A Revision of Gazetteer of Yuanhe County in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Zhuchengxian zhi 乾隆諸城縣志 (Gazetteer of Zhucheng County in Qianlong's Reign). Qianlong Zichuanxian zhi 乾隆淄川縣志 (Gazetteer of Zichuan County in Qianlong's Reign). Qing Gaozong shilu 清高宗實錄 (Veritable Records of the Emperor Gaozong of the Qing Dynasty). Qing Shengzu shilu 清聖祖實錄 (Veritable Records of the Emperor Shengzu of the Qing Dynasty). Qing Shengzu tingxun geyan 清聖祖庭訓格言 (The Maxim of Emperor Shengzu of the Qing Dynasty). Qing Shizong shilu 清世宗實錄 (Veritable Records of the Emperor Shizong of the Qing Dynasty). Qing Shizu shilu 清世祖實錄 (Veritable Records of the Emperor Shizu of the Qing Dynasty). Qing Yongzheng shangyu neige 清雍正上諭內閣 (Imperial Edicts of the Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty). Qingbia leichao 清稗類鈔 (Collection of Anecdotes of the Qing Dynasty). Qingchao jingshi wenbian 清朝經世文編 (Collected Writings on Statecraft of the Qing Dynasty). Qingchao tongdian 清朝通典 (Mid-Qing Period Supplement to Du You's Statecraft Encyclopedia). Qingchao wenxian tongkao 清朝文獻通考 (Mid-Qing Period Supplement to Ma Duanlin's Statecraft Encyclopedia).

205

References

Qingchao xu wenxian tongkao 清朝續文獻通考 (Early Republican Supplement to Ma Duanlin's Statecraft Encyclopedia). Qingchao yeshi daiguang 清朝野史大觀 (Grand Sight of Quiet Day Unofficial History of the Qing Dynasty). Qingchao zhengdian leizuan 清朝政典類纂 (Political Compilation of the Qing Dynasty). Qingdai chaodang 清代抄檔 (Hand-written Files of the Qing Dynasty). Qingdai dang'an 清代檔案 (Archives of the Qing Dynasty). Qingdai wenziyu dang 清代文字獄檔 (Files of Literary Inquisition in the Qing Dynasty). Qingshi gao 清史稿 (History of the Qing Dynasty). Shengzu yuzhi wenji 聖祖御製文集 (The Literary Works of Emperor Shengzu). Tanji congshu 檀几叢書 (A Collection of Tanji). Tongzhi Huzhoufu zhi 同治湖州府志 (Gazetteer of the Prefecture of Huzhou in Tongzhi's Reign). Tongzhi Panyuxian zhi 同治番禺縣志 (Gazetteer of Panyu County in Tongzhi's Reign). Tongzhi Shangjiang liangxian zhi 同治上江兩縣志 (Gazetteer of the Two Counties of the Shangjiang in Tongzhi's Reign). Tongzhi Shuanglinzhen zhi 同治雙林鎮志 (Gazetteer of the Town of Shuanglin in Tongzhi's Reign). Tongzhi yongxinxian zhi 同治永新縣志 (Gazetteer of Yongxin County in Tongzhi's Reign). Weiyuan ji 魏源集 (The Collection of Wei Yuan's Work). Wenxian congbian 文獻叢編 (The Compilation of References). Xianfeng Shundexian zhi 咸豐順德縣志 (Gazetteer of Shunde County in Xianfeng's Reign). Xinding libu zeli 欽定吏部則例 (Imperial Clauses of the Ministry of Official Personnel). Xu Yunnan tongzhi gao 續雲南通志稿 (Continuation of Gazetteer of the Province of Yunnan). Xuzuan Jiangningfu zhi 續纂江寧府志 (Continuation of History of the Prefecture of Jiangning). Yan Ruyu 嚴如煜. Sansheng bianfang beilan 三省邊防備覽 (A Review of the Border Defense of the Three Provinces). Yongzheng Conghuaxian zhi 雍正從化縣志 (Gazetteer of Conghua County in Yongzheng's Reign). Yongzheng Dongguanxian zhi 雍正東莞縣志 (Gazetteer of Dongguan County in Yongzheng's Reign).

206

References

Yongzheng shangyu baq i 雍正上諭八旗 (Edicts to the Eight Banner by Yongzheng). Yongzheng zhupi yuzhi 雍正朱批諭旨 (Imperial Edict of Emperor Yongzheng). Yuji mianhua tu 御製棉花圖 (Picture of Weaving by the Emperor). Zhizhe chenggui 治浙成規 (Conventions on Administration of Zhejiang). Personal Works Bao Shichen 包世臣. Anwu si zhong 安吳四種 (Four Books on Governing Suzhou). Chu Hua 褚華. Mumian pu 木棉譜 (Chronicle of Silk Cotton). Chen Huang 陳潢. Tianyi yishu 天一遺書 (Posthumous Papers of Chen Huang). Dai Zhaojia 戴兆佳. Tiantai zhilüe 天台治略 (Outline of Administration of Tiantai). Ding Baozhen 丁寶禎. Sichuan yanfa zhi 四川鹽法志 (Gazetteer of Salt Laws in Sichuan). Fan Kai 范鍇. Jiangkou congtan 江口叢談 (Essays of Jiangkou). Fang Bao 方苞. Fang Wangxi quanji 方望溪全集 (Completed Works of Fang Bao). Fang Bao 方苞. Wangxi xiansheng wenji 望溪先生文集 (Anthology of Fang Bao). Feng Guifen 馮桂芬. Jiao Binlu kangyi 校邠廬抗議 (Essays of protest from Feng Guifen). Gan Xi 甘熙. Baixia suoyan 白下瑣言 (Notes of Bai Xia). Gu Gongxie 顧公燮. Xiaoxia xianji zhaichao 消夏閑記摘鈔 (Excerpts of Spending an Idle Summer). Gu Yanwu 顧炎武. Tianxia junguo libing shu 天下郡國利病書 (Advantages and Disadvantages of All Prefectures and States in the World). Guo Xiu 郭琇. Guo Huaye xiansheng shugao 郭華野先生疏稿 (Draft of Memorial by Guo Xiu). Han Chengyu 韓程愈. Baisong lou jilüe 白松樓集略 (Collections of the White Pine Building). Huang Junzai 黃鈞宰. Jinhu langmo 金壺浪墨 (Gold Ink-pot). Huang Pushi 皇甫氏. Shengguo jiwen 勝國紀聞 (Records of the Current Dynasty). Jinfu 靳輔. Zhihe fanglüe 治河方略 (Methods of River Improvement). Li Dou 李斗. Yangzhou huafang lu 揚州畫舫錄 (Records of the Painting Boat in Yangzhou). Li E 厲鶚. Dongcheng zaji 東城雜記 (The Notes of City East). Li Fu 李紱. Mutang chugao 穆堂初稿 (The First Draft in Mu Hall). Li Wenzhi 李文治. Zhongguo jindai nongyeshi zhiliao 中國近代農業史資料 (Literature on Modern Agricultural History of China).

207

References

Liang Qingbiao 梁清標. Jiaolin shiji 蕉林詩餘 (The Poetry of Jiaolin). Liang Zhangju 梁章鉅. Tui'an suibi 退庵隨筆 (Tui'an Essays). Liu Fang 劉坊. Tianchao geji 天潮閣集 (Collections of Tianchao Pavillion). Liu Jian 劉健. Tingwen lu 庭聞錄 (Records of the Imperial Court). Liu Xianting 劉獻廷. Guangyang zaji 廣陽雜記 (Notes of Guangyang). Lu Kun 盧坤. Qinjiang zhilüe 秦疆治略 (Bounded Administraton on the Qin Dynasty). Lu Yao 陸耀. Ganshu lu 甘薯錄 (Stories of Sweet Potatoes). Lu Yao 陸耀. Qiewen zhai wenchao 切問齋文鈔 (The Copy of Articles in Studio). Lu Yitian 陸以湉. Lenglu zashi 冷廬雜識 (Views on Cold House). Qian Yong 錢泳. Lüyuan conghua 履園叢話 (Prose of Lü Yuan). Qu Dajun 屈大成. Guangdong xinyu 廣東新語 (New Words and Expressions of Guangdong). Shi Lang 施琅. Jinghai jishi 靖海紀事 (Records of Pacification of the Taiwan Strait). Sun Jiagan. Nanyou ji 南遊記 (South Travel Notes). Sun Jiagan 孫嘉淦. Sun Wendinggong zoushu 孫文定公奏疏 (Memorial Presented by Sun Jiagan). Tan Qian 談遷. Beiyou lu 北遊錄 (Records of the North Travel). Wang Qingyun 王慶雲. Kangxi jizheng 康熙紀政 (Laws and Politics in Kangxi's Reign). Wang Qingyun 王慶雲. Shiqu yuji 石渠餘記 (Notes of Shiqu). Wang Qingyun 王慶雲. Xichao jizheng 熙朝紀政 (Laws and Politics in the Kangxi Reign). Wang Qishu 王啟淑. Shuicao qingxia lu 水曹清暇錄 (Records of Shuicao Qingxia). Wang Shizhen 王世禛. Xiangzu biji 香祖筆記 (Notes of Xiang Zu). Wu Qijun 吳其濬. Diannan kuangchang tushuo 滇南礦廠圖說 (Illustrated Handbook of Mine Factories of Yunnan). Wu Zhenyu 吳振棫. Yangji zhai yulu 養吉齋餘錄 (Records in Cultivation and Luck Studio). Xu Qi 徐琦. Qing bailei chao 清稗類鈔 (Anecdotes of the Qing Dynasty). Yan Ruyu 嚴如煜. Sansheng bianfang beilan 三省邊防備覽 (A Review of the Border Defense of the Three Provinces). Yan Sishen 晏斯盛. Chumeng shanfang ji 楚蒙山房集 (Records of Chumeng Shanfang). Yang Guangfu 楊光輔. Songnan yuefu 松南樂府 (Yuefu of Songnan). Yang Wenjie 楊文杰. Dongcheng jiyu 東城記餘 (Records on City East).

208

References

Ye Fengmao 葉鳳毛. Neige xiaozhi xu 內閣小志序 (Preface to the Record of the Cabinet). Ye Meng Zhu 葉夢珠. Yüeshi bian 閱世編 (Compilation of World Experience). Yongzheng 雍正. Pengdang lun 朋黨論 (On Factions). Yu Deyuan 余德淵. Mozhai gongdu 默齋公牘 (Documents about the Silent House). Yu Huai 余懷. Banqiao zaji 板橋雜記 (Miscellaneous Notes on the Plank Bridge). Yu Jin 余金. Xichao xinyu 熙朝新語 (New Words and Expressions of Kangxi's Reign). Zhang Jian 張鑒. Leitang Anzhu dizi ji 雷塘庵主弟子記 (Records on Disciples of Leitang Master). Zhang Lüxiang 張履祥. Yangyuan xiansheng quanji 楊園先生全集 (Completed Works of Sir from Yangyuan). Zhang Qin 張梫. Kangxi zhengyao 康熙政要 (Major Political Affairs in Kangxi's Reign). Zhang Renmei 張仁美. Xihu ji 西湖記 (Notes of West Lake). Zhao Lian 昭槤. Xiaoting zalu 嘯亭雜錄 (Records of Squealing Pavilion). Zhao Mengling 趙夢令. Quzhong wu zhong 區種五種 (Five Models of Fielddivided Cultivation). Zhao Shenqiao 趙申喬. Zhao Gongyi gong shenggao 趙恭毅公剩稿 (Posthumous Papers of Zhao Shenqiao). Zhao Shenqiao 趙申喬. Zhao Gongyi gong zizhi guanshu leiji 趙恭毅公自治官書 類集 (Collections of Letters of Zhao Shenqiao). Zhao Yi 趙翼. Huangchao wugong jisheng 皇朝武功紀盛 (Records of the Military Affairs of the Qing Dynasty). Zhao Yi 趙翼. Yanbao zaji 簷曝雜記 (Yanbao Notes). Zhao Zhifu 趙之符. Fanchan bianjia shu 藩產變價疏 (Memorial of Appraisal of Vassal Estates in the Ming Dynasty). Zhi Chaozi 枝巢子. Jiujing suoji 舊京瑣記 (Records of Old Beijing). Zhu Shi 朱軾. Yaoche zalu 軺車雜錄 (Miscellany of a Carriage Drawn Only by One Horse).

209

Index academies 6, 19-20, 23-4, 28, 30, 107 administrative system 25-6, 61 affairs 21-5, 30, 100, 209 political 7, 15, 21-2, 25, 28-9 agricultural production 45, 72-3, 76, 78, 91, 100, 104-5 agricultural products 76, 82, 100, 102, 104-5, 114, 163 commercialization of 82, 93, 109 agricultural sectors 82, 90, 93 agriculture 77, 82, 98, 101-4, 125-6, 140-2, 164, 176 development of 51, 101 Ao Bai 2-3, 5-8, 15, 19-20, 45 banners 2, 5, 18, 24, 30-3, 38, 99, 207 Beijing 5, 7, 16, 23, 30-2, 39, 47, 51, 79, 124, 137-8, 144-6, 149, 160-1 bureaucrats 3, 36, 51-2, 54, 60, 63, 65, 6870, 93, 96-8, 161 businessmen 68, 127, 132-4, 137-8, 142-3, 145, 149, 155, 157, 160-1 cabinet 19-21, 24, 30, 209 capitalism 82, 86, 118, 124-6, 128, 130, 132, 139 bud of 124-5, 132, 139-41, 148 capitalists 125, 128-30 Censorate 23, 30, 37 censors 23, 56, 65 census record 56, 59, 74 Changsha 10, 13-14, 88, 114 Chen Huang 47-8, 50-1, 207 China 3, 16, 27, 35, 47-8, 61, 73, 76, 82, 88, 91, 124-6, 139-40, 153-4, 162-3 chisellers 120-1, 135 cloth 82, 84, 108, 120, 123-4, 126-9, 153, 160-1, 167, 169-71, 177

coal 135, 137-9, 143-4, 159, 171 extraction of 136, 138-9 coal mines 136, 138-9, 144 commodity economy 69, 83-4, 86, 105, 114, 125, 140, 149, 162-3, 166-9, 181 copper 132-4, 137, 142 mining of 133-4 copper ore 120, 132-3 corvée 43, 47, 52-64, 66, 68-9, 71-2, 75, 96-7, 99 cotton 81-5, 90, 114, 126-7, 158, 164-5, 171 growing 83-4 price of 85, 127 provision of 126 cotton cloth 83-4, 124, 126-7, 129, 169 county magistrate 43, 64-5 court 6-7, 15, 24, 36 royal 52, 142-3 craftsmen 24, 47-8, 122, 128-32, 141, 149 stamped-cloth 128-9 crops 76-80, 100-2 cash 162, 171 economic 90-1 cultivation 42, 80-1, 83, 86, 96-7, 100, 102, 208 Daoguang 71, 74, 89, 145, 157, 172, 174, 176, 178-9, 199 Daoguang's Reign 36, 67-8, 89, 122, 129, 131, 157, 168, 172, 174, 176, 178, 179 development 2-3, 17-18, 41-2, 72, 82, 11719, 123-5, 129-31, 133-5, 139-41, 143-5, 147-9, 153-5, 161-7, 181 degree of 163, 167 Dong'an County 168, 171, 175 Dongguan County 167-8, 172 drought 78, 81, 89, 93, 101, 103

Index

Duo Ergun 2, 5, 7, 34 dyeing 121, 128, 164-5 E Bilong 2, 5-6 early Qing dynasty 25, 42, 52-6, 76, 82, 85, 87-8, 91, 94, 96, 99, 118, 120, 145, 158 economic development 98, 101, 140-2, 144, 148 Emperor Jiaqing, reign of 33, 116 Emperor Kangxi 2-3, 6-10, 12-13, 15-16, 18, 21, 25, 29, 31, 35, 42, 55, 60, 64-5, 114-15 reign of 25, 31, 35, 55, 60, 65, 114-15 Emperor Qianlong 19, 21, 136, 151, 164, 166 reign of 18-19, 25, 29, 40, 68, 73, 111-12, 114-16, 145 Emperor Shunzhi 2, 6-7, 34, 45, 55-6, 64 reign of 45, 55-6, 64 Emperor Yongzheng 18-21, 26, 29, 31, 35, 66-8, 71, 78, 111, 115, 141, 164, 205, 207 reign of 20-1, 26, 29, 67-8, 111, 115 employers 26, 36, 92, 102-4, 123, 126 merchant 126-7 Enforcement of Centralization of Administration 2-3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31 eunuchs 18, 21, 24 examinations 22, 28-9, 36, 60, 123 provincial 28 exchange 5, 127, 166-8, 170, 177, 179-81 exploitation 45, 55, 98-9, 101, 105, 108-9, 111, 116, 128, 132, 145, 147, 178 rate of 101-2 farm cattle 76, 100-1, 107, 168 farm rent 43, 45, 68, 70 farmers 26, 77-81, 85, 89, 92-5, 97-102, 105, 126, 141 land-holding 95-7, 102 tenant 99-100

212

farming 23, 76, 100-1, 135, 141, 162, 176 farmlands 42, 44, 47, 55, 58, 62, 64, 70, 86, 89, 96, 98, 100, 105-6, 111-12 fen 43, 64, 66-8, 70, 105-7, 110-12, 114, 147, 177 Fengxu 188-92, 195-6 feudal society 3, 37, 51-2, 68, 71, 86, 93-5, 112, 139-40, 145 feudalism 2, 5, 42, 50, 125, 129-30, 132, 134, 140-1 feudatories 8-10, 12, 14-15, 18, 42, 44, 47, 203 fields 77-80, 86, 88, 93, 104, 107, 115, 126, 132-3, 136, 142-3 paddy 80 fish 80, 87, 159, 161, 168-71 flood 42, 45-6, 48, 50, 93, 101, 103 flourishing 158, 161, 165, 168-9, 171, 179, 181 food 47, 81, 83, 90-1, 113, 140, 155, 159 shortage of 110-11, 113 food grains 51, 53 foremen 122, 128, 138 Foshan 118, 123-4, 126, 134-5, 149, 156-8, 168, 170, 180 Fujian 9-10, 13, 16, 42-3, 79-81, 85, 91, 93, 106, 124, 127, 135, 153, 156 Fujian province 66, 68, 81, 88, 91, 116, 121, 170 garrison 31-2, 80 Gazetteer 199-206 Geng Jingzhong 8-10, 12-13, 15 government 3, 6, 20, 24-6, 31-2, 37, 39, 42, 52-5, 75, 130-7, 141-3, 149-50, 168, 177-8 feudal 52, 131-2, 141-3, 149, 177 local 22, 38, 54, 118, 131, 136, 138 government office 22, 24, 56, 143, 177 government officials 47, 52, 133, 163 governor 5, 10, 15-16, 18, 24-5, 29, 31, 37, 98, 134, 179 local 30, 36

Index

grain 25, 45, 47, 50-3, 55-66, 77-83, 87-92, 94, 104-8, 110-15, 167, 169-71, 178-9 Grand Council 19-22, 38 Guan ji 177-8 Guangdong 9, 42-3, 85, 89-92, 100, 123, 127, 134, 139, 144, 149, 153, 156, 158, 161 Guangdong province 55, 65-6, 91, 124, 157, 167, 171-2, 175, 178 Guangxi 10, 13-14, 42-4, 91, 132, 159 Guangxi province 88-9, 91 Guangzhou 11, 62, 118, 122, 127, 132, 135, 149, 156, 158-9, 168-9, 172 guild halls 145, 147, 149, 160-1 Guizhou 8, 10, 14, 42-4, 62, 66, 153, 159 Han 5, 11, 13, 18, 30, 33, 39, 98 Han officials 7, 22, 28, 30 handicraft industry 118, 121, 124-6, 13942, 148-9, 161, 181 handicrafts 24, 26, 122-4, 157, 162 handicraftsmen 118, 127-8, 145 Hangzhou 70, 83, 86, 118, 122-3, 143, 149, 154-6, 158, 163, 171, 202 Hankou 92, 135, 145, 149, 159-60, 180 harvest 87-8, 100-1, 105, 108, 110, 113, 115, 162, 176 harvest season 102, 108, 110-11 Henan 44-5, 81, 83, 102, 108-9, 138, 159 Henan province 45, 66, 83, 111, 116, 124 household handicraft industry 82, 128-9 Huai River 45-7, 50, 81 Hunan 12-13, 33, 42, 44, 54, 91-2, 106, 114, 124, 136, 159, 161, 191 Hunan province 54, 67-8, 91, 97, 114, 161 Huzhou 156, 163, 171, 206 imperial clan 24, 93, 96 imperial family 2, 18, 24, 35-6, 39 imperial power 2, 17-20, 23-4, 30 industrialists 142, 145, 149

industry 35, 82, 103, 112, 121, 125, 130, 133-5, 139, 141-3, 145-50, 153-5, 15961, 163-4, 168-9 development of 142, 149, 161, 163 mineral 131-2, 143 stamping 128-9 iron 124, 134-7, 145, 148, 157, 159, 165, 170-1 ironworks 122, 132, 134-5 jia 26, 61, 94-5, 129, 155, 164 Jiading county 83, 165-6 Jiajing 164-6 reign of 164-5 Jiajing's reign 163, 165 Jiangning 130, 149, 155, 180, 201, 206 Jiangsu 45, 64, 90-1, 93, 102, 140 Jiangsu province 45, 60, 64, 67, 110, 11415, 165 Jiangxi 12, 42, 91-3, 99, 119, 124, 153, 159 Jiangxi province 106-7, 112, 154, 161, 170 Jiaqing 21, 35-6, 68, 76-7, 83, 88-9, 91, 102, 144, 146, 160-1, 164, 168, 178-9, 201-2 reign of 21, 36, 76, 81, 83, 88, 91, 106, 123, 135, 144, 150, 154-5, 161, 168 Jiaqing's Reign 102, 172-3, 178, 202 Jiaxing 156, 163-4, 200-1 Jiaxing prefecture 77, 164, 200-1 jishi 175-9 Kangxi 2, 6-7, 10, 15-16, 22-3, 42-54, 5960, 62-5, 73-6, 96-7, 153-4, 166-7, 173-5, 179-80, 202 reigns of 72, 74-6, 82, 90, 180 Kangxi's Reign 2-3, 6-7, 10-11, 14-16, 22-3, 27, 29-30, 34, 42-3, 59, 64-7, 72-6, 7880, 90-1, 94, 96-7, 99, 128-9, 163-4, 166-8, 172-5, 178-9, 202-3 labor 39, 42-3, 47, 55, 72, 77, 81, 96, 99, 103-4, 130, 149, 160 division of 22, 121-3, 132, 140

213

Index

laborers 105, 123, 135-6, 138-9 land 5-6, 43-5, 49-51, 55-6, 58-9, 61-5, 6872, 76-7, 80, 83-4, 86-7, 89-91, 93-7, 99102, 104-9 civilian 51, 53 concentration of 95, 97 cultivated 44, 73, 97 land ownership 45, 72 land rent 26, 98, 104-6, 108, 111 land tax 44-5, 51-5, 58, 61, 64-72, 74, 140, 168 landlord class 13, 18, 21, 35, 39-40, 43, 52, 58, 62, 64, 69-71, 105, 107, 124 landlords 3, 25, 33, 36, 51-2, 61, 63-4, 6970, 93, 95-6, 98-102, 104-11, 116, 140-1, 159 Le Fu 47-52 levies 9, 54-5, 58, 62, 64, 69 secret apportionment of 54-5, 57 li 25-6, 30, 48-50, 61, 64-8, 96, 105, 107, 121, 153, 156, 177, 190, 192, 203 liang 54, 63, 76, 87, 89, 97, 105, 110-12, 114, 127, 133, 138, 147, 168, 177 Liezhuan 183-4, 186 lunar month 79, 108, 176 machines 118-20, 122, 125, 129, 131, 154 magistrate 25, 29-30, 39, 71, 78 Manchu 2, 5-6, 11, 15, 17, 23, 25, 28, 30-1, 34, 39, 98 Manchu officers 25, 30, 34 materials, raw 82, 127, 131, 134 Meiyan 163, 166 merchants 24, 50, 83-5, 89, 91-3, 110-12, 116, 124, 126-7, 146, 150, 153-4, 15670 military 13, 15, 24, 32, 34, 209 Ming dynasty 19-20, 24-5, 34-5, 44, 52-3, 56-7, 73, 80, 82, 118-19, 131-2, 145, 163-6, 179-80, 203 mining 120-2, 125, 132-6, 139, 142-4 ministers 2, 7, 10, 15, 19-23, 27, 29, 34, 37-8, 203 auxiliary 2-3, 5-6

214

ministries 7, 9, 22-4, 37 Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs 22, 34 Ministry of Penalties 22, 37-8, 40, 102-4, 150 Ministry of Revenue 22-3, 39, 43, 56, 65 Ministry of Rites 22-3, 30 Ministry of War 22-3 mortgages 99, 106, 112-15 mu 52, 63, 65, 68, 70, 76-80, 87, 89, 94, 96-7, 101, 105-7, 111 Nanhai County 168-9, 172 Nanjing 43, 64, 68, 101, 118, 122, 124, 143, 153-5, 160 national population 69, 73-4 natural economy 84, 130, 140-1, 181 nobility 18, 37, 39, 138 Nongsong 187-8, 191 North China 98, 100-1, 139, 160 Opium War 74, 86, 125-6, 145, 159, 161-2, 165, 167, 171, 180 peasants 9, 42, 44-5, 51, 56, 58, 64, 6970, 72, 77, 93-4, 105-8, 110-14, 140-2, 167-8 land-holding 45, 52, 94 tenant 105-6, 108, 115 poll tax 53, 58, 62-5, 68-71, 74-6 population 44, 56, 61-5, 68-9, 72-6, 86, 95, 137, 153-4, 156, 159, 179 population growth 62, 72-3, 75 porcelain 121, 124, 139, 142-3, 153 prefecture 24-5, 28-9, 38-9, 54, 57-60, 77, 114, 155-6, 161-3, 168, 175, 206-7 production 6, 76-8, 80, 82, 86, 88, 90, 97-8, 101, 109, 118-21, 128-9, 132, 134-6, 148 development of 8, 166

Index

products 20-1, 34, 82, 85, 90-1, 105, 114, 121-2, 124, 126-7, 131-2, 134, 143, 153-4, 156 provinces 8, 24-5, 27, 37, 42-4, 53-5, 60, 62, 66-8, 88, 90-3, 150, 157-8, 160-1, 180-1 qian 65-8, 106-7, 112, 129, 133, 147, 168, 177 Qianlong 21, 27, 67-8, 74-7, 83-4, 86-7, 144, 147, 150-6, 158-60, 164-5, 168-71, 173, 180, 204-5 Qianlong's Reign 35, 73-5, 79, 81, 83, 87, 89-91, 94, 102, 104, 106-8, 122, 137-8, 147, 150-1, 153-5, 165-6, 168-75, 17780, 204 qing 15, 43-4, 49, 63, 94, 96, 142, 160, 206 qing government 9, 14, 16, 26, 33, 44, 47, 54, 98-100, 108-9, 129-31, 133-6, 138-9, 143-4, 149-50 qing regime 8, 10-16, 18-20, 23, 29-31, 33, 35, 38, 42 qing rulers 8, 18, 23, 30, 35, 40, 42, 47, 56, 58 rent 9, 36, 44, 99-102, 104-9, 111-12, 129, 140 in-kind 104-5, 107 resumption 8, 42, 72, 118, 121 revenue 9, 21-3, 25-6, 29, 35, 39, 43, 56, 61, 63, 65, 69, 72 public 42, 44, 55, 59 rice 53-4, 70, 78-80, 83, 89, 91-3, 106, 108, 145, 159-60, 164, 171 river improvement 45, 47, 50-2, 207 royal families 24, 53 rural areas 26, 86, 98, 109-10, 162, 166, 171, 181 rural markets 162-3, 167, 169, 171, 175, 180-1

salt 9, 25, 89, 121, 123, 145, 150, 159, 161-2, 167-71 secretary, grand 19-22, 29, 105 servants 22, 30, 36, 81, 98-9, 101, 104, 109, 132, 150 Shandong 43-4, 81, 89, 138, 153, 162, 171, 175-6, 178 Shandong province 71, 78, 84, 97, 124, 171, 176-9 Shanghai 85, 120, 122, 126-7 Shanghai County 83, 166-7 Shanhaiguan 2, 7-8, 11, 17, 31, 33-4 Shanxi province 67-8, 78, 83, 111-12 shi 15, 54, 63, 77, 79-80, 160, 163-70, 178-9 Shi Lang 16, 208 Shiji 188, 196-7 Shunzhi 42-4, 56-7, 59, 63, 74, 76, 180 Shunzhi reign 3, 9, 19, 34, 42-4, 57-60, 72-4, 118 Sichuan 11-12, 14, 43-4, 65, 91-3, 106, 118-20, 150, 153, 159 Sichuan province 42, 65-6, 106, 123 silk 55, 86-7, 108, 114, 118, 122-4, 151, 154-8, 161, 167, 169-70, 179 silkworm 86-8, 171 silver 45, 52-4, 61, 63, 70, 89, 111, 114, 131, 133, 147, 150, 162 smelting 121, 125, 132-3, 135-6, 142 solar terms 38, 81 Song dynasty 156, 164-5, 167 Songjiang 108, 110, 127, 153, 163, 201-2 South China 82, 88, 91, 96, 98-101 state affairs 2-3, 18-21 Sukesaha 2, 5-6, 8 Suo Ni 2, 5-7 Suzhou 26, 65, 79, 84, 86, 90-1, 93, 96, 118, 122-3, 128-30, 145-7, 149, 153-4, 163 Taiping Revolution 25, 33 Taiwan 15-16, 42, 91 taxation 42, 52-3, 55-8, 60-1, 64, 66, 68-9, 72, 129, 177

215

Index

taxation method 65, 69-70 taxes 13, 26, 42-3, 52-6, 59-65, 68-71, 75, 80, 96-7, 102, 110, 133, 136, 168, 177-8 taxpayers 55, 57-8, 60 tenants 35, 43, 45, 97, 99-102, 104-9, 116 throne 2, 6, 9, 14-15, 18, 35, 66, 202-3 tobacco 88-90, 161 trade 90-1, 122, 129, 139-40, 145-7, 158, 160, 165-70, 175-80 usury 109-12, 116 Wang Fuchen 10, 12-13 Wang Qingyun 67, 73, 208 Wanli, reign of 56-7 war 11, 22-3, 35, 47, 73, 91, 118 wasteland 43-4, 51, 62, 96, 106 weaving 84, 94, 122, 126, 142, 156-7, 207 white banner 2, 5-6, 31 workers 89-90, 120-2, 126-7, 130-5, 140, 142, 147-9, 157, 161, 171 workshops 118, 121-2, 126, 128-30, 142, 158, 162 Wu Sangui 8-11, 13-14, 96 Wuchan 188-9, 192-3, 195 Wucheng county 86-7, 176 xushi 167-9, 171-5, 178, 196 Yangtze River 3, 10-11, 18, 42-3, 51, 77-8, 81, 83-4, 86, 88, 92, 96-7, 99-100, 150, 167-8 Yangzhou 89, 149-51, 202 yellow banners 2, 31 plain 2, 5-6 Yellow River 45-50, 66, 81 Yi ji 176-8 Yongzheng 20-1, 35, 66, 70-1, 73-4, 76, 86, 91, 97, 99, 102, 158, 207, 209 Yongzheng Emperor 144

216

Yongzheng's reign 20-1, 27, 35, 66-7, 69, 75, 78, 80, 86, 89, 91-4, 97, 99-100, 102, 105, 128, 130, 172, 178, 180 Yu Chenglong 50, 52, 65, 114 Yunnan 8-10, 42-4, 62, 108, 120, 122, 128, 132-4, 153, 159, 200, 206, 208 Yushan 89-90 Zhao Shenqiao 54, 69-70, 209 Zhejiang 12-13, 42-3, 70, 79, 86, 90-1, 93, 96, 124, 127, 132, 135, 145, 152-3, 164 Zhejiang province 69-70, 77, 84, 86, 89, 110, 163 zhen 163, 165-9, 178-80 Zhili 44, 55, 65-6, 84, 89, 96, 100-1 zhou 56-60, 64-5, 67-8, 105, 175, 178 Zhoucun 179-80 Zongren government 30, 39-40