Local merchants and the Chinese bureaucracy : 1750-1950 9780804713412, 0804713413

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Local Merchants and the Chinese Bureaucracy, 1750-1950

Susan Mann

Local Merchants and the

Chinese Bureaucracy, 1750-1950

Stanford University Press Stanford, California 1987

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

© 1987 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America CIP data appear at the end of the book

Maps i and 3-7 were drawn by Yue Zumou: Map 1 is adapted from Huang 1974b: 54, with permission of the publisher, Cambridge University Press; the Map 3 inset is adapted from Hou Renzhi 1979: 339; Map 4 is based on data in S. F. Wright 192.0: 99—110, and Luo Yudong 1936: 290; the locations of lijin stations in Map 5 were iden­ tified by Yue Zumou using data in Gu 1919, zheli (zhong), 25—64; Map 6 is adapted from GDCZSMS 1910, using data in Kobayashi 1971; and Map 7 is based on data in Schoppa 1982 and Zhejiang caizheng yuekan, 4, no. 6 (1931). Map 2 is reproduced from CSXZ 1801, juan shou, with data from CSXZ 1801, juan 1, 30a—33b.

In memory of

John Raymond Mann (1882-1971)

and George Willoughby (1886-1972)

Acknowledgments

As a scholar I have enjoyed the best the American academy has to offer. I cannot measure or adequately acknowledge here the influence of teachers, friends, and colleagues in the making of this book. My fore­ most intellectual debts are two: to G. William Skinner, whose teaching and writing led me to my first work in local history; and to Philip A. Kuhn, who consistently and generously shared his scholarly interests with me over a period of many years. I also wish to thank Fu-mei Chang Chen, Hamashita Takeshi, Harold L. Kahn, Thomas Rawski, William T. Rowe, and Dorothy Solinger for advice and bibliographic guidance during the time when I was writing and revising the manu­ script. During a visit to Stanford in 1982, Professor Hou Renzhi was kind enough to discuss the findings in his book with me. Professor Shiba Yoshinobu has helped me to keep abreast of Japanese scholarship on Chinese economic history, and has managed a faithful correspon­ dence on subjects of mutual interest in spite of the many demands on his time. Readers will see my debts to his assistance in several chapters. A generous fellowship from the National Endowment for the Hu­ manities gave me a year to read and write while completing the first drafts of the manuscript. I am grateful to Dr. Ramon Myers of the East Asian Collection at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, for providing me with an office and with access to a library and a scholarly community during that period. The Faculty Research Committee, the Division of Humanities, and the Comparative and International Stud­ ies ORA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, supplied’com­ puter time, text-editing services, and other financial assistance, with­ out which the manuscript would have been considerably delayed. At an earlier stage in my work, I also received research support from the Center for Far Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. I wish to thank colleagues there, particularly Tetsuo Najita and Harry Harootunian, for their encouragement.

viii

Acknowledgments

My thinking about this book has been shaped in discussions with members of two research groups: the Project on Local Leadership in China, directed by Tsou Tang and sponsored at the University of Chi­ cago from 1977-1980 by the National Endowment for the Human­ ities; and the Comparative and International Studies research group at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I thank them collectively for their support, their interest, and their many suggestions. Particular individuals contributed in substantive ways to the writing of the manuscript. Kwan Manbun was both research assistant and in­ tellectual collaborator in searching out documentary evidence. Yue Zumou prepared maps and wrote the characters for the glossary; his calligraphy also graces the cover of this volume. Madeleine Zelin gave the first five chapters the benefit of a careful and critical reading at an early stage. Prasenjit Duara, Mary Rankin, Jonathan Ocko, and Joseph Fewsmith read later drafts and offered important advice. I am espe­ cially grateful to G. William Skinner and to anonymous readers for Stanford University Press for astute and constructive criticism that shaped the final text. Editor J. G. Bell’s encouragement, confidence, and vision helped to bring the book to its present form, and kept me working on its problems. Finally, it gives me pleasure to record my spe­ cial debts to Margery Wolf and Carol A. Smith, who insisted on taking time away from their own work to read and criticize early versions of many chapters, and who as a result moved the manuscript along at a critical point. None of these people bears responsibility for the prob­ lems that remain, despite their best efforts. At home I owe thanks for a different kind of support, tangible and intangible. I wish to acknowledge, with affection and gratitude, the help I have received from women who took care of my children over the years so that I could do research and write: Claudia Mae Moore, the late Sister Ruby Lynch, Carol Swanson, Clarice Begemann, AnaMaria Navas, and the teachers at College Terrace Preschool Center. I thank the members of my several extended families who will celebrate the publication of this book. And I pay special tribute to my parents, for raising me in a world where grandparents were a regular presence; to my children, for being a constant source of joy and comfort; to Thomas M. Jones, who has been a loving father to our two boys; to Frances Van Loo, who has been better than a sister; and to William, for sharing fully with me the joys and the heartaches of these years.

S.M.

► I

Contents

Maps and Figures

i.

2.

xi

Introduction: State-Building and Market Taxes in Presocialist China i

Liturgical Governance and the Merchant Class

12

3. Regulation and Revenue: High Qing Policy and Historical Precedent 29 4. The State and Local Markets in EighteenthCentury Shandong 52 5.

Liturgical Leadership and Market Town Development in the Jinan Region 70

94

6. The Lijin Tax: Ideology and Organization 7. Lijin Taxes and the Merchant Response

8.

121

Tax-Farming and State-Building: The Late Qing and Early Republic 145

9. Brokerage Tax Reform and Tax-Farming at the Local Level 171

10. Epilogue: Commercial Taxation in the People’s Republic of China 200 Notes

217

Character List

Bibliography

255

Index

273

269

Maps and Figures

Maps

i. The Grand Canal, Showing Provinces and Major Ports 37 Changshan County, Shandong, ca. 1800, Showing Founding Dates, Schedules, and Locations of Tax-free Markets 61 3. Shandong Province, Showing Major Commercial Centers and Counties Where Tax-free Markets Were Found During the Eighteenth Century 75 4. Lijin Bureaus in Jiangxi Province, by Prefecture, ca. 1920 113 5. Hangzhou Prefecture, Zhejiang Province, ca. 1919, Showing Lijin Stations at All Levels 115 6. Guangdong Province Lijin Bureaus, Showing Dates and Sites of Lijin Tax Protests 118 7. Zhejiang Province, Showing Fit Between Fiscal Qu and Core Counties 173

2.

Figures 1. The Li Lineage of Zhoucun 78 Distribution of Li Mobility Strategies by Generation 88 An Impoverished Scholar Thanks His Merchant Brother-in-Law for a Loan