Abstract
This article reflects upon the centre-province fiscal relations from the mid-nineteenth century on, with special reference to the last decade and a half of the Qing dynasty. My findings are: 1. There was much haggling over the tanpai (assigned quotas) between the central and provincial authorities; nevertheless, the central government succeeded in drawing in a substantial revenue by the practice of tanpai. As most of the appropriations were earmarked for the payment of foreign loans and Boxer indemnity, there was a connection between the use of tanpai and foreign influence, as the functioning of the former relied on the support of foreign powers. Apart from the foreign powers and the banking interests it was the central government which benefited from this practice. In the short term, the growing domestic influence of the foreign powers on Chinese politics strengthened rather than weakened the central government, which was still able to maintain a certain degree of control over the provinces. 2. Foreign powers also assisted the central government in the control of provincial finance in another way. In accordance with the second Anglo-German loan contracted in 1898, the lijin on commodies and salt in certain region of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Hubei and Jiangxi were pledged as security and were put under the administration of the maritime customs. However, this would lead these five provinces into financial trouble as they would lose one of their most reliable sources of revenue. In view of this, the central government designated a number of other sources of revenue from both within and outside these five provinces to make good the deficits. Revenue designated for this purpose was known as the bobu lijin (compensatory allocation for making good the loss of lijin revenue). The five provinces soon found that the new arrangement made it impossible for them to make ends meet. The repeated appeals of governors-general and governors of the five provinces reflected the failure of the central government to identify workable sources to compensate the provinces for the lost revenue or co-ordinate systematic action to put the total financial structure back into balance once these funds had been removed. The central government cared nothing for the absurdity of the system of compensatory allocation as long as it worked to its own financial advantage. On the other hand, the financial basis of these five provinces was much eroded as a substantial proportion of their reliable sources of revenue was stripped from the provincial authorities. 3. As provincial authorities could mobilize only limited financial resources they had no option but to forward revenue to the centre rather than to their needy counterparts. This dealt a heavy blow to remote and revenue-deficient frontier provinces such as Guangxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, Yunnan and Guizhou. In short, "inter-regional compensation" or "supra-regional integration" was overshadowed by increasing provincial financial obligation to the centre in late Qing China. 4. Historians researching the financial aspects of late Qing history usually attach great importance to the chaotic state of the financial administration in which the provincial authorities enjoyed full autonomy at the expense of the central government from the mid-nineteenth century on. They tend to overlook the financial integration efforts on the parts of both the central and provincial governments. In fact, before the Qing government took measures to reorganize government finance on a grand scale in 1909-11, it was not only the central government that made efforts to integrate the provincial financial system, but provincial authorities also took initiatives in the integration of machinery for revenue collection and disbursement under their jurisdiction. Institution of a new tax system for the consolidated collection of native-opium and Zhao Erxun's financial centralization in Sichuan are the most concrete examples. 5. Financial deterioration of the provinces was a common feature throughout the country. Due to ideological constraints and the existence of practical administrative problems the Qing government was unable to work out fully the potential of land tax as the economy grew. It was against this background that the provincial authorities increased their reliance on the practice of increasing the retail price of salt and excise on native opium. They also increasingly resorted to the collection of miscellaneous taxes as well as over-minting debased new-style silver and copper coins. These measures served their purposes quite well in the short run but many undesirable consequences emerged which were at odds with their long term interests. The frequent and brazen unauthorized withholding of revenue was evidence, not of strength and independence, but rather weakness on the part of the provincial powers. 6. Sichuan was an entity where the economic forces most favoured regionalism and centrifugal tendencies. Nevertheless, not only was its financial commitment to the centre increased substantially, but also its revenue was allocated for use by the central government. A considerable portion of the provincial expenditure was, in a sense, for services or material received by the central authorities. It seems that similar situations existed in other provinces as well. Viewed in this perspective we simply cannot regard the extremely complex centre-province fiscal relations in late Qing China as a "zero-sum" game but should examine the long term trends in its historical evolution. There does not seem to have been enough effective central administrative supervision over the overall provincial fiscal system; the provincial governments were also unable to exercise effective supervision over the fiscal systems under their management. In studying the fiscal relations between the central and provincial governments, it is more appropriate to view the problem from a socio-economic perspective than from a political viewpoint.
Keywords
Systems of delivery, subsidies and rendering annual financial accounts, practice of tanpai (assignment of quotas) and the bubo lijin arrangement, integration of new collection and disbursement agencies among provincial authorities, financial deterioration of the provinces, financial status of Sichuan
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