A Study On The Changlu Salt Revenue (1912-1928)

During the Peking government of ROC, the salt revenue was of the utmost importance in the fiscal revenue. The Changlu Salt District is located in the capital, and its huge salt revenues were the base on which the Peking government borrowed money from home and abroad and addressed the urgent needs in fiscal problem. The Beijing government's policies and measures for the collecting and managing salt revenue were mostly tried out in Changlu Salt District, and then extended to other areas.In the early years of ROC, the reform of the Changlu Salt Revenue was one of the key measures with which the Peking government attempted to consolidate the administration of national salt and increased the income of salt revenue. The reform changed the old salt revenue to some extent and promoted the process of modernization of the managing the Changlu salt, even China's salt. The disputes and strives between the Peking government, Changlu salt dealers and the head office of the Salt Administrative Inspection over salt prices, alteration of the old systems and adoption of the new. The reason for the disputes was that each side of them scrambled for the distribution of benefits of the salt revenue in order to achieve the aims of their own and hamper the others, but finally they had to reach the agreement that each side could accept in the point of beneficial equilibrium. Chaotic political struggle of the warlords had a huge influence on the Changlu Salt, which had been the goal that warlords strived to reach. The area of salt Changlu geographic and political environment in which the particularity of warlords competing for Changlu Salt makes the process of showing the characteristics of areas different from other salts. The special geographical and political environments where the Changlu Salt was standing made it with different features that warlords scrambled for the tax collection of the Changlu salt. Before the second Chihli-Fengtien War, their struggle was mainly in the form of a disguised tax on the Changlu Salt to compete privately. After that, the ways that warlords contended were upgraded to a flagrant retention, excessive levies of surtax, and usurpations. The salt tax-levying system was greatly ruined after reforms of salt revenue thereafter.During the Peking government of ROC, the collection and management of the Changlu Salt Revenue reflected from a perspective the characteristics of fiscal and tax systems in modern times, i.e., the country's fiscal revenue was forcibly strapped in the machine of political and military wars by the warlords. Thus the functions of these systems were extremely strong in politics and military, but greatly weakening and even missing in regulating and developing the economy. The funds seized by the government were not used for the economic development, but for innumerous military and political costs. This upside-down fiscal, economic policy was a serious impediment to the development of regional economy and even national economy.