Research On The Impact On The Fiscal System By The Late Qing's National Debt

History is the reality of the past while the reality is the history of the future. History is a mirror that reflects the vicissitudes of life. Whether the study of today or the forecast of tomorrow, is based on the familiarity with yesterday. Summarizing history serves for clearer understanding of reality and better grasp of future. The occurrence and development of Qing dynasty's national debt experienced a hard process. The operating mechanism, including borrowing, expending and repaying, has had huge impact on the fiscal system of recent china. Summarizing and rethinking experiences and lessons from that historical period can shed light on the current national debt and fiscal system from both theoretical and practical perspectives.This dissertation does deep research on the impact on the fiscal system of late Qing's national debt and concludes that late Qing's national debt has promoted the development of then tax system, fiscal expenditure system, and intergovernmental fiscal management system. Further, the author reveals the inspiration on the current national debt management and fiscal system reform from late Qing's national debt.The dissertation contains the introduction part and six chapters amounting to about 110,000 characters.The Introduction sets forth from the research background and meanings, followed by the research situations from domestic and abroad, research methodology and logic structure.Chapter 1 gives theoretical definitions of national debt and fiscal system. The following topics are discussed: the connotation of national debt and fiscal system, the basic conditions from which national debt arise and develop, the causes for the transformation of fiscal regime, and finally the research scope and keys.Chapter 2 covers the background for the late Qing's national debt to take place and go forward from, and the general debt conditions. As for the historical background, the five aspects are included: the late Qing's gradual recognizing of national debt, the development of recent China's capitalism, the formation and deterioration of late Qing's fiscal crisis, the rise-up and go-forward of recent China's financial industry, and the gradual improvement of late Qing's legal system.Chapter 3 discusses the effects on the tax system brought by late Qing's national debt. The repayment of late Qing's national debt was guaranteed by taxes, which provoked important changes in then tax system. In detail, the traditional feudal taxes, such as land tax and salt tax, decreased sharply in the whole tax system, while the new industrial and commercial taxes, such as Lijin (internal tax on the transit of goods at the rate of 10%) and tariff, increased significantly. Thus, the agrarian-related feudal tax system had gradually been transformed into the commercial-related recent one.Chapter 4 discusses the impact on the fiscal expenditure system by the late Qing's national debt. In the late Qing dynasty, owing to the national debt which was used as the repayment guarantee, the amount and structure of the fiscal expenditure were affected and intervened by the western powers. Henceforth the late Qing government had lost control over the fiscal expenditure and been forced to adjust the fiscal expenditure principles.Chapter 5 is arranged for explaining the impact on the intergovernmental fiscal management system by the late Qing's national debt. In the early and middle stages of Qing dynasty, the intergovernmental fiscal management system was centralized. After the Opium War, the central government asked the local governments to bear more fiscal expenditures with more fiscal power granted to the latter. Especially after the Sino-Japanese War the decentralization was speeded up owning to the huge national debt burdens. Chapter 6 is the retrospection and further thinking, which summarizes the experiences and lessons from the late Qing's national debt, and comment on the historical inspiration from the evolution of the late Qing's fiscal system.The dissertation has absorbed the existent research results from the domestic and abroad academics and studied the late Qing's national debt combined with the fiscal system evolution. The following are the main innovative viewpoints.1. Innovative research perspective. The dissertation focuses on the interrelation between the national debt and the fiscal system evolution in the late Qing dynasty, with the late Qing's debt as the clue and the fiscal system evolution as the object.2. Systemic analysis of the special background for the occurrence and development of the late Qing's national debt. There are five conditions for there to happen the modern-sense national debt. In detail, first, the establishment of the national debt concept offered the ideal basis. Second, the development of the recent capitalism laid down the material foundation. Third, the deteriorating fiscal crisis provided the fiscal condition. Fourth, the recent finance industry created the technical premise. Fifth, the evolution of the late Qing's legal system assured the legal basis.3. Comprehensive analysis of the impact on the tax system by the late Qing's national debt. There were two main transit channels. First, facing the heavy burdens of repaying the debt, the Qing government had to look for new tax resources besides increasing the existent tax revenues, which had transformed the agrarian-related feudal tax system into the commercial-related recent one. Second, because the tariff was used as the debt guarantee, the central government had lost the management power on the related taxes, and thus the local governments had got inappropriate discretionary powers on the tax system.4. Comprehensive analysis of the impact on the fiscal expenditure system by the late Qing's national debt. First, the borrowing, expending, and repaying of debt made the fiscal expenditure's items and amounts affected and intervened by the western powers, and the Qing government lost the control over the expenditure amount and structure. In the end, the Qing government transferred to the principle of"collecting revenues according to expenditure needs", from the principle of"arranging expenditures according to the revenues". Second, the national debt deepened the expansion of the fiscal expenditures. Third, the fiscal expenditure structures were distorted further. After the Opium War, in the Qing government expenditure structure, besides the sharp increase of the military and administrative outlays, there existed expenditures in relation with compensation and debt service.5. Comprehensive analysis of the impact on the intergovernmental fiscal management system by the late Qing's national debt. First, the expanding debt burden had become unbearable for the central government, thus who asked the local governments to share the burden, which further speeded up the decentralization. Finally at the end of Qing dynasty the tax-sharing system was suggested and put into force in the period of the national government. Second, the fiscal management was loosened by the borrowing, expending and repaying of debt. In order to strengthen the fiscal management, the government budget was introduced and implemented in the late Qing dynasty.However, there still remain quite a few shortcomings in the dissertation, resulting from lack of historical files and the limited ability of the author. First, the impact of the late Qing's national debt extends quite largely in the fiscal system while the dissertation only touches the tax, expenditure and intergovernmental fiscal management systems. Second, owing to the difficulty of collecting data, the research method is mainly qualitative, without enough quantitative analysis. Third, a few particular data are not in line with each other, for the resources contradict with each other and the author cannot inverstigate for the time being.