HUO-HAO KUEI-KUNG: RATIONALIZING FISCAL REFORM AND ITS LIMITATIONS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHINA

This dissertation is a study of reform in the institutions of taxation and local public finance during the High Ch'ing.; Scholars have long taken the situation in China in the nineteenth century as their model for understanding the potential for "modernization" and innovation in the late imperial period. Through an examination of the huo-hao kuei-kung reforms of the Yung-cheng period (1723-1735) this study demonstrates the ability of the Ch'ing bureaucracy to undertake unprecedented reforms to eliminate "government by corruption" and modernize its fiscal administration.; The first part of this work examines the fiscal institutions inherited by the Manchu dynasty from the Ming and the funding crisis created by the failure of traditional Chinese tax administration to provide for provincial and local government expenses. Early Ch'ing attempts to improve tax collection and surveillance are described as well as detailed discussion of the informal funding system developed by officials to compensate for their lack of legal revenues.; The main body of this dissertation is concerned with the huo-hao kuei-kung reforms themselves. In brief, these comprised the legalization of a fixed percentage surcharge on the land and head tax which was retained in the provinces and used to provide officials at all levels of the local bureaucracy with substantial salaries (yang-lien) and public expense funds (kung-fei). A province by province account analyzes variations in methods of implementation, distribution of funds for salaries, services and construction projects, new accounting methods, as well as the philosophy underlying the reform movement. In the process, a detailed picture is provided of local fiscal administration and the role of landed, commercial and industrial resources in the functioning of local and provincial government.; Obstacles to the lasting success of the reforms are the subject of the remainder of the study. A case study of tax arrears and tax resistance in the Kiangnan region shows the inability of the government to eliminate problems in tax administration below the level of the bureaucracy. The dissertation ends with a survey of changes made in the reforms during the following two reigns and the influence of inflation and population growth on government finance. Thus, we find that although extra-ordinary rationalizing reforms were possible during the eighteenth century, both structural and ideological constraints destroyed their effectiveness and set the stage for the political and fiscal disintegration of the Chinese state on the eve of the Western incursion in the mid-nineteenth century.