Late Qing Sino-british Opium Tax Dispute Probe

After the legalization of the importation of opium in 11th.1858, China and Britain struggled for more than fifty years around tax and Li-kin problem. Exploration and research to this problem is advantageous to further understand financial tax revenue and diplomatic conditions in late Qing Dynasty.To study this question, we should understand first the main cause of the struggle about tax and Li-kin problem between China and Britain: from the internal aspect, from the end of the first Opium War to the last period of Qing Dynasty, the governmental finance is unable to make ends meet. After the legalization of the opium trade, indemnity, soldier's rations and pay, holding new political campaign, all these need large amount of money. In this way, every year, hundreds of thousands of tales of opium tax and Li-kin had become one of the most important economic lifeline that the government was lying on. From the British aspect, since the 19th century, the opium income had become more and more important in the financial revenue in Indian government that attached to England. Most part of these incomes were remitted back to England by the name of"domestic expenditure".The final result of the tax and Li-kin struggle between China and Britain needed to be performed in the form of treaty. So we concretely study the negotiation course from the Commercial Regulations Rehabilitating Treaty in 1858 to the Banning on Opium-Smoking and the Opium Trade Treaty in 1911, we could find how China and Britain fought for their own interests through tax and Li-kin struggle. The author divides this course into four periods: 1. from 1858-1870 is the period of the Commercial Regulations Rehabilitating Treaty and the Revising Treaty. 2. from1875-1887 is the period of Yantai Treaty, Special Regulations Attached to Yantai Treaty, Hong Kong Opium Trade Agreement and China and Portugal Treaty of Friendship and Commerce. 3. from 1901-1902 is the period of the Successive Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between China and Britain. 4. from 1906-1911 is the period of the Banning on Opium-Smoking and the Opium Trade treaty.Although the four periods have different features, they all performed the high agreement that both China and Britain were exploiting Chinese people's fortune and cruelly harming people's lives. One of the political results of the tax and Li-kin struggle is that China exchanged state sovereignty for economical sovereignty. To economics, it resulted in fighting for financial power between central and local government. To the military affairs of the late Qing Dynasty, opium tax and Li-kin were the important financial resources that the government suppressed the peasants'uprising and developed munitions industry. And at the same time, along with the foreign gunboats, Chinese diplomacy began its tottering steps in the association with big powers.