The Research On Fu Yi&Li Jia System In Zhejiang Province During Ming And Qing Dynasty

Based on the "xiang-du" system of past dynasty and the investigation of land and population, Ming dynasty organized people into the rural zone of 110 households, by which, people were arranged alternately for the provision of tax and labor-service. The whole system plaid a basic role not only in the collecting of tax and service, but in the control of rural society. In mid Ming dynasty, when more and more tax and service were paid by silver, the structural form of finance was transformed from the physical entity and manpower to the single whip silver. As a result, the object of rural registration was transferred from household to the land, the 10 year alternate operation was gradually canceled. After calculated by silver, the revenue was combined and divided evenly onto the whole district land, and it's collection did not comply with the 10 year assessment of Yellow Register. Followed the above changing process, the original control of rural household system for people and land was gradually relaxed, finally, the inequality exist in the rural society was converted to the more inequality of tax burden. In this situation, from the beginning of mid-Ming dynasty, the local government of Zhejiang province began to reform, and then reconstruct the former rural control system. By the irregular measure land, the old rural zone of registriting household was transferred to the one of land. At the same time, the periodic assessment of tax and labor-service unite had the circulation of land rights recorded.Based on the above measures, the people were arranged into a new unite, of which composed fixed amounts of land, in order to collect and transport their own tax, so that, the rural zone, which was used to register and assess land, became to a geographical unite in its degree. However, when observe it's actual effect, we will find that, until the early Qing dynasty, people still could not be arranged by the fixed land unite ('jia') to pay their own tax. Most often the reason for this was that the impeded record of population was too false to achieve that goal of assessment. Once the default of tax payments occurred, the local government could not find the real slow payer. On the other hand, according to the role of fixed land, when people,who usually lived in the geographically distant areas, and unknown each other, were arranged into the unite ('jia') to pay the tax, the lack of actual social relationship made them nearly impossible to complete the collection of tax as a whole. Consequently, in the late period of Kang xi, there were some new attempts about how to record the population effectively and arrange them into a more geographical unite occurred in the daily registration and assessment. In the YongZheng era, utilizing the record of population and village in the security unites, the local government of Zhejiang carried out a reform called "shun-zhuang fa". Under this rule, every county government adjusted their former basic geographical unite("tu"),and mostly in this geographical region, to make the control of the villages come true in a more micro scale. Hereafter, the information such as land,population,grain tax,the amount and name of village, were recorded into this system, which laid the foundation on basic control system of local government.