Research On The Late Qing Dynasty's Tariff System And Foreign Trade Relations

The core of state-to-state relations is interests,and trade interests are an important part of national interests.Obtaining foreign trade benefits needs reduce international trade costs.As part of foreign trade costs,Tariffs have an important impact on the scale and structure of foreign trade.Historically,it happened all the time that tariff adjustments had triggered trade frictions and trade frictions had led to wars,such as the Franco-Dutch War,the American Revolutionary War,and the American Civil War.Therefore,the study of the relationship between tariff system and foreign trade has important reference significance for dealing with trade relations between countries,safeguarding national rights and interests,and making full use of foreign markets.There are many factors affecting foreign trade,and the tariff and tariff system have the most direct influence on foreign trade.After the first Opium War,the late Qing government lost its customs autonomy.Western countries obtained trade benefits through agreed tariffs.The agreed tariffs became the most direct means for Western powers to expand and occupy the Chinese market.In order to dump industrial products and plunder raw materials in the late Qing Dynasty,by setting a very low import tariff rate(5 %)and expanding the scope of tax exemption.the Western powers had made the impact of Western industrial products on China's natural economy dominated by cottage industries.The gradual process of China becoming a semi-colony was also the process of the disintegration of China's natural economy.China had been forced to integrate into the world economic system.The ordinary people's lives had become more and more impoverished under the double squeeze of domestic exploitation and foreign aggression compensation.At that time,the constants peasant resistances had severely shaken the foundation of feudal rule.The interests of the Western powers had also been consolidated through the changes in the tariff system.Under the premise of taking control of China'stariff initiative,the Western powers had gradually deprived the employment opportunities of China and poisoned China's development environment through commodity exports and capital exports.This caused increasing poverty among the people and the country's weakening.Studying the changes of the tariff system in the late Qing Dynasty and the trade between China and the West can have a deeper understanding of the political,economic,and international relations of the late Qing Dynasty.At the same time,it also has a clearer understanding of the importance of the customs system and foreign trade to a country.In this paper,the topic is the relationship between the customs system and foreign trade in the late Qing Dynasty,the main line is the four major wars between Chinese and foreign.This paper divided the late Qing Dynasty into five stages: the first Opium War,between the two Opium Wars,the second Opium War,the Sino-Japanese War and the eight-nation coalition invasion of China.In this paper,it has analyzed the changes of tariff system,the scale of foreign trade and the internal relation between tariff system and the scale of foreign trade,it also put forward the conclusion that the changes of tariff system and foreign trade was mutually causal.Unlike most works that used agreed tariffs to explain the loss of customs sovereignty in the late Qing Dynasty,this article had a quantitative analysis to prove the abnormal relationship between import tariff rates and the import amount,export tariff rate and export value.It showed that the Chinese customs under the foreign tax department had not collected all the customs duties,especially the import tariffs.It deeply revealed the nature of its service to Western capitalism,confirmed the objective facts of the loss of customs sovereignty,and also explained the colonial nature of customs duties in the late Qing dynasty.The article mainly used the comparative analysis method.The proportion of the main export commodities in the total export value in the five historicalstages of the late Qing Dynasty explained the changes in the foreign trade structure;The changes in the proportion of major imports in the current period at five historical stages indicated the changes in the competitiveness of different foreign commodities in the Chinese market;Comparison of import and export tariff rates and the scope of tax reduction and exemption in five historical stages explained the process of loss of tariff sovereignty under the agreement tariff;The comparison between the import tariff rates of India,Japan,the United Kingdom,and the United States in the same period showed the position of China's tariff levels in various countries in the world at that time and the reasons for the gradual decline in the proportion of silk and tea exports which had the Chinese traditional export advantages.Through these comparisons,the relationship between tariff rate and foreign trade volume,foreign trade volume and tariff revenue was comprehensively analyzed.In addition,in order to make the argument more persuasive,a large number of lists of charts are used.Through comparative analysis,the evolution process between the various variables was clearer over time,and the relationship between the variables was analyzed more thoroughly.When studying the relationship between variables,ignoring the influence of other variables to analyze the relationship between given variables,it is a static analysis.Static analysis does not consider the time dimension.At a certain point,tariffs must be related to the scale of foreign trade.As an important part of transaction costs,tariffs directly determine the cost of foreign trade and thus affect the scale of foreign trade,it is based on static analysis.However,adding the time dimension,the tariff level and the foreign trade volume were not strictly linear relations,this was because in the 72 years of the late Qing Dynasty,there were many factors affecting bilateral foreign trade,and tariffs were only part of these many factors.This article tried to find out these factors and explain them,so the conclusion of quantitative analysis wasreasonably explained.This process itself was also a dynamic analysis.Static analysis looks at the time point,and dynamic analysis looks at the trend.Combining static analysis and dynamic analysis,it could understand the short-term relationship between variables and could better grasp the long-term development trend between variables.This paper analyzed the influence of the changes of tariff system on foreign trade in various historical periods,and also expounded the effect of the changes of foreign trade scale and policy on the changes of tariff revenue and tariff policy.Foreign trade is two-way,and so is the impact of tariff policy.The changes in China's tariff policy affect China's foreign trade.And the adjustment of China's major trading partners 'tariff policy also has an impact on China's foreign trade.The article took the example of the major trading partners of the late Qing Dynasty,the United Kingdom,the United States,Japan,and the British colony India as an example to analyze the impact of the changes in the customs system of these countries on the foreign trade of the Qing Dynasty.Changes in the volume of foreign trade of Chinese silk and tea,the main export product,and cotton,the main import product,were closely related to the tariff policies of these trading partners.Finally,this paper gave some enlightenment on the relationship between tariff system and foreign trade,including: grasping tariff sovereignty and defending international interests;expanding openness and promoting international division of labor and cooperation;promoting popular communication and achieving smooth trade;adhering to reciprocal trade and abandoning the zero-sum game;maintaining trade balance and properly resolving differences;Optimizing the tax system structure and maintaining tax neutrality.The scope of foreign trade is very wide.This article closely tied with the center of foreign trade related to tariffs.For those nothing to do with tariffs,this article covered very little,for example tributary trade,coolie trade,preciousmetal trade and sailing trade in the late Qing Dynasty.These foreign trades also formed the cross-border flow of commodities or elements,and strictly speaking it also belonged to the category of foreign trade.Because customs did not impose tariffs on these trades,there was no discussion in this article.In addition,at different stages of capitalist development,the role of tariffs was also different.In the capitalist stage of free competition,commodity output and raw material input were the main means for capitalists to obtain benefits.At that time,tariffs played a prominent role.In the imperialist stage,commodity exports turned to capital exports,and the importance of tariffs was declining for capitalists.This was also an important reason for the rapid and slow transition of the customs system in the late Qing Dynasty.