Early Qing Dynasty Import And Export Cargo Customs Clearance

The customs procedure of the imported /exported goods and their ships is factually a procedure of how the foreign trade policy being carried out0 The Qing government before the Opium War founded and developed a considerably complete customs procedure system under its foreign trade policy of strict constriction and passive defense. And the system was expected to function well both internally and externally to ensure a stable rule. ~ system mainly concerned the customs, Hangshang, the goods and tneir ships .The function of the customs was specialized and improved comparing with the counterpart organ before in that it made no direct decision on the goods and the foreign merchants any more. Hangshang got monopoly privilege from the government and accepted the responsibility of supervising the merchants and levying duties, thus can be attributed as semi- official, semi-merchant. The flourishing of the domestic commodity economy and the forming of an international market stimulated the foreign trade, the amount of the impo抰edlexported goods and their ships surpassed any time before. The goods and ships must accept the customs surveillance and then went into the specific procedure, including declaration, checking levying and customs clearance.The customs procedure system has got the following characteristics: feudal constriction, more tight and more decayed, defending both internally and externally. Yet when it guarded successfully for the domestic feudal economic structure, it doomed to fail to defense the intrusion of external forces.