Late Qing China Customs Put On Record At Their Functions Study

The Statistical Department was founded in October 1873. It was one of the most important thing in the history of the neoteric custom of China. The Statistical Department adopted the advanced statistic means of the Occident, and it changed the conventional and glancing statistic means. This offered a fire-new pattern for the neoteric custom of China. The effect of custom statistic in foreign trade and custom's manage were intensified, and the functions of the custom were changed too. This thesis mainly discussed the founding of the Statistical Department and its functions such as compiling the trade statistics and reports.The main content of the whole thesis includes three parts:I The establishment of the Statistical Department and its functionsThe old custom of China in that time had no such special organization of doing statistics, nor does it have scientific statistics for customs. Then, foreigners started to manage the customs of China, advanced management systems and statistic methods brought in from west countries. But, because of the starting of a new agency, other agencies all had their own statistic methods. Because, there were no national trade statistics, these brought much trouble to custom management. With the development of provincial customs and the increase of trade, it was urgent to establish a lead agency that could govern the trade statistics of every provincial agency. The Statistical Department came into being under this condition. This part also discussed many things such as assignment, promotion, rewards and punishment, asking for leave and changing of personnel. And, it simply introduced the main functions like making trade reports and annual statistics reports.II The report forms and the advantage of the Statistics ReportsThis part was based on a great deal of data in English and government's archives to analysis the advantage of the neoteric custom's statistic means. The advantage was systemic, all-around and intuitionistic.III The variety and effect of the Trade ReportsThis part was based on a great deal of data in English and some native newspapers such as <>, <>. It reviewed detailedly the trade reports' variety and the effect that the trade reports of the neoteric custom of China brought to Chinese economic.