A Study On The Salt Tax Smuggling Police During The Nanjing National Government(1931-1945)

Among the important tasks of the salt administration in the past,the dark fight between smuggling and smuggling had never been cut off.Salt tax was the bulk of government finances.Due to the complicated taxation and the monopoly of salt merchants,salt prices were high,and private salt were repeatedly banned.With the spread of private salt,official salt would be unsalable,which in turn would lead to a reduction in tax revenue.The financial support had always been the predicament faced by the modern Chinese government.Therefore,the reform of salt and abundant salt tax was one of the measures for the government to solve the financial difficulties.By strengthening private interests in order to control the circulation of private salt in the market,it had also become an important measure for the government to ensure salt revenue.In order to investigate private salt and abundant salt tax,since the end of the Qing Dynasty,successive rulers had organized a team responsible for self-interest to be stationed in various salt fields and distribution areas.The tax police were front-line personnel responsible for salt affairs and smuggling during the Nanjing National Government.Prior to the establishment of the tax police,the right to private affairs in salt business had not been specific and leadership has been constantly changing.Although there was a department of privacy,the administrative and auditing agencies also participated in private affairs.The effectiveness of mutual supervision between agencies had not been seen,but the disadvantages of each other were becoming more and more obvious and the effectiveness of self-defeating is unsatisfactory.However,the old private teams had a lot of problems,and there was no set of closely followed standards from the selection to the management of the private staff,leading to an endless stream of dereliction of duty and malpractice.After the tax police was established in 1931 and Song Ziwen was appointed as the Minister of Finance,in view of the porous nature of salt tax revenue due to the difficulties in military and government expenditures and the corruption of the smuggling team,the organization and management system of salt government was reorganized.From the promotion of selection,promotion of assessments,approval of salary scales and many other aspects,the standardized management processes have been formulated.These changes included the exclusive right to private rights,and the unification of private affairs is assigned to the auditing agencies for special supervision,in each salt area.The tax police force was organized to set up a police training station to recruit tax police officers,recruit military specialists to serve as instructors,and conduct professional training for both officers and policemen to go forward.The Tax Police Chief Mission under the Ministry of Finance waseven better equipped in terms of personnel,materials,weapons and equipment,and was also designated as an official combat force to go to the anti-Japanese battlefield,which was the ultimate trend toward regular militarization.Compared with the old private team,the unified formulation of tax police,armed independence,and the gradual improvement of professionalism have become important features.After the establishment of the tax police,both the constraints on the behavior of personnel and on the procedural rules were more institutionalized than those in the past.The enactment of regulations and rules governed the many problems that arised in the tax police's smuggling activities,in order to make it a rule in private practice and the entire private affairs more standard than before.Because of the effective entry of the editorial service,the prevalence of private salt was controlled,the sales of the official salt became more widespread,and the achievements of self-deprivation had made some progress.The number of seizure cases and salt taxes increased.However,there are some practical difficulties and problems in the practice of private practices.For example,some local agencies and railways and other transportation departments do not cooperate with the tax police's smuggling activities because of their respective interests.At the same time,the tax police themselves also have certain limitations,such as the shortage of military weaponry and the malpractice of smuggling.The complexity of these realities and their own flaws make it unnecessary to overestimate the self-criticism of tax police.In particular,the tax police's smuggling methods had excessive problems such as harsh accusations and violent disturbances.This had led to constant conflicts between police and civilians those were manifested mainly in problems of salt,fishing salt and nitrate due to incomplete reform of the salt government.The tax police can be said to be the combination of many problems in the salt industry and society at that time.They were the products of the salt reform,and they were also the executors of many salt reform policies.The reasons for the various police and civilian conflicts were not only improper misconduct of the tax police,but also because of the political and fiscal pressures of the Nationalist government,which made the salt government reforms with the main goal of increasing salt revenues limited.In general,the establishment and reorganization of tax police,especially the training and management of tax police,had brought new signs of long-standing corruption.However,due to the complexity of the current environment and the shortage of tax police,there were many problems in the tax police's smuggling activities.In the reform of salt administration aimed at increasing income,the salt tax rate had remained stubbornly high,so that official salt did not have much competitive advantage in front of private salt,and the method of relying on private interests to protect the sales of official salt had the limitation of palliation,became a hindrance to the modernization of salt governance.