A Research On The Reform Of Lu Jianying Huainan Salt Policy In Late Qing Dynasty

Although salt administration and salt law have always been the focus of academic research,the research on the reform of salt administration in Huainan by Lu Jianying is somewhat lacking.This paper tries to discuss the causes and effects of the salt administration reform in Huainan by three aspects.The first chapter focuses on discussing the decline of salt system in Huainan,starting from three aspects of salt merchants’ exhaustion,salt affairs’ corruption and salt classes’ reduction,and considers that Huainan salt administration can no longer be continued.This paper holds that the objective causes of salt merchants’ exhaustion are the shortage of profit,the cheap price of silver and the disaster,and the subjective causes are the consumption and waste of capital.On the one hand,it is reflected in the excessive price and exploitation of salt;on the other hand,it is reflected in the invasion of private salt.The reduction of salt class is because the official salt is unsalable,which makes it difficult for merchants to turn over and pay taxes.The second chapter discusses the content of the reform,the attitude of the people and the effect of the reform.Lu Jianying focused his reform efforts on reducing costs and facilitating sales by adopting the salt ticket law,which changed the monopoly position of salt merchants under the system of "Salt Of Gang Law".After the implementation of the reform,the price of salt in Huainan decreased,and the price of salt increased,so that the private salt trafficking was restrained to a certain extent,alleviating the financial crisis of the Qing government.The third chapter analyzes the defects of the salt ticket law in Huainan and the regression of "the salt of Gang law".Under the background of taiping heavenly kingdom movement,the salt ticket law in Huainan had many problems.The Qing government made various attempts to change this situation.By the time of Zeng Guofan’s reform of Huainan salt administration,the salt law was still called "the salt ticket law",but the essence returned to "the salt of Gang law".The conclusion is that the government should balance its relationship with businessmen.Avoiding killing the goose that lays the golden eggs is the key to financial adequacy.