Research On Financial Operation And Efficiency Of North China Prefectures And Counties In The Qing Dynasty

Finance is the taxation that the state’s financial organs levy on people and the expenditures used for the undertakings of the state.Finance plays a special role in the stability of daily life as well as the state’s economic life.In the early and middle period of the Qing Dynasty,under the centralized financial system,the financial management institutions and financial management systems of the Qing Dynasty remained unchanged,and the financial revenues and expenditures of prefectures and counties tended to be stable.These phenomena show that China was still under the natural economy of the traditional society.However,after the Opium War in 1840,China became more and more closely connected with the West and China began to move toward modernization.In the process of the transition from traditional society to modern society,finance gradually moved toward modernization.Not only did the financial management institutions and financial management systems change,but the structures of financial revenues and expenditures changed significantly.In terms of financial management institutions,in addition to the official financial management institutions,local self-government financial management institutions such as the finance bureaus and the finance management institutes emerged.In terms of financial systems,the old financial systems gradually collapsed in the late Qing Dynasty,and the new financial systems such as the public expense system and the budget and final accounts system emerged.Moreover,in terms of financial revenues,due to the failure of foreign wars and the suppression of people’s resistance,there were new financial revenues such as likin,customs duties and so on besides the old financial revenues in the Late Qing Dynasty.In addition,because of the increasingly serious corruption of officials,miscellaneous taxes including farm surtax increased,which aggravated the burden on the people.Finally,in regard to financial expenditures,in the late Qing Dynasty,the society was unstable;for the suppression of people’s resistance and foreign wars,the proportion of military expenditures in the structure of financial expenditures gradually increased.In the late Qing Dynasty,in the process of financial modernization,the expenditures of administrative funds,industrial and transportation funds also increased steadily.In addition to demonstrating the above aspects,the paper also compares the financial operation in the early and middle Qing Dynasty with that in the late Qing Dynasty as well as the financial operation of Zhili’s prefectures and counties with that of Guangdong’s prefectures and counties,and then demonstrates the historical changes and geographical differences of the financial operation of North China’s prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty and the influence of the distance from the political center on the financial operation.In the last chapter of the paper,the efficiency of the financial Operation in North China’s prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty is studied and discussed.The paper comprehensively uses and analyzes the local chronicles of the prefectures and counties in North China and the documents of the First Historical Archives of China such as the archives of the palace,and studies the financial operation and the efficiency of North China’s prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty from the macroscopic and microscopic perspectives.From the perspective of financial economics,the financial efficiency and impact of North China’s prefectures and counties are analyzed and evaluated on the basis of the specific historical facts of its financial system.In addition,through the taxes and corvee,likin,customs duties,miscellaneous taxes and the financial expenditures including salaries for officials,educational expenditure and social relief funds,the paper conducts a further study on North China’s financial expenditures in the Qing Dynasty.It studies the financial operation and the efficiency of North China’s prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty through the financial relationship between prefectures and counties and the central government as well as the interaction between prefectures and counties and the lower classes.Its historical experience and lessons can provide a historical reference for the scientific decision-making of social financial governance and the establishment of an effective mechanism for social financial governance.In addition,the paper also discusses the changes in the finance of North China’s prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty from five aspects of the evolution of financial management institutions,the evolution of financial management systems,the structures and changes of financial revenues,the structures and changes of financial expenditures and the evolution of financial operation mechanisms and financial reforms of North China’s prefectures and counties in the Qing Dynasty.For the evolution of financial management institutions,the financial management organizations of North China’s prefectures and counties in the early and middle Qing Dynasty such as the management institutions for money and cereal were all collections organs and organs for receiving and paying out money of the national unified finance.They did not have their own unique financial revenues and expenditures.They just collected taxes such as land taxes and poll taxes on behalf of the state and retained the administrative funds allocated by the state to the local governments.By the end of the Qing Dynasty,local self-government finance emerged.At that time,there were some local public property and funds or some temporarily raised money from some public welfare affairs.They generally belonged to the villages,clans,and associations.They were managed according to the customary revenues and expenditures or by the gentry who handled public welfare affairs,and the permanent financial institutions such as the finance bureaus and the finance management institutes emerged.The differences between the official finance and the local self-government finance and the division between national finance and local finance can be seen from the above.By the end of the Qing Dynasty,the factor of modernization appeared in finance.However,due to the objective environment at that time,there were many problems and drawbacks in the modernization of Finance in the late Qing Dynasty,but it is still worth studying.