Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China doc

Twitchett x Acknowledgements xii A note on weights and measures xiv The Ming emperors xv Map of Ming provinces xvi 1 Fiscal organization and general practices 1 I Governmental organizati

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN

CHINESE HISTORY, LITERATURE AND INSTITUTIONS

General Editors

PATRICK HANAN & DENIS TWITCHETT

Taxation and Governmental Finance

in Sixteenth-Century Ming China

GLEN DUDBRIDGE: The HsUyu Chi: A Study of Antecedents

to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel

STEPHEN FITZGERALD: China and the Overseas Chinese: A Study

of Peking's Changing Policy, 1949-1970

CHRISTOPHER HOWE: Wage Patterns and Wage Policy in

Modern China, 1919-1972DIANA LARY: Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique

in Chinese Politics, 1925-1937

Professor of History, State University College,

New Paltz, New York

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521104876

© Cambridge University Press 1974 This publication is in copyright Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without the written

permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1974 This digitally printed version 2009

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 73-79311

ISBN 978-0-521-20283-1 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-10487-6 paperback

List of figures page vii List of tables viii Preface by D C Twitchett x Acknowledgements xii

A note on weights and measures xiv The Ming emperors xv Map of Ming provinces xvi

1 Fiscal organization and general practices 1

I Governmental organization 4

II Rural organization and basis of taxation 32

2 The heritage of the sixteenth century and major fiscal problems 44

I The level of state income and modifying factors 46

II Land and population data 60III The maintenance of the army 63

IV The monetary problem 69

3 The land tax—(i) Tax structure 82

I The complexities of the tax structure 84

II Regional variations 98III The service levy and its partial absorption by the

land taxes 109

IV Further modifications of the tax structure 134

4 The land tax—(ii) Tax administration 141

I Tax administration by the local government 142

II Factors affecting the general administration 154

[v]

III The level of collection page 163

IV Disbursement of tax income 175

V A final analysis of the land tax system 182

5 The salt monopoly 189

I The mechanism of the salt monopoly 189

II Governmental control and manipulation 195III Administrative cycles in the sixteenth century 205

IV Revenues, salt prices, and their effects on consumers 212

V Responsibility for the failure 221

6 Miscellaneous incomes 225

I Revenues from commerce and industry 226

II Administrative income 244III Cash income from commutation of services and supplies 252

IV Non-cash income 257

V Summary of miscellaneous incomes 262

7 Financial management 266

I The ministry of revenue in the sixteenth century 268

II Inter-provincial and inter-ministerial administration 277III Appropriation of military supplies 284

IV Fiscal retrenchment under Chang Chii-cheng 294

8 Concluding observations 306

I The risks of over-simplification 307

II Ming financial administration and its place in Chinese

history 313List of abbreviations 324

Appendixes

A Landed properties not subject to regular taxation 325

B Customary fees and extra services collected by the

magistrate of Shun-an county, Chekiang, 1561 327

C Barter rates and excise tax on each yin of salt, 1535 328

D Partial returns of the land survey of 1581, as recorded

in Ming Shih-lu 329

Notes to the text 331 Bibliography 361 Glossary index 377 General index 383

1 Ming provinces page xvi

2 The Grand Canal (Ts'ao Ho), ca 1610 54

3 Land tax structure in the late sixteenth century 83

4 Diagram showing distribution of tax revenue 182

5 Northern frontier army posts in the late sixteenth century 289

[vii]

1 Financial burden to the taxpayer of tax grain delivered or

commuted, for four prefectures in South Chihli, ca 1585 page 101

2 Service levy collection in Chang-chou prefecture, Fukien, 1572 126

3 Service levy distribution in six counties in the southeastern

provinces, 1572-1621 127

4 Service levy distribution in three counties in north

China, 1608-20 130

5 Quotas of fish duty and local business tax of Yung-chou

prefecture, Hukwang province, 1571 140

6 Provincial tax quotas in piculs of grain based on the

tabulation of 1578 164

7 Estimated land tax rates of Hang-chou prefecture in 1572 167

8 Estimated land tax rates of Fen-chou prefecture in 1608 169

9 Estimated land tax collection and disbursement in piculs of

13 Cash income from salt monopoly, as of 1578 214

14 Estimated annual income of the salt monopoly, ca 1575-1600 216

15 Miscellaneous incomes, ca 1570-90 227

16 Collection quotas of eight inland customs stations,

1599-1625 231

17 Collection offish duty, 1578 245

18 Estimated annual proceeds from miscellaneous incomes,

ca 1570-90 263

19 Reported annual revenues from miscellaneous sources of

income of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, ca 1570-90 265

20 Reported disbursement of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, 1551-7 270

[ viii ]

List of tables ix

21 Reported revenues of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, 1567-92 page 270

22 Reported deficits of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury, 1583-90 270

23 Estimated basic revenues of the T'ai-ts'ang Treasury,

When some twenty years ago I finished the first draft of my own study ofT'ang financial administration, I began to undertake the preliminaryreading for a similar study of the Ming period, feeling that it would bepossible to pose and answer many questions which cannot even beformulated in detail for earlier periods because of the lack of evidence.

I soon found myself frustrated by the complexity of the task The sheerbulk of source material which has to be covered is daunting in itself, andsince then far more of the Ming historical literature has been madegenerally accessible But in addition the subject matter proved to beinfinitely more complicated than in the case of the T'ang The main problemwas that whereas the earlier dynasties had systematically attempted toimpose a uniform and universal set of comparatively simple institutionsthroughout their empire, and incorporated these in a tightly draftedsystem of centrally codified administrative law, the gradual abandonment

of this concept of uniform government from the late eighth century wards, and the decentralization of control over detailed policy-making andenforcement, had led by Ming times to a situation of bewildering localdiversity It had reached the point where in some fields it was no longerpossible to make simple generalizations about the empire as a whole.Eventually I was side-tracked into other things and abandoned myplans

on-Since Professor Huang and I first met in the early 1960s and begandiscussing the subject matter of this book, it became clear that far fromexaggerating the difficulties of the subject, I had underestimated them.The comparatively straight-forward and clear-cut picture given in the'Shih-huo chih' sections of the Ming dynastic history, from which I hadgained my own first overall impressions of the subject was graduallytransformed into an infinitely complex and ill-defined mosaic of oftenapparently unrelated detail

Although many detailed articles and a few important large-scale studies

of individual aspects of Ming finance have appeared during the pastdecades in China and Japan, Professor Huang's is the first attempt in any

[ x ]

Preface xilanguage to give a general account of financial policy, placing this mass ofnewly discovered detail in a broader historical perspective.

The reader may sometimes find that his account of certain aspects ofpolicy contains apparent anomalies and even internal contradictions This,however, reflects the fact that in many fields government policy and local

practice did contain glaring inconsistencies and anomalies Ming

govern-ment, notably effective as it was in many respects, was not a tidy and form system, particularly at the local level The detail in this volume,overwhelming as it may sometimes appear, is also far from complete But

uni-at the present primitive stage of our knowledge of the subject, and of thedetailed history of the period, it is important to present the evidence in full,rather than rushing to erect facile generalizations The study aims topresent a general framework to which further detail may be related, not toprovide yet another grand historical pattern

It is to be hoped that not only will it stimulate further detailed studies

of financial history, but that it will also provide reliable guidelines on theseaspects of government policy for the growing numbers of young historiansworking on late Imperial China In particular it should help scholarsworking in the important area of local history in Ming and Ch'ing times

to interpret the perplexing masses of statistical and administrative detailincluded in local gazetteers and elsewhere

DENIS TWITCHETT

1973

It is my sincere hope that the publication of this book will bring somemeasure of satisfaction to those who, during the past several years when itwas under preparation, generously helped me in many different ways:provided inspiration and guidance, supplied bibliographical materials,answered specific questions, read parts of the manuscript and offeredvaluable criticisms Any errors which remain are of course my own.

My thanks are due to Dr William Theodore de Bary, Vice-President andProvost, Columbia University; Professor Wing-tsit Chan, ChathamCollege; Professor Albert Feuerwerker, University of Michigan; ProfessorPing-ti Ho, University of Chicago; Professor James T C Liu of PrincetonUniversity; Professor John Meskill, Barnard College; Professor F W.Mote, Princeton University; Dr Joseph Needham, Master of Gonville andCaius College, Cambridge; Professor Morris Rossabi, Case WesternReserve University; Reverend Henry Serruys; Mr Wei-ying Wan of theEast Asian Library at the University of Michigan; Dr Eugene Wu of theHarvard-Yenching Library and his staff, among them in particular

Mr George C Potter; Dr K T Wu, Division of Orientalia of the Library

of Congress; and Professors Lien-sheng Yang and Ying-shih Yu, both ofHarvard University

Professor John K Fairbank and his committee at the East AsianResearch Center, Harvard University, gave me a fellowship grant in 1970when I was completing the first draft In particular I wish to express mygratitude to Professor Fairbank for his kindness in advising me how todeal with the subject matter In his opinion, a study in depth of a specifictopic may, by extension, be related to the study of other topics within thesame area, without the necessity of covering these in similar detail.Originally I had intended to write on the fiscal administration of the entireMing period, but the material had a constant tendency to get out ofcontrol, and on Professor Fairbank's advice I eventually arrived at thepresent format Having benefited from his insight, I record this here withappreciation, in the hope that others may continue to benefit from it.For a great many years Professor and Mrs Chao-ying Fang have been

[xii]

Acknowledgements xiiigiving valuable guidance to scholars in the field of Chinese studies Havingthe good fortune to work closely with them in 1967 on the Ming Biographi-cal Project, I took every advantage of their immense knowledge of theMing dynasty and their willingness to share it with others Dr L CarringtonGoodrich, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and editor of theMing Biographical Project, has at my request read practically every word

I have written for several years His criticism is always offered in a tone ofaffection Charles O Hucker, Professor of History at the University ofMichigan, is a special friend I made his acquaintance by correspondencemore than twelve years ago when I was a Ph.D candidate, and have neverceased to be grateful for his continuing help since then Professor Denis

C Twitchett, Cambridge University, has helped me to prepare the finaldraft for publication and graced the present volume with a preface Myindebtedness to them all is great

The basic research for this book was done several years ago with freetime obtained through fellowship grants An area study fellowship jointlysponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and theSocial Science Research Council (SSRC) covered one term in 1966 Summerresearch grants were made available by the Center for Chinese Studies atthe University of Michigan and the Research Foundation of the StateUniversity of New York My grateful acknowledgement to them, however,should not be construed to mean that my sponsors endorse the opinions

in this book

I am grateful for the assistance rendered by Miss Hilary Beattie,Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge She has made a signifi-cant contribution to improving the style of my writing; I alone am respon-sible for the inadequacies inherent in the original draft Although I haveretained American spelling in this volume, I hope that the text will beequally acceptable to readers on both sides of the Atlantic

Closing this acknowledgement, I would like to extend my deepestappreciation to my wife, Gayle, who for seven years has shared my hopesand endured the hardships that I brought to the family through myinterest in historical research Her enthusiasm is always a source of mystrength Only after completing this book did I get in touch with

Dr Ch'iian Han-sheng Several articles recently published by him in the

Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies will be of invaluable interest

to readers of this volume While I am most grateful to Dr Chiian forsending me off-prints, unfortunately it has not been possible to includethe titles in the present bibliography

Mulberry Close, Cambridge R H

12 July 1973

The Ming tried to standardize weights and measures Though metal scales,weights, and measuring receptacles were issued by the ministry of works

no examples have yet been discovered So far the closest thing found is anivory scale made in the Chia-ching period, which, being an engineeringscale, differs from the fiscal standard

The following equivalents are based on specialist studies of Ming papercurrency and copper coins and weights and measures, and are known to berelatively accurate, although their absolute accuracy cannot be guaranteed

1 Measurement of Length The cKih, or 'foot', is approximately 12.3

inches

2 Weights The chin, or 'catty', is approximately 1.3 pounds It is divided into 16 Hang, or 'taels', each of which of which is about 1.3 ounces.

3 Capacity The dry measuring unit is generally known as the shih,

though some scholars, such as Rieger, Sun and de Francis, prefer to

romanize the term as tan or dan Here translated as 'picul', it equals about

107.4 liters

Except for the division of the catty into 16 taels, the fiscal units alwaysfollowed the decimal system Ming accounts do not use a decimal pointbut enumerate the fractions of the basic fiscal units by name Each fraction

of a basic unit has its own special term For example, a millionth of a tael

is called a wei, and a trillionth a mo All these cumbersome figures have

been converted into the basic units and whenever 'decimal points' and'decimal digits' are mentioned they refer to these converted figures.'Billion' is used to mean one thousand million, and 'trillion' (as in thepreceding paragraph) one million million

Numbers in the text are, in general, spelled out up to 100, but figuresare used for percentages, units of currency and series of numbers

[xiv]

The Ming emperors

1620 (one month) 1620-7

1627-44

Era name Hung-wu Chien-wen Yung-lo Hung-hsi Hsiian-te Cheng-t'ung Ching-t'ai T'ien-shun Ch'eng-hua Hung-chih Cheng-te Chia-ching Lung-ch'ing Wan-li T'ai-ch'ang T'ien-ch'i Ch'ung-chen

mm mx

&m mm

[XV]

/ NORTH

T'ai-yuan « CHIHLI

SOUTH / CHIHLI /"Nanking

/ KWEICHOW }V~* y ~ \

Kun-ming / /- N ^-—^"'v/'

<~l~P KWANGTUNG \

Chinese frontier provincial boundaries -n-ruxn Great Wall of China

FIG 1 Ming provinces.

[xvi ]

1 Fiscal organization and general practices

Most governmental institutions under the Ming preserved certain featuresreminiscent of previous dynasties, the T'ang, Sung and Yuan, yet at thesame time developed distinctive characteristics of their own The dynasty'sfiscal administration was no exception Such Ming practices as the employ-ment of supervising secretaries as fiscal auditors, the organization of sixministries, the circulation of government notes, the utilization of the GrandCanal as a trunkline connecting the north and the south, the trading of teafor horses with nomadic groups, and bartering salt under governmentalmonopoly for military supplies in the frontier region, were clearly copiedfrom earlier dynasties On the other hand the Ming administration sawmore concentration of power in the emperor's hand, smaller administrativeoverheads, a greater reliance on agrarian sources for state income and

a stricter control over maritime trade which virtually committed China to

a state of limited seclusion

The imitation of the past was not totally unjustified In fiscal matters alldynasties in post-T'ang China faced the same fundamental problems Tosecure the durability of the empire, imperial control over the nation'sfinancial resources had to be firm and thorough Yet the empire's vastnessand its regional diversities worked against a policy of centralization, asdid pre-modern methods of transport and communications The gap be-tween aims and the limited available means of achieving them was noteasily bridged In these circumstances it was not surprising that all dynastiestended to draw on past experience

The particular style of Ming administration, geared to the concept of

a village commodity economy, could be labelled conservative, and couldindeed in the light of economic development in China in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, be regarded as anachronistic This conservativeoutlook was, however, the inevitable outcome of political centralization

in a vast country under pre-modern conditions

It must be noted that economic development in China before the Mingshowed considerable regional imbalance It was based on a few handicraftindustries and on foreign trade, which affected only certain geographical

I [1] HTF

areas As the Ming administrators saw it, to promote those advancedsectors of the economy would only widen the economic imbalance, which

in turn would threaten the empire's political unity It was far more desirable

to keep all the provinces on the same footing, albeit at the level of the morebackward sectors of the economy The Ming fiscal policies were largelydetermined by this attitude

Such an approach seems absurd to the modern historian, in that itsacrificed China's long-term economic growth for the sake of a short-termpolitical aim Ming administrators, however, did not have the foresight

to visualize the contributions that industry and commerce could ultimatelyrender to a modern state For the small states of Western Europe govern-ment promotion of industry and commerce could facilitate a swift capitalisttransformation of their economies In China, which was vastly larger, itcould not have effected such rapid and far-reaching change Moreover,unlike the emerging national states in Europe or even the rival feudatories

in Japan, Ming China never placed itself on a competitive basis with itsneighbors; it could therefore afford the price of backwardness Withintheir own horizons Ming administrators saw no compelling reason torevise their policies On the contrary, there was good reason for them toproceed on their traditional course, in perfect accord with the traditionalConfucian doctrine that agriculture alone provided the economic foun-dation of the state

The tragedy was that despite their striving for simplicity and uniformity,and their willingness to base their policies on the minimum level ofeconomic activity, the Ming administrators never fully accomplished theirpurpose China's internal diversity simply defied any uniform controlfrom the center, especially in the area of fiscal administration In agri-culture, there were wide regional variations in climate, soil, topography,and labor supply, not to mention the enormous variety of crops, differingmarket conditions, multiple kinds of land tenure and leases, and thediverse standards of units and measurements across the country Legis-lating from the capital, the Ming court could not take all these factorsinto account Without attempting to reconcile these differences it was tofind that to proclaim a uniform land tax law was one thing and to have itapplied in every corner of the empire was another

It was generally assumed by many late Ming writers that in the earlyyears of the dynasty the empire's fiscal programs had been carried out infull, and that only toward the end did the administration become corrupt.The assumption is only partially true There is sufficient evidence that even

at the very beginning government regulations were compromised, imperialdecrees discounted, and official data to some extent tampered with Thiswas not necessarily the act of dishonest officials In the early stages it wasdue largely to the fact that fiscal schemes conceived from above failed to

Fiscal organization and general practices 3correspond to conditions at lower levels, or else the desired degree ofcentralization exceeded the technical capacities of contemporary govern-ment As a result, imperial laws had to be adjusted Local manipulationsand revisions were necessary Indeed, in the dynasty's later years deviationfrom prescribed procedures became a general practice; by then widespreadabuses were only to be expected.

This lack of exactitude in the fiscal machinery had numerous sequences An outstanding example was that Ming officials customarilycompensated for shortages in one item of state revenue with funds andmaterials derived from another What we regard as the salt gabelle inMing times actually contained portions of the land taxes After the middleperiod the land taxes also became inseparable, if not totally indistinguish-able, from several other sources of income Government income andexpenditures in Ming times can be compared to water channels in a swamp,

con-in that they had constant tendency to diverge and re-converge

These complexities do not facilitate our task Most of the Ming tions do not lend themselves to precise classification or definition Theywere in flux, their changes being determined in the main by externalenvironment rather than internal development They owed more to themanipulations and compromises of the administrators than to any logicalgrowth of their own In this book, the greatest difficulty has been to confinethe material under topical headings without creating a misleading im-pression that a jigsaw puzzle is a checkerboard We have therefore, chosen

institu-to rely more heavily on description rather than on tabulation of data Inplaces the logical sequence of presentation is slightly modified to suit thematerial Cross references in parentheses mark topics treated in differentchapters or different sections of the same chapter While this is not theideal way of writing a financial history, we hope that it will permit a morerealistic view of the subject

Similarly a mixed approach is adopted in the present chapter It may benoted that throughout the Ming period, except for the reign of Hung-wu,reorganization of officialdom was seldom attempted In its span of 276years the dynasty saw China's commodity economy transformed into

a money economy, taxes in kind and statutory labor largely replaced bysilver payments, and a conscripted army gradually replaced by a recruitedarmy; yet, surprisingly, few fiscal offices were created in the middle period

of the dynasty and still fewer offices abolished This was possible becausethe functions of government agencies were not always fixed by stature, butwere rather based on customary usage Administrative procedures more-over were rarely superseded by new laws Old and new statutes alike weresimultaneously preserved The obsolete sections were simply disregardedand the surviving clauses selectively applied to individual cases according

to the circumstances All offices in fact went through some kind of

evolu-tionary process, their functions being readjusted from time to time, times so smoothly that the change went unnoticed even by contemporaries.This introductory chapter on the fiscal structure must therefore deal withits form as well as its dynamics.

some-I GOVERNMENTAL ORGANsome-IZATsome-ION

The nature of the Ming monarchy and its role in public finance

Under the Ming system there was no central authority administering theempire's finance other than the emperor himself The premiership wasabolished in 1380 and never revived The grand-secretaries limited theirfunctions to rescript-drafting Although they were consulted by theemperor and did participate in decision-making, they were never officiallyaccorded any power The minister of revenue supervised routine fiscalmatters, yet he could never act without prior imperial approval Theemperor, truly an autocrat, received memorials from a large number ofcensors, supervising secretaries and ministerial officials, down to divisionheads and section chiefs Suggestions and criticisms on fiscal matters could

be initiated by practically anyone, regardless of his area of specializationand current assignment The emperor was also approached by scores ofimperial commissioners, governors and governors-general Their proposalsand requests could be handed to the ministry of revenue for comment, orelse, when important issues were involved, referred to the Nine Ministers'Conference for deliberation.1 But the final decision was always theemperor's own

In practice, in the course of the dynasty, there were a few persons whomanaged to exercise the power reserved to the throne, notably Grand-Secretary Chang Chii-cheng during the reign of Wan-li, and 'eunuchdictators' Wang Chen, Liu Chin, and Wei Chung-hsien in the Cheng-t'ung,Cheng-te, and T'ien-ch'i eras respectively Yet, although Chang gained hispowerful position through informal arrangements with his fellow officialsbehind the back of a youthful emperor, even then the formality of seekingthe sovereign's approval on major and minor matters was not disregarded(7, m) The eunuchs, with the indulgence of the emperors, violated virtuallyevery fundamental law of the empire All of them were later condemned,

or charged with conspiracy It is noteworthy that none of the three eunuchsdied a natural death and Chang Chii-cheng was posthumously disgraced.Outwardly the imperial power could not be delegated and never was

In general, official and office titles in this work follow Charles O Hucker,' Governmental

Organization of the Ming Dynasty', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 21 (Dec 1958),

pp 1-66 This article is reprinted in Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese

History, ed J L Bishop (Cambridge, Mass 1968) But the Ming emperors are referred

to throughout by their reign titles rather than temple names.

1,1 Governmental organization 5Several emperors ascended the throne when they were minors but noformal regency was ever established for them.

In the realm of fiscal administration some of the matters brought to theemperor's attention could be exceedingly trivial Even minor issues - such

as the relocation of a particular business tax station, or from which ductive area a particular county was to draw its salt supply, or how manyrolls of silk were to be awarded to a foreign tributary mission, - were allsubmitted to the emperor for final approval The sovereign was expected toattend to all administrative details, the precedent having been established

pro-by the dynastic founder In one eight-day period Hung-wu is said to havereceived 1,660 memorials in which 3,391 issues were discussed.2

Apparently the founding emperor felt that this personal control overwhat seemed to be insignificant matters was justified In the early years ofthe dynasty taxes were collected almost exclusively in kind The govern-ment had to avoid the accumulation of tax proceeds at the intermediatelevel, in order to avoid over-burdening the service facilities, the weakestsection of the whole fiscal establishment The solution was for eachrevenue-gathering agency to make delivery directly to a dispensing agency;items of income and expenditure were matched up so as to cancel eachother out Under this system bulk deliveries were few, but there werenumerous modest-sized consignments of materials and goods moving fromone end of the empire to another The disposal of each of those small con-signments, therefore, could not be treated lightly, for each was a thread inthe fiscal fabric If control over any one of them were relaxed it wouldpermit precedents to be established that might ruin the whole system Inlater years, owing to deviations from fiscal regulations at the local level,imperial control over the nation's financial affairs slackened considerably,but the custom of the emperor attending to minor matters persisted Theassertion of the imperial prerogative was now limited, however, to thoseselected cases which were actually brought to the court's attention

It seems outwardly strange that, even though after Hung-wu fewemperors effectively exercised their legislative power, and no sweepingfiscal reforms were ever proclaimed by them, yet toward the end of thedynasty, taxes in kind and labor services were largely commuted to silverpayments, the fiscal responsibilities of the military bureaucracy werereduced to a minimum, the ranks of the army were filled with recruitedsoldiers and army posts were paid from the capital It may be added thateven the use of silver in private business transactions, which came to beuniversally accepted in the later period, had been forbidden in earlieryears The answer to the puzzle is that even though ostensibly the succeed-ing emperors had in general refrained from revising the dynastic founder'sfiscal legislation, they did authorize occasional exceptions to the establishedprocedures Such changes followed a pattern They usually started with

a petition from a lower-echelon bureaucrat, the requested exceptionapplying to his office alone The emperor's approval, most likely grantedalong with other routine matters, then established the required precedent.Sooner or later similar petitions were submitted and approved until theoriginal exception had become a common practice Thereafter no formalpetition was required; either an imperial decree directed the remainingoffices to follow suit or the latter proceeded to carry out the reform withoutexplicit approval In this way a major reform might take several decades

to accomplish The chiin-yao method (3, m), for instance, took almost

fifty years from the time of its earliest experimental use to become generallyaccepted The Single Whip Reform took even longer, and even at thecollapse of the dynasty it had not attained a final, definite form

The removal of earlier restrictions, especially when the restrictions couldnot be effectively enforced, took much less time An example is the relaxa-tion of the use of silver as a common medium of exchange It started with

a petition from a prefect in Kwangsi whose original proposal applied only

to the legalization of copper cash in private trade (2, in) Apparently, theprecedent-establishing effect quickly caught up with the approval of thispetition and soon the earlier decree forbidding the use of silver bullion,too, became defunct.3 This exercise of legislative power by the Mingemperors sometimes had a very similar effect to the judiciary decisionshanded down by a supreme court in the Western world

Another paradox in the administration was that in spite of their cratic power many later Ming emperors found themselves in a defensive

auto-position vis-a-vis the bureaucrats who raised questions concerning their

spending habits There were several reasons for this One was that in theeyes of the Confucian bureaucrats the private life of the emperor was

a matter of public concern and subject to discussion if not criticism.Another was that since the early sixteenth century few Ming emperors,with the notable exception of the last emperor, Ch'ung-chen, had shownany genuine interest in state affairs Some of the emperors were either tooindolent to care or too incompetent to make a decision Thus disagree-ments between the monarchs and their courtiers on strictly public matterswere few Controversies were usually related to the emperor's private life.Thirdly, according to the theory that all under the heaven belonged to theemperor, the Ming system made no clear-cut distinction between stateincome and the emperor's personal income, and between governmentalexpenditure and the emperor's expenditure The sovereign's personalspending was therefore closely related to public finance Frequently theissues raised by the courtiers concerned exorbitant palace expenses,excessive procurement programs, the misconduct of eunuch commissioners

in charge of those programs, and land grants to the emperor's favoritesand relatives But since the final authority rested in the sovereign, bureau-

1,1 Governmental organization 7cratic action was limited to remonstrance, resignation, attempted impeach-ment of those who carried out the emperor's orders, and exaggeration ofportents as heaven-sent warnings to the wayward emperor When all thesefailed there was no recourse left Furthermore, in carrying out these stepsthe bureaucrats always risked reprisals from the throne.

With the exception of the dynastic founder, who was self-taught, allMing emperors received a Confucian education.4 Thus indoctrinated, theywere expected to follow the frugal standards of their forefathers, to respectpublic opinion, and to remain above malice and self-indulgence Theactual effect of these moral precepts is difficult to gauge In view of theunattractive personalities of most Ming emperors it is easy for us toconclude that the so-called Confucian morality was no more than a fiction.Yet considering the unlimited power at the disposal of the crown, onemight wonder what would have happened had this power never beensubject to any moral restraint at all

Grand-secretaries, outwardly powerless, could also exercise considerablepositive influence from behind the throne It is true that newly-appointedgrand-secretaries serving mature sovereigns were in general more inclined

to be subservient But by tradition the grand-secretaryship under theMing was a long-term appointment In normal circumstances grand-secretaries were expected to hold office for life Many of them did so andserved under several emperors Because of their prestige and the publictrust which they enjoyed, they could act as intermediaries between theemperor and the ministerial officials, thus providing a stabilizing force inthe court There were numerous examples of such senior statesmen in theearly Ming period Even in the later years towering figures of this kind were

by no means lacking Chang Chii-cheng's case may be somewhat toocomplicated to accord exactly with this description But Yang T'ing-ho(in office, 1507-24), who introduced a drastic austerity program in thecourt upon the accession of Chia-ching, and Yeh Hsiang-kao (in office,1607-24), who masterminded the transfer of some 7 million taels of silverfrom the emperor's personal treasury to replenish the empty state coffers

in the T'ai-ch'ang-T'ein-ch'i periods, show well how grand-secretariescould be instrumental in carrying out popular policies and restoring publicconfidence.5

Nevertheless, none of the deterrents to unlimited exercise of imperialpower - including Confucian morality, reverence for the standards set up

by imperial ancestors, public opinion, or the influence of senior statesmen

- had the effect of law If an emperor chose to defy all these and wasdetermined to exercise his absolute power to the full, there was no way ofchecking him This situation actually prevailed during the reign of Wan-li

In the 1590s the emperor dispatched eunuchs to collect business taxes inthe provinces, superseding the civil officials (7, m) Many courtiers, after

remonstrating to no avail, handed in their resignations The emperor was

so annoyed by the opposition that he ignored their resignation requests.Some officials subsequently left without authorization and the emperor, inturn, kept the vacant offices unfilled The sequence of events precipitatedwhat amounted to a 'constitutional crisis', and the deadlock remainedunbroken until the sovereign's death in 1620

Palace expenditures and the eunuchs

The complexities of palace expenditures in Ming times can best be stood by first visualizing the layout of the Ming palace complex

under-The center core of the palace was the Forbidden City, a walled and guarded compound of about a quarter of a square mile of elegant archi-tecture, consisting of the residential quarters of the imperial household,many ceremonial halls, studies, libraries and the office of the grand-secretaries Encircling the Forbidden City was the Imperial City, alsowalled and restricted, which was in turn surrounded on all sides by the city

well-of Peking proper Ministerial well-offices were located outside the walls well-of theImperial City Inside the wall, encompassing an area of three square miles,was a huge maintenance area.6

Installations inside the Imperial City included treasuries, receiving andstorage depots, material processing and manufacturing plants such as

a bakery, confectionery, dispensary, distillery, leatherworks, tailor's shop,silversmith's shop, printing shop, dyeing shop, etc There was even anarsenal which manufactured firearms and gunpowder Most of thosesupply agencies were manned by eunuchs, some of them exclusively, otherswith a handful of civil service officials nominally in charge Next tothem were other eunuch agencies which, drawing supplies from the afore-mentioned warehouses and shops, provided household services in theForbidden City Offices of the civil service physically located inside theImperial City included the supervising secretariat, which had the function

of inspecting the supply depots, and the court of imperial entertainments,which was nominally subordinate to the ministry of rites

The total number of these offices and service and supply installations wasover fifty Apart from the eunuchs, artisans performing statute labor andtheir hired assistants constituted a major portion of the palace population,which, even in the later fifteenth century, exceeded 100,000 Because thesalaries of Ming officials were only nominal (2, i), the amount of cashpaid to the functionaries by the ministry of revenue remained fairly smalland insignificant, but it appears from the accounts that prodigious quanti-ties of grain were rationed to the palace personnel, including soldiers called

to perform constructional labor in the compound

While the service agencies were primarily concerned with serving the

1,1 Governmental organization 9imperial household, their operation was not totally separated fromgovernmental functions The enormous quantity of silk fabrics processed

in the complex was issued mainly to clothe the palace women, but was alsoawarded to foreign tributary missions and the civil and military bureau-cracy, sometimes in large quantities The imperial smithy produced silverutensils for the Forbidden City, but also cast metal frames for importantstate papers The court of imperial entertainments provided delicacies forthe emperor's table, but also prepared state banquets, served dinner toofficials on special duty, rationed meat and wine to them, and providedfood for sacrifical services As for manufacturing military ordnance, there

is no need to stress that it was a matter of state function rather than palaceconsumption All these shops and depots must have used up considerablequantities of materials for their own plant maintenance.7

In brief, the Ming organization followed the familial principle so closelythat the palace and government were virtually one and indivisible Theunderlying principle was that the emperor shared his material goods withhis bureaucrats It also involved something akin to the inseparability ofchurch and state One of the primary functions of the Ming monarchy was

to perform endless court rituals in an ostentatious setting The construction

of palace buildings and the numerous ceremonies both in and outside thepalace, including imperial accessions, weddings, and many other suchactivities, always incurred immense costs It was difficult to ascertainwhich was the emperor's personal spending and which was state expenditure

No ministry of imperial household was ever established; no accounts ofthe net expenses of the Forbidden City were ever prepared or published.Figures referred to as palace expenses came from two sources One was thedelivery reports and procurement orders of the several ministries whichsubmitted materials and goods to the palace compound; the other was thepapers of the supervising secretaries who audited the accounts and madeinventories of the warehouses No complete set of data is currently avail-able The customary method of estimating palace expenses by Ming officialswas to sort out a few essential items for consideration, such as cotton cloth,silk fabrics, tea, wax (used for candle manufacture), and dyes, all of these

in large quantities The merging of palace maintenance with public financewas undoubtedly a serious handicap to fiscal operations

More must be said about the organizational weakness of the logisticalsystem Even though the palace warehouses were designated as 'belonging'

to the ministries of revenue, works, and war, in practice the ministerialofficials were only responsible for maintaining the levels of their supplies.They had little authority to distribute the materials stored in the palacegrounds, that being a prerogative of the sovereign In managing the ware-houses, the rule was that the civil officials kept the books and the eunuchskept the keys

The ministries held their silver bullion outside the palace The onlyagency that received silver payments in the Imperial City was the InnerCh'eng-yun Treasury Each year the ministry of revenue delivered to itabout one million taels of silver derived from land taxes, which was ear-marked as the emperor's privy purse (see Gold Floral Silver, 2, i) Rentsfrom the imperial estates which constituted the cash incomes of the dowagerempresses were also collected by the ministry and handed over to the InnerCh'eng-yiin Treasury The treasury had little to do with palace maintenance,however It was in reality an intermediate agency The funds received by

it were usually spent on gifts and personal grants, contributions to religiousinstitutions, and purchases of gems and curios Any surplus was transferred

to the Tung-yii Treasury inside the Forbidden City.8

The Kuang-huei Treasury, also located inside the Imperial City, wasconcerned with petty cash only All revenues arriving in Peking in coppercoins and paper currency had to be surrendered to this coffer Its operationcaused considerable irregularity in the fiscal system For instance, normallywhen the inland customs duties were collected in silver, the proceeds wereunder the jurisdiction of the ministry of revenue But if in a particular yearthe deposits of the Kuang-huei Treasury ran short, the emperor wouldthen order that the next year a percentage of the customs duties be collected

in coins and paper notes In the end the palace treasury was replenished,but at the same time the ministry of revenue lost a portion of its normalincome from this source The expenditures of the Kuang-huei Treasurywere also irregular; but a major portion of the copper coins and papermoney was distributed by order of the emperor to officials at festival times,and disbursed as petty cash for lesser purchase orders in the capital.9After the early fifteenth century the eunuchs were organized into twenty-four agencies, but no chief eunuch was appointed The director of cere-monies was generally regarded as the senior eunuch; but even then at notime did he assume any responsibility as a fiscal officer.10 It may be saidthat the emperor was his own treasurer inside the palace compound.Eunuchs in Ming times became notorious Customarily they were dis-patched by the emperors to the provinces to supervise a variety of statefunctions Yet for much of the dynasty there is no evidence that theyseriously interfered with governmental operations, despite their occasionalabuses of power Some of them were stationed at the sea ports to receivetributary emissaries, one was in Nanking to take charge of imperial tombs,and others attached to the army as personal agents of the crown.11 As long

as the normal operating procedures of the government were not alteredbecause of the presence of these eunuchs, they could not be considered tohave supplanted the bureaucracy In the 1590s however the Wan-liEmperor commissioned them to manage local business taxes and in thelast two decades of the dynasty the Ch'ung-chen Emperor put them in

1,1 Governmental organization 11charge of city defense In these two instances at least the integrity of thecivil service was threatened.

Throughout the dynasty senior eunuchs were frequently dispatched onprocurement missions Supplies thus procured included palace furniture,porcelain, and silk fabrics Palace furniture was made in Nanking; theprocurement usually caused little controversy except for the fact that ontheir return trips the eunuchs often demanded extra government transporta-tion on the Grand Canal to carry their own private cargo Porcelain wasmanufactured in Kiangsi; the items in demand included flower vases, bowlsmore than ten feet in diameter, chess games, porcelain screens, sacrificialvessels, and all the chinaware for the court of imperial entertainments.Silk fabrics were woven in Chekiang and South Chihli, of varying type,color and design, to the imperial specifications The manufacture of thesetwo last items, which might number as many as a quarter of a million in

a single order, called for statutory labor and the requisition of materials

in the local districts, plus extra logistical support It was a constant cause

of tension between the civil officials and the eunuchs, because the demandfor materials and labor cut into the incomes of the ministry of revenue andthe ministry of works; it affected the local administrations of the provincialofficials as well One more area of tension between the eunuchs and thebureaucrats was the purchase of palace supplies All the warehouses in thepalace grounds received relatively fixed quotas of materials derived fromtax proceeds or requisitions from the provinces But whenever shortagesoccurred, the extra purchases were still the responsibility of the respectiveministries, using funds derived from their own accounts A special item ofsupply might have been commuted to silver payments, in which case theministry intercepted the money but was responsible for supplying thearticle The eunuchs always demanded larger and more extravagant orders,which were consistently opposed by the bureaucrats Only in a few instanceswould the emperor's decision favor the latter This kind of conflict, com-bined with the other vested interests of the eunuchs in charge of the supplydepots, was one of the reasons why tax payments in the later period couldnot be totally commuted to silver.12 The lack of such a sweeping reform, as

we shall see later, affected the empire's tax structure deeply

The minister of revenue and the ministry of revenue

The hu-pu shang-shu in Ming times is now recognized by us as the minister

of revenue, but the translated title with its sense of authority derived fromWestern usage may be somewhat too complimentary to the Ming office-

holders Throughout the Ming period no hu-pu shang-shu ever rose to

become a Cochrane or a Colbert The Ming office had never been intended

to be that of a policy-maker Since its establishment in 1368 the ministry

of revenue had gone through major reorganizations several times in

Hung-wu's reign In 1372 there was one shang-shu and under him four

bureaus In 1373, however, the office was demoted and split up Five

shang-shu were appointed to take charge of five sections, none of them to

assume an overall command Only after 1380 was the position of a single

chief administrator revived and the shang-shu, with his rank elevated to

2a, gained some semblance to a minister.13

Even then the Ming emperors often treated their ministers of revenuewith outrageous brutality, paying scant regard to the dignity of their office

In 1385 Minister Yii T'ai-su was chained to his desk by Hung-wu because

he did not conduct business as speedily as the sovereign wished In 1421Minister Hsia Yuan-chi was imprisoned by Yung-lo merely because hetried to dissuade the monarch from launching another expedition into theMongolian desert Only on the emperor's death in 1424 did he regain hisfreedom In 1441 Minister Liu Chung-fu was pilloried by Cheng-t'ungsimply because he suggested that palace horses be entrusted to civilianstables for maintenance And in 1547 Minister Wang Kao was first beaten

in public and later exiled by orders of Chia-ching on a false charge ofreceiving bribes, the true offense being his lack of enthusiasm for pur-chasing ambergris, a rare kind of incense that the emperor wanted for hisTaoist altar.14

Of the 89 ministers of revenue appointed after 1380, 25 left office throughretirement, 22 were transferred to other duties, 16 were dismissed, 7 died inoffice, 7 resigned because of illness or mourning, 3 were executed, 2 werebanished with their names removed from the civil service register, 1 wasexiled, 1 left office without authorization, 1 was killed in battle, and the lastminister, Ni Yiian-lu, committed suicide at the fall of the dynasty.15 Thisleaves only 3 unaccounted for; the reasons for their leaving office cannot

be ascertained from the materials currently available Even among thosewho later left through retirement or otherwise, 3 ministers, namely ChinLien in 1451, Han Wen in 1507, and Pi Tzu-yen in 1633, had been arrestedwhile still in office At least 5 more relinquished their positions in order toavoid surrender to the palace eunuchs After fighting losing battles withthe eunuchs, Ch'in Chin retired in 1527, Ma Shen in 1569 and WangYing-chiao in 1622; Pi Ch'iang resigned in 1586, and Wang Lin wastransferred in 1585 The list shows the insecurity of the ministers; theirtenure was very much dependent upon the whims of their autocratic mastersand the favor of the latters' trusted attendants.16

Perhaps the only minister of revenue during the dynasty who managed

to exercise some initiative and handle his office with a sense of authoritywas Ko Tse, who served under Yung-lo, Hung-hsi, and Hsiian-te He issaid to have countermanded the latter two emperors' decrees which madeabrupt tax reductions without his consent As a senior statesman and an

1,1 Governmental organization 13imperial tutor, Ko was able to defy the throne without causing himselfserious trouble Nevertheless, in the end his policy was overruled.17Most of the time the minister of revenue acted as the fiscal adviser tothe crown; under normal circumstances his ministerial duties involved onlyvery limited planning Since the early years of the dynasty when taxes werepaid in kind and labor services performed by the taxpayers in person, themilitary installations, the palace grounds, and several other disbursingagencies in Peking were assigned fixed quotas of materials and services to

be furnished by designated collecting agencies In the sixteenth centurymost but not all of the materials and services were commuted to silverpayments; but the cash incomes were never consolidated The disbursingagencies simply maintained separate expense accounts in silver derivedfrom the commutation, still paid by the same collecting agencies whichearlier had furnished them with supplies and services The only exceptionwas the palace Due to the lack of a central fiscal agency in the ImperialCity, the ministry of revenue handled part of the silver consignments paid

in lieu of palace supplies In addition, the ministry of works, the court ofthe imperial stud under the ministry of war, and the court of imperialentertainments under the ministry of rites all maintained large separateexpense accounts, as did the army installations The ministry of revenueperformed some bookkeeping functions connected with the delivery ofsilver payments, but could not exercise budgetary control over theappropriation of funds The surpluses from those expense accounts wereheld by the respective offices as their own treasury reserves and remainedbeyond the ministry of revenue's reach The same procedure governed theseveral fiscal offices in Nanking When the dual-capital system was putinto effect in 1421, government organs were duplicated in the auxiliarycapital By customary arrangement the ministry of revenue in Nankingperformed certain regional functions in the south But this office, sub-ordinate only to the throne, was by no means a branch office of the ministry

of revenue in Peking The minister of revenue in Nanking reported directly

to the emperor, maintained his own quota of receivables, and controlledsilver vaults, granaries, and warehouses.18 Even auditing the separateexpenditures and making inventories of the supply depots in Nankingwere functions of the censorial officials, not the ministry of revenue inPeking

All this means that the revenues and appropriations had already beenestablished on a semi-permanent basis The utmost the minister of revenuecould do was to make minor readjustments, revising the commutationrates, recommending further commutations, and sometimes switching thedeliveries of materials and funds from one point of origin to another, all

on an ad hoc basis The ministry of revenue under the Ming was therefore

much less an executive agency than a gigantic accounting office Had there

not been a rapid increase in military expenditures in the later part of thedynasty which forced the ministry to take a more active role in govern-mental finance, the minister of revenue could have continued to remain forall practical purposes the emperor's chief accountant.

Yet, merely to supervise the flow of supplies across the empire was anawesome task To ensure that all tax payments both in commodities and insilver were properly delivered, the ministry of revenue prepared the so-

called stub-books (k'an-ho) Like bus tickets carrying detachable coupons,

the sheets of the stub-book were made of two, three, or more parts Butthe most commonly used kind had only two parts, consisting of a detach-able coupon and a stub for each sheet The remaining book with stubs on

it was sent to the receiving agency Over the perforation line separating thecoupon and the stub the vermilion seal of the ministry was applied, andthe serial number of the delivery was recorded Each part thus carried half

of the seal imprint and the writing on its edge During the transaction thedeliverer and the receiver pieced the coupon and the stub together toverify the order This eliminated subsequent dispute over the delivery andquantity of the article In the rare situations when the delivery involved anintermediate agency, the extra coupon on each sheet of the stub-bookserved the purpose for intermediate delivery When the deliveries werecompleted the receiving agency reported to the ministry with a 'fulfillment

of the order' (fung-kuari) 19 Any shortage or irregularity was also reported

to the ministry of revenue

This device reflected the fact that the fiscal system relied on centralizeddirecting with decentralized handling Supplies, in commodities or in cash,were rarely handled in large volume during transit The aggregate figures

of the various articles appearing in official documents had in most casesbeen compiled for statistical purposes only In practice it was typical for

a receiving depot to receive supplies from scores of different deliveryagencies; at the same time a delivery agency also made articles available

to dozens of different service installations The volume of the transactionwas always kept at the lowest possible level to avoid transportation andstorage difficulties Furthermore, the commodities thus handled, includingnot only grain, hay, and cotton wadding, but also such things as indigo,hemp, and sesame seeds, were of so many kinds that there was no way forthe accounts to be combined This system of control caused a fantasticaccumulation of bookkeeping The ministry of revenue had to scrutinizeall the accounts, usually down to the county level; in 1385 it reviewed theaccounts of 2,437 fiscal offices.20 The situation was not greatly improved

in later centuries, when the use of silver had become more widespread In

1572 the ministry is said to have consolidated twenty-two kinds of ing books and discontinued the use of another twenty-eight kinds We donot know how many kinds were retained after the reform.21 As late as 1632

account-1,1 Governmental organization 15Minister of Revenue Pi Tzu-yen submitted a memorial to the Ch'ung-chenEmperor in which tax arrears across the empire were listed The list coversfour and a half pages of fine print in the present reproduced form Amongmany other items, the minister was able to report to the emperor thatWu-hsien in South Chihli still owed the palace some 28 taels of silver,which was supposed to cover the portion of honey requisitioned from thatcounty.22

Considering its assignment, the staff of the ministry of revenue wassurprisingly small The number of officials assigned to it was listed as

51 in 1390, plus 160 lesser functionaries handling the clerical work In thelate 1570s there were 74 officials plus 165 lesser functionaries Except thatfrom time to time dozens of imperial university students were attached tothe ministry to gain administrative experience, the size of the ministryvirtually remained unchanged through the rest of the dynasty.23

The minister of revenue had no executive officer, no comptroller, and nochief statistician All this is understandable when one remembers that hehimself for most of the time was serving in those capacities under theemperor Nor did the minister have a planning staff Even though theministerial organization provided a 'business assistant' and a 'documentchecker', those officials carried out only housekeeping and clerical super-vising duties within the ministry; they were by no means under-secretaries.When Minister Ni Yiian-lu in 1643 promoted a brilliant but hithertounknown student as his business assistant and placed five staff membersunder him to take charge of office routine, the delegation of responsibilitywas considered a novelty.24

Under the minister of revenue were two vice-ministers, but neither wasactive within the ministry One of the vice-ministers was customarilyappointed superintendent of imperial granaries He maintained his separateoffice and reported directly to the emperor The T'ai-ts'ang Treasury,which after its establishment in 1442 handled all the silver bullion under theministry's jurisdiction, was placed under his supervision To add to theconfusion, sometimes this vice-minister was also promoted to become an

extra hu-pu shang-shu, thus becoming equal in rank and title with the

minister, though in practice he limited his function to that of treasurer andgranary superintendent and did not interfere with other business of theministry.25 The other vice-minister was usually given a field assignmentsuch as commissioner in charge of the Grand Canal, or superintendent

of military supplies to Manchuria, and thus also was absent from theministry's office

In carrying out his duties the minister of revenue dealt directly withthirteen bureaus of the ministry, which were organized to correspond tothe thirteen provinces of the empire After 1575 matters concerning Northand South Chihli, the salt monopoly, inland customs houses, the granaries

on the Grand Canal and imperial stables and pastures, were ordered to beplaced under the jurisdiction of the Fukien, Szechuan, Shantung, Yunnan,Kwangsi, and Kweichow bureaus respectively The assignment wasarbitrary, mainly because the aforementioned bureaus, which supervisedthe fiscal administration of remote provinces normally had less volume

of work and could take on the extra duty.26

Within each bureau there were supposed to be three or four staff bers of civil service status, but the positions were not always filled Evenwhen they were, some of the occupants were often detailed to the frontierprovinces to manage field installations For about a century before 1570,the staff members were not even required to report to the ministry daily;they held official positions on an inactive basis in order to gain seniority

mem-It was Wang Kuo-kuang, minister of revenue from 1572 to 1576, who firstdemanded that all personnel on the ministry's payroll actually report to theoffice.27 When in the decade after 1610 the positions of bureau heads wereagain left vacant, Minister of Revenue Li Nii-hua acted simultaneously asthe head of several bureaus under his own command.28 It seems surprisingthat with its limited manpower the ministry could afford these furtherreductions of its authorized strength This can be explained by the nature

of the ministry's routine, which was basically clerical and technical, thing in which the civil service bureaucrats were least interested andfor which they were least qualified The mainstay of the office personnelwere the lesser functionaries Self-trained, informally recruited, and oftenregarded by the civil service regulars with disdain, they nevertheless becameindispensable due to their special knowledge of procedural details andcustomary usage Apparently they held their positions as a life-timeprofession and passed their trade on to their friends and relatives KuYen-wu has pointed out that in the early seventeenth century practically allthe lesser functionaries on duty with the ministry were natives of Shao-hsing prefecture, Chekiang province.29 The official papers and accounts ofthe ministry were reviewed and audited by a specially appointed supervisingsecretary Sun Ch'eng-tse, supervising secretary in that capacity during thereign of Ch'ung-chen, indicated in one of his memorials that while con-ducting the auditing he dealt with the lesser functionaries directly, and nocivil service officials appeared on the scene.30

some-Service agencies directly subordinate to the ministry were few Thesuperintendency of paper currency, the office of currency supply and office

of plate engraving were rarely mentioned after the fifteenth century, due

to the gradual discontinuation of the production of paper money Eventhough coining money was a function of the ministry of revenue, the mint

in Peking was controlled by the ministry of works Only in 1622 for thepurpose of increasing coin production was an additional mint createdunder the ministry of revenue, operating simultaneously with the existing

1,1 Governmental organization 17mint and other mints under the jurisdiction of the ministries in Nankingand provincial offices.31 All those mints, however, were manufacturingplants They were not grouped together under an imperial mint The ware-houses, which were under the control of the ministry of revenue butactually in the hands of the eunuchs in the palace grounds, have alreadybeen noted.

The ministry of revenue had no regional offices in the provinces Butthe inland custom stations outside Peking were managed by ministerialpersonnel, usually secretaries of the several bureaus on leave of absencefrom the ministry (6, i) Their tour of duty was limited to a one-year term.Habitually these officials referred to their posts as 'branch offices, ministry

of revenue' The title is misleading The offices were strictly customs dutycollecting stations and no other ministerial functions were performed bythem Moreover, in the later sixteenth century the inland customs duty wasgradually merged with other business taxes under provincial jurisdiction.The customs stations in reality became operated jointly by the ministerialofficials and local prefects Towards the end of the dynasty, vice-ministers

of revenue were put in charge of the services and supplies of field armies.They became imperial commissioners of a sort In performing their fieldassignments they reported directly to the emperor rather than to theministry Other officials of lesser ranks, such as directors and vice-directors

of territorial bureaus, were likewise dispatched to the frontier to takecharge of army logistics.32 For all practical purposes they were on loanfrom the ministry to the respective governors-general on the border In nosignificant way did those officials extend the ministry's authority to thefield; nevertheless they maintained a close liaison between the armycommand and the office in Peking

Other ministries

All the other five ministries were in one way or another involved in fiscaladministration Some of their interests in governmental finance werederived from concerns shared with the ministry of revenue These mattersusually caused no serious problem For instance, the ministry of personnelwas concerned with the sale of ranks; the ministry of justice with thecommutation of punishments to fines; and the ministry of rites with awards

to foreign tributary missions and the licensing of Buddhist monks andTaoist priests As long as those ministries did not actually operate fiscalinstallations to manage the funds, differences between the ministries could

be easily resolved Such overlapping interests, after all, could have beenexpected in any form of government

Under the Ming system, however, the ministry of war to a lesser extentand the ministry of works to a greater extent were virtually competing

with the ministry of revenue in fiscal management The division of authoritywent back to the early days of the dynasty when taxes were rarely levied incash Since those days the land taxes in a large area extending over fourprovinces had been reduced to one-half in exchange for the servicesprovided by the taxpayers in stabling of government horses But when theservices were discontinued, the ministry of revenue was not authorized toincrease the taxes Instead, the civilian households were ordered to deliversilver payments to the court of the imperial stud to provide the army withcombat horses.33 The payments were still assessed according to the previousquota of'studs' and designated as 'feeding fees', although there were now

no horses in their care In reality this meant that half of the regular landtaxes in the affected areas was collected by the ministry of war (3, n).The ministry of works not only collected the forest produce levy at manystations and intercepted part of the fish duty, but also requisitioned materialsand funds from all provinces The duties and functions of the ministryincluded construction of palaces, mausoleums, public buildings and citywalls, undertaking water-control and reclamation projects, exploitingwater and forest resources, and manufacturing military equipment andships In addition, right from the early days of the dynasty when no fundswere provided for those undertakings, the ministry of works called uponcorvee labor and collected materials all across the empire While unskilledlabor was provided by the general population, skilled labor was leviedfrom those households which were registered as artisans The weavers inSouth Chihli and the porcelain workers in Kiangsi fell into this category,

as did the artisans of numerous trades in the maintenance area within theImperial City The requisition of materials was even more extensive Bowsand arrows were contributed from most prefectures Lumber was derivedfrom the produce levy and glue from fish duty Leather and fur werefurnished by those who were registered as hunters Dyes and potash alumwere supplied by the districts specializing in those products When corveelabor was called up for water-control projects, not only did those on callprovide their own tools, but each man also brought along some suppliesfrom his home locale, including wooden poles, nails and ropes The materialand labor requisitions could be both scheduled and unscheduled Theformer were assessed to every prefecture of the empire and the prefect inturn divided the quotas among his subordinate counties Some of theassessments were collected annually, others biennially or triennially.34Since all these obligations in Ming times gradually began to be commuted,the ministry of works slowly became a recipient of silver payments in theprovinces The income may be considered as a huge expense account,directly derived from taxation, which enabled the ministry to remain self-sufficient It is in fact true to say that the ministry was gradually transformedinto a taxation agency that rivalled the ministry of revenue

1, I Governmental organization 19The deterioration of the empire's population data further intensifiedthe conflict of interest In the early years the land tax and the service levy(see 1, II below) were separate impositions; those with artisan registrationwere clearly distinguished from the general population From the midfifteenth century onwards the population registration became a matter

of formality The registered statutory laborers had already absconded andmany miscellaneous requisitions, such as those assessed on hunters andfishermen, had become uncollectable Most counties had adopted thesolution of transferring the burden of service and supply obligations tolanded property, converting these quotas into surcharges on land or evenadding them to the land tax proper The commutation of the service levytherefore in the end resulted in both the ministry of revenue and the ministry

of works chasing the same tax income

For extraordinary quantities of supplies needed in Peking, the procedure

was 'local procurement' (tso-pan) For instance when a major construction

project was undertaken, the required lumber might exceed 1 million taels

of silver in value Obviously, the order could not be filled from the regularrequisitions By local procurement the ministries directed the provincialofficials in the lumber-producing areas to furnish what was needed, thecost being compensated by tax proceeds derived from the same provinces

In other words, either the lumber was paid for with tax proceeds due to thecentral government or the taxpayers submitted the required raw materials

in lieu of regular tax payments The ministry of works, deriving its cashincome from commutation of service obligations, which were scatteredover the empire, and restricted in amount, often found the resources atits disposal on the spot insufficient to pay the costs It would petition theemperor and by order of the sovereign the ministry of revenue had to makethe local tax proceeds under its jurisdiction available for the occasion Theonly large item of tax proceeds was derived from the land taxes Theprocurement orders of the ministry of works subsequently invaded thatdomain too.35

It seems that the ministry of works in the early part of the dynasty hadbeen an operating agency But clearly as time went by it became more andmore concerned with fiscal management The spectacular water-controlprojects under the direction of Liu Ta-hsia in the later fifteenth century andP'an Chi-hsun in the sixteenth century (7, i) were executed with little activeparticipation from the ministry It merely allocated materials, funds, andlabor to the project directors Land reclamation, similarly, slipped into thehands of provincial and local officials For palace construction eitherministerial officials or eunuchs were put in charge But inasmuch as theservice facilities and technicians were under the control of the eunuchs,they alone could carry out the operation Even when a ministry staffmember was commissioned as the project director, he could not do more

than assume the overall responsibility and carry out the financial planning.36

To supply material and labor for the manufacturing plants and warehousesinside the palace compound was mainly, though not exclusively, theresponsibility of the ministry of works, and so was the budgetary allocationfor eunuch procurement missions All this deprived the ministry of itsoperating capacity and reduced it to a logistical branch or service supportagency of the court The Ming system created numerous palace installationswithout a ministry of imperial household to coordinate them It was theministry of works, in its changing role, that came close to filling this gap.The unexpected role sometimes confused the ministerial officials andcaused them to be inconsistent In the event of an extraordinary order forsilk fabrics initiated by the eunuchs, the bureaucrats at the ministry ofworks would, generally as a matter of principle, join their civil servicecolleagues in objecting to its excessiveness But when the cost of the orderwas to be borne by the ministry of revenue and the latter ministry arguedagainst surrendering its own tax quotas for this purpose, the matter became

a dispute between the two ministries At this point the ministry of works'officials would change their stand and say that such a supply order was,after all, only reasonable.37

The net result of the divided fiscal authority had serious consequences,however Throughout the Ming period no central treasury was everestablished The T'ai-ts'ang Treasury under the ministry of revenue wasonly one of the silver vaults in Peking It exercised no control over theCh'ang-yin Treasury or the Chieh-sheng Treasury, which were subject tothe court of the imperial stud and the ministry of works respectively, northe silver vault inside the court of imperial entertainments, not to mentionthe Inner Ch'eng-yiin, Kuang-huei, and Tung-yii Treasuries inside thepalace The ministry of revenue in Nanking also had its own treasuries.Except by a specific order from the emperor, silver deposits could not betransferred from one unit to another In the Wan-li period, even after theemperor's order for transfer, no agency would yield its bullion readily,knowing well that the order had been initiated by some rival office ratherthan by the emperor himself Usually it memorialized the throne forreconsideration and applied delaying and haggling techniques to avoid theloss of silver to the other agency, giving in grudgingly only after all means

of resistance had been exhausted.38

Fiscal agencies of the central government in the provinces

Throughout the Ming period no regional treasuries were ever established

in the provinces by the central government Owing to the monolithicstructure of the state, the primary fiscal function of all provincial and localgovernments was to serve the central government There was no need for

1,1 Governmental organization 21the central government to add regional offices in the provinces The fewfiscal installations considered in the present category were exceptionalcases, each specializing in an inter-provincial service or a special type ofrevenue They were the imperial commissionership in charge of the GrandCanal (2, i), and the managerial offices of the salt monopoly (5, i), tea andhorse trade, maritime and inland customs duty, and the forest levy (6, i andiv) It may be noted here that in theory most of these offices were underprovincial jurisdiction But when the censors were dispatched to exercisesurveillance over the salt monopoly and tea and horse trade, they actuallybecame fiscal officers operating in the provinces under the emperor'sauthority They reduced the operating agencies, still nominally underprovincial jurisdiction, to the status of their direct subordinates In order

to avoid duplication, detailed descriptions of these offices will be postponeduntil the discussion of the services and revenues under their management.However, it may be observed that in general the efficiency of theseoffices was low, and the revenues under their management never reachedlevels comparable to those of the T'ang and Sung In part this was due tothe fact that at the beginning of the dynasty the Ming had neglectedcommerce as a major source of state income Although the materialrequisitions under the Ming were comprehensive, more emphasis wasplaced on goods that were actually needed for use by the state; consider-ation of their intrinsic financial value was secondary The aforementionedmanagerial offices were moreover scattered over the empire without aneffective chain of command to back them As will be seen in the forth-coming chapters, this lack of organizational support induced some of the

agencies in the later part of the dynasty to maintain a de facto joint

administration with the provincial officials

Provincial government and local government

The primary consideration behind the organization of the provincial andlocal governments was that of fiscal management An edict in 1373 assignedupper, middle, or lower grades to the prefectures of the empire The firstcategory included those prefectures which produced an annual land taxincome of 200,000 piculs of grain* or more, the prefect to be ranked 3b;the second category embraced those whose annual income was less than200,000 piculs but more than 100,000 piculs, the prefect being ranked 4a.All other prefects were of the lowest category and ranked 4b Apparently

in the early years of the dynasty it was expected that the tax quotas of allterritorial units would be revised from time to time to reflect changes inpopulation and land data; the status of each unit, together with the rank ofits administrator, would then be adjusted accordingly The system was too

* For explanation see: A note on weights and measures, p xiv

cumbersome to be carried out in full; by 1371 the empire already had

12 provinces, 120 prefectures, 108 subprefectures and 887 counties.39 (Inlater years their numbers increased to 13, 140, 193, and 1,138 respec-tively.) Nor was any periodic revision of the tax quotas of the territorialunits seriously attempted, most districts retaining their tax quotas on

a permanent or semi-permanent basis Even though in the sixteenth centurythere were still scattered cases where counties were promoted to sub-prefectures or vice versa, they were increasingly rare in occurrence In themeantime officials were ranked equally according to the levels of admini-stration, with the exception of the two prefects in Nanking and Pekingwho were one grade higher than their counterparts elsewhere.40

The local government could be arranged in either four or three tiers.The four-tier pattern included the province, prefecture, subprefecture andcounty in descending order The three-tier type involved a subprefecturedirectly subordinate to the provincial government (without any inter-mediate prefecture), or else a county directly subordinate to a prefecture(without any intermediate subprefecture).41 There were also subprefectures,which, while subordinate to prefectures, had no counties under them Thetwo metropolitan areas, namely North Chihli and South Chihli, each thesize of a province, had no provincial administration, their prefects andsubprefects reported directly to the central government Consequently, inthe national accounts the 8 prefectures of North Chihli and 15 prefecturesand 3 independent subprefectures of South Chihli were never consolidatedunder the respective metropolitan areas The fiscal data of these 26 unitswere placed on the same footing as those of the 13 provinces

These different patterns again reflected a primary concern for fiscaladministration The guiding principle behind it was that the county was

a basic tax-collecting unit, the prefecture a basic accounting unit, and theprovince a revenue transit unit Whenever possible, the seat of a countygovernment was located within one day's travel distance from its borders.The size of the county, therefore, was more or less predetermined Theoffices of the higher echelons also had to be centrally located among theirsubordinate units to facilitate operations It was moreover necessary thatall those governmental offices be situated in walled cities and populationcentres for convenience with regard to military operations, their ownmaintenance, and land and water transportation In special circumstancesthe Ming court could actually relocate a sizeable city merely to suitadministrative purposes Yet, territorial organization could not completelyignore geographical and historical factors In the selection of a prefecturalcapital, in particular, they had to balance the demands of organizationaluniformity and the physical advantages of the sites The creation of sub-prefectures eliminated the difficulty when the divergent demands couldnot all be reconciled Most of them had the effect of breaking the large

1,1 Governmental organization 23prefectures into administratively manageable units; others accommodatedthose districts which had an intermediate level of revenue but were, how-ever, disadvantageously located geographically Created to adjust im-balances, the subprefectural government had no distinctive features of itsown When the subprefecture was subordinate to a prefecture, it functioned

as a branch office of the prefect If the subprefecture was immediately ordinate to a province, it functioned as a prefecture of a minor order In thelatter case its fiscal accounts were put on the same footing as those of theprefectures.42

sub-When a level of government became unnecessary in the chain of mand, it was eliminated Since fiscally the provincial government servedmainly as a relayer of revenue, it was not required in the two metropolitanareas whose prefectures and subprefectures were conveniently close to thenorthern and southern capitals

com-According to their organizational principles there was no great differencebetween the central government and local government All provincial andlocal officials down to county magistrates were appointed by the throne.All revenues, in a sense, were imperial income There was no expenditure

of the central government that could not be paid by provincial and localofficials This monolithic order was slightly compromised during the lateryears, notably in the southern provinces after the mid sixteenth century.Nevertheless even then the parcelling-out of funds was never clear, definiteand thorough In most instances every item of income was shared by boththe central government and the provincial government The relative fiscalautonomy in specific areas could only be considered, at least in theory, asgrowing out of standing authorizations which permitted their officials todisburse some of the funds on the spot on behalf of the throne, withoutfrequent requests for prior approval The funds thus disbursed were notrecognized as institutionalized local revenue.43

Most of the provincial and local officials delivered portions of their taxproceeds to the various receiving depots according to established pro-cedures Some of those depots were located on the northern frontier, some

in Peking or Nanking, and some quite close to the point of origin of thetaxes Some but not all of the deliveries were consolidated at prefecturaland provincial levels A consignment delivered outside the fiscal officer's

district constituted an item of ch'i-yiin, literally a 'checked-out item',

which will however be referred to as 'transferred revenue' Upon thecompletion of delivery the item was removed from the local administrator's

jurisdiction The balance retained within the territory was called ts'un-liu,

literally a 'staying-in item', but will be termed 'retained revenue' Any taxincome could simultaneously comprise portions of transferred revenue andportions of retained revenue for the collecting district From the retainedrevenue the local officials drew their salaries The stipends due to govern-