TWO ESSAYS ON THE CH'ING ECONOMY OF HSIN-AN
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The areas over which the Kowloon and Fuk-Wing Deputy Magistrates exercised jurisdiction were referred to as ssu, a common administrative term throughout the prefecture commonly translated as "township." Some idea of the distribution of villages within tu can be had by surveying the data in the table below:
Table I: The Hsiang-Tu-Ts'un System
Jurisdiction Tu Number of villages 1st 19 Kowloon: 6 Nam Tau: 13 2nd 34 Kowloon: 13 Fuk-Wing: 5 Nam Tau: 16 3rd 59 Kowloon: 11 Fuk-Wing: 35 Nam Tau: 13 4th 11 Nam Tau: 1 Tai-Pang: 3 Kowloon: 5 Fuk-Wing: 2 5th 10 Kowloon: 10 6th 32 Kowloon: 32 7th 264 Nam Tau: 11 Tai-Pang: 98 Fuk-Wing: 10 Kowloon: 145It is important to notice that no longer are discrete tu placed under sole jurisdiction of superordinate officials (with the exception of the 5th and 6th tu, all tu are divided amongst one or more officials). By the mid-nineteenth century, the artificial and largely arbitrary tu had lost whatever significance they may have had for purposes of civil administration.14
In any event, it is obvious that the land registration system was structurally disjoint from the tax collection system in mid-nineteenth century Hsin-An. This fact is further borne out by the mass of evidence which suggests the inaccuracy of the land registers and the consequent shrinkage in the size of the taxable base. Given the limited staff at his disposal, the magistrate gave priority to the fulfillment of tax quotas over the keeping of accurate records. This in turn led to increasing dependence on the rural leadership. Krone