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C. MARTIN WILBUR
event of threatening floods to repair embankments.1
Taxation, the primary interest of the government, is also carried out with the help of the Ti-pao. This individual is supposed to know all about every bit of land owned by the members of his village, and the exact tax set upon it. This is no easy matter since most farmers own many small bits of land scattered hit-or-miss over the countryside. Under the Ch'ing dynasty the land tax was set for all time in 1713.2 This does not mean that in reality taxes did not increase steadily, for the burdens seem constantly to be getting heavier.
This increase was affected by several means. In the first place the permanent settlement takes no account of the cost of collection. This cost is a matter of yearly battle between the collector and the land owners; but once a precedent is set it becomes an accepted part of the tax thereafter, and is merely the starting basis on which further additions will be placed. A second manner in which accretions are made rests on the fact that originally all or part of the tax was to be paid in kind. The magistrate, however, often demands a cash settlement, and places the conversion rate well above the market price of grain. Another method is for the magistrate arbitrarily to fix the conversion rate between cash-coin and the tael at a point highly unfair to the land owner who has only cash-coin to pay in. By these and other devices Morse reports that the permanently settled land tax of 1713 is often increased to over five times the statutory amount.3
The Ta Ch'ing Lü Li (׆†##1) describes the correct machinery of collection as follows:
[ Jamieson, George; Chinese Family and Commercial Law, p. 72. A good account of the modern working of a modified form of corvée is found in Smith, Arthur H.; Village Life in China, p. 230-231. Also, Boulais; op. cit., p. 161-162, 181-185, 213-214.
2 Morse, Hosea B.; The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, p. 86. (Jamieson; op. cit., p. 94, wrongly gives 1711 as the date of permanent settlement, but this is the date of the census which was made the basis for taxation.) This permanent settlement had several important results. In the first place, it practically did away with the old method of taking the census of the number of people liable to a poll tax, and led to the establishment of modern census taking of the whole population, as started under Ch'ien Lung. Secondly, the establishment of an immutable poll-tax led to its amalgamation with the land tax for ease and saving in collection. Huang, Han Liang; The Land Tax in China, p. 99-100.
3 Morse, op. cit., p. 87.