GEORGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL.
365
half that amount. Official returns of the Chinese Government-intended for a special public use, and as such not very reliable—which were published in 1844, give the revenue as follows:
Land-tax, in money
Ditto in kind, valued at.
Salt tax.
Tea duties..
Duties on merchandise.
Duties on foreign ditto, at Canton.
Sundries .....
Duties on marketable articles...
Duties on shops and pawnbrokers.
Ginseng
Coinage
Taels 53,780,218 113,398,057
7,486,380
204,530
4,335,459
3,000,000
1,052,706
1,174,932
5,000,000
1,000,000
1,000,000
191,804,139 £63,934,713
*
Total taels.
Sterling
The above was returned as the net revenue of the country. No statement of the expenditure is given in the official account; but from missionary reports, as well as the accounts published in the Peking Gazette,' it would appear that there are almost constant deficits, which the governors and high officers of provinces must cover by extraordinary taxation.
The public revenue is mainly derived from three sources, namely, customs duties, licenses, and a tax upon land, but the receipts from customs alone are made known. The customs duties fall more upon exports than imports; their total produce at all the treaty ports open to Europeans amounted to 9,880,189 taels or £3,293,399, in 1869; to 9,545,848 taels, or £3,181,949, in 1870; and to 11,216,146 taels, or £3,738,382, in 1871. To the customs revenue of the year 1871, the duties on imports contributed 3,847,989 taels, or £1,282,663, and the duties on exports 6,384,583 taels, or £2,128,194, the remainder being derived from minor customs charges.
China is among the few civilised countries that have as yet no foreign debt. It is not known whether the Government has raised, or is responsible for loans contracted at home.
Population, Trade, and Industry.
The population of China is very dense, but nothing accurate is known respecting- the number of inhabitants, although official enumerations of the same are stated to have taken place at intervals since the year 703, or for more than eleven centuries. One of the causes of uncertainty regarding the population of the empire is that its limits are undefined, the imperial government claiming the allegiance of the inhabitants of many of the neighbouring territories, which appear to be more or less independent. According to the most reliable estimates, based upon Chinese official returns, the area of the empire and its dependencies, embraces 186,887 geographical, 3,924,627 English square miles, with a population of 425 millions, distributed as follows:-
China, proper
Dependencies:
$
Manchuria
Mongolia
Thibet
Corea...
Lieukhieu Islands Liaotong
...
14
...
Total
*
AREA.
POPULATION.
Engl. sq. miles.
1,534,953
405,213,152
362,313
3,000,000
*
1,288,035
2,000,000
643,734
6,000,000
90,300
8,000,000
2.310
2,982
1,000,000
3,924,627
425,213,152
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