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writes: "When the Mandarins intend to levy the taxes, they announce their intention to the gentry of the villages, one or two weeks, or sometimes a month, before their arrival. They then make a progress through the district, accompanied by a sufficient force to protect themselves against large bands of robbers..." This situation engendered the rise of local "magnates" (大家) who gained monopolization of collection responsibilities within whole districts. The magnates, in most cases local gentry, typically extracted sizable commissions from the revenue collected. This form of tax farming, known as pao-laan (包攬) in Chinese and referred to as "tax-lordism" by the British, was particularly widespread in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture. The 1797 edition of the Tung-Kuan Gazetteer gives the following account of conditions in that county:
Previously, the collection of the grain tax was regulated by li-chang who rotated the responsibility on an annual basis. These li-chang were local magnates who practiced pao-laan by manipulating the rotation. The neighboring households, moreover, would each take bribes by turns in exchange for shouldering the blame (for not paying their grain tax). For these two reasons, they (the magnates) were able to hoard great amounts. During the Yung-Cheng period (1723-1736), the District Magistrate, Chou T'ien-ch'eng (周天成), first attempted to rectify this situation. He ordered the inhabitants of each p'i to register the amounts of tax due under their household names. Thus, it was a simple matter to check who had paid their taxes and who had avoided payment. The policy was very good, and crafty methods could no longer be used. After a few decades, however, this method of registration gradually fell out of use, to the extent that it is no longer possible to investigate p'i by reference to the book,
The author goes on to note that the current situation has reverted to the previous one, and proposes the reinstitution of the registration policy.
The process by which local gentry of large landlord villages gradually gained monopolization of the land tax was closely related to the complimentary process by which smaller, less powerful villages placed themselves under the protection of more powerful villages. Both Krone and Lockhart take note of the practice in
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74
J. T. KAMM
writes: "When the Mandarins intend to levy the taxes, they an- nounce their intention to the gentry of the villages, one or two weeks, or sometimes a month, before their arrival. They then make a progress through the district, accompanied by a sufficient force to protect themselves against large bands of robbers..." This situation engendered the rise of local "magnates" () who gained monopolization of collection responsibilities within whole districts. The magnates, in most cases local gentry, typically extracted sizable commissions from the revenue collected. This form of tax farming, known as pao-laan (£) in Chinese and referred to as "tax- lordism" by the British, was particularly widespread in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture. The 1797 edition of the Tung-Kuan Gazetteer gives the following account of conditions in that county:
Previously, the collection of the grain tax was regulated by li-chang who rotated the responsibility on annual basis. These li-chang were local magnates who practiced pao-laan by mani- pulating the rotation. The neighboring households, moreover, would each take bribes by turns in exchange for shouldering the blame (for not paying their grain tax). For these two reasons, they (the magnates) were able to hoard great amounts. During the Yung-Cheng period (E: 1723-1736), the District Magis- trate, Chou T'ien-ch'eng (MK), first attempted to rectify this situation. He ordered the inhabitants of each p'i to register the amounts of tax due under their household names. Thus, it was a simple matter to check who had paid their taxes and who had avoided payment. The policy was very good, and crafty methods could no longer be used. After a few decades, however, this method of registration gradually fell out of use, to the extent that it is no longer possible to investigate p'i by reference to the book,16
The author goes on to note that the current situation has reverted to the previous one, and proposes the reinstitution of the registra- tion policy.
The process by which local gentry of large landlord villages gradually gained monopolization of the land tax was closely related to the complimentary process by which smaller, less powerful villages placed themselves under the protection of more powerful villages. Both Krone and Lockhart take note of the practice in
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