Land Registration and Local Society in Qing China
Taxation and Property Rights in Mid-Nineteenth Century Guangdong
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20210409 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kentaro Matsubara (Tokyo University of Agriculture, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 163-187 |
| Publication date | 2011-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1479-5914 • E-ISSN: 1479-5922 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1479591411000040 |
| OpenAlex | W2108613259 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
This paper explores the relationship between local lineage social structure and the workings of tax registration in Qing China, through a case study providing documentary evidence of a level of precision that enables us to go beyond the findings of previous scholarship. In the first instance, it reconstructs a tax dispute where implications of the registration system come into play, based on rare records made by the taxpayers themselves. In doing so, it shows that (a) the registered “acreage” of land was in fact unrelated to any actual land whatsoever; (b) tax collection ceased to be able to rely on knowledge of the terrain and had to depend on knowing the social groups that could be held responsible for payment, while the cohesion and internal differentiation of these social groups was (in turn) underpinned by tax collection and registration; and (c) since the registration system did not permit the government to keep track of actual landholding, property rights had to be secured at the local community level. In conclusion, an attempt is made to speculate on the extent to which this specific case contributes to our knowledge of local social structure, the interactions between localities and the government, and the property regime of Qing China overall
Business · China · Economics · Economy · Geography · Local government · Payment · Political science · Property rights · Property tax · Scholarship · Tax reform · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · Finance
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| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |