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During the Qing dynasty, the salt monopoly, along with the grain tribute system and management of the Yellow River, was consideredby the most important matter to both state finance and the livelihood of people and at the same time the most difficult to administer. Because of its importance, the Qing salt monopoly has received much attention from scholars. The sizable body of work on the Qing salt monopoly notwithstanding, we still do not have a clear understanding of how the system worked and what it meant to the history of late imperial China. The reason is twofold: first, the Qing salt monopoly was a system of bewildering complexities; second, despite the admirable efforts of many scholars, there are critical mistakes and oversights in the extant literature. This article attempts to sort out the “rules of the game” of the Qing salt monopoly, which differed fundamentally from previous salt monopoly institutions, by examining the mechanisms and features that defined its operation and by identifying errors in existing studies. It begins with a brief introduction to the Qing salt zone system, followed by an analysis of its historical origins. This author argues that the emergence of the salt zone system was shaped mainly not by economic considerations but by the political circumstances during the period from the eighth to the eleventh centuries and that in consequence there were built-in elements that ran against economic reasoning. While the salt zone system had been in place since the Song dynasty, the combination of this system and the hereditary franchise system (gangfa) in the Qing led to a development unseen in previous dynasties, i.e., the territorialization of salt merchants’ interests, which became a major cause of resistance to reform in later times. The greater part of the article explores the operational aspects of the monopoly, focusing on the differences in the modes of operation in different salt zones. The most significant among these differences was that between the monopoly of “salt certificates” practiced in the Huainan sector of the Lianghuai salt zone and the monopoly of “franchised salt territories” found in the majority of salt zones. This institutional divergence gave rise to further differences between Huainan and other salt zones, particularly in the medium of exchange—silver or copper cash—used in business transactions, and in salt merchants’ relationships with the Qing government. The relationship between transport merchants and merchants engaged in salt production was another major difference with serious ramifications. Here we look at the example of the Hedong salt zone, whose unique arrangement had adverse effects on the transport merchants and salt trade there. In addition to explaining the power and wealth of Yangzhou salt merchants and the less enviable conditions in which Changlu and Hedong salt merchants found themselves, our analysis suggests that a sound understanding of how the Qing salt monopoly operated is imperative if we were to use aspects of the monopoly as the empirical basis for proposing views and theories on issues pertaining to state-society relations, the nature of Chinese society, the (under)development of capitalism in China, and the modernization of China.
This paper examines the strategic thinking behind China’s prohibition on the export of rhubarb to Britain before the Opium War, and explores the myth that Westerners could not survive without rhubarb. The paper makes five main points. First, the strategy was based on the previous successful experience over Russia in 1792, during the late Qianlong reign. Second, the myth was based on differences between the pharmaceutical theories and material cultures of the Chinese and Western traditions. In China rhubarb was considered as fatal if misused, whereas in the West, after a specific method of processing, rhubarb was considered to possess mild medical qualities. Furthermore, in the Western tradition of pharmacology rhubarb was broadly used as a cure-all for its amazing effects of discharging surplus body fluids. Thus in China and in the West, this same herb possessed completely different images. Third, a contingent reason fostering the myth was the Russian government’s recent termination of the rhubarb monopoly before the Sino-Russian border conflict. This gave rise to increased smuggling, which China misunderstood as evidence that Russia desperately needed rhubarb. When the boarder conflict came to an end in 1792, Russia’s unusually submissive attitude tended to confirm this misunderstanding. Fourth, therefore, the rhubarb myth did not lie in baseless imagination; rather, Chinese aimed to collect evidence on the basis of a false question, namely how China could keep a privileged status over other countries by controlling some necessary goods, which can be traced back to the successful tea-horse trade model developed in the Ming Dynasty. Finally, fifth, whether we consider rhubarb or the tea-horse trade, both policies were based on a natural theory concerning pharmacology, food, the body, and the natural environment. This paper concludes by noting that the complexity of Chinese diplomacy cannot be grasped by a simple theoretical structure. Sometimes it is essential to examine cultural factors such as medicine and pharmacology to understand the basis on which it was conducted.
Since nationwide voluntary societies were previously unknown in China, they represented a new experience for the government and elites as well, thus giving government-elites relations a unique significance in the history of the Republic of China. In the case of the Chinese Red Cross Society, various Republican governments hoped to reinforce their control over this organization through regulations and related powers. The Beijing governments were unhappy that the Red Cross’ general office and standing council were in Shanghai. Most of the chairmen of the Chinese Red Cross Society headquarters in Beijing were nominated from former diplomats, who thus received at least implicit approval of Beijing; as a result, the Red Cross’ Beijing headquarters maintained good relations with the Beijing governments. However, the Beijing headquarters was merely a nominal organization without any real powers, and the Chinese Red Cross Society remained outside the direct control of the Beijing governments. On the one hand, this was perhaps due to the Beijing governments’ general lack of authority. On the other hand, it may have been due to the Red Cross’ dependence on the contributions of local businessmen in Shanghai. Although the Beijing governments tried announcing personnel appointments directly and intervening in personnel arrangements and operations of the Chinese Red Cross Society, these efforts were in vain, and the Red Cross remained out of Bejing’s control.
After the unification of China in 1927, the Nationalist government was not friendly to the Red Cross, refusing to approve its new chairman and canceling all preferential treatment. The Nationalists then started to intervene in the Red Cross’ reorganization, taking advantage of internal personnel disputes and finally, perhaps with the aid of underworld gangs, successfully suppressed the traditional power structure of the Chinese Red Cross Society. In 1934, the reorganization of the Red Cross signified the success of the Nationalist government’s interventions, though the form of democratic elections was still maintained. During the war against Japan, the Nationalists put the Chinese Red Cross Society under direct control of the military, and since then all Red Cross officers have been appointed by the government. Indeed, for the officers of the Red Cross in Taiwan and China, appointment by government remains unchanged even today.
Studies of postwar Taiwan history primarily focus on the issue of the February 28th incident or use political lenses to examine various questions. Furthermore, much historical work is shaped by “Chinese-ification”(中國化) and de-Japanization notions. However, if this history is re-examined through female discourses in the public space, new aspects of postwar Taiwan are revealed. This paper obtained materials from twenty-four newspapers and magazines published in postwar Taiwan to examine such controversial problems as the images of Taiwanese women, prostitution, maids, and marriage. This article concludes that the media in postwar Taiwan provided women with an extensive space for voicing opinions. Whether they adopted a more official or a more popular stance, newspapers and magazines accommodated heterogeneous discourses. Though the discourses published in these media often lacked a common point of view and were often unfocused, repeated discussions gave these topics real substance. However, although the discourses formed by media representation and design could not fully reflect social reality, intersecting discussions emerged when newspapers and magazines of different types or time periods generated similar viewpoints on the same issue, and therefore partially reflected social reality. More importantly, the diverse aspects of these issues revealed not only aspects of the national identity problem in postwar Taiwan, but also interlocking relationships of gender, power, ethnicity, culture, and region. Many problems arose not only between native Taiwanese and Mainlanders (wai-sheng-ren, 外省人)but also among Mainlanders themselves.
Therefore, this paper delineates the unstable transformations in relationships among gender, class, and power through the various identity questions in female discourse, concluding that although distinct ethnic, national, cultural, and regional identities emerged, these different identities were simultaneously negotiating and adapting to each other.