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Ch'ing Government and the Mineral Industries Before 1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

E-Tu Zen Sun
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Extract

There were mines and smelters located in all the provinces of Ch'ing China before the nineteenth century. Their sizes varied greatly, as did their role in the local as well as national economy. Government policy regarding these industries was not based on a uniform code, but rather reflected a body of principles that served as guidelines for coping with each individual situation as it arose. Indeed, reading the early Ch'ing documents on mining leaves one at first with the impression that the authorities were eternally debating over the question, “to mine or not to mine.” Upon closer examination it soon becomes clear, however, that “mining affairs” were far from being administered along haphazard lines. It is the intention of this paper to describe some of the basic factors that went into the making of government decisions regarding mineral enterprises. In doing this, it would be helpful to keep these questions in mind: how did the mineral industries fit into the general framework of an agrarian-based civil bureaucracy? In the application of policy, did the government invariably let its actions be determined by a priori conceptions, or did it base decisions on pragmatic grounds? What sort of relation was generally accepted as the norm between the government and the operators of the enterprises in the instances where government interest was manifest?

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , August 1968 , pp. 835 - 845
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1968

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References

1 Hsiang-jung, Lu, comp., Yang-shan-hsien chih (Gazetteer of Yang-shan District), (1832 ed.). 5.42b.Google Scholar

2 Hui-yün, Hsü, comp., Ch'en-hsi-hsien chih (Gazetteer of Ch'en-hsi District), (1821 ed.), hereafter cited as Ch'en-hsi. 21.4–4b.Google Scholar

3 Ch'ing-ch'ao wen-hsien t'ung-k'ao, Shanghai (1936 ed.), hereafter cited as WHTK. 30.5129Google Scholar; Ch'en-hsi, 21.2.Google Scholar

4 P'ing-han, , com., Tsun-i-fu chih (A Gazetteer of Tsun-i Prefecture), (1892 ed.), 19.10–2Google Scholar. The petitioners in this case are referred to as a group of “Szechuanese and Hunanese vagrants without an occupation,” which might have compounded their difficulties, in that obviously they were (a) natives of other provinces, and (b) apparently not sponsored by any local groups.

5 Nankai University, Department of History, comp. Ch'ing Shih-lu ching-chi tzu-liao chi-yao (Selection of Economic Data from the Veritable Records of Ch'ing). Peking (1959), hereafter cited as SL-CCTL. 201.Google Scholar

6 Ch'en-hsi, 21.2.Google Scholar

7 WHTK, 30.5130. For a discussion of the place of mine workers in traditional society, see my chapter, “Mining Labor in the Ch'ing Period,” Approaches to Modern Chinese History, ed. by Feuer-werker, A., Murphey, R., and Wright, M. C. (University of California Press, 1967), pp. 45–67.Google Scholar

8 WHTK, 31.5137; Huang Pang-yuan, et al, Kuang-hsü Hsin-ning-hsien chih (Gazetteer of Hsinning District, Kuang-shü edition), quoted in I-tse, P'eng, ed., Chung-kuo chin-tai shou-kung-yeh shih tzu-liao (Materials on Modern Chinese Handicraft Industries) (Peking, 1957)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as SKYS. I.317.

9 WHTK, 61.5137: replying in 1739 to objections voiced against the opening of coal mines in southern Jehol, the Ch'ien-lung Emperor dismissed as unimportant one of the reasons, that the mines would be located too near the Imperial hunting park; the important thing, he pointed out, was that all the people in that area would benefit from the opening of the coal mines.

10 Ch'ing-ch'ao Hsü wen-hsien t'ung-k'ao (Shanghai, 1936 ed.), hereafter cited as HWHTK. 43.7973.

11 WHTK, 30.5129: in 1709 the amount of taxes from the gold, silver, copper and tin mines and smelters in Yunnan totalled more than Tls. 80,000 per year, a sum considered enough by the K'ang-hsi Emperor as that province's contribution to military appropriations, and he forbade an increase in the tax rates.

12 Memorial of Gov. Li Shih-yao, June 24, 1759, quoted in SKYS, 1.310.

13 SKYS, 1.310–11, 315–16; II.134; Shigemi, Sasamoto, “Tetsusei ni okeru Butsusan hoko to doro: Zoku Kanton no testsu ka” (The administration of the iron smelters of Fo-shan: The iron cooking vessels of Kwangtung, continued), Tōhōgaku 20, 52–62 (1960)Google Scholar. The tax was not always levied on the basis of furnace units. In Szechuan in 1764, for example, new ironworks in P'ing-shan district were taxed at the rate of 20 percent of the wrought iron produced and the amount was commuted into money before being paid into the provincial treasury for military use. Generally speaking, in the Ch'ien-lung period where production of a mineral on a large scale could be counted on, there the mining taxes would be levied according to an annual quota; where the production was of smaller amounts, the taxes were set up at a rate ranging between 10 and 20 percent of the amount produced. See WHTK, 30.5132 and 40.5225–26.

14 SKTS, 1.311.

15 For instance, was it not possible that iron produced in southern Hunan, and distributed to domestic markets through Hankow, could also have found its way overseas via the lower Yangtse region? The Yung-cheng Emperor asked this question in 1732 and ordered the authorities in all the provinces concerned to suggest ways of better controlling the production and shipments of iron. SL-CCTL, 201.

16 Tuan-liu, Yang, Ch'ing-tai huo-pi chin-jung shih kao (A History of Money and Finance in the Ch'ing Dynasty), (Peking, 1962), pp. 182–86.Google Scholar

17 The account of the Shang-chou episode is based on Wen-ssu, Lo, comp., Hsü Shang-chou chih (Revised Gazetteer of Shang-chou), (1758 ed.), 4.3–9Google Scholar, under “Mines.”

18 The chien-sheng were actually merchants who purchased this title as an entry into the privileged class. This practice steadily increased throughout the eighteenth century. Ho, Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York, 1962), pp. 32–34Google Scholar; and his Chung-kuo hui-kuan shih-lun (An Historical Survey of Landsmannschaften in China), (Taipei, 1966), p. 38.Google Scholar

19 The importation of Japanese copper was another instance of government-sponsored enterprise operated on a quota basis. At first supplied annually by certain Yangtse valley customs stations which bought copper from import merchants, the system gradually evolved into one in which government-licensed merchants were authorized to trade with Japan and import the required copper each year. Each merchant was then directly responsible for delivering a specified amount of copper to the government; all surplus copper after taxes was allowed for private trading. It would seem that the merchants chose to reexport a considerable portion of it to European traders at such ports as Amoy and Chusan. Ch'ing-yün, Wang, Shih-ch'ü yü-chi (1890 ed.), 5.16b–17Google Scholar; Morse, H. B., Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Taipei reprint ed., 1966), I.110, 123–4, 132Google Scholar. Records for the years 1701–04 show that English traders at these ports were eager to pay good prices for “Japan copper,” and in at least one case the ships “scrambled” for the copper offered by the Chinese merchants.

20 Ch'ing-yün, Wang, 5.17Google Scholar; Chung-p'ing, Yen, Ch'ing-tai yün-nan t'ung-cheng k'ao (A study of the copper administration in Yunnan during the Ch'ing dynasty), (Shanghai, 1957), p. 2.Google Scholar

21 Enough was produced for at least a small amount of it to find its way into foreign trade: at Canton in 1705 the English ship Kent took on, among other cargoes, 600 chests (1 chest = 1 picul) of “Yunnan copper” worth Tls. 6,180. This is a price lower than that paid for “Japan copper” at the other ports. Morse, 1.144.

22 WHTK, 16.4994.

23 Yen, , 81–84Google Scholar; Anonymous, T'ung-cheng pien-lan (A Manual on Copper Administration), (pub. 1825?), hereafter cited as TCPL. 1.9 and 3.2.

24 TCPL, 1.9b, 11b, 15–41b; 2.2–43 passim.

25 Yuan Yuan, comp. Yün-nan t'ung-chih (A General Gazetteer of Yunnan), (1835), hereafter cited as YNTC. 74.27.

26 Quoted in SKYS, 1.337.

27 YNTC, 74.23.

28 TCPL, 2.44.

29 Ibid., 8.38b–39.

30 Li Fu, “Letter on the copper industry of Yunnan,” quoted in SKYS, 1.345.

31 Yen, 29 and passim.; Sun, E-tu Zen, “The Copper of Yunnan: an Historical Sketch,” Mining Engineering (july 1964), pp. 118–24.Google Scholar

32 Wen-shao, Wang, comp. Hsü Yün-nan t'ung-chih kao (Revised General Gazetteer of Yunnan), (1901). 48.1.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., chüan 46–47 passim.; TCPL, 1.9b, 3.1–10.

34 Yen, , 68.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 65, 68.

36 Hu-pu tse-li (Regulations and Precedents of the Board of Revenue), (1851 ed.), 37.18–19bGoogle Scholar; I-ling, Fu, Ming Ch'ing shih-tai shang-jen chi shang-yeh tzu-pen (Merchants and Commercial Capital during the Ming and Ch'ing Periods), (Peking, 1956), pp. 176–78, 184.Google Scholar

37 Ch'i-chün, Wu, Tien-nan k'uang-ch'ang t'u-lueh (Illustrated Account of the Mines of Yunnan), (1848), 1.500Google Scholar. The importance of investors from other provinces to the development of Yunnan mines had become evident since the K'ang-hsi period: besides copper, the tin mines of Ko-chiu were developed with funds brought by investors from Kiangsi, Fukien, Hunan, Hupei, Szechuan, and Kweichow. See Ho, , Chung-kuo hui-kuan shih-lun, 46Google Scholar, item on Meng-tzu.