摘要
清代财政有三大制度性特征广为学界所关注:第一,不管是和其他中国早期现代王朝相比,还是与其他早期现代国家相比,清政府的整体财政能力都更加薄弱。第二,在长达几乎两个世纪的时间里,尽管经济总量有显著增长,而且后来又出现了严重的财政危机,但清政府始终拒绝提高农业税的总量。第三,清政府对农业税和非农业税始终采取截然不同的处理方式:农业税往往处于停滞状态,而非农业税则往往被相对灵活地使用。自20世纪90年代起,学界一直偏向以"经济理性主义"的理论视角对清代财政政策进行解读。本文将论证,尽管这些解读相当成功地解释了非农业税收的变化轨迹,但却没能令人足够满意地解释农业税的异常停滞。因此,它们无法解释为何非农业税被清政府灵活地使用,而农业税却没有。这意味着,如果我们想要完整地了解清代财政背后的政治逻辑,恐怕需要摆脱纯理性主义的思维方式,转而去关注财政政治是否在某种程度上建构于意识形态之上。
The Qing fiscal state had three major institutional characteristics that have drawn significant academic attention:First,relative to both other Chinese dynasties and to other contemporary early modern states,the Qing state’s gross fiscal capacity was very unusually low.Second,it refused to increase the absolute volume of its agricultural taxation for nearly two centuries,despite significant economic growth over the same period,and the existence of serious fiscal crises in the latter half of that period.Third,it took fundamentally different approaches to agricultural taxation and non-agricultural taxation,keeping the former stagnant for extended periods of time,while wielding the latter in a fairly flexible manner.Since the 1990 s,scholars have tended to attempt to explain these institutional features through economically rationalist models of political behavior.This article argues that,while these models successfully explain the general trajectory of Qing non-agricultural taxation,they fail to provide fully satisfactory explanations for the unusual stagnation of the agricultural tax.They are therefore unable to explain the former enjoyed a significant measure of institutional flexibility,while the latter did not.If we are to fully understand the political logic behind Qing fiscal policymaking and institutions,we must look beyond pure rationalism,and look instead to the ideological foundations of fiscal politics.
出处
《中国经济史研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2021年第1期40-53,共14页
Researches in Chinese Economic History
关键词
清代财政
农业税
工商税
关税
间接税收
经济理性主义
Qing Fiscal State
Agricultural Taxes
Commercial and Industrial Taxes
Tariffs
Indirect Taxation
Economic Rationalism
