Taxation, Property Rights and Fiscal State: The Historical Analyses of China In Capital and Ideology

Abstract

The widely acclaimed Capital and Ideology, though an important contribution to the inequality debates, is limited by its use of secondary sources and fiscal state framework in its historical analysis of China. Its arguments for a Confucian trifunctional society with property rights sacralized by nobles’ and scholars’ regalian functions, and persistently low and stagnant taxation in premodern China overly simplify the historical reality. Using primary Chinese sources, this article highlights the major oversimplifications. The information and issues presented here are also worth considering for similar social and fiscal studies of premodern China.

Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology is monumental both in its scope and argument. It is an epic sequel to the widely acclaimed Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and it makes an important contribution to the inequality debates.¹ So far, reviews of the book have been overwhelmingly positive. To solve inequality, this book argues that there are viable alternatives to capitalism, and that its ills can be cured by non-revolutionary means. Based on historical analyses of how different social groups justified their property rights, this book contends that societies have gone through a five-stage progression: from trifunctional societies (i.e. societies with a structure of three functional groups, nobility, clergy, and workers, in which nobility and clergy justified their property rights by their regalian functions), to ownership societies (i.e. societies in which property rights are sacred, despite the transfer of regalian functions from the nobility/clergy to the state, the non-state social groups’ property rights were inviolable), to colonial and slave societies and then social democratic societies (which broadly include all welfare and communist states), and finally to today's hyper-capitalist societies.² This book uses taxation as a major tool for understanding the past and creating a better future. Anchored in cross-country historical analyses, it recommends progressive taxation as the non-violent wealth redistribution tool to solve inequality. China is one of the non-European examples analyzed to illustrate the universal validity of its arguments, thus buttressing its transnational recommendations.

The trifunctional model, five stages societal categorization, and linear progression are conceptually clean, but they don't reflect the complex reality in premodern China. There are also other important oversimplifications in this book's analyses of premodern China's taxation and social configuration. Oversimplifications are understandably used in this book to find historical commonalities across a sweeping scope of countries and time periods, but they also mask significant differences and jeopardize its transnational conclusions. Some oversimplifications appear to be scope and methodology issues. But some are inherited: this book's social and fiscal analyses of premodern China are largely based on secondary sources, and certain oversimplifications seem to be derived from assertions often repeated in analyses under the “fiscal state” framework. Instead of belaboring the praise for this book, this article will use primary Chinese sources to highlight the major oversimplifications. Capital and Ideology makes broad claims across China's history, but the data and argument presented are particularly problematic for the late-fourteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, a period with watershed taxation changes and complexities that do not fit this book's explanatory model. More examples from this period will therefore be used to illustrate the issues of this book's sweeping interpretations of the Chinese case. The information and issues presented below, especially those on social configuration, low taxation, and the fiscal state, are also worth considering because they are topics scholars of Chinese history discuss.

The Trifunctional Model and Premodern China

In the “Trifunctional Society and the Construction of the Chinese State” section of chapter 9, Capital and Ideology argues that China had been configured trifunctionally “throughout its history, until the revolution of 1911,” and was “analogous to the trifunctional regimes found in Europe and India until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries” (p. 389). Recognizing the differences between China and Christian Europe, and in order to fit premodern China into the trifunctional explanatory model, this book creates a “Confucian version of trifunctionality” by replacing the clergy in the European explanatory model with Chinese scholars. This book posits that the “fundamental difference between the Confucian and Christian versions of trifunctionality” is that the Chinese scholars were not “seen as a religious organization distinct from the state” (p. 389). In other words, by discounting the clergy, all of premodern China is essentially interpreted as a trifunctional society of nobility, scholars and workers, with scholars’ and nobility's property rights justified by their regalian functions. However, premodern Chinese society was a lot more complex than the overly simplified trifunctional model, and private property of the major social groups was not simply justified or denied by the performance or non-performance of regalian functions.

The first complexity is that, instead of being trifunctional, premodern China had long had a different ideology of organizing the scholars and other commoners (shumin 庶民) into four social categories (simin 四民): scholars, farmers, craftsmen and merchants.³ It is very difficult to explain simin by the trifunctional model because simin was categorized by professions, not property and regalian functions. Simin was not originally purposed to justify or deny private property among the commoners, but to segregate the commoners based on their professions and restrict their residential locations, so as to facilitate social control.⁴ Ideologically, there was no blanket exclusion of all commoners from property across the whole of premodern China. On the contrary, it was believed that commoners should have dedicated professions and property; and if they had property, they would be incentivized to remain at the same place until they died.⁵ The fixing of people's profession and residence, especially with the emphasis on farming and property, could then reduce the floating and unproductive population (youshizhimin 游食之民), which in turn, would improve social stability.⁶ In fact, in early premodern China, instead of being excluded from property, commoners were already granted land and taxed accordingly.⁷ At least from the early Han (206 BCE–220), commoners were able to sell their land.⁸ In the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911), private property among commoners was a common phenomenon (see the public versus private capital analysis below). Although there were occasional property restrictions in certain time periods and for certain commoners, a simple trifunctional model of blanket property exclusion among all commoners except scholars cannot explain simin and the historical reality across the whole premodern China.⁹

Another complexity undermining the trifunctional model is the explanation of the changing status inequalities among simin. The social status superiority sequence of simin (such as the sequence of scholars, farmers, craftsmen and then merchants) indeed varied over time, which cannot be explained by the static and blanket trifunctional model. When simin first emerged, all the four social categories were regarded as important foundation stones of the state, and simin was not directly used to discriminate one category of commoners against the others.¹⁰ The social status superiority sequence then varied until the Qin and Han.¹¹ Furthermore, the sequence advocated by the government could be different from the social reality. For example, in the Han, there was a time when merchants were lowered by law to a social status below farmers; but in reality, merchants were much more powerful and wealthier than the farmers, and society at large viewed farmers as having a lower status.¹² In fact, the superiority sequence of simin was repeatedly challenged in premodern China because of the changing social reality. For example, in the Song (960–1279), Ming, and Qing, scholars and government officials argued that the four simin categories should be viewed as equal.¹³ These arguments happened in a changing social context in which the boundaries among the four categories were becoming increasingly blurred, especially the boundary between merchants and scholars. China was largely evolving into a society in which it was mainly merchants’ sons who could afford to become scholars.¹⁴ The static and blanket trifunctional model is inadequate to explain the complex social reality, especially in terms of simin's changing status inequalities, across premodern China. There are also other structural and scope complexities of reconciling simin with the trifunctional model, which are explained below.

Structurally, it is difficult to fit simin into the trifunctional model, such as by replacing the European clergy with simin's scholars, and by reducing the other three simin categories into the workers functional group of the model. One major difficulty is that the four simin categories were not mutually exclusive. A person could belong to multiple simin categories at the same time, such as being both a scholar and a farmer, or a scholar and a merchant. In the Han, it was not unusual for government officials to engage in merchant activities, effectively being both a scholar and a merchant within the context of simin.¹⁵ In the Song, because of their meager salary, government officials had to be farmers and/or merchants at the same time in order to earn a sufficient living.¹⁶ In the Yuan (1271–1368), it was thought that to earn a living, a scholar should ideally also be a farmer; but as long as the ethics were not abandoned, ideologically, there was also nothing wrong with a scholar also being a merchant.¹⁷ Also, the boundaries among nobility, officials/scholars and other commoners could be less than distinct in premodern China. In many time periods in premodern China, there were policies which allowed commoners to obtain official positions, or even nobility titles by making “donations and payments” (juan na 捐納) to the government.¹⁸ The purchased noble titles could sometimes even be traded among commoners.¹⁹ To further complicate matters, nobility in premodern China could be demoted across generations and, under certain situations, nobility could also be commoners or scholars/officials.²⁰ The static and blanket trifunctional model cannot explain the complex realities across premodern China, such as the non-mutually exclusive identities among the four simin categories and the nobility.

In terms of scope, it is difficult for the static and blanket trifunctional model to cover all the social category variations across premodern China, which even simin itself could not encompass. The social categories before the Qin were already more complex than simin; for example, the state of Chu had ten different social categories.²¹ In fact, the simin categorization was repeatedly viewed as inadequate in reflecting the social reality in premodern China. At least from the Tang (618–907), it was already impossible to use simin to represent the whole of the population without increasing the social categories from four to six (by adding the monks and priests).²² Chinese society continued to develop to such complexities that in the late Ming it was suggested that simin should be expanded from four to twenty four categories (ershisimin 二十四民) to better reflect the complex social reality.²³

Another scope issue regards the Confucian trifunctional model's discounting of clergy, which limits our ability to understand certain premodern Chinese societies. As highlighted above, instead of discounting the religious groups, simin had to be expanded to include monks and priests in the Tang, because of their significant influence. Many commoners in the Tang tried to obtain a monk or priest registration to avoid their tax liabilities.²⁴ This caused serious inequalities and social issues because the avoided taxes were then redistributed and extracted among the remaining poor and powerless people.²⁵ We can examine a more specific example in the Tang to understand the religious groups’ influence. In 845, the emperor, upon the advice of certain Daoist priests and officials, recognized the social and economic threats of the Buddhist monks and revoked the licenses of about 260,500 monks and nuns; their over 150,000 slaves and servants were also reverted to being taxable households under government's control, and a few billion mu 畝 of their fertile farmland were confiscated.²⁶ However, the revocation policy was overturned after only two years.²⁷ Though the precise amount of land confiscated in 845 is not known, its order of magnitude gives us a rough idea on how influential the monks were. We do not know the exact size of the total government controlled land in 845, but in the early Tang, the government had control of a total land area of about 1.4 billion mu.²⁸ The government controlled a similar amount of land in the middle of the Kaiyuan (713–741) and the Tianbao period (742–756).²⁹ In the middle of the Dazhong period (847–860), a short period after the 845 revocation and over 200 years of development from the beginning of the Tang, the government controlled land decreased to about 1,168,835,400 mu.³⁰ In comparison, the 845 confiscated land was of a much larger order of magnitude than the government controlled land. The significance could be further understood by examining the land grant (shoutian 授田) amount in the Tang. Commoners in the early to mid-Tang were supposed to obtain their land through government land grants.³¹ Each monk and nun in the Tang was to be granted 30 mu and 20 mu of land respectively.³² Therefore, because of the land grant limit, for the 260,500 revoked monks and nuns in 845, the total land area under their control should not exceed 5,210,000 mu to 7,815,000 mu. ³³ The 845 confiscated land well exceeded this land grant limit. This meant the religious groups’ influence grew to such an extent in 845 that they were able to possess a very large amount of land beyond the government's land grant limit; and most importantly, they were powerful enough to control and protect a land holding that was even larger than the total government controlled land. In fact, it was already suggested in as early as the Jinglong period (707–710), over a century before 845, that 70–80 percent of the country's wealth was controlled by the monks.³⁴ Also, the 150,000 slaves and servants reverted to being taxable households were very probably only those known to or previously assigned by the government, and did not include all the people under the monks’ influence.³⁵ It was estimated that, on average, each monk had at least ten households to support him; so for the 260,500 monks and nuns, the actual number of people under their influence could be many times the 150,000 people.³⁶ Given such level of influence of the religious groups, a clergy-discounted Confucian trifunctional model seriously limits our understanding of certain premodern Chinese societies such as the Tang.

Even if we were to resolve the scope limitation by extending the Confucian trifunctional model to include the discounted clergy (say, a “tetra-functional model” of nobility, scholars, clergy, and workers), it would still be difficult for the static model to explain the blurred boundaries among monks, priests, and commoners in the Tang. For example, in 757, there was a policy that monks, nuns and priests could, upon certain payments to the government, choose to become commoners and be awarded official or nobility titles.³⁷ Also, commoners were offered the opportunities to become monks and priests upon certain payments, bypassing the onerous approval processes.³⁸ To further complicate the blurring boundaries, there was also a large number of unregistered monks and nuns (sidu 私度) in the Tang. For example, in 830, the government realized the problems of sidu and asked the unregistered monks and nuns to apply for a proper license. This one exercise already attracted about 700,000 applications.³⁹ The Confucian trifunctional model, or even a clergy-extended model, cannot explain the complex social reality in the Tang.

The trifunctional model's explanatory power is further challenged when we move beyond the ideology level of simin, and examine the actual rights and obligations, and therefore the inequalities, among the social groups in premodern China. We would better understand the challenges by examining a specific example of the household registration institution in the Ming, which specified important rights and obligations for most of the population. Instead of being trifunctional, under the institution, people were organized into many hereditary household groups, mostly according to their professions.⁴⁰ At a very high level, there were four household groups: military, civilians, craftsmen, and salt households.⁴¹ These were only the basic groups; there were other derivative groups and certain groups could also be divided into many sub-groups, which were very different from the simple trifunctional model.⁴² Also, unlike the trifunctional model, the inequalities among the household groups were justified more in terms of their respective tax obligations and exemptions than property. Interestingly, on property, for some of the household groups mentioned above, their property claims in terms of land grants were justified by the fulfilment of their tax obligations, not by the performance of regalian functions as suggested by the trifunctional model. For example, the salt households were granted land for the fulfilment of their salt production obligations.⁴³ It was not a universal justification of property rights by regalian functions performed by the trifunctional groups of nobles and scholars as this book argues. The salt households’ property claims indeed evolved into very complex property regimes (see the “future property rights” example below). Most importantly, unlike what is proposed by the trifunctional model, most of the commoners, regardless of their household groupings, were not excluded from land ownership. To encourage land development and increase revenue, the Ming compendium of rules and regulations, Da Ming huidian 大明會典, documented a rule in 1527 that households from any of the four major groups (i.e. military, civilians, craftsmen, and salt households) could be granted, on a perpetual basis, land that were abandoned anywhere in the country.⁴⁴ Land grants and property rights protection for the commoners were mainly justified by tax contribution, not by regalian functions as suggested by the trifunctional model. Tax and property relations were intertwined.

The Ming taxation and household registration institutions pose additional challenges for the trifunctional model to explain the monks and priests. Similar to the Tang, there was a government licensing system with separate registers and qualifying examinations for Buddhist monks and Daoist priests in the Ming.⁴⁵ However, they were still linked to their originating household groups, such as military, civilians, craftsmen, or salt households. The Great Ming Code (Da Ming lü 大明律) stipulated that if a monk or priest committed an offence, the person would be struck off the Monks/Priests Registers (effectively losing their licenses), revert to their originating household groups and be subjected to the respective service obligations.⁴⁶ Also, in the Ming, monks and priests had a relatively low social status; even their clothing had restrictions similar to those of the bottom social classes.⁴⁷ Property ownership by a temple was constrained by the Ming government and land owned in excess of the limit was supposed to be confiscated.⁴⁸ Property ownership by monks and priests was not justified by their regalian functions under a universal trifunctional model. Their property ownership could be nominal and was differently justified, depending on the services they provided to the local community. For example, upon payment of an annual service fee, the monks and temples could provide tax management and/or avoidance services by accepting a transfer of land, and thus the associated tax liabilities, under their household registration. Taxable land was nominally “owned” by the temples for the sake of the tax services. There were even market prices for such services as taking nominal ownership of taxable land. In the mid to late sixteenth century, the average price for such services was about ten shi 石 of grain (disguised as an annual rental payment to the monks), for taking over one shi of annual tax liability in Fujian province.⁴⁹ In addition to tax services, property could also be “parked” under a temple by civilians as a financing arrangement to fund the various services to be provided by the temples, such as ancestor worship services for lineages, facilities operation, and maintenance of irrigation systems.⁵⁰

The final problem with the trifunctional model is that the local social structure in premodern China varied widely by location and was very much determined by interactions among the local power holders. It cannot be explained by the static and blanket trifunctional model. For example, in terms of dispute resolution, in the early Ming the government required that all disputes, such as the ones related to marriage, land, and brawls, should be arbitrated and judged by the elders in the local community.⁵¹ If the parties went directly to the government for arbitration, the concerned parties would be first punished by a beating of sixty strokes, regardless of the grievances or whether their causes were justified, and the case would then still be referred back to the elders.⁵² The elders could also control local public goods provision such as water affairs management.⁵³ The elders were mainly local elites determined by the local power configuration. They did not have to be nobles, clergymen, or scholars, but they performed regalian functions such as dispute arbitration, which is a defining characteristic of the nobles and clergymen/scholars in the trifunctional model. It is therefore hard to argue that a static trifunctional society, with the nobles and scholars owning all the property, and with their property justified by their regalian functions, persisted across the entire history of China before 1911.

Linear Societal Progression and Wealth Redistribution by Taxation

China's development trajectory was also more complex than the linear societal progression from a trifunctional society to today's capitalist mixed economy (i.e. a mix of public and private capital in the ratio of 30 percent to 70 percent in today's China, pp.607–8) described in Capital and Ideology. If we evaluate China based on a similar private capital ratio of 70 percent or more, this defining characteristic of the twentieth century's mixed economy and ownership society did also appear in premodern China. For example, in the sixteenth century, China already had a substantial proportion of private capital. China was then predominantly an agricultural economy, and land was the primary productive asset from which a majority of the national income was derived. Ownership distribution of this most important productive asset could give us a rough idea on the relative proportion between public and private capital. In 1578, the total taxable land in China was about 701,397,628 mu.⁵⁴ The highly taxed government land (guantian 官田) accounted for approximately 30 percent of the total taxable land.⁵⁵ Given the weak control on government land and tax evasion, some of the government land was sold deceptively as private civilian land (mintian 民田), and, in reality, the proportion of private civilian land was probably much higher than 70 percent. In fact, after the unified tax liabilities redistribution across all civilian and government land (guanmintian heweiyize 官民田合為一則) in 1581, it was lamented that the government lost control of most of its government land.⁵⁶ Such a high private land ownership proportion shows that China in the sixteenth century already had the characteristic of the “mixed economy”: a Chinese society with significant private capital was not exclusive to the twentieth century, as this book argues. In fact, the high proportion of private civilian land was not unique to the sixteenth century. In 1753, according to the government's fiscal accounting records, the proportion of private civilian land out of the total registered land was at a level of over 90 percent in most of the provinces, with a national average of over 94 percent.⁵⁷

Premodern China also manifested the ownership society characteristic of respecting property rights because of the intertwining property and tax relations. Instead of being justified by regalian functions, as in the trifunctional model, property rights were protected by taxation against infringement by other social groups and/or the state. For example, in those gigantic lake irrigation systems in the prosperous Yangzi River Delta, which usually included vast lakes as water stores, extensive distribution networks, massive physical facilities (e.g. gates, dikes) and complex rules (e.g. water allocation rules, security rules, tax liability distribution rules), higher unit tax liabilities (e.g. per mu) were distributed to the more fertile land within the irrigation footprint. The unit tax liabilities distributed to the irrigated land could be 100 percent higher than the land outside of the irrigation footprint. The social groups covered by the irrigation systems leveraged their higher tax contribution to secure government protection of their privileges and property, in terms of lake land and water rights, against competing social and political groups from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth.⁵⁸ Commoners could secure property and privileges by taxation, not performance of regalian functions.

Because of the intertwining property and tax relations, the protection of property rights by taxation evolved to such sophistication that on certain tax payments, the government could offer property exclusion and protection not just for existing property rights but also for future, yet-to-emerge ones. One interesting phenomenon was the future property rights associated with land along the seaside or riverside. Those lands could be subject to tidal or river course landscape changes. They were unstable and could collapse and emerge under the sedimentary effect of a river and/or the tidal bore attack. On emergence, if they could be fenced off, drained and/or desalinated properly, they could be developed into cultivatable land. For example, in the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, in Fujian Province, future property rights to yet-to-emerge coastal land (daitian 埭田) could be secured by civilians by paying the government an annual future land tax.⁵⁹ Certificates were issued to taxpayers to prove their future entitlements. Waiting for the emergence of a piece of coastal land required a lot of patience, as it could take generations. For those who did not have the patience or financial resources to keep paying taxes on non-existent land, these future property rights were so popularly recognized that the owners could choose to sell them to others.⁶⁰ Similar examples of future property rights existed across time and space in premodern China. In the Ming and Qing, the salt households, especially those in the coastal areas, were allocated zaodi 竈地, which were supposed to be in the proximity of a salt production site, to enable their salt production, and the allocated land was associated with certain tax liabilities.⁶¹ In the eighteenth to nineteenth century, in Zhejiang province, because of the tidal bore attacks, certain zaodi collapsed into the sea. Instead of petitioning the government for a tax reduction, the salt households chose to continue to pay taxes for their collapsed zaodi in order to secure their property claims for some future, yet-to-emerge land. By continuing to pay taxes for the disappeared land for years, they could then claim that any future-emerged land was part of their previously collapsed land. Because of their tax payments, they obtained the government's protection on their claims for future, yet-to-emerge property against the other local power groups.⁶² In a nutshell, the ownership societies’ defining characteristic of respecting property rights did exist in premodern China, and a linear five-stage societal progression cannot fully explain the complex reality.

The above historical examples of intertwining tax and property relations also highlight a potential applicability issue with this book's universal recommendation of using progressive taxation to redistribute wealth in all societies. Progressive taxation targeting elites and capitalists may not necessarily lead to a more equitable redistribution of wealth. Progressive taxation's ability to help reduce inequality could be affected by a number of factors such as how the tax system is implemented, how the taxing power is distributed among central, regional, and local authorities (e.g. on rules setting, revenue collection, exemption), how tax revenue is shared among central, regional, and local authorities, and how performance targets among the officials are established and managed (e.g. as long as the aggregate revenue target is met at the local level, the central government is less concerned from whom and how the tax is actually collected). If in certain societies the taxation systems breed intertwining tax and property relations like our examples above, and if local officials can set rules and benefit from the revenue collection, etc., then tax payments could morph into protection money. The more tax one pays, the more property and privileges one could secure. Such situations did not happen only in premodern China, as the examples above show. In fact, during the economic reforms of the past forty years, local governments in China offered protection and special privileges to enterprises based on their tax revenue contribution.⁶³ The intertwining tax and property relations in China evolved to such an extent that it created a “buyers’ market,” in which elites could shop around for the best protection of their property/privileges across locations.⁶⁴ Taxation could be used to fortify the elites’ property claims and privileges, making it difficult to redistribute wealth away from them. In other words, instead of being the universal solution for inequality that this book argues it is, progressive taxation, depending on its implementation, could aggravate it.

Persistently Low and Stagnant Taxation

The validity of Capital and Ideology's conclusion depends on its historical taxation analyses. The book compares China with a number of European states from 1550 to 1850, and finds that China's per capita tax receipts “remained around two to five days of wages” and thus “stagnated at 1–2 percent of national income” (p. 366). According to the book's supporting Excel spreadsheets, this persistently low and stagnant extraction conclusion for premodern China is based on four data points of “per capita tax receipts in equivalent days of wages,” that is, 2.5 days of wages in 1550, 3.8 days of wages in 1650, 5.0 days of wages in 1750 and 3.8 days of wages in 1850.⁶⁵ Since the low and stagnant conclusion is based on only four data points, the validity of each and every data point is therefore critical in supporting such a conclusion. However, there are issues with both the methodology and supporting data.

On methodology, using “days of wages” in cross country comparison could avoid many comparative issues such as purchasing power and exchange rates across payment mediums, but it creates another oversimplification issue. As cited above, the persistently low and stagnant extraction conclusion for premodern China is based on state extraction equivalent to two to five days of wages from 1550 to 1850, which is then translated to mean only 1–2 percent of national income (p. 366). Contradictorily, one of this book's three cited sources for the four data points highlights a consensus among China historians that “only 1–2 percent of the Ming population were wage laborers.”⁶⁶ With such a low wage labor population in the late fourteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, unless this book also proves that the historians’ consensus is wrong, wages of the very few laborers could hardly be argued as a representative proxy for national income in 1550 and 1650. Translating tax receipts and national income into wage equivalents does not reflect the reality of the time.

On the data issue, instead of primary sources, this book's supporting Excel spreadsheet says that the four data points are from three secondary sources: Richard von Glahn, An Economic History of China, 358–82; Tuan-Hwee Sng and Chiaki Moriguchi, “Asia's Little Divergence: State Capacity in China and Japan before 1850” Centre for Economic Institutions Working Paper Series, No. 2014–6, August 2014, 3–4, and Mark Dincecco, “The Rise of Effective States in Europe,” The Journal of Economic History 75.3 (2015), 909–10.⁶⁷ However, since the data points do not seem to be extracted directly from these sources, it would be very helpful to the readers if more details on how the data points were deduced are disclosed. For example, in the Sng and Moriguchi article that provides the most detailed statistical data among the three sources, the China revenue data series starts only after 1650, does not include corvee services and has no wages details.⁶⁸ So, to be convinced of the persistently low and stagnant taxation conclusion, the readers would need to better understand the calculation bases, such as the total actual tax receipts (not revenue targets) in the year 1550 and its primary source (as there seems to be no known surviving nationally consolidated fiscal revenue official publication for 1550), whether this revenue includes the revenue of government units other than the Ministry of Revenue, the national daily wages and waged labor population in 1550, the common fiscal accounting unit for consolidation (e.g. grain, silver), commutation rates among tax payment mediums, and related estimation assumptions. Detailed disclosure of the calculations and bases is also helpful because one of the three cited sources indeed warns that “there are significant theoretical and empirical problems both with calculating GDP and real wages and their utility as measures of comparison, and the results of such exercises must be viewed with caution.”⁶⁹

It is especially important to understand the sources and estimation bases of the 1550 data point since the taxation institutions in the late-fourteenth to mid-seventeenth century were much more complex than the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The complexities make this book's argument for persistently low and stagnant taxation in 1550–1650 particularly questionable. In particular, the complexities are in the areas of tax increases through indirect means, significant surcharges, independent extractions by multiple government units without consolidated national fiscal accounting, and so forth. Unless these complexities are properly addressed, the argument for persistently low and stagnant taxation before the mid-seventeenth century could hardly be convincing. The following paragraphs will explain some of these complexities and the associated issues.

For the complexities of tax increase through indirect means, it could happen through changes in commutation rates, extra-target requisitions, manipulation of surcharges, switching among various in-kind and silver levies, and so forth. There were even tibian 提編—advanced collection of taxes in future years (especially the advanced extractions by commuting services obligations in future years into silver, such as tibian junyao 提編均徭).⁷⁰ Depending on the number of years of taxes that the government tried to collect in advance and the number of advanced collections, the actual extraction in a year could be much more than that single year's regular tax targets.⁷¹ Tibian was supposed to be only a temporary tax increase for covering military expenditures; however, once imposed, the advanced extractions persisted and were diverted to other uses.⁷² So, nominally, there seemed to be no increase in the annual tax targets but taxes were effectively increased by repeated/continuous advancement.⁷³ In fact, among the various tax increases, the government realized that tibian created the most serious burden among the people.⁷⁴ For example, there was an advanced extraction to cover the military campaigns against the “Japanese” pirates in early to mid-sixteenth century. It was extracted almost on an as-needed basis by the local in-charge military commander, and tibian was arbitrary and prone to abuses.⁷⁵ Such “temporary” tax advancement practices, once implemented, became indispensable and were still in place in 1562–1591, long after the original “Japanese” threat had subsided.⁷⁶

A good illustration of tax increases through other indirect means is offered by the changes in Shanxi province. Military extractions were particularly heavy for Shanxi.⁷⁷ There were multiple and substantial increases in the extraction for the northern borders such as the Datong Defense Area (Datong Zhen 大同鎮).⁷⁸ For example, in 1443, Shanxi was obliged to deliver to the Datong Defense Area over 418,860 shi of in-kind grain, plus 150,000 shi of grain which were commuted to silver, at the commutation rate of 0.25 taels of silver per shi. On top of the grain, Shanxi province had to deliver another 600,000 trusses of horse hay. Six years later, the in-kind grain was increased to 445,315 shi, and then there was a new extraction under the tax category of cloth, which was commuted to grain in the amount of 364,568 shi. So, in terms of in-kind grain, the effective increase was over 93 percent.⁷⁹ Then, in 1457, the silver commutation rate for the commuted grain was changed from 0.25 taels to 1 tael, a 300 percent increase. In 1480, there was another new extraction under the tax category of “white cotton cloth” in the amount of 160,000 bolts, which was commuted to 160,000 shi of grain. In terms of horse hay, it was also increased from 600,000 to one million trusses in 1449, an increase of over 66 percent, and there was another increase in the amount of 700,000 trusses in 1482.⁸⁰ We must also note that the above increases had to be extracted under a context of taxable land reduction in Shanxi from 41,864,248 mu to 36,803,927.21 mu, a reduction of over 12 percent, from the Hongwu period (1368–1398) to 1578.⁸¹ The tax burden was aggravated because those substantial tax increases were distributed and extracted against a contracting tax base of productive assets. This Shanxi example was not the only one. In the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries there were also tax increases in provinces such as Shandong and Henan for border defense.⁸² With all these changes, we could hardly argue that taxation was persistently stagnant in premodern China.

In addition to the issue of being stagnant, this Shanxi example also illustrates another issue with Capital and Ideology's argument that the per capita tax receipts were persistently low: “at 1–2 percent of national income” (p. 366). Even if we follow the book's methodology and examine the regular tax revenue under the Ministry of Revenue alone, the book's persistently low tax conclusion is questionable for the years 1550–1650. For example, based on the Ministry of Revenue fiscal targets in 1578, the combined Summer and Autumn Tax target for Shanxi amounted to a total of 2,314,802.6 shi, and the registered headcount was 5,319,359.⁸³ So the average tax target was about 0.44 shi per registered headcount.⁸⁴ If we apply the same subsistence national income proxy from the cited source of the Sng and Moriguchi article of 2014 (p.3–4), this Summer and Autumn Tax target alone was already at about 13.8 percent of subsistence national income, much higher than the “1–2 percent” argued in Capital and Ideology.⁸⁵

The above example of Shanxi was not an isolated exception. If we examine the national Summer and Autumn Tax target (i.e. 26,638,460.07 shi) and registered headcount (i.e. 60,692,856) in 1578, the average tax target in terms of subsistence national income percentage was about 13.7 percent for the whole of China, again well above the “1–2 percent” level.⁸⁶ To allow for the possibility that the registered headcount deviated more from the actual population in the south than the north in 1578 because of regional variations in the methods of distributing tax liabilities and extractions, we can perform a further scenario analysis to assess the reasonableness of the “1–2 percent” conclusion.⁸⁷ To get to the “1–2 percent” level, if we assume the same subsistence national income of 3.2 shi, the national registered headcount in 1578 will have to increase by seven to fourteen times, i.e. from 60,692,856 to the population range of 420 million to 850 million. Such a population range means, in 1578, 86–93 percent of the population were outside of the tax net and government's administrative control. If this were true, one has then to answer why China was having one of the most prosperous periods in the Ming in terms of fiscal capacity during the 1570s–1580s, instead of disintegrating due to poor fiscal and administrative control. Also, the population range of 420 million to 850 million means a population growth of 600–1,300 percent from the late fourteenth century to 1578. Such a population level in 1578 does not seem to appear in commonly known primary sources and is well above contemporary scholars’ population estimates of about 130 million to less than 200 million in late sixteenth to early seventeenth century.⁸⁸ It does not seem to be a very convincing scenario that could support the “1–2 percent” conclusion.

We must also note that the above revenue numbers only reflect the Summer and Autumn Tax's nominal targets concerning the Ministry of Revenue and do not include many other extractions, surcharges, indirect means of tax increases as explained above, and extractions by other government units and vaults. Those other extractions were not trivial, and they varied widely across locations.⁸⁹ Worse, even the underlying Summer and Autumn Tax categories changed substantially over time. For example, in the late fourteenth century, the Summer Tax had only three tax categories, including the grain tax, and the Autumn Tax also had only three tax categories, including the grain tax. Then, in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, the Summer Tax increased to twenty-three categories, and the Autumn Tax increased to eighteen categories. In 1578, the Summer Tax changed to twenty-one categories, and the Autumn Tax increased to thirty-one categories.⁹⁰ In fact, the hypothetical 13.7 percent level of taxation calculated in the previous paragraph could be a serious underestimation because, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it was observed that the actual extraction level, in terms of pure civilian land tax (i.e. which broadly included the core Summer and Autumn Tax categories and before other extractions such as supplies orders, services obligations, etc.), was already at 40–50 percent of the civilian land output.⁹¹

On the complexity of surcharges, for example, the Shanxi extractions above for the Datong Defense Area reflected only the basic extractions such as grain and horse hay, other surcharges such as substantial transportation costs had also to be borne by the taxpayers separately and were not included in the above numbers. If silver was transported from a location of over 500 li 里 to Datong, the additional transportation cost was already at the 20 percent level.⁹² For delivery of the heavier tax grain from Shanxi to Datong, the additional transportation cost was around 600–700 percent in the mid-fifteenth century; and it was observed in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century that, depending on the originating locations, the additional transportation cost for border defense areas’ tax grain delivery could be up to 800–900 percent.⁹³ Transportation surcharges were also not negligible in other deliveries, such as the 70 percent for transporting tax grain from around the Yangzhou area to Beijing,⁹⁴ and the 216 percent for delivering rice from the Suzhou Prefecture to the royal household in Beijing.⁹⁵ Other than transportation costs, there was a general observation that if the taxes were commuted to silver, the surcharge of silver meltage waste (huohao 火耗) alone could amount to a 50 percent addition for the regular taxes, and a 70–80 percent addition for the miscellaneous taxes.⁹⁶

Another complexity of accounting for the surcharge-related tax increase was that tax could be increased by manipulating surcharges without increasing the regular tax targets. For example, around 1540, in the Suzhou Prefecture, there was an increase of three tax categories with an additional tax target of 33,428 shi plus an additional surcharge of 45,074 shi (i.e. a total increase of 78,502 shi, with an average surcharge at 134 percent of the additional tax target). At the same time, there was a removal of another three tax categories, resulting in a reduction of the tax target by 34,390 shi with an associated surcharge of 13,502 shi (i.e. a total reduction of 47,892 shi, with an average surcharge at 39 percent). So, superficially, it was not incorrect to say there was a tax target reduction in the amount of 962 shi (i.e. 34,390 shi–33,428 shi). However, in substance, there was a net tax increase of 30,610 shi (78,502 shi–47,892 shi) because of the replacement of lower surcharge tax categories by higher surcharge categories.⁹⁷

Independent extractions by different government units formed another complexity at odds with Capital and Ideology's blanket conclusion on persistently low and stagnant state extraction. The taxation system in the late-fourteenth to mid-seventeenth century was essentially designed as a multipoint to multipoint extraction system, i.e. multiple government units extracted independently from multiple taxable sources, and the various tax sources were supposed to deliver their tax dues to the vaults of the various government units, without a single national control point and consolidated national fiscal accounting across government units. The crisscrossing in extractions and deliveries were particularly complicated before the location- and circumstances-specific tax reforms in the late fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. The Summer and Autumn Tax, as explained above, was mainly the Ministry of Revenue's concern, and it did not represent the total state extractions, especially the other government units’ extractions. For example, the Ministry of War had their own extraction policies, such as those regarding horse provision. The unit responsible for the actual horse provision administration (Taipusi 太僕寺) accumulated a surplus of over 10,000,000 taels of silver in the mid-sixteenth century.⁹⁸ In comparison, the annual revenue target of the Beijing Ministry of Revenue's main silver vault (Taicang 太倉) was only about two million taels of silver in the early to mid-sixteenth century.⁹⁹ So, the horse provision extractions surplus reached a level of over 500 percent of Taicang's annual revenue target. The Ministry of War and Taipusi's extractions were obviously not negligible. The Ministry of Works also had their own extractions in terms of materials, labor and silver for various construction and maintenance projects, water control projects, and so forth. In the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, the water control projects in areas such as Shandong, Henan, Suzhou, and Songjiang, already required over 400,000 people.¹⁰⁰ In 1556, for the regular extractions under the Ministry of Works, the portion of material requisitions that was commuted to silver already amounted to about 500,000 taels.¹⁰¹ This amount did not include the value of materials that had to be submitted in-kind and other silver commuted extractions, such as the ones for the craftsmen, for which the Ministry of Works had an extraction headcount target of 142,486 craftsmen in 1562.¹⁰² Worse, in addition to the regular extractions, there were special project extractions, such as those related to mausoleum construction and maintenance, palace repairs, or preparation for major ceremonies. Resources were extracted on an as-needed basis for those projects, which could be arbitrary and very substantial. For example, for the mausoleums of three emperors in the Ming, each construction project cost over 8,000,000 taels of silver, or over 24,000,000 taels in total.¹⁰³ There were sixteen emperors in the Ming, as well as many members of the nobility.¹⁰⁴ Although we don't have the total construction costs for all the emperors’ and nobility's mausoleums, this 24,000,000 taels for three gives us an idea of the magnitude of the total resources needed. The direct and indirect extraction impact of this expenditure was certainly also not negligible and must be accounted for in the total state extraction estimation.

On palace construction projects, for example, the Ministry of Works estimated, for the projects initiated in 1514, that the materials and labor would cost about 1,000,000 taels of silver. These special funding needs were met by additional extractions, collected alongside regular taxes. The increased taxes were distributed to the households in Zhejiang province, and all the prefectures and counties in Northern and Southern Zhili.¹⁰⁵ For palace repairs, during the Jiajing (1522–1566) and the Wanli period (1573–1620), each repair project cost about 4,000,000–5,000,000 taels of silver, as each piece of wood already cost over 1,000 taels of silver.¹⁰⁶ In 1600, the projects’ funding needs were so substantial that the Ministry of Works’ central vault account balance, which was supposed to be the annual regular extractions, net of expenditure, plus cumulative surplus, if any, was not even sufficient to cover 10 percent of the needs.¹⁰⁷ There were suggestions that certain projects should be suspended, but the suggestions were ignored by the emperor.¹⁰⁸ In 1605, there were again attempts to add extractions for the palace repair and renewal projects. There were even suggestions to place dedicated senior central government officials directly in the provinces of Huguang, Sichuan, and Guizhou to push harder for the ad hoc extractions. After careful deliberations, some of the projects were temporarily postponed because the government realized the then extraction burden was already so heavy that further extractions would risk inciting rebellion.¹⁰⁹ Then, in 1607, there was another royal wood supply order (huangmu caiban 皇木採辦) for palace construction projects in Beijing. The royal wood supply order was usually very onerous, both in terms of the financial burden and casualties during logging and transportation.¹¹⁰ In Sichuan alone, the silver commuted extraction target for the order was already over 3,630,000 taels of silver, which was roughly a 300 percent increase over the previous supply order.¹¹¹ Worse, construction works for the royal household in Beijing was just part of the issue, extractions required to support the nobility in the provinces were also very substantial. For example, in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, the labor requirement for the nobility's residence construction projects in Huguang, Jiangxi, and Shandong was already over 1,000,000 people, and this did not include the regular supply of another 400,000 people to serve the nobility.¹¹² The direct and indirect impact (e.g. heavy casualties, productivity losses, etc.) of these kinds of extractions should be considered before drawing any persistently low taxation conclusion.

The Ministry of Works special projects discussed above were not isolated examples. There were also many similar special funding needs that could not be covered by regular taxes under the Ministry of Revenue. In the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, Taicang's annual revenue target was increased to around 4,000,000 taels of silver, which, even if fully collected, was barely sufficient to cover regular expenditures. However, the Ministry had to fund three special military campaigns, which cost over 8,000,000 taels of silver; and the other ad hoc palace and ceremonial funding in the Wanli period amounted to 3,600,000 taels of silver.¹¹³ The marriages of the Wanli Emperor's many children were events requiring special funding. For example, the marriage of Prince Fu cost 270,000 taels of silver, the wedding event for the eldest princess cost 120,000 taels, and the one for the seventh princess in 1608 was reluctantly reduced from 400,000 taels to 120,000 taels under the context of recent tax-incited rebellions.¹¹⁴ We cannot arrive at a total state extraction unless all these special funding needs and their direct and indirect extraction impact are properly accounted for.

Also, depending on how we estimate the total annual fiscal revenue, we have to note that the then fiscal accounting was on a complicated cash basis, and actual revenue/extractions were expenditure driven. Fiscal control usually focused on four key figures: the regular annual revenue targets, the actual receipts in a particular year, the actual expenditure in a particular year, and the actual cumulative surplus. Without proper adjustments, using the regular annual revenue targets alone as the total annual fiscal revenue proxy could create a misleadingly stagnant picture. If we take the various vaults’ annual silver revenue targets as an input for estimating the total fiscal revenue, because of the cash basis accounting, we have to be aware that the nominally stable annual revenue targets could mask significant year to year fluctuations resulting from the varying level of actual regular tax receipts (which could include extra-target tax increases, indirect means of extractions, borrowings for special funding needs, etc. as driven by the needed expenditure). For example, in 1549 (one year before our concerned 1550 data point), Taicang's regular revenue target was 2,125,355 taels of silver, but the actual receipt was 2,957,116 taels of silver, 39 percent over the regular target (there were special fund raising means such as plundering local resources (soukuo 搜括) and the selling of degrees and offices). And then, in 1550, although its annual revenue target remained the same, Taicang somehow covered a funding need of 4,122,727 taels, almost 94 percent over its regular revenue target.¹¹⁵ Also, some of the supposedly one-off special funding needs, once initiated, became regular extractions. Before drawing any persistently low and stagnant tax conclusion, we have to be aware of the time period they became effective. For example, in 1618, there was a direct tax target increase of over 2,000,000 taels of silver to cover a special military funding need in Liaodong; and in 1619, there was another similar increase, and then in 1620, there was a further increase, leading to a total tax target increase of over 5,000,000 taels of silver over the three years, and this special funding need became an annual extraction.¹¹⁶ If we take only one random data point in the 100 years period of 1550–1649 (for example the 1550 data point, as Capital and Ideology does) to represent the long term extraction pattern, in addition to the issue of the actual tax receipts’ year to year fluctuations from regular revenue targets, we could also miss major tax target increases (such as the tax increase of over 5,000,000 taels of silver in 1618–1620) and deduce a conclusion that deviates from historical realities.

The above complexities pose daunting challenges to the estimation of the level of total extraction. Unfortunately, we cannot avoid these challenges, as the extractions on top of the Ministry of Revenue's regular taxes (such as the advanced extractions, ad hoc extractions, extractions by various government units, etc.) were not negligible. To further assess the reasonableness of Capital and Ideology's low tax conclusion, we can also examine the issue from another perspective: the tax avoidance arrangements. We can examine how much the taxpayers were willing to pay in order to offload their tax liabilities, which could give us a very rough sense of how substantial the total extractions could be in relation to the regular tax. For example, in the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century, in Zhangzhou prefecture of Fujian province, taxpayers could offload their liabilities through a nominal transfer of taxable land to someone else's household registration, and the prices they paid were disguised as “rental payments.”¹¹⁷ More specifically, in Nanjing County of Fujian province, one could offload one's tax liabilities by paying 0.3–1 shi of grain for every 0.1 shi of tax liabilities.¹¹⁸ This level of tax liabilities transfer price shows a transfer price multiple of three to ten (i.e. 0.3 shi/0.1 shi to 1 shi/0.1 shi), which means that the actual total tax liabilities could be three to ten times of the regular tax for a normal taxpayer. This was because, if otherwise, there would be no incentive for one to pay such a premium to offload one's tax liabilities. In some other areas, such as Longxi County, the offloading price was at ten taels of silver per one shi of tax liabilities. The official commutation rate for civilian tax grain (minmi 民米) was around 0.5 taels of silver per one shi of tax grain.¹¹⁹ So, given the liabilities transfer price, the total actual extractions could be up to an extreme level of twenty times (i.e. 10 taels/0.5 taels) the regular tax liabilities. Worse, the total tax liabilities could even become well above the agreed transfer price upon sudden new tax impositions. For example, in the mid to late sixteenth century, the monks in Fujian accepted, on average, a transfer price of ten shi of grain for taking over one shi of tax liabilities. When in 1564, the government, in order to cover its military expenses, imposed an additional tax of 3.74 taels of silver on each shi of tax liabilities, the monks faced the grave situation that their tax liabilities well exceeded their income of ten shi of grain. It was because the then market price of the ten shi of grain income received by the monks was worth only 2.5 to 3 taels of silver; and the additional imposition by the government meant an annual net loss of 0.7 taels of silver or more (e.g. 3.74 taels–3 taels) for every shi of tax liabilities that the monks accepted.¹²⁰ In this case, a persistently low taxation was certainly not what the monks experienced. This example also shows that the tax increase could be very sudden and drastic. Based on the price of 2.5 to 3 taels of silver for ten shi of grain, each shi of tax liabilities was worth only 0.25–0.3 taels of silver. The 3.74 taels additional imposition per shi of tax liabilities meant a more than 1,000 percent sudden tax increase.

The above are just some of the many examples which contradict a stagnant picture of low taxation. In fact, apart from high or low taxation, to fully understand inequalities in premodern China, we must also understand tax liabilities redistribution. For example, the avoided taxes in the Ming were repeatedly redistributed among powerless people and created serious inequalities. Powerless people were trapped in a vicious cycle of tax liabilities redistribution. The more taxes the powerful elites avoided, the more avoided taxes were redistributed among the powerless, especially those with land holding, however small, on the government's register. To avoid attracting the ruinous tax liabilities redistribution, more desperate people disposed of their land, and more avoided tax liabilities had to be redistributed. This led to an ever-contracting tax liabilities redistribution scope, and an ever increasing tax burden for those remaining in the scope; inequalities were thus pushed to the extreme.¹²¹ Tax liabilities redistribution was a significant factor affecting property redistribution and inequalities. It was not just about high or low taxation.

The Fiscal State Analysis Framework

Capital and Ideology inherits the fiscal state studies’ economic development causation logic that “the rise of the fiscal and social states played a central role in the transformation of ownership societies into social-democratic societies” (p. 456), and “the rise of the fiscal state did not impede economic growth … Indeed, the opposite is true: the fiscal state played a central role in the modernization and development of the economy in Europe and the United States over the course of the twentieth century” (p. 458), and “no rich country has been able to develop with tax revenues limited to 10–20 percent of national income” (p. 457).¹²² Following this logic, to explain the “great divergence” between Europe and China, the book argues that, rather than Smithian institutions (i.e. low taxes, free markets, property rights, etc.), Europe's domination in the nineteenth century was due to its superior military power, which in turn was a result of high extractions and strong revenue capacity (pp. 374–381, 479). China “was a structurally weak state with extremely limited fiscal revenues and little to no capacity for economic or social intervention or oversight” (p. 390). China remained a “weak state” “until the nineteenth century,” “incapable of autonomously guaranteeing the security of people and property and of maintaining public order and enforcing respect for the rights of property” (p. 368). The fiscal state causation logic serves as a backbone in buttressing its universal recommendation of progressive taxation across all the countries. But did high extraction definitely lead to modern economic growth? The argument that high extraction leading to strong state capacity and then modern economic growth may be valid in explaining Europe's economic development, but its applicability to the whole of premodern China is questionable. We have seen that taxation was not persistently low and stagnant throughout premodern China. There were indeed periods with significant increase in extraction that did not result in strong state or military capacity. There were also periods of strong state capacity that did not result in modern economic growth.

In terms of military capacity and extraction, the tibian examples and Fujian example above of a ten times tax increase for military expenses were not unique. The overall border defense military expenditure in terms of silver that had to be funded by the Ministry of Revenue in fact increased by over 500 percent from 430,000 taels of silver to over 2,700,000 taels from the late fifteenth to mid-sixteenth century.¹²³ In the late Ming, there was a military extraction increase of about 1,800,000 taels of silver for 120,000 soldiers, but there was no corresponding increase in the soldiers’ headcount from the old register after the tax increase. Then, there was a similar failure to improve the military capacity after a tax increase of 7,000,000 taels of silver for strengthening the border defense forces.¹²⁴ In 1643, one year before the collapse of the Ming, the military expenditure reached a high of 21,221,487 taels of silver.¹²⁵ These examples show that high extractions did fail to strengthen state capacity, even when the state was in existential crises, let alone promote modern economic growth. In fact, what happened in the Ming was not unique. There was indeed an overall observation in the late Song to the early Yuan that, the increased military capacity in the Tang and Song actually led to the weakening of state capacity and demise of the state.¹²⁶

A good example of strong state capacity (in terms of fiscal surplus), without leading to modern economic growth, was in the period under the governance of Zhang Juzheng 張居正 (1525–1582). Zhang managed to turn around the Ming government's poor fiscal position and achieve a substantial fiscal surplus in the 1570s–1580s.¹²⁷ However, despite the much-improved state capacity in terms of the fiscal surplus, modern economic growth did not occur during his reign.¹²⁸ To understand this phenomenon, we have to understand that the then conception of wealth growth and redistribution was very different from the conception under the fiscal state analysis framework. They were concerned not only about inequality and the redistribution of property and tax liabilities among social groups, but also about the redistribution of wealth between the state and the people. Zhang believed that world resources, and therefore wealth, were finite and fixed; and it was a matter of zero-sum redistribution between the state and the people.¹²⁹ In other words, it was not a fiscal state conception of creating a bigger economic pie by increasing the state's capacity through higher extraction. Instead, it was believed that if the state got more of the finite wealth, the people would get less. It was essentially a “you win, I lose” or the “state against people” conception. This zero-sum redistribution conception was not conducive to the promotion of economic growth by revenue maximization. This conception was not just an isolated casual remark by Zhang. It was also shared by other influential officials, such as Pan Huang 潘潢 (?–1555), the Minister of Revenue in the Jiajing period (1522–1566), Lü Kun 呂坤 (1536–1618), who was once a senior official in the Ministry of Revenue and the Governor of Shanxi, who also published a famous administration and fiscal governance handbook, and Zhao Shiqing 趙世卿 (?–1618), the Minister of Revenue in the early seventeenth century.¹³⁰

Indeed, similar views on finite wealth and zero-sum redistribution between the state and the people were also expressed by different emperors, for example, the Jiajing Emperor in a 1529 edict, and the Tianqi Emperor in a 1626 edict.¹³¹ This zero-sum understanding of wealth redistribution was not new to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it had a long history going back at least to the eleventh century, if not before. For example, Sima Guang, a key policy maker more than 400 years before Zhang Juzheng, expressed an almost identical zero-sum finite wealth redistribution view: an increase in state capacity in terms of higher extraction would be at the expense of the people's wealth.¹³² In short, they did not all share the ideal of promoting economic growth through high state extraction. The zero-sum conception among the rulers and policy makers from the Song to Ming contradicted the aim of developing a fiscal state and growth through revenue maximization. Unless such a fundamental difference is understood, it is difficult to understand and explain the historical actors’ decisions and the resulting economic phenomena directly through the fiscal state analysis framework.

Conclusion

In summary, China was not a simple trifunctional society throughout its history until 1911, and a linear five-stage societal progression cannot fully reflect historical realities. Persistently low and stagnant taxation did not characterize the whole of premodern China. To fully understand inequalities in premodern China, tax liabilities redistribution must be examined alongside property redistribution. Also, the fiscal state framework's causation logic of high extraction leading to strong state capacity and then modern economic growth is questionable in the context of premodern China. A persuasive analysis of the role of the premodern Chinese state in promoting economic growth must consider the then “zero-sum” finite wealth view among policy makers.

It must be emphasized that, despite the oversimplifications, Capital and Ideology's attempt to transcend nationalistic and identitarian perspectives and offer a global solution to our inequality problems is highly commendable. It rightly rejects determinism, elevates the importance of overcoming ideological constraints, and increases our awareness of alternatives to capitalism. It is correct that if we set our gaze beyond the accepted ideologies which justify inequality, we can then see the many possible paths forward.