The central feudal dynasty system that China has inherited for thousands of years is like a double-edged sword, which created a rich and splendid Chinese civilization and unified the Chinese nation, but in the later years of the Qing Dynasty, this kind of thinking became a burden to China's progress. In the nineteenth century, the Qing Dynasty, because of the dual backwardness of ideology and technology, led to military defeat and signed countless unequal treaties with the great powers.
According to statistics, from the Treaty of Nanking signed by the Qing court and the United Kingdom in 1840 to the later Treaty of Xinugu and some other treaties combined, a total of 3.881.2 million taels of silver had to be repaid. That's a very large number.
At this time, the Qing Dynasty was in a state of decay, and the nobles coveted enjoyment, in addition to paying a large amount of silver for compensation, but also allocating funds to Empress Dowager Cixi and other imperial relatives for pleasure, did the Qing government really have so much money?
Let's take a look at the government revenue of the Qing Dynasty in the past years, during the reign of Kangxi Qianlong, China's GDP reached one-third of the world, the Qing government's highest revenue reached 80 million taels, and the perennial was maintained at about 60 million to 70 million taels of silver.
In the 30th year of Daoguang (1850), the Qing Dynasty government's income was only 40 million taels of silver due to famine and uprising, which was almost half of the previous reduction, but in the thirteenth year of Guangxu (1887), the financial revenue of the Qing Dynasty government recovered to about 80 million, and in the first year of Xuanun, the fiscal revenue soared to 263 million taels, which was 4 times that of the Kangqian dynasty!
This is nothing more than the Qing rulers still calmly deal with so many huge reparations, and on the surface, they really have the ability to repay it.
Ancient China was a traditional farming civilization, as the saying goes, "relying on the mountains to eat the mountains, relying on the water to draft water", the biggest income basis of the Chinese dynasties has been based on the land endowments handed in by the peasants. During the Xuan reunification year, the tax revenue of the land endowment alone reached 40 million taels. In 1885 the income of the field was 30 million taels.
Twenty years of time to increase the land endowment of 10 million taels, this does not mean that the peasants' land harvest achievements have increased with it, but the Qing government in order to alleviate the pressure of repaying the arrears, the money and grain in the form of taxes to each peasant's head.
In addition, Xuantong also collected 46 million yuan of commercial taxes, and in the past, the Qing Dynasty was forced to open up the trade market until modern times because it was closed to the country, did not encourage trade exchanges, and adopted a policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, so it received so many commercial taxes.
In order to collect more taxes, the rulers also made sufficient efforts in the salt that the common people were able to survive, the Qing government salt tax in the Daoguang period was only 7 million, and soon after the Opium War, it soared, and before the Sino-Japanese War, the salt tax reached a terrible 14 million, and after the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing court signed a new unequal treaty, and the price of salt continued to rise by sixty percent. In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, it reached the level of 40 million taels, but Cixi held a banquet on the 60th birthday of Cixi, and he extravagantly squandered 30 million taels of silver.
It is worth mentioning that the Qing Dynasty government also set up a tax on native medicine, which can also bring 30 million taels of silver to the Qing Dynasty every year. It is opium, the Qing Dynasty government acquiesced in the entry of opium into China, but to collect taxes from foreigners, wool out of the sheep, this tax was attached to the opium and sold to Chinese, so that although the income of the late Qing Dynasty was 4 times that of Kangqian, but what reason did the feudal government of the fish and meat people not perish?