Study of Institutional Culture in Ancient Tujia Society—Economic System Culture (III)
Section 3: Economic System Culture during the 'Gaitu Guiliu' Period. In the early Qing, the court continued the 'using barbarians to rule barbarians' policy, inheriting the Ming chieftain system to govern Tujia areas. After vigorous administration during the Kangxi reign, with a stable regime and strengthened national power, the Qing court decided to abolish the chieftain system in Tujia areas and implement 'gaitu guiliu'...
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Section 3: Economic Institutional Culture during the Period of "Replacement of Native Officials with Circulating Officials"
In the early years of the Qing dynasty, the Qing court continued to adopt the ethnic policy of "using barbarians to govern barbarians," following the Ming dynasty native office system to govern the Tujia areas. After vigorous management during the Kangxi period, the regime was stable and national strength increased; therefore, the Qing court decided to abolish the original native office system in the Tujia areas and implement the "replacement of native officials with circulating officials." From then on, Tujia society entered a new stage of historical development. The replacement of native officials with circulating officials broke the previous situation of native officials carving out regions and each governing independently, and established a unified national political institution; it promoted the rapid development of the landlord economy, and the feudal lord economy subsequently disintegrated; it changed the land relations of the feudal lord system and the personal dependency relations built on those land relations; it advanced the economic and cultural development of the Tujia areas, bringing the level of social development in the Tujia areas basically close to that of the Central Plains Han areas.
I. Land Ownership Relations during the Period of "Replacement of Native Officials with Circulating Officials"
The "gaitu guiliu" (replacing native chieftains with government-appointed officials) was a reform of the economic system, which led to major changes in land ownership relations in the Tujia areas. First, besides landlords, peasants also gained the right to dispose of land. Before the "gaitu guiliu," the tusi (native chieftains) held almost all the land and were the largest feudal lords in the Tujia areas. After the gaitu guiliu, the Qing court divided the tusi's original land (excluding that which had been purchased) into three parts for redistribution. One part was given to the tusi and subordinate officials as "granted land," causing these tusi to lose their lordly status and become landlords; one part was confiscated by the government, called "official estate land"—for example, Yongshun County had ten such "official estate lands" totaling 425 mu; one part was distributed to ordinary commoners for free cultivation, turning them into free farming peasants. For instance, peasants in Longshan County received over 290 qing of land from the government. In addition, the Qing court stipulated that peasants could freely cultivate the official mountains formerly held by the tusi: "The official mountains of the native officials may be reclaimed and cultivated by the people at will. Their fish ponds, tea gardens, bamboo groves, forests, cliff wax and the like may be freely used by the people, with no prohibition whatsoever, and shall not be retained as public property; thus the people all leisurely take from them, regarding them as their own." Second, both landlords and peasants held the right to manage the land. For landlords' land, whether ancestral inheritance or newly purchased, whether reclaimed through tenant recruitment or allocated after the gaitu guiliu, as long as the value and quantity of the land were reported, the government would issue a license confirming that "households with property shall hold it as a perpetual estate." For peasants' land, whether allocated from the government or obtained through their own reclamation, peasants only needed to pay a certain annual "autumn grain tax" to the government, and the land could be freely disposed of. The Qing dynasty confirmed through policy the ownership and management rights of landlords and peasants over land. Third, land could be freely bought and sold. The Qing dynasty promulgated the decree "Prohibiting Unlawful Disputes over Redeeming Distant Surplus Land," permitting and encouraging the free sale of land. Regarding those who "sold land at low prices or pledged land by contract" before the gaitu guiliu, as long as there were "no redemption clauses and the property had been lost for many years without any evidence, no forced redemption or additional claims shall be permitted... violators shall be strictly arrested and punished according to the law, with no leniency." While these decrees protected the right to buy and sell land, they also stimulated land consolidation. Many wealthy households "also rose to become prominent clans," and many who "first came as traders, then acquired property, have now all become great families." For a time, the trend of land consolidation prevailed. Land prices grew increasingly expensive; whenever land was offered for sale, people rushed to bid and snap it up, causing many peasants to successively lose their land and making the concentration of land increasingly severe. Bureaucrats, rich merchants, and great traders colluded in unscrupulous seizure, and the peasants suffered deeply. "Wealthy clans lived in luxury, with two or three such families per li." Under the protection of the land sale policy, the landlord class rapidly grew into a newly emerging stratum in Tujia society, and its power grew day by day. Objectively speaking, the growth of the landlord economy and its replacement of the feudal lord economy of the former tusi era was a historical advance.
During the gaitu guiliu period, changes in land ownership relations in Tujia society began alongside political institutional reform. It was precisely the abolition of the tusi system that changed the feudal lords' land relations and the personal dependence of the broad common people, gradually transforming the vast number of serfs into free peasants who possessed their own freely cultivated land; thus their enthusiasm for production increased somewhat, which undoubtedly had positive significance for promoting the rapid development of social production in the Tujia areas.
II. Forms of Taxation During the "Gaitu Guiliu" Period
After the "gaitu guiliu," the Qing court resurveyed land in the former tusi areas, cleared grain and money accounts, registered households for taxation, implemented a tax policy unified with the interior, and stipulated that "the autumn grain of the native people shall be levied according to the original quota, with no additional surcharges ever." It abolished the tusi-era "miscellaneous exactions and private levies" based on persons and households, replacing them with the general taxation method of "grading and assessing taxes according to the fertility of the fields."
The "gaitu guiliu" ended the heavy tax burden on the Tujia people during the tusi period. Peasants cultivating land only needed to pay a certain autumn grain tax to the court, and compared with interior peasants of the same period, the autumn grain tax burden was lower. For example, the four counties under Yongshun Prefecture—Yongshun, Baojing, Longshan, and Sangzhi—each only needed to complete an autumn grain tax of 280 taels per year. The Qing government also stipulated that the autumn grain tax in the Tujia areas could be reduced or exempted within a certain scope. For instance, in the first and second years of the Qianlong reign, the autumn grain of Shinan Prefecture was entirely exempted. At the same time, the Qing court abolished more than twenty outdated customs and practices from the tusi period, such as presenting gifts to high and low officials, and stipulated that "when hiring civilian laborers, the wage for laborers shall be reasonably fixed." The series of tax policies adopted by the Qing dynasty to reduce peasant burdens were conducive to the development of social production in the Tujia areas.
While reforming the forms of taxation in the Tujia areas, the Qing dynasty encouraged peasants there to reclaim wasteland and recruited peasants from Han areas to go to the Tujia areas to open wasteland and farm. Those who reclaimed over one hundred mu were "heavily rewarded." For poor households unable to manage, as long as the bao-zheng (local guarantor) issued a certificate, the government would lend them farm tools and seeds. This policy caused large numbers of Han people to pour into the Tujia areas to reclaim wasteland, and subsequently there emerged the gratifying situation that "after the gaitu, the people gathered from all around, and all the mountains were reclaimed," and "corn could be harvested without fertilizing." For example, of the cultivated land in Guzhang Ting, three-tenths was paddy field, four-tenths was mature dry land, one-tenth was dry land, and only two-tenths was rocky wasteland. The effective use of large tracts of fertile fields and rich soil laid the foundation for the economic development of Tujia society.
III. Conditions of the Main Sectors of Social Production During the "Gaitu Guiliu" Period
In a certain sense, the "gaitu guiliu" was a top-down movement to liberate production relations launched by the Qing dynasty. It greatly reduced the production burden on peasants and promoted the further development of agriculture, handicrafts, and commerce in the Tujia areas.
(1) Development of Agricultural Production
The Qing court attached importance to agricultural development in the Tujia areas and, after the gaitu guiliu, introduced a series of reform measures. First, it distributed part of the tusi land to peasants and encouraged peasants to reclaim wasteland; second, it reduced taxes and raised peasants' enthusiasm for production; third, it introduced advanced production techniques and fine crop varieties and promoted the use of farming methods and production experience from Han areas. At the same time, it introduced and promoted water conservancy tools such as the "tube waterwheel," "centipede waterwheel," and "chongjian," and built water conservancy facilities. The effective implementation of these measures changed the relatively backward appearance of agriculture in the Tujia areas.
With the development of agricultural production, the variety of crops also increased substantially. The grain varieties in the Tujia areas at that time were roughly the same as those in neighboring Han areas, mainly including rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, and millet. Rice varieties planted included middle-season rice, late rice, glutinous rice, and non-glutinous rice. For example, Yongshun had as many as more than 20 crop varieties, including "Red-foot Glutinous, Guiyang Glutinous, Willow-strip Glutinous, Horse-tail Glutinous, Dragon-whisker Glutinous, Green Glutinous, Hemp Glutinous, Tall-foot Glutinous, Short-foot Glutinous, Ninth-month Glutinous, Hundred-day Early, and Cucumber Early."
Cash crops also developed rapidly. Tung oil, tea oil, tea leaves, cotton, ramie, indigo, yellow wax, honey, and raw lacquer gradually became major trade goods of the Tujia people. Tung oil in particular became a major export commodity of the Tujia, with great economic value: "The tung tree has leaves like red maple and thorns; also called oil tung or ren tung, commonly known as oil tung. Its fruit is large and round, with seeds as big as maple seeds, used to make paint. It is planted along the mountains, from top to bottom, in neat rows. The people of Long rely greatly on this for profit, and merchants flock to it."
(2) Development of Handicrafts
After the "gaitu guiliu," large numbers of handicraftsmen from Han areas moved into the towns and villages of the Tujia areas. They brought many advanced handicraft techniques, creating in the Tujia areas a situation where there were "stone-working artisans, metal-working artisans, weaving artisans, and town-building artisans," and "all kinds of crafts were available."
Within the handicraft industry there emerged a group of professional carpenters, bamboo craftsmen, stonemasons, bricklayers, tile makers, blacksmiths, loom craftsmen, cotton fluffers, leatherworkers, shoemakers, jewelers, dyers, painters, tailors, sawyers, and coppersmiths. These handicraftsmen began to separate from agricultural production and became professional skilled artisans. The textile industry also achieved considerable success. Products such as homespun yarn, homespun cloth, and the Tujia flowered quilt cover "Xilankapu," woven, plaited, and embroidered by Tujia women, were partly used by themselves and the rest sold to other places through merchants. In addition, mining, smelting, lime burning, and brick and tile production began to take shape on a certain scale.
(3) Development of Commerce
The development of agriculture and handicrafts drove the prosperity and flourishing of commerce. After the "gaitu guiliu," the Qing government abolished the tusi-era customs of extorting and restricting outside merchants, greatly raising the enthusiasm of industrial and commercial operators for doing business. As a result, large numbers of outside merchants entered the Tujia areas and engaged in buying and selling activities with local merchants and residents, greatly promoting the development of commercial trade in the Tujia areas.
With the rapid development of commerce, a commercial network extending throughout both urban and rural areas took shape in the Tujia areas. Whether at key overland transportation routes or at waterway transport hubs, all developed into centers of commodity distribution, into urban markets and rural periodic fairs. Yongshun County alone had forty-three markets and fairs of various sizes, held once every three, five, or ten days according to the lunar calendar for the exchange of goods, naturally forming small economic centers.
The development of commerce not only strengthened the exchange of goods between the Tujia areas and neighboring regions, but also facilitated the production and daily life of the people in the Tujia areas. For example, major commodities such as tung oil, tea oil, and native alkali from the Tujia areas, as well as local specialties such as tea, medicinal materials, and raw lacquer, could be normally and smoothly exchanged for metal tools, cloth, salt, and other goods produced by people in other regions. Before the "gaitu guiliu," because commercial trade was not smooth, salt was expensive, and only native officials and wealthy families could afford to buy salt. After the "gaitu guiliu," the Qing dynasty set up special merchants at commercial outlets in both urban and rural areas to deal in Sichuan salt and Huai salt, and salt prices fell sharply, enabling peasants to afford salt as well. In short, the development of commercial trade, while providing convenience to the lives of urban and rural people, was also conducive to the further economic development of the Tujia areas.