I read William Rowe's China's Last Empire: The Great Qing this summer, but I never got around to writing a blog post about it. I'm not going to put in the effort now, but it is an interesting subject with lots of scope for sophisticated commentary on comparative public adminstration teaching and its location by ideological needs for states and their social basis. Still, I thought this observation (via Tyler Cowen, quoting Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels: Volume 2, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800-1830) was interesting, especially in the light of the Qing 'no new taxes and tax cuts only' ideology:
…best estimates are that during the second half of the 18th century imperial taxes captured only 5 percent of the gross national product in China, compared to 12-15 percent in Russia, 9-13 percent of national commodity production in France, and 16-24 percent of national commodity production in Britain. During the 18th century in Russia, moreover, corvees and military service were far more onerous than in China, where most labor services had been commuted. If we consider that under the Northern Song in 1080, imperial revenue averaged about 13 percent of national income, and under the Ming in 1550 6-8 percent, we find some support for Skinner’s thesis that percentage of the surplus captured in imperial taxes shrank steadily relative to the share retained by local systems.
One the other hand, you may want to take these numbers with a grain of salt: I'm not sure China and France are following the OECD's national accounting standards, as laid out in the 2002 revisions, fully. Some of the figures may reflect aspirations more than reality, and the Qing aspired to low taxes.
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