Research on the Salt Administration Policy of the National Government during the War of Resistance

Author: Dong Zhenping
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-06-01
Features: After the promulgation of the "New Salt Law," the measures taken by the Nanjing National Government to organize salt fields were roughly as follows:
1. Promoting anti-smuggling projects. Organizing salt fields, the most important thing is to control salt fields and prevent smuggling. The methods to prevent smuggling include "building granaries to store salt grains and constructing dikes and moats around the production areas to isolate them from the outside world. Roads should be built at appropriate locations within the salt field areas, tax police stations should be set up, inspection routes should be designated, telephones should be installed for patrolling and communication. With these complete facilities in the salt field areas, management can be made more thorough. The official granaries in the Changlu area were established in the early years of the Republic of China, but the anti-smuggling projects were still lacking. Since 1933, efforts were focused on building salt flats, ditches, and roads, and tax police stations and salt field management offices were set up within the fields. A total of more than 120 kilometers of roads, more than 20 kilometers of ditches, more than 80 bridges, 13 culverts, 75 tax police stations, and 35 salt field management offices were completed, and the anti-smuggling projects were largely completed." The construction of anti-smuggling projects in the Huaibei area was one of the earliest in all regions of the country. From September 1929, "organization fees" were raised, and construction began in July 1931. The projects in the Huaibei salt fields were carried out in two phases. The first phase focused on building granaries, and by the end of 1933, 7 official granaries had been completed. The second phase focused on dredging salt rivers and building main and branch roads, and by the end of 1936, a total of 5 rivers had been dredged and 9 roads had been built. At the same time, appropriate police forces were deployed to each salt field, camps and watchtowers were set up, and a thorough defense was established, with inspection lines drawn around the salt flats and key posts set up for liaison and patrol. After these arrangements, the management of salt fields gradually became standardized, smuggling and leakage were reduced, and sales increased. Following the Huaibei area, Guangdong, Shandong, Liangzhe, Songjiang, and Fujian were also building enclosure projects and organizing salt field management simultaneously. In the Guangdong area, 90 granaries were built in 3 salt fields—Chaoqiao, Hailufeng, and Huizhou—and facilities such as watchtowers, weighing towers, tax police stations, and salt field management offices were built near the granaries. In the Shandong area, the Salt Field Construction Committee was established in 1934 to survey the salt fields under its jurisdiction and decided to first build granaries and important roads in the Jiaozhou and Jinkou salt fields, as well as inspection routes and tax police stations. The rest of the salt fields would be completed gradually. In the Liangzhe area, the Salt Field Organization Committee was established in 1934, and 2 stations were set up to first survey the important salt fields. In 1935, the Yuyao salt field was organized, and roads were built, rivers were dredged, watchtowers were set up, and the Qianqing and Huangyan salt fields also began construction. In the Songjiang area, the Salt Field Construction Committee was established in 1934, and the Zhu family tax police camp was built, and efforts were made to construct official granaries in each region, salt transport roads, and dredge rivers, as well as lay telephone lines. In the Fujian area, the Salt Field Construction Committee was established in 1935 and began with the Xiaoxia and Shanyao salt fields, digging ditches, building roads, building embankments, and setting up telephone lines. While the anti-smuggling projects in the Shandong, Songjiang, Liangzhe, and Fujian areas were underway, they were interrupted due to war.
2. Strengthening the management of brine salt. Brine salt is a by-product of gypsum mining and is only produced in Hubei and Hunan. In the past, only business taxes were collected by local governments, but the production, transportation, and sales of brine salt did not follow salt management regulations, which led to the undermining of official salt and the loss of tax revenue. In view of this situation, the Nanjing National Government established the Yingcheng Brine Salt Management Bureau in Hubei in 1935 to manage Yingcheng brine salt. In 1936, it ordered the Xiang'an Salt Administration Office to take over Xiangtan brine salt. In this way, the production, transportation, and sales of brine salt were finally brought under the unified management of the Nanjing National Government.
3. Abolishing useless salt fields. Salt fields were often established in various salt-producing areas across the country. Due to differences in production conditions, production technology, and other production factors, there were significant differences in salt production volume, salt production costs, and salt quality composition between different regions. Even within the same salt-producing area, different salt fields varied. The Nanjing National Government first surveyed the salt flats, salt dikes, salt wells, salt kilns, and salt boards in each area and abolished those that were truly useless. Of course, the implementation of this work varied in time and degree across different regions. From 1934 to 1937, before the outbreak of the war, the results of this work were as follows: "The Huaibei area leveled 3,990 square meters of salt flats and 124 brine wells; the Shandong area had about 400 salt flats; the Fujian area had 34,410 salt dikes; the Liangzhe area had 13 salt kilns and 4,000 salt boards; the Songjiang area had 44 salt kilns and 15,000 salt boards; and the Yunnan area had 10 wells." To consolidate the achievements of this work, measures were formulated for each abolished salt flat, dike, well, and kiln to build embankments to preserve fresh water and eliminate salt production capabilities. For the salt producers who were abolished, the government provided relief funds to help them switch to agriculture.
4. Prohibiting nitre and earth salt. The production areas of nitre and earth salt were mostly distributed along the old Yellow River course, with Hebei, Henan, and Shandong being the most numerous. Poor people privately produced and sold nitre and earth salt, which hindered the sale of official salt and affected national tax revenue. rulers had adopted policies such as prohibition, reform, purchase and dumping, and prohibition embedded in taxation, but the results were not ideal. The Nanjing National Government adopted a policy of addressing both symptoms and root causes: the "symptom" treatment involved improving rural areas, maintaining the livelihoods of alkali farmers, rewarding local county governments, encouraging alkali farmers to switch to other occupations, providing loans, distributing anti-alkali seeds, guiding people to plant, increasing tax police forces, and using peaceful methods to demolish their salt production ponds and kilns; the "root cause" treatment involved dredging canals, diverting water to store fresh water, drilling deep wells, changing the geological conditions, and transforming brine into fertile land. Under the guidance of this policy, in 1933, the Henan Province Waterway Organization and Soil Improvement Committee was established, with 1.8 million yuan raised from the salt tax of Henan Province to carry out drainage and irrigation projects and drill deep wells, and to distribute American cotton seeds and various anti-alkali seeds to salt-alkali areas, with personnel sent to guide planting, and an alkali soil experimental station was set up to promote improvement. In 1934, the Changlu Salt Area Soil Improvement Committee was established, and in counties with high alkali content, associations for improving alkali land were organized. The work carried out was divided into water conservancy and farmland projects; the water conservancy plan involved digging canals along rivers to flush away the alkali or drilling deep wells for drainage; the farmland plan involved using imported soil, fertilization, deep plowing, and planting anti-alkali crops, and encouraging the planting of American cotton. Peaceful methods were also used to demolish nitre and earth salt kilns and equipment. In 1936, Shandong Province imitated the methods of Henan and Hebei provinces to prohibit nitre and earth salt and carry out improvement work. These measures achieved certain results, but after the outbreak of the full-scale war, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan provinces were successively turned into war zones, and all work was forced to stop. The Nanjing National Government put a lot of effort into prohibiting nitre and earth salt, but the root cause of nitre and earth salt production lay in the poverty of the people and the heavy taxes. To completely prohibit nitre and earth salt, this problem must be fundamentally solved. In fact, the Nanjing National Government never fundamentally solved this problem.
The production and causes of smuggled salt
"Salt is a source of profit but also a source of trouble. While the state strictly prohibits smuggling to prevent it, lawbreakers take advantage of the law to seek profit. The more laws are established, the more problems arise." Before the Opium War, salt was always the most important commodity in long-distance transportation and trade among industrial and agricultural products. In the state's revenue, salt tax ranked second only to land tax. Where profit lies, people flock to it, and competition for salt profit is fierce in all aspects of society. At the same time, ensuring people's food supply is also related to social stability, and the ruling authorities must pay close attention. Therefore, smuggling and anti-smuggling issues involve various aspects of ancient Chinese society, politics, economy, and society, and are a comprehensive issue. As history developed into the modern era, due to the prominent position of salt tax in the national finance, the smuggling problem not only did not get effectively solved but also became more complex. "Official salt" refers to salt that has paid taxes to the government, while "smuggled salt" refers to salt that has not paid taxes to the government. However, since China implemented the salt monopoly system of designated salt supply, residents of a certain area could only consume salt designated for that area by the government. If they bought salt freely from other places, even official salt was considered smuggled salt. The problem of smuggled salt was very serious in the late Qing Dynasty, with "one-third of the country consuming smuggled salt," and after the establishment of the Republic of China, the scale of smuggled salt further expanded, with an estimated "fifty percent of the population consuming smuggled salt" by 1928. Smuggled salt has many names, but it can be roughly summarized into three categories: the production of smuggled salt, the transportation and sale of smuggled salt, and the consumption of smuggled salt. The smuggled salt produced mainly refers to nitre salt and earth salt. Nitre salt and earth salt are mainly produced in parts of Hebei, Henan, Shandong, and Jiangsu provinces. Because the quality of nitre salt and earth salt is poor and harmful to people's health, it is not suitable for consumption and has been banned for development and consumption. Therefore, the production and sale of nitre salt and earth salt are classified as smuggled salt. In addition, salt produced using abandoned salt flats is also smuggled salt. Smuggling originates from production, extends to transportation, and continues to consumption. The situation of smuggled salt is extremely complex, with diverse causes. , China has a long coastline with abundant salt sources, and almost all coastal areas can produce salt, with relatively convenient transportation and difficult strict supervision. Second, the tax rates vary from region to region, even within the same salt-producing area, different places have different tax rates. Taking Songjiang as an example, after the 1932 reform of production areas' tax rates, Shanghai and Wuxi had a tax of 7.2 yuan per dan, Chongming and Qidong had a tax of 4.1 yuan per dan, and fishing salt had a tax of 0.2 yuan per dan. The differential tax rates resulted in huge price differences, so there was a world of difference between whether there was a tax or not, high or low taxes, and huge profits attracted many people. Third, the historical system of specialized merchants and designated salt supply areas evolved into hereditary monopolies, and illegal transport merchants often smuggled across designated areas to encroach on the interests of other areas. Fourth, due to abundant salt sources and simple production methods, supply often exceeded demand, and practitioners were willing to engage in illegal operations, smuggling and selling salt. Fifth, tax police officers were not all good, some protected and released smugglers, and even engaged in smuggling themselves. . Although smuggled salt has many names, it ultimately boils down to three types: smuggled production, smuggled transportation, and smuggled sale. From different perspectives and characteristics, different classifications can be formed:
(1) From the salt source, there are field smuggling, sales smuggling, and foreign smuggling. According to the provisions of the "Salt Production Special License Ordinance" issued in March 1914, "no salt production is allowed without government permission," so any salt field, salt kiln household, or salt producer who privately increased board walls, set up private salt kilns, or used abandoned salt flats to produce salt privately, or illegal salt merchants who bribed salt field police or other acceptance personnel to smuggle and transport salt, as well as unruly people who stole from granaries and sold salt privately, were all considered field smuggling. In the northern part of China, the four provinces of Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan have vast salt-alkali wastelands. During the spring and autumn seasons, the climate is dry, and after evaporation by the sun, a layer of white salt-alkali soil forms on the ground. When scraped and filtered, it is cooked in salt kilns to become nitre salt. This type of salt contains nitric acid, which has always been banned for consumption by the government, so it is called nitre smuggling. Foreign smuggling, as the name suggests, refers to imported goods, concentrated in coastal ports, with Russian smuggling in the northeast, Japanese smuggling in the southeast, and Vietnamese smuggling in Guangxi. The operators are mostly foreign nationals, each with their own cliques, and they transport goods by ship, smuggle through customs, and store them in foreign goods warehouses if they cannot sell them. Because they often involve foreign affairs, crackdowns are very difficult.
(2) From the identity of the transportation and sales personnel, there are official smuggling, military smuggling, commercial smuggling, and bandit smuggling. Illegal salt officials and tax police officers who collude to release, protect, or sell smuggled salt are considered official smuggling. Military personnel of all kinds, relying on their power, smuggle and sell salt, even forcing salt fields to release salt without tax to make profits, are called military smuggling. Transport merchants who collude with salt officials and tax police officers to engage in private interests, such as less tax and more release, or reporting more "additives," or tampering with salt during transportation, are called commercial smuggling. Unlawful merchants who form cliques, use vehicles and ships to transport goods, and carry weapons to forcibly sell them are called bandit smuggling.
(3) From the means of behavior, in addition to salt officials, tax police officers, salt merchants, and bandit gangs who release, protect, transport, or smuggle salt, there are also neighboring smuggling. Because transport merchants each have designated salt supply areas, illegal transport merchants often smuggle across areas to sell for profit, so they are called neighboring smuggling.