[...]... gradual discontinuation of the production of paper money Even though coining money was a function of the ministry of revenue, the mint in Peking was controlled by the ministry of works Only in 1622 for the purpose of increasing coin production was an additional mint created under the ministry of revenue, operating simultaneously with the existing 1,1 Governmental organization 17 mint and other mints under... ministry's authority to the field; nevertheless they maintained a close liaison between the army command and the office in Peking Other ministries All the other five ministries were in one way or another involved in fiscal administration Some of their interests in governmental finance were derived from concerns shared with the ministry of revenue These matters usually caused no serious problem For instance,... office of the ministry of revenue in Peking The minister of revenue in Nanking reported directly to the emperor, maintained his own quota of receivables, and controlled silver vaults, granaries, and warehouses.18 Even auditing the separate expenditures and making inventories of the supply depots in Nanking were functions of the censorial officials, not the ministry of revenue in Peking All this means... transformed into an infinitely complex and ill-defined mosaic of often apparently unrelated detail Although many detailed articles and a few important large-scale studies of individual aspects of Ming finance have appeared during the past decades in China and Japan, Professor Huang's is the first attempt in any [x] Preface xi language to give a general account of financial policy, placing this mass... The nature of the Ming monarchy and its role in public finance Under the Ming system there was no central authority administering the empire's finance other than the emperor himself The premiership was abolished in 1380 and never revived The grand-secretaries limited their functions to rescript-drafting Although they were consulted by the emperor and did participate in decision-making, they were never... several other sources of income Government income and expenditures in Ming times can be compared to water channels in a swamp, in that they had constant tendency to diverge and re-converge These complexities do not facilitate our task Most of the Ming institutions do not lend themselves to precise classification or definition They were in flux, their changes being determined in the main by external environment... vice-minister was also promoted to become an extra hu-pu shang-shu, thus becoming equal in rank and title with the minister, though in practice he limited his function to that of treasurer and granary superintendent and did not interfere with other business of the ministry.25 The other vice-minister was usually given a field assignment such as commissioner in charge of the Grand Canal, or superintendent... for their own plant maintenance.7 In brief, the Ming organization followed the familial principle so closely that the palace and government were virtually one and indivisible The underlying principle was that the emperor shared his material goods with his bureaucrats It also involved something akin to the inseparability of church and state One of the primary functions of the Ming monarchy was to perform... of the ministries in Nanking and provincial offices.31 All those mints, however, were manufacturing plants They were not grouped together under an imperial mint The warehouses, which were under the control of the ministry of revenue but actually in the hands of the eunuchs in the palace grounds, have already been noted The ministry of revenue had no regional offices in the provinces But the inland custom... exactitude in the fiscal machinery had numerous consequences An outstanding example was that Ming officials customarily compensated for shortages in one item of state revenue with funds and materials derived from another What we regard as the salt gabelle in Ming times actually contained portions of the land taxes After the middle period the land taxes also became inseparable, if not totally indistinguishable, . LARY: Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925-1937 Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China by RAY HUANG Professor . scholars working in the important area of local history in Ming and Ch'ing times to interpret the perplexing masses of statistical and administrative detail included