博弈与利益输送:光绪年间帽盒茶税率调适研究OACHSSCD

As a crucial commodity in Sino-Russian trade,hat-box tea reflected the complex interactions of interests between factional forces and commercial capital in the late Qing Dynasty.Centering on the adjustments to hat-box tea tax rates during the reign of Emperor Guangxu,this study examines archival materials and historical documents to investigate the process and consequences of factional power intervention in adjustments to hat-box tea tax rates against specific historical contexts.The findings indicate that the Sino-Russian Overland Trade Regulations fundamentally disrupted traditional trade patterns.By leveraging preferential tax rates,Russian merchants squeezed the market share of Shanxi merchants,which in turn led to a contraction in the scale of the hat-box tea trade.The Qing court's sluggish response to the market imbalance exposed structural flaws in its fiscal taxation measures when confronting the impacts of international trade.The Beiyang faction,with the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company at its core agency,strategically invoked the banner of"relieving merchants'hardships"and attempted to reassert control over the freight charges for hat-box tea transportation through tax system adjustments.This initiative encountered resistance from the Nanyang bureaucratic group,which reflected the struggles among late Qing political factions.Paradoxically,what had originally been intended as a measure to reduce transaction costs,the adjustments to hat-box tea tax rates were thus distorted into an instrument through which various factions sought to maximize their own interests,with its progress rendered tortuous by factional rivalry.This case thus provides an important vantage point for examining the decline of Chinese tea exports after the tenth year of the Guangxu reign(1884),as well as the fiscal power struggles between the central and local governments and among local authorities themselves from the perspective of taxation.