嘉庆以降川茶引岸制度的失效与茶税体系的衰败-《中国农史》

文章信息/Info

Title:: The Failure of the Yin’an System（引岸制度） for Sichuan Tea and the Decline of the Tea Tax System after the Jiaqing Reign

Author(s):: MA Guoying1 HAN Mingda2; （1.Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100836; 2.School of Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 102488）

Keywords:: Sichuan tea; Yin’an system; fiscal extraction; tax institutional rigidity

摘要:: 本文从财政学视角出发，审视嘉庆以降川茶引岸制度的失效与茶税体系的衰败过程。研究发现，清代川茶税制的核心缺陷在于其固有的制度刚性，茶引发放长期脱离市场供需与产业实际，导致清廷对川茶产业的财政汲取能力持续减弱。面对税收短缺的困境，清廷采取增征引额、摊派税款、加征附加税等应对举措，这些措施不仅未能缓解财政压力，反而加剧了税负向茶商、茶农转嫁，进一步导致川茶产业衰退，最终形成“制度刚性—税基侵蚀—财政汲取失效—税收持续衰减”的恶性循环困境。这一历史过程不仅凸显了传统专卖制度在财政效率上的内在缺陷，更折射出税收制度与市场机制之间的内在张力，为理解清代财政体系的转型困境与制度局限提供了典型案例。

Abstract:: From a public finance perspective, this paper examines the collapse of the Sichuan tea Yin’an system (certificate and designated marketing area system) and the decline of the tea taxation regime after the Jiaqing reign. The study found that the core defect of the Qing Dynasty’s tea taxation system was its inherent institutional rigidity: tea certificate issuance remained long disconnected from actual market supply and demand as well as industrial conditions, resulting in a continuous weakening of the Qing court’s fiscal extraction capacity from the Sichuan tea industry. To address fiscal shortages, the court adopted policies including expanding certificate quotas, imposing mandatory tax apportionments, and levying surcharges. These measures not only failed to ease fiscal pressure but also shifted more tax burdens onto tea merchants and tea farmers, further accelerating the decline of the Sichuan tea industry. This eventually formed a vicious cycle: "institutional rigidity—erosion of the tax base—failure of fiscal extraction—sustained fiscal decline". This historical process not only revealed the inherent inefficiencies of the traditional state monopoly system in fiscal governance but also reflected the fundamental tensions between taxation institutions and market mechanisms, offering a typical case for understanding the transformation dilemmas and institutional constraints of the Qing fiscal system.