What did it mean to run a large, commercialized agrarian polity according to the best Confucian principles?

This book is intended as a contribution to both intellectual and political history. It is partly a study of how Confucian-trained officials thought about the grain trade and the state's role in it, particularly the "ever-normal granaries," the stockpiles of grain maintained by every county government as protection against shortages and high prices. The author investigates the scope and limits of belief in market forces among those critical of government intervention, establishing that rudimentary economic arguments for state withdrawal from the grain trade were available by 1750. She then explores challenges, from within the ruling apparatus, to the state's claim that its own stockpiling served the public interest, as well as the factors behind decisions in the mid- and late 1740s to suspend or decrease state purchases of grain.

As a study of Confucian government in action, this book describes a mode of public policy discussion far less dominated by the Confucian scriptures than one might expect. As a contribution to intellectual history, the work offers a detailed view of members of an ostensibly Confucian government pursuing divergent agendas around the question of "state or merchant?"

Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 Tables, Maps, and Figures x
 Weights, Measures, and Units of Currencyx
ii
 Abbreviations and Citation Conventionsxii
i
 Introduction 1
 
 Part I Private-Sector Stockpiling: State
 Versus Hoarder
1 Legal Ambiguity, Coercive Practice 15
 What the Law Had to Say 17
 Controlling Merchant Speculators
Through Statistics 31
 Beatings and Forced Sales 41
2 The Subtler Ways of Handling Hoarders 55
 Enter the Banner Grain Bureaus 58
 Civility in Place of Chastisement 69
 When the Strong Arm Menaced Landlords
84
3 Interventionism Questioned 91
 A 1748 Manifesto Against the Busybody
 State 95
 Contra Price Controls and Grain Export
 Embargoes 103
 "Laws Should be Obeyed" 115
 The Speculator Vindicated 129
 How Market-Conscious Qing Officials
 Thought the Market Worked 140
 Part II Public-Sector Stockpiling: The
 State As Hoarder?
4 The Issues in the Ever-Normal Granaries
Debate 151
 Storage and Rotation Quotas 154
 Granary Restocking and Grain Price
 Inflation 166
 The First Extreme Opponents of Official
 Buying 181
 Was There a Grain Trade Lobby? 189
5 A Sage and His Advisors: 1738-43 193
 Fanfare for an Innovation 194
 From Zeal to Disappointment 208
 The First Retreat 214
 Resistance to the 1743 Retreat 225
 The Radicals Rebuffed 235
6 Overt and Covert: 1744-47 246
 1744 Versus 1743: The Patterns in the
 Reset Targets 247
 From Obedient Modesty to Ambiguous
 Ambition 253
 Studentship Sales, Once More the
 Panacea 264
 The Ever-Normal System on the Brink277
 The Rebirth of Controversy 284
 Examining the Figures 294
7 The Grand Discussion: 1748-49 309
 The Quest for Wisdom on the Sources of
 Inflation 310
 How the Vote Went 314
 The Granaries' Defenders 322
 Ambivalence Where Least Expected 333
 The Granaries' Accusers 340
8 The Slashing of the Targets 348
 The Options for Reform 349
 Let There Be Cuts! 354
 The Conservative Settlement of Early
 1749 357
 Why Did the Committee Cook the Books?
 382
9 Of Loose Ends and Parallel Developments
406
 Knowing Where to Stop 408
 Let Able-Bodied Famine Refugees Fend
 for Themselves! 416
 Exit the Banner Grain Bureaus 429
 The Landowners' Tax Holiday 445
 Beat the Presumptuous to Death! 453
 Conclusion: Political Economy or
Political Process? 465
 Appendix
 Appendix: Chronology of the Granaries
Debate 485
 Reference Matter
 Bibliography 491
 Glossary 505
 Index
511