CHINA. 



101 



about $125,000,000 a year. The customs re- 

 ceipts only are published. These increased 

 from 7,872,257 Haikwan taels (the Haikwan 

 tael = $1.50) in 1864 to 12,483,988 in 1878. 

 The largest receipts are from export customs. 

 The army consumes about $75,000,000 of the 

 revenues. There is a small public debt paying 

 eight per cent interest, contracted abroad in 

 two loans, one of $3,138,375 in 1874, the other 

 of $8,021,380 in 1878. 



COMMERCE. The total imports in 1880 

 amounted to $118,940,000, and the exports to 

 $116,825,000. In ten years the imports had 

 increased 19 and the exports 27 per cent. 

 There are twenty-two ports opened to foreign 

 commerce since 1854 by treaty, although one 

 of them, Nanking, has not been thrown open. 

 The largest share of the foreign trade is with 

 Great Britain, which received from China in 

 1880 146,081,679 pounds of tea, valued at 7,- 

 701,804, and 2,650,085 worth of raw silk, 

 and imported into China 3,498,684 worth of 

 cotton manufactures, 867,420 of woolens, 

 and 698,201 of other goods, besides 3,778,- 

 201 of imports, mostly cotton manufactures, 

 imported through Hong-Kong. The progress of 

 China in adopting Western arts and commer- 

 cial methods is retarded by the abuses of the 

 system of Chinese officialism, as well as by the 

 conservative prejudices of the people. The 

 patronage of powerful mandarins is required to 

 protect every novel enterprise of importance, 

 and this is only to be obtained by sharing the 

 profits with the patrons. The oldest under- 

 taking of the kind, the China Merchants' 

 Steam Navigation Company, has prospered in 

 the end through the interest and support of 

 Li Hung Chang. The company started in 

 1872 with two small steamers purchased at 

 exorbitant prices from an English corporation. 

 A subsidy in the form of liberal freights on 

 the rice sent to the Mantchoo garrisons in 

 Peking enabled them to compete successfully 

 with the foreign vessels for the coasting-trade. 

 They purchased other vessels, and in 1877 

 bought out the Shanghai steamship line with 

 borrowed money, part of it advanced by the 

 Government. The company was enabled to 

 pay interest by the subsidies, but could not 

 have long continued in existence, as the debts 

 far exceeded the value of the vessels. The 

 share capital stood at 751,000 taels and the 

 borrowed capital at 3,800,000 taels in 1878. 

 A reform in the management was instituted. 

 The officials and their friends who had ob- 

 tained places in return for the Government 

 loans were dismissed, and their peculations 

 stopped. This with the revival in trade has 

 enabled the directors in three years to reduce 

 the debt, lower the capitalization to something 

 like the value of the fleet, and report a net 

 profit of 21 instead of 7 or 8 per cent on the 

 capital employed. The share capital was given 

 in 1881 as 1,000,000, and the borrowed capi- 

 tal as 2,600,000 taels, 1,500,000 of which were 

 Government loan. In addition to their coast- 



ing business, the company has attempted to 

 run packets to San Francisco and tea-ships to 

 London. A Eussian and Danish company 

 completed a telegraph line from Shanghai to 

 Tientsin at the end of 1881. The enormous 

 coal deposits which are scattered all over the 

 eighteen provinces have only been begun to 

 be worked. In Formosa the Government 

 started mines in 1876, employing an English 

 engineer. The works were not commercially 

 successful at first; yet the output increased 

 from 14,000 tons in 1878 to 30,000 tons in the 

 first six months of 1881. The coal sells at 

 $2.50 a ton, the cost of mining being only 

 $1.34; but embarkation is difficult. At Kai- 

 ping, near Tientsin in North China, a private 

 company, encouraged by Li-Hung-Chang, is 

 working rich beds, four to six feet thick. A 

 woolen factory established in Lan Chowfoo, 

 in the remote province of Kansuh, with public 

 means by Tso - Tsung - t'ang, produces cloth 

 very cheaply, though the quality of the wool 

 thus far received is inferior. 



AGRICULTURE. In the vast territory of the 

 Celestial Empire some district is stricken with 

 famine nearly every year by drought, floods, 

 or locusts, if not in consequence of an insur- 

 rection. In 1882 a rise of the Yangtse and 

 its tributaries, caused by a heavy rain-fall com- 

 ing at the time of the melting of the snows in 

 Central Asia, overflowed large tracts of rice- 

 land. The cultivators of China are extremely 

 poor, never accumulating capital. This may 

 be owing to the land laws, although they cor- 

 respond to some of the advanced ideas of 

 modern agrarian theorists. All waste lands 

 belong to the crown, but whoever brings them 

 under tillage acquires a clear title, and can 

 freely sell the property. The property of a 

 decedent passes to his male children in equal 

 shares, and can not be bequeathed away from 

 them. The greater part of the soil is owned 

 in small parcels, or from five acres down to a 

 sixth of an acre. The possessor of ten acres 

 is considered well-to-do, and the owner of an 

 estate of a thousand acres is accounted a mill- 

 ionaire. Over two thirds of the land is culti- 

 vated by tenants on the metayer, or half-profit 

 system ; the landlord providing the houses and 

 paying the tax, which amounts to 10 per cent 

 of the net returns, and the cultivator the sim- 

 ple implements besides his labor. One bad 

 season reduces these tenants to beggary. 



EVENTS OF THE YEAR. The most important 

 events to chronicle are the removal of the 

 prejudices and the obstacles connected with 

 the official system to the introduction of the 

 material improvemonts of European civiliza- 

 tion. The Kaiping coal -mining operations 

 were nearly stopped in compliance with a me- 

 morial of one of the censors representing that 

 they offended the protecting dragon of the 

 district, and disturbed the manes of the lately 

 deceased Empress, who is buried some sixty 

 miles distant. It was only by bribery that 

 , these superstitious objections were overcome. 



