Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions
 

Date & Time: May 31, 2023 (Wednesday) 12:00 – 13:00
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong (Also available on Zoom)

Registration: Please click here

Abstract:
This book talk looks at China’s relative economic decline in the 18th and 19th centuries. The decline was believed to be related to China’s weak fiscal institutions and limited revenue. Zhang argues that this fiscal weakness was fundamentally ideological in nature. Belief systems created through a confluence of traditional political ethics and the trauma of dynastic change imposed unusually deep and powerful constraints on fiscal policymaking and institutions throughout the final 250 years of China’s imperial history.

Speaker:
Taisu Zhang is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School and works on comparative legal and economic history, private law theory, and contemporary Chinese law and politics. He also serves as a Global Faculty member at Peking University Law School and holds a secondary appointment at Yale as Professor of History. Zhang is the author of two books, The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and The Laws and Economics of Confucianism (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which received the 2018 Presidents Award from the Social Science History Association and the 2018 Gaddis Smith Book Prize from the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. In addition, he has published articles, essays, and book chapters on a wide array of topics, winning awards from several academic organizations, and is a regular commentator on Chinese law, society, and politics in media outlets. Zhang has taught at the Duke University School of Law, the University of Hong Kong, Brown University, and the Tsinghua University School of Law.

Discussant:
Jedidiah Kroncke is an Associate Professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, joining the faculty in August of 2018. He currently teaches property, equity and trusts, as well as courses in common law reasoning for civil law students.

Chair:
Angela Zhang is the Director of Philip K.H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong