The Incentives of Empire: Qing Officials and Land Reclamation Policy in the Southwest Prior to 1750.

• In Event: Empire, Commerce and Mobility in Qing China's Southern Arc

Abstract

This paper examines the Qing state’s (1636-1912) land reclamation policy (kaiken) and its application in the southwest during the Kangxi (r. 1661-1722) and Yongzheng (r. 1723-1735) reigns. Contained in this policy were incentives that required Qing officials to reclaim land and develop natural resources, or face the possibility of receiving a poor performance evaluation, a reduction in salary, and a demotion in rank. These incentives (and penalties) were first outlined by the Qing state in the 1650s as a means to encourage officials to quickly and aggressively rebuild China’s economy devastated by years of war, and by all accounts the Qing economy in 1720 was measurably equal to the benchmarks established in the 1570s-80s under the Ming (1368-1644). Yet, whereas the incentives for Qing officials to reclaim land and exploit natural resources were gradually reduced by 1720 for those officials assigned to posts in China proper, these incentives remained in force in the southwest well into the eighteenth century. In other words, throughout the Kangxi and Yongzheng reigns, Qing officials assigned to the southwest were evaluated in part based on the amount of land they reclaimed. This calls into question the long-held notion that during the Kangxi reign the Qing state promoted a laissez-faire approach toward the non-Han peoples in the southwest, an approach that was supposedly overturned by his son, Yongzheng.

Author

• John Herman, Virginia Commonwealth University