在无为而治与英雄主义的失败之间——清代国家能力与经济发展概论

Between Benign Neglect and Heroic Failure:State Capacity and the Qing Economy in Broad Outline

一直以来,许多研究者都致力于讨论:清代的国家究竟在多大程度上介入经济,而这种介入又在何种程度上促进或阻碍了经济的发展。要回答这个问题,就必须要从观念、概念的层面进行剖析,还要因时因地而论。清代的国家维系了一个有利于绝大部分地区实现斯密型增长的制度结构,同时保持着相对低的税收水平,但其在经济方面最重要的作为在于兴建和维持交通、防洪和水利灌溉的基础设施。在这些方面,国家会采取哪些行为,很大程度上取决于地方官员认为哪些措施是必要的,以及哪些事务可以交给非官方人士去经管。这样一来,不同地区的情况就会有很大的差别,但是国家在不同的地域、不同的时期仍然可以有所作为。在一些相对贫穷而且生态脆弱的地区,地方官员曾经实施过一些相当亮眼的治理举措;在比较富裕的地区,国家对经济、社会事务的介入相对少一些,地方精英则承担了更多的治理责任和社会控制工作。尽管许多研究者认为,帝制晚期中国的基础设施建设很大程度上受限于国家财政,本文并不同意这样的观点。许多事例都显示,清代国家建设基础设施的能力明显要高于其维护基础设施的能力,而后者对财政经费的要求显然要比前者少得多。这就提示我们,必须要深入剖析清代国家在日常监管方面存在的问题,必须要关注"国家与精英关系",要注意"运动"在清代国家治理中的意义。只有这样,我们才能进一步理解清代国家在经济发展历程中的成就与局限。

A wide range of views exist about the degree to which the Qing state intervened in the economy and about whether those interventions aided or inhibited economic development.Answering this question requires disaggregating it conceptually,regionally,and temporally.Beyond maintaining an institutional structure that,for the most part,facilitated Smithian growth across a vast geographic space,and doing so while keeping taxes relatively low,the most important Qing interventions were in the area of infrastructure for transportation,flood control,and irrigation.Here the forms of state action varied dramatically in accordance with what officials thought was needed,and in accordance with different assessments of what non-state actors were likely to do on their own.The results were highly uneven,but included substantial achievements in some times and places;notably,some of the most vigorous instances of state action were in relatively poor and ecologically fragile regions;in wealthier regions,state intervention tended to be more limited,with a great deal of responsibility and control delegated to local elites.While many scholars have suggested that the limits on the development of infrastructure during the late empire were largely due to fiscal limitations,this paper argues that this is unlikely;one sign of this is that the Qing record in building infrastructure looks much more impressive than their record in maintaining it,even though the latter task should be less fiscally challenging.It suggests that we should look to the limits of Qing regulatory capacity to explain this,focusing on the nature of state/elite relations and the role of"campaigns"in Qing governance to further understand the mixture of achievements and limitations in this area.