ann
(Ann)
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distort state perceptions about the amount of land actually cleared for
cultivation in China proper around this time. This memorial, written by
Cao Yishi probably when he served in the censorate, outlines two major
problems connected with“the extremely large amount of land now
being cleared in various provinces.”Thefirst was counting already
developedfields as newly cleared ones. This was a tactical response to
excessive clearance quotas previously established by provincial officials
on paper, which grossly overestimated the actual extent of as yet
undeveloped provincial“wastelands.”These“new”fields were then
newly assessed, which simply increased the tax burden of farmers
working what were really the same oldfields as before. The other
problem was, conversely, counting undeveloped wastelands as fully
developedfields. Cultivation of marginal lands remaining uncleared
along waterways and around mountain bases was often sustainable only
for a few years before thin rocky soil gave out or boggy soil became
inundated. Nevertheless, all reclamation of such areas was included in
official figures, and revenues were fixed in state anticipation of
recouping its initial investment inseed, livestock, and tax remissions
from stable, fully productivefields. These commitments were incentives
for provincial officials to conceal, through various reporting measures,
the inevitable collapse of such reclamation schemes. Plots long gone to
seed would be declared as productive, so that clearance“proceeds in
name without anyfields that have actually matured.”Such“productive”
lands thus inflated registers. Onsite surveys to determine what cleared
land was viable for taxation and what should be written off were
recommended. A 1740 memorial from Henan, however, suggests little
change when it described similar problems. It concluded that provincial
reclamation went on“in name only from the start,”and any talk of
revenue was just“empty phrases on paper.”^98 Cao’smemorialwas
probably penned around the time major scandals over false acreage
reports emerged in 1735. One inquiry determined that only 127 , 400
muout of 980 , 000 cleared was viable farmland for taxation. Likewise
1. 3 millionmuin Jiangnan were similarly written off.^99 Under such
conditions, there is no reason to assume the predominance of dynamics
for the concealment of new acreage over those for exaggerating the
extent of new acreage and hiding loss of productivefields.
Finally, the statistics under discussion assume all productive land was
worked by farmers, not herders or foragers, so only gains in grain, not
losses in meat, milk,fish, or fungi, are accounted for. Moreover, the heads
counted are all assumed to be agrarian. Were it possible to include these
256 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
