This book explores the formation, development, and characteristics of modern China's finance, focusing especially on Guangdong province as a case study to illustrate both the macro-level trends and the micro-level reality. The chronological range of this book is mainly from the late Qing period to the early Republican Era ending in 1937, when the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War broke out. After the concept of modern finance was introduced to China for the first time in the late Qing period, the efforts to build modern finance continued in the Republican Era both nationally and locally. But this process was interrupted by the outbreak of the war against Japan in 1937 and, having been derailed, did not subsequently recover due to the subsequent civil war between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. This interrupted process of financial modernization was resumed with Reform and Opening-up, launched in 1978. Therefore, in order to illustrate the structural transformation and persistent characteristics of China’s fiscal system, this book also includes discussions of the early Qing period and current Chinese finance.

Jin-A Kang is a Professor in the Department of History at Hanyang University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. She graduated from the Department of Oriental History, Seoul National University in 1996, obtained a Ph.D. from Tokyo University in 2001 and held positions in Central China Normal University in Wuhan, China, and Kyungpook National University in Daegu, Korea.

"The Guangdong Model and Taxation in China is a valuable addition to the literature on state-building in modern China. Its multi-archival and multi-lingual analysis of fiscal arrangements in Guangdong warrants attention from scholars and students interested in China's politics and economy from the late Qing to the Republican era."
-Tomoko Shiroyama, The University of Tokyo, International Journal of Asian Studies , September, 2024

List of Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Modern Transformation of the Imperial Fiscal System: The Case of
Provincial Finance in Guangdong
Part 1. New Tax Revenues in Guangdong during the Republican Era
Chapter 1. Fiscal Reform in the Late Qing and the Republican Period
Chapter 2. Tobacco and Wine Taxes
Chapter 3. Abolition of the Likin and the Paradox of Tax Reform: The Special Tax
Chapter 4. Special Taxes on Imported Rice
Part 2. State-led Industrialization and the State Monopoly
Chapter 5. Industrial Building: Provincial Entrepreneurs
Chapter 6. The Sugar Monopoly: From Local to National
Part 3. Reform of Tax Collection
Chapter 7. The Building of Public Administration and Taxation
Chapter 8. Regularization of the Tax-farming System
Part 4. The Transition of the Modern Chinese Tax Structure in a Global Context
Chapter 9. Transition of the Modern Chinese Tax Structure
Chapter 10. Afterword: Between Chinese Exceptionalism and Modern Fiscal State-building
Glossary
Index
Bibliography