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CHAPTER  IV

REVENUE  AND  EXPENDITURE
China  is  an  Asiatic  country.  It  seems  absurd  to  re-state
this  truism,  but  in  nothing  is  the  fact  more  clearly  marked
than  in  its  system  of  taxation,  and  its  methods  of  providing
for  the  expenses  of  administration.  The  Western  mind  is
accustomed  to  the  system  of  the  common  purse  for  one
administrative  area,  into  which  all  receipts  are  covered
without  being  ear-marked  for  a  definite  purpose,  and  fro#
which  all  payments  are  made  irrespective  of  the  source
from  which  the  funds  are  derived  ;  it  is  also  accustomed
to  a  complete  severance  of  the  budgets  of  the  different
administrative  areas—national,  state  and  municipal  * n
America,  national  and  municipal  in  Great  Britain,  Imperial
Royal,  and  municipal  in  Germany—with  some  exceptionssuch
  as  educational  expenditure  in  Great  Britain,  and
those  due  to  more  centralised  forms  of  government,  as  &amp;
France.  This  makes  it  difficult  for  the  Occidental
project  his  mind  into  the  system  which  prevails  in  Chinaand
  still  more  difficult  for  him  to  distinguish,  in  the  mas 5
of  what  appears  to  him  gross  irregularity,  what  is  due  to
the  system  and  what  to  administrative  and  financial  cof'
ruption.  The  student  of  history  will  recall  the  admin*'
strative  system  of  Europe  of,  say  five  centuries  ago,  andif
  he  has  any  knowledge  of  China,  will  find  many  points
resemblance  in  matters  which  we  to-day  have  come  to
reprobate  ;  but  any  comparison  is  vitiated  by  the  r ea j
difference  between  the  feudal  organisation  of  Europe  ot
that  time,  and  the  consolidated  government  of  China,  wh* 1
the  Son  of  Heaven  at  the  top  and  the  mass  of  the  peop* e