Academic Review

 

Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2018

 

Some Issues Concerning Research on the Shuihudi Bamboo Slips and the Qin Land Distribution System(Abstract)

 

Jin Wen

 

With the discovery of the Qin Shuihudi bamboo slips, research on the land allocation system (shoutian zhi) became a major topic in the reassessment of ancient Chinese history. Many scholars argue that the land in the shoutian zhi was state-owned in nature, but others claim it was privately owned. However, neither claim is supported by the evidence. Overall, the land system was a form of transition from state land ownership to private land ownership. The previous interpretation of some legal texts, such as入顷刍槀(paying chugao taxes) 盗徙封，赎耐(unauthorized movement of land boundary marks will be punished by forced shaving according to law), 部佐匿诸民田(officials concealing the true size of people’s land holding), 封守（declaration of forfeiture）and 百姓不当老，至老时不用请(lying about age) are misreadings; the criminal acts in these legal texts are basically unrelated to land ownership. In the Qin and early Han, the collection of land taxes in fact used two simultaneously operative land tax rates: one taxed land as a proportion of distributed land, that is, the tax was based on area, and was fixed and unchangeable; the other was the differential land tax or grain tax, which depended on crop yield and had a changeable rate. Although it is rare to see land sales or annexation in Qin land distribution, the Shijie An shows that the distribution of land to “non-statutory persons” and widespread debt relationships indicate that the distributed land was allowed to be inherited in part and to be transferred within families, and that land sales existed in a disguised form. A growing number of studies have tended to question or revise the theory of state land ownership.