The T'ang dynasty adopted liang chien system as a means of status control. By this system people were divided into liang ren and chien ren, and the majority of liang ren was the people of po-hsing status, who were assessed as tax payers. Government officials, Buddhist clergy and Taoists, emperor's relatives were also among liang ren, but the people of these privileged classes were not included in po-hsing. In terms of economic system, the fundamental relationships of production can be thought to have been the rule over peasants by the state, and in terms of class control, the historical reality can be grasped primarily as the rule over po-hsing by the state. Therefore the status of po-hsing by itself concretely reflected on its own nature of the state control in those days. First of all, po-hsing under chun t'ien system were not necessarily the same as farming people, but they were people of a kind of complex status including artisans and tradesmen. They also were given certain area of chun t'ien, which meant that they were equally classified as po-hsing together with inherent farming people. Perhaps they equally paid direct taxation known as tsu yung tiao. As chun t'ien system declined, however, it was not long before there appeared the usage of the word 'po-hsing' which exclusively meant farming people. Its appearance may have corresponded to the reflection of the social division of labour upon the exploitation system of the state. Secondly, whereas fundamental laws of the T'ang dynasty intended to have fixed the status of po-hsing as was the case in general with respect to the status question, the state found it necessary to re-classify people into chu-hu and ko-hu in order to maintain the rule over the people, because of changing conditions of the community. Both chu-hu and ko-hu were originally po-hsing, but soon ko-hu were excluded from po-hsing. At the stage of liang shui fa, tax payers were divided into two parts: po-hsing and ko-hu.

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After Japan had seen a transport revolution centering on railway building in 1890s, she found it necessary to tackle the problem of harbour improvements in the years between the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War (1900s) when the industrial capitalism was establised in Japan. Groping the way, she began to accomodate the harbour improvements to the transport system in a capitalistic society. Most of the studies on this ' harbour question ' have hitherto been concerned with harbour improvements largely from the viewpoint of civil engineering and management. The author approaches the problem in its politico-economic relevance. When the Sino-Japanese War came to an end, the Finance Ministry undertook harbour works at Yokohama. Here can we see a special feature of the post-Sino-Japanese War period, because the works ought to have been undertaken by the Ministry of Home Affairs as engineering public works were under their jurisdiction from the nature of the matter. This harbour works, however, were threatened to be suspended in the Russo-Japanese War, when the municipal corporation of Yokohama changed its attitude and offered to share the expense. Thus it was finally decided in March 1906 to continue the Yokohama harbour works, the expense being shared between the state and the municipal corporation of Yokohama. This pattern of sharing the expense was to become a model case in the development of the harbour policy even after the Russo-Japanese War as long as there remained a restrictive influence of wartime structure on the national finance. After the First Saionji Cabinet was formed, the harbour works under the leadership of the Ministry of Finance with a view to national enrichment were not always carried out successfully, for Kei Hara, the Minister of Home Affairs, preferred overall systematic harbour works under the guidance of the Ministry of Home Affairs to the policy of doing works under the direction of the Ministry of Finance. On 31st May 1906, he convened the first meeting of the Committee on Harbours and on 24th June 1907, the committee was made to be an official institution. Now the formerly missing policy concerning harbours was to come into being, and the committee chose some 770 harbours all over the country and graded them, designating 14 harbours as important. The meaning of this measure to solve the harbour problem in the post-Russo-Japanese War period was to set a priority order for various harbour works, or for various regional interests, under the name of 'harbour policy', because it was impossible for the government to satisfy all the local or regional interests under the peculiar financial circumstances which had not got rid of the influence of the wartime structure. Moreover, it was devised in lines of, so to speak, 'national enrichment and propartisanship' -national interests being given the primary place, but regional interests being taken into consideration as well. For it was requisite for Seiyukai led by Hara to act upon national rationale in order to gain a footing among political powers, and at the same time they had to establish a system of local control by leaving room of discretion to various local and regional interests.

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Finance of the Japanese colonies (Korea, Formosa, Sakhalin, Kwantung Province, and the South Sea Islands) were incorporated by the Public Account Acts and Regulations into the national finance as a whole, and through the money transferred from the Funds for Public Finance they were operated in close relationship with other special accounts. Annual expenditure was greatest in Korea, and the expenditure for the other colonies stood in such a descending order as Formosa, Sakhlin, Kwantung Province, and the South Sea Islands. Those expenditures increased or decreased corresponding to similar changes in the national General Account. Among the various items of expenditure, the biggest (except those of the government enterprises peculiar to each colony, such as the railway in Korea, the monopoly corporation in Formosa, the communication enterprise in Kwantung Province, and forestry and the railway in Sakhalin) was the police expenditure to suppress the national liberation movements in Korea and Formosa. Industrial expenditure represented a relatively greater weight in Formosa than in Korea as there was a difference of industrial policies. As a rule, the Policy in Formosa was more development oriented. With respect to public works, investment was largely made on roads in Korea and on irrigation works in Formosa. Educational expenditure showed a rapid increase both in the colonial governments finances and in local finances, but the local finances bore rather heavy share. The revenue consisted of tax, profit from the government enterprises, grant-in-aid from the General Account, public loans, and the balance carried forward from the previous fiscal year. All the colonies but Korea and Kwantung Province ceased receiving the grant-in-aid at certain dates. The characteristics of the tax structure in Korea and Formosa were as follows: (1) Central were the two categories of tax, that is to say, profit tax consisting mainly of land tax consumption tax such as custom duties, liquor tax, sugar tax, etc., while income tax accounted for a small proportion. (2) The system of income tax tended to a large extent to reinforce accumulation of the Japanese capital. (3) Custom duties were subject to the Japanese tarrif system. (4) Liquor tax system in Korea was planned not to destroy native brewers. Public loans and grant-in-aid were not to be neglected in the colonies as the revenues there depended less on tax. In conclusion, finances in the Japanese colonies, in terms of their systems and of their specific functions, tended to swell the expenditure. Powerful authority of administration and legislation given to the colonial governments strengthened this tendency all the more. Transfer of the Funds for Public Finance from the colonial finances to the 'Special Accounts of Extraordinary Military Expenditure' turned the nature of the former into that of wartime finances, which meant collapse of the colonial finances themselves.

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