Increasingly, scholars believe that China’s relative economic decline in the 18th and 19th centuries was related to its weak fiscal institutions and limited revenue. Taisu Zhang argues in this talk that the fiscal weakness was fundamentally ideological in nature. A confluence of traditional political ethics and the trauma of dynastic change created belief systems that imposed unusually deep and powerful constraints on fiscal policymaking and institutions throughout the final 250 years of China’s imperial history, leading to the Qing empire’s decline.

This public lecture is organized by the 21st Century China Center (21CCC) at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. For more information about this and other 21CCC events, please visit china.ucsd.edu.