Prostitution Taxes and Local State Building in Republican China

Abstract

When we think of prostitution in Republican China, we usually think of it as having been one of the major social problems in China's most cosmopolitan cities, such as Shanghai or Tianjin. When we think of the relationship between brothels and the outside world, we usually think more about their ties to gangs and protection rackets than we do about their formal, institutional connections with the state. And when we think of prostitution's political significance, we usually limit our consideration to the realm of political discourse. Yet prostitution was an important political and fiscal issue in many places outside the major metropolises, while institutional connections between prostitution and the local state helped determine the direction and amount of local state building that took place in early twentieth-century China. These institutional connections show that rather than being simply a social problem, an extension of organized crime, or the subject of a discourse about modem morality, prostitution was important in the political and fiscal life of the local state in early twentieth-century China. To make the case that prostitution mattered fiscally and politically, this article explores how localities in late Qing and early Republican China (roughly 1900-1937) taxed female prostitution.' In virtually all provinces, at least one locality (usually the provincial capital) taxed prostitution, and the revenue from those taxes was almost always