The collection of the duty on opium is in
the hands of the provincial officials, but they are required to
rendera separate account of duty and likin collected on the drug, and
to hold the sum at the disposal of the board of revenue at Peking. The
annual import into China of Indian opium used to amount to about
50,000 chests, the exact amount of opium imported in 1904 being 54,750
piculs, on which the Chinese government received from duty and likin
combined about 5-1/2 million taels (L825,000). The total amount of
native-grown opium was estimated in 1901 at about 400,000 chests
(53,000,000 lb), and if this were taxed at taels 60 per chest, which
in proportion to its price was a similar rate to that levied on Indian
opium, it should give a revenue of 24 million taels. Compared with
this the sums actually levied, or at least returned by the local
officials as levied, were insignificant. The returns gave a total levy
for all the eighteen provinces of only taels 2,200,000 (L330,000). The
anti-opium smoking campaign initiated by the Chinese government in
1905 affected the revenue both by the decreased importation of the
drug and the decrease in the area under poppy cultivation in China. In
1908 the opium likin revenue had fallen to taels 3,800,000.

7. _Miscellaneous_.--Besides the main and regular sources of income,
the provincial officials levy sums which must in the aggregate amount
to a very large figure, but which hardly find a place in the returns.
The principal are land transfer fees, pawnbrokers' and other licences,
duties on reed flats, commutation of corvee and personal services, &c.
The fee on land transfers is 3%, and it could be shown, from a
calculation based on the extent and value of the arable land and the
probable number of sales, that this item alone ought to yield an
annual return of between one and two millions sterling. Practically
the whole of this is absorbed in office expenses. Under this heading
should also be included certain items which though not deemed part of
the regular revenue, have been so often resorted to that they cannot
be left out of account. These are the sums derived from sale of office
or of brevet rank, and the subscriptions and benevolences which under
one plea or another the government succeeds in levying from the
wealthy. Excluding these, the government is always ready to receive
subscriptions, rewarding the dono