Kupiao and the Accounting System of the Imperial Household Workshops

Abstract

Focusing on kupiao, a rudimentary document of accounting, this chapter explores the accounting system of the Imperial Workshops in Qing China. Spurred by a series of institutional reforms, a complex budgeting and auditing system developed at the Imperial Workshops during the eighteenth century. As the records of day-to-day transactions between various Works and other departments, kupiao instantiated the operation of production and finance as a correlated system. Tracing the paper trails of kupiao, therefore, we locate the manufacturing processes of the Workshops at the intersection of artisanal collaboration and the administrative cycles of budgeting and audits in which various bureaus participated. By comparing the accounting systems of the Imperial Workshops and the Qing state, moreover, we argue that the former modelled after the zouxiao system of the state. Both systems shared as their principles rigorous accountability and the pursuit of checks and balances.