Page 96 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

82.

As long as the provincial officials remitted their assigned

quota of revenue and kept order, Peking was content to leave
55
them alone. To be sure, the Imperial government did not re-

frain completely from any interference. Various arms of the

Imperial bureaucracy kept watch over the provinces but only

when circumstances warranted direct action did the Emperor

overrule the provincial government. At the top of the provin­

cial structure was the Governor-general (Tsung-tu) or Viceroy

who ruled two provinces, in this case Kwangtung and Kwangsi

(Liang-Kwan9 or "the two Kwangs"). His duties concerned the

general maintenance of law and order, and he was supreme in all

civil matters. Under him was the provincial Governor (Fu-tai

or Foo-yuen), called the Lieutenant-governor by the foreigners.
He ruled Kwang-tung (Canton's province) and substituted for the

governor-general if necessary. Both of these men were respon­

sible for the foreign trade in seeing that foreigners obeyed

the laws of the Celestial Empire.

Below the governor were a variety of officials who

presided over provincial revenue and justice. At the bottom

of the hierarchy were the Hien (Hsien or "district"), officials

who combined the duties of tax collector, police chief and

magistrate. Canton had two districts and therefore two Hien,

the Namhoi (Nan-hai) and the Punyu (Pan-yu). These Chinese

officials exercised the most direct responsibility over the

55
Morse and Macnair, Far Eastern International Relations,

p. 55.