The Predicament of the Canal Hub: Decline and Adaptation of Huai'an Native Customs in Modern China

This paper examines the Huai'an Native Customs in modern China as a case study, focusing on the decline and adaptation of traditional inland tax stations within the canal hub ecosystem. The study demonstrates that the Huai'an Native Customs, established during the Ming and Qing dynasties as a cornerstone of the canal transport system, though once reaching its zenith, succumbed to functional obsolescence in the modern era. This decline was driven by multiple factors: silting of canal waterways, encroachment of tariff autonomy by treaty-port Maritime Customs, and disruptions from successive wars. Despite multiple reform initiatives in the late Qing and early Republican periods, the Huai'an Native Customs ultimately failed to achieve a transformative shift. Its abolition in 1931 was not merely an imperative for fiscal centralization under the Nationalist Government but a historical inevitability in the modernization of China's tariff system, marking the irreversible transition from traditional to modern fiscal institutions.