Philip A. Kuhn’s scientific contributions

... This phenomenon was initially noticed by a Qing scholar Huang Zongxi and further conceptualized by Qin (2002) and Zhou (2017): whenever a local surcharge was forbidden or institutionalized, a new one would appear tenaciously; through several waves of central interventions, such surcharges became more pervasive, which completely contradicted the central vision of benevolent governance. This was increasingly risky for the dynastic longevity after the mid-18 th century, as various surcharges increased the probability of tax resistance (Kuhn, 1978;Wong, 1997, Chapter 10). 17 Ironically, it was not local governments and their surcharges, but the central state with its rigid fiscal management, that accounted for the increasing number of tax resistance riots. ...

Reference:

A history of decentralization: fiscal transitions in late imperial China, 1850-1911