The funds of coastal defense construction were important task of the late Qing government. The construction of Guangdong province's coastal defense can be divided into three stages. Before the Sino-French war, which was the initial period of modern coastal defense, it began to purchase armored warships and the construction of new types of forts, coastal defense mainly relied on self-funding and only the Guangdong Customs allocated 20,000 taels of silver per month; the Sino-French War until the departure of the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, Zhang Zhidong, was the rapid development stage of Guangdong Coastal defense. It raised a lot of funds for coastal defense by borrowing foreign debts, promoting the gambling tax, withholding the central government funds and levied opium tax. At the same time, Guangdong and the Ministry of Households competed for various donations. Guangdong used the wartime system to obtain domination over donation. It can be seen from the fund-raising process of coastal defense funds in different stages that the Guangdong governor has constantly built the province's coastal defense by seeking new sources of finance and applying for the interception of the central government funds. From the financing process of coastal defense at different stages, it can be seen that the governor of Guangdong continues to seek new sources of financial resources, requesting to withhold Beijing's funding and other province funding which need Guangdong to provided, to build coastal defenses in the province. In the process of mutual compromise between the central government and Guangdong, Guangdong gained greater fiscal control.