From the beginning of the Qing Dynasty to the first half of the Guangxu period, the Qing government always taxed the silted land after it had been reclaimed for a few years, and people could have the right to polders. The yield of the silted beside the lake varied greatly depending on the topography. The Qing government was sympathetic to the people’s situation and exempted the tax on low-lying fields. Since the first year of the Yongzheng period, the Qing government stipulated that taxes on paddy fields would be levied after six years of reclaiming while taxes on dry fields would be levied after ten years.In the early years of the Qianlong period, the Qing government officially exempted the sporadic land below two mu from tax. For the low-lying silted and fields beside water, the Qing government only levied the reed tax measuring once every five years, whose amount was decided by local condition. But since the sixteenth year of the Guangxu period, Hunan governor Wang Wenshao requested that all of the silted should be state-owned land, and the government began to take strong intervention. However, the original order of land in Dongting Lake area was still in effect, and the provincial government had to recognize the civil property nature of some polders in the earlier developed areas such as Huarong County. In the twenty-ninth year of the Guangxu period, when the financial situation of Hunan Province had deteriorated significantly, the Preparatory General Bureau attempted to levy rent on the mature fields in Yuanjiang County following the case of Nanzhou. However, the magistrate of Yuanjiang County Zhang Mo objected to it after survey because the government had always levied tax rather than rent on the polders in Yuanjiang County. The directors of polders also submitted petitions against the rent and proposed to be taxed, not only because the money to be paid for rent would be higher than tax, but also because they wouldn’t obtain the legal property right of the polders after investing a large amount of capital to build embankments. However, the Hunan government still broke the original rule and insisted on levying rent on ripe polders, to reserve the rent on the local expenses without submitting to the central government. But this process had not completed until six years after the controversy ended, and while the directors of polders accepted the rent, the provincial government also had to admit that polders constructed by people were private polders rather than state-owned fields and make a discount in the calculation of mu of polders. The natural characteristic of the polders, the limitation of the Qing government’s governing ability, and the rise of the local gentry made it necessary for the provincial government and local directors to compromise with each other and strike a delicate but fragile balance.