Additional Charge Labels

Additional Charge was first introduced in 1988. Until now, there have been 3 periods during which additional charges for postal services were collected. The first period covers the years 1988-1990. The revenues from the additional charges were meant to cover the postal service's deficits. The second period covers the years 1991-1993. The revenues from the additional charges during the second period were meant for the expansion of the telephone network. A third period started in 1994; we do not know when this period will end or whether it has already ended. Neither do we know for which purpose the revenues from the additional charges are used.

Although a large number of the post offices did not use labels, but cancellation stamps to indicate the additional charge we will, for the time being, limit ourselves to the labels.

From a postal point of view, the first two periods are the most important, because during these periods labels or parts thereof were stuck on letters or postal forms. We will include the official announcements and lists of the charges, as far as they are known to us, on the following pages. We will also include the additional charges for, for example, telephone traffic, in order to make clear that the additional charge did not only apply to mail, but to all sorts of areas of telecommunications and transport.

For the compilation of a catalogue of the labels issued, the cooperation of official institutions in the People's Republic of China is necessary. Unfortunately we have not yet been able to obtain this cooperation. For this reason, the catalogue will not be complete. We depend on the labels we have received from collectors in China. Our catalogue lists all the labels in our reference collection. Where present, these are complete labels, but in a number of cases complete labels were not handed over by the post. There is also a number of labels which we have only seen on postal items; in many cases it is unclear whether these are complete labels.

In most cases we do not know the exact date of issue. Only for Hubei, dates of issue are known to us because they are listed in Mr C.C. Ouyang's catalogue. When no date of issue is known, we will state, as far as possible, the dates of letters or forms bearing that label. In cases where we have several postal items with a specific label, we will state the earliest and the last date.

THIS IS A PRELIMINARY CATALOGUE AND COULD BE CHANGED WITHOUT NOTICE.

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