Abstract: Historical research on rent resistance must include studies of government policy and legal regulation. Much of the previous research on rent resistance however, has focused on the status of tenants as defined in the tenancy law of the fifth year of the Yongzheng reign, while ignoring concrete evidence from the actual struggles of tenants. Based on extant legal cases of peasant rent resistance, this article finds that, contrary to the received wisdom, the government usually did not permit increases in rent. When they could not collect rents fully landlords sued to reclaim tenancy rights but this was often very difficult to accomplish. In lawsuits over rent, landlords had no special advantages and were treated the same as any other type of creditor.