The present article attempts a re-examination of the great debate of 1748 on grain prices. It points out that the court’s position-that the expansion of the ever-normal granaries’reserves was to blame for the on-going inflation in the price of grain-does not necessarily fit the facts. When the emperor decreed, in August 1748, that the provincial storage targets should all revert to the“old levels of the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods, ”this decision cannot be considered a reflection of the consensus of the provincial governors and governors-general. Not only were there differences of opinion among the provincial chief administrators; the crudeness of the emperor’s indiscriminate order makes the reader suspect that he may have had an ulterior motive. If one reads between the lines of the January 1749 report that recommended that the nationwide storage target be cut to 33. 79 million shi, it is not hard to discern that the report’s authors did not object to finding opportunities to save funds. It is entirely possible that these fiscal considerations had some connection with the first Jinchuan campaign.