01
Following the debate between Sang Hongyang and his courtiers on the salt and iron monopoly in 81 BC, the second debate in Chinese history on the state-run and monopolization in the imperial court took place in August 1068 in the first year of the Great Song Dynasty, and the court debate between Sima Guang and Wang Anshi can be described as a classic historical debate. And this historic debate had a huge impact on the historical trend of the later Song Dynasty.
This process is probably like this, in 1068, there were successive earthquakes in Jingshibei Prefecture, there was a yellow river breach in Jizhou, and a huge drought occurred in Heshuo. In order to relieve the disaster, the government spent a lot of money, and the Song Dynasty was financially tight. Officials asked Emperor Shenzong not to issue any more rewards during the routine southern suburban ceremonies. According to the rules, the emperor should reward his ministers with gold and goods during the ceremony.
Therefore, Emperor Shenzong of Song invited Wang Anshi and Sima Guang to the imperial court to discuss the matter. Sima Guang agreed with Qunchen's proposal, arguing that there was not enough money and that taxes needed to be lowered and expenses saved. Wang Anshi believes that there is not enough money, so we should increase taxes and expand expenditures.
Sima Guang retorted that increasing fiscal revenue was nothing more than collecting more taxes, and that collecting more taxes was just plundering private wealth. However, Wang Anshi also retorted that financial management is not to be plundered from the private sector, but to increase fiscal revenue and achieve financial adequacy.
Sima Guang said that there are so many treasures in the world, not in the hands of the government, but in the hands of the people. The so-called not depriving people of their belongings and relying on financial management to make money is just a trick used by the Sanghong sheep in the Han Dynasty. In this way, the two sides come and go, and do not give in to each other. At this time, Song Shenzong came out and made a round scene, announcing that as an individual, he agreed with Sima Guang's proposal, but as an emperor, let's do it according to Wang Anshi's opinion.
After Emperor Shenzong of Song succeeded to the throne, he put the treasury financial management in the highest priority. Initially, he adopted Sima Guang's policy to reduce taxes and reduce expenditures, but could not complete the task, just when Wang Anshi came out and announced that he could bring the imperial finances back to life, so that the reform of the Song Dynasty entered the Era of Wang Anshi.
02
More than 100 years after the founding of the Song Dynasty, the moderate ruling strategy allowed industry and commerce and the economy to develop rapidly for a long time, but on the other hand, the concentration of wealth was getting higher and higher, the gap between the rich and the poor widened, the magnates and powerful merchants controlled most of the land and important industries of the country, and the economic model of the gentry was constantly evolving. History has once again entered a cycle of openness-regulation-half-decay-collapse.
Whenever in this context, a heavyweight financial master is needed. In 1067, Emperor Shenzong of Song ascended the throne and chose Wang Anshi as his deputy chancellor to change the law, Wang Anshi (1021-1086), in junior high school and primary school textbooks, can often see Wang Anshi's name, he is very good at writing, including Su Shi, Liu Zongyuan, Han Yu and others are one of the famous "Eight Greats of the Tang and Song Dynasties".
Wang Anshi proposed that the only way to enrich the country and strengthen the army was to adopt the practice of Emperor Wu of Han to control the country's important industries, and proposed: to destroy mergers and acquisitions, and to alleviate poverty. Its transformation is divided into three parts. It covers one-stop industrial policies such as commodities, circulation and agriculture: the equalization method, the municipal easy law, and the green shoots law. He also put forward the most reasonable quote that "the sky is not enough to be afraid, the ancestors are not enough to fa, and the people are not enough to be compassionate."
03
All are lost
During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Sanghong Sheep also introduced the equalization method, which is to promote the balanced circulation of goods and control logistics and price fluctuations. Wang Anshi's main purpose was to let the government control the circulation of important commodities and set up a special transport official.
Municipal Easy Law
Two years after the launch of the equalization method, Wang Anshi launched the municipal easy law, that is, the government comprehensively monopolized the retail of goods in the city, and set up a municipal easy division in various places, responsible for affordable purchase and average price sales. In this way, a complete set of state monopoly systems from procurement, transportation, pricing, and sales has been created.
The GREEN SHOOTS Method
It is Wang Anshi's original move, the specific method is that every summer and autumn, farmers can go to the local government to borrow cash or grain, subsidize farming, the interest rate of each loan is 20%, and the loan can be borrowed twice a year.
Through these three variations, the central government of the Song Dynasty monopolized the two major areas of commodity circulation and agricultural production. In the short term, a rapid increase in government revenue was achieved, but in the long run it hurt the interests of the merchant and peasant classes.
04
In addition to industrial changes, the political system has also been reformed, and the Household Department, the Salt and Iron Department, and the Degree Branch Division have been established to control the macro-economy, state-owned enterprises, and handle fiscal and tax affairs. It also established a new independent body: the Establishment of the Three Divisions of Regulations and Regulations, which reinstated the power of the central government into one person.
At the beginning of the reform of the law, the effect soon appeared, the central government's fiscal revenue increased rapidly, and agricultural output also increased significantly, but at the same time, its drawbacks also soon appeared, and the government power was unprecedentedly huge, resulting in government companies, competing with the people and businessmen everywhere. The Song Dynasty under the rule of Wang Anshi entered an extreme era, the intensity of the change of law was too fierce, even in the capital Kaifeng at that time, apples and other fruits had to be unified by the government for supply and marketing, the change of law caused a great impact on the wealth of the people, but also made the merchant class lack of security in wealth accumulation. After 17 years of changing the law, Sima Guang was sent to Luoyang for 15 years, achieving the famous classic "Zizhi Tongjian".
In 1085, Emperor Shenzong of Song died, Emperor Zhezong succeeded to the throne, Sima Guang came to power, the new law was abolished, Wang Anshi died in depression the following year, and four months later, Sima Guang also died.
05
In the more than 50 years after Wang Anshi's change of law, his son-in-law Cai Jing continued his state-owned monopoly system. These decades were the 57 years of the Northern Song Empire's transformation from prosperity to decline, and in 1127, the Jin army of the Northern Song Dynasty attacked the capital and abducted Hui and Qin Erzong, which is known in history as the "Difficulty of Jingkang".
Wang Anshi's reform is the most important economic change since the Han Wu Emperor, and even in the next 800 years, there has been no change comparable to it, and history has a lot of controversy about Wang Anshi, he has a strong willpower, and in the face of huge controversy, he has not shaken his determination and will to change in the slightest.
Wang Anshi's transformation method and Guan Zhong, Shang Martingale, Sang Hongyang, Wang Mang, Liu Yan's transformation method are in the same line, it is a major economic change in Chinese history, Wang Anshi's degree of radical change is quite similar to Wang Mang's, they are thousands of years apart, but in terms of innovation ability, Wang Anshi's transformation method is higher than the previous one. In the changes in Chinese history, the imperial model of centralized power and great unification did not happen overnight, and the more successful ones included a change of law by Emperor Wu of Han and Sang Hongyang. The changes in history have been continuously explored and optimized in the construction of the system, from the military lords and counties of the Qin Dynasty, to the Confucianism of the early Han Dynasty, to the imperial examination system of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, to the more and more refined system of the Song Dynasty, and many industrial and commercial forms have emerged, including the separation of property rights and the prototype of joint-stock enterprises.
06
For more than 1,000 years, China has not found a unified economic system and model that is compatible with centralized power. Wang Anshi's change of law is a brave attempt and exploration, and its reform covers the reform of the economic and political system, and is a relatively complete supporting reform. At the same time, we look around the globe and a major social change is taking place in the far West, with free cities and free universities emerging.
In 1085, Song Shenzong died, and in the same year, the first democratically elected city of Pisa appeared in Italy, which marked the birth of a free city. But compared with the large cities of the Song Dynasty with a population of up to one million, the size of European cities is still relatively small, generally thousands of people, at most more than a hundred thousand people. In 1209, England created the first university in history: the University of Cambridge.
In the Song Dynasty we had the largest, most populous, and most prosperous urban group in the world, and our economic development and science and technology were ahead of Europe. However, Europe preceded us in the construction of social institutions, including liberal democracy, democratic cities, the principle of legitimacy of private property, and the restriction of monarchical power. This has led the social development of the East and the West to two different paths.
After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Southern Song Dynasty reluctantly persisted for more than 100 years, during which although industry and commerce and socio-economic recovery were restored, and at the same time, ideologically, cheng Zhu Lixue, which appeared during the Southern Song Dynasty, advocated "preserving heavenly reason and destroying human nature", which echoed the imperial examination system and completely incorporated people's ideological innovation into the system of authoritarian rule, and eventually greatly weakened the ability of the intellectual class to challenge the centralized system. It also has a profound impact on future generations.
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