Business in ancient china
Business in ancient chinaThe Merchant Class In Traditional China
The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, also referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners-the mercantile class-arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Many merchants were rich enough to visit and bribe princes and dukes. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige.
Once the canals were built, some merchants and craftsmen became rich. A really successful merchant might ride in a cart with a coachman, buy a title from an emperor, and built a mansion surrounded by pools and gardens. This absolutely infuriated officials and peasants. The merchants didn't till the soil. They weren't nobles. There ought to be a law, to stop them from doing this, and for a while, there was a law, forbidding them from riding in carts and chariots and also from wearing silk.
Huo Kuang sponsored a conference to inquire into the grievances of his emperor's subjects. Invited to the conference were government officials of the Legalist school and worthy representatives of Confucianism. The Legalists argued for maintaining the status quo. They argued that their economic policies helped maintain China's defenses against the continued hostility of the Hsiung-nu and that they were protecting the people from the exploitation of traders. They argued in favor of the government's policy of western expansion on the grounds that it brought the empire horses, camels, fruits and various imported luxuries, such as furs, rugs and precious stones.
The Confucianists, on the other hand, made a moral issue of peasant grievances. Also they argued that the Chinese had no business in Central Asia and that China should stay within its borders and live in peace with its neighbors. The Confucianists argued that trade was not a proper activity of government, that government should not compete with private tradesmen, and they complained that the imported goods spoken of by the Legalists found their way only into the houses of the rich.
In old China, there was a wide gulf in power and prestige between the rulers and those being ruled. The old Chinese society was traditionally divided into four classes, which in the descending order were the scholar- administrator, the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant. The scholar administrator as an educated man, was presumed to be morally superior, exercising the power under the supreme authority of the Emperor who was normally considered as the son of heaven mandated to rule the country, consequently dominating all aspects of public life.
This concept and practice of the superiority of educated men was clearly related to authoritarian family pattern of old China, which provided a...
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