What were the economic policies of the Han Dynasty?

The above is about the formation of the government and the distribution of its powers. The following is the main economic issue that supported the government, namely the tax system. During the Han Dynasty, the ideal of a lighter tax system was realized. During the Warring States period, Mencius said, "A tithe is the king's policy." This shows that the amount of tax in the Warring States period was more than a tithe, and Mencius thought that a tithe was good enough. However, in the Han Dynasty, the amount of tax was only "fifteen tax one". And, in fact, you only need to pay half of the tax, 30 tax one. For a hundred stones of grain, you only had to pay a little more than thirty percent of the tax. Even at that time, people said that there was a tax of one hundred and one (see Xunyue, "The Former Han Chronicle"), and in the time of Emperor Wen, there was a total exemption of field rent, before and after eleven years of time. This was the only time in Chinese history. This was due to the fact that China's territory was vast, and the taxes were as light as possible to support a government that was still inexhaustible. However, the tax system of the Han Dynasty had a big problem, the land policy at that time was relatively liberal. The well-field system of the feudal era had long been abandoned, and the ownership of land belonged to the farmer, who was free to use it or sell it. When there was economic hardship and fields could be bought and sold, annexation was formed. If we ask further, why did the farmers have to sell their fields when the government tax was lighter? There are of course other reasons. This has to do with the population tax and the military service tax at that time, as well as the whole picture of the social economy. There is nothing to be said about it at the moment. But after a farmer sold his land, he became a tenant farmer, and the rents paid by the landlord to the tenant farmer were very high. Some of them were as high as fifty percent (i.e., five-tenths). As a result, the lighter the government rent, the cheaper the landlord, the farmer sold his land, to pay five-tenths of the rent to the landlord, the landlord to the government as long as one-thirtieth of the tax. The landlords only had to pay one-thirtieth of the tax to the government. The government's reduction of rent only benefited the landlords, and the peasants were not benefited in any way. This is what is meant by rent.

But the question of land ownership is involved here. In the feudal era, there was no one who was not the king's land within the four seals, and no one who was not the king's minister was not the king's minister, and the land was the exclusive property of the feudal aristocracy. The land was reserved for the feudal aristocracy, and those who cultivated the land received it back in due course, which was one of the main conditions of the well-field system. Now that feudalism has been destroyed, land is privately owned by the people. Since it is privately owned, it can be bought and sold freely. The government only collects taxes according to the land, regardless of who owns the land. The seller and the buyer of the land, both sides **** with the establishment of a contract. This is purely a private economic and trade relationship. Therefore, the big landlords under the free trade were not feudal aristocrats. Feudalism is political, while the landlord at the moment is formed on the basis of favorable economic conditions. He is free to buy and free to sell. It is precisely because of the private ownership of land, and the fact that the cultivator is entitled to his own land, that there is free sale and purchase, and that annexation has begun to take place, and that the poor have no place to stand on. In later Chinese history, the land policy was often based on the idea of equal possession of land under the ancient well-field system, but on the other hand, it was also based on the idea of private ownership of land, recognizing that arable land should belong to the private property of the people. The conflict between these two concepts ultimately prevented a proper solution to the problem of land rent and tax.

Again, not all the land in the country is cultivated. The first is that the land of the people who are not in possession of the land is not in possession of the land of the people who are not in possession of the land. A mountain, a band of woods, a large lake, in feudal times, naturally, within the four seals, not the king's land, arable land non-cultivated land, the same belongs to the nobility. Cultivated land is open, scattered to the farmers, evenly distributed, become a well field, and non-cultivated land has become closed to the public forbidden land. In the mountains, forests, ponds and swamps, the nobles sent other administrators, such as Yu Ren, to guard them. Later, the situation changed, the ownership of arable land, gradually transferred to the hands of farmers, and non-cultivated land of the forbidden area? Gradually also by the private intrusion of the people, charcoal burning and logging, fishing and hunting, which is a kind of illegal profit-making. Some of these people who broke into the forbidden area were regarded as thieves at that time, and their production outside the arable land was called treacherous profit. The government set up officials to prevent them and had the right to collect them. After the defense could not prevent, could not be repulsed, so the forbidden land, namely, the mountains, forests, ponds and swamps were gradually opened up. Only in the entry and exit passes, set up a collector, in case of fishing and logging in the forbidden area, only on their catch, levy a few percent of their catch in kind, which is in addition to the field rent, another tax. This is the origin of the customs duty. Therefore, it was called levy, originally it was prohibited by levying, but later only to share the acquisition as a compromise, but still with the word levy. This kind of transformation had already begun in the late Spring and Autumn period. Land is narrow or densely populated countries, such as Zheng, such as Jin, such as Qi, all have this phenomenon, all have this measure. However, until the emergence of the united government of Qin and Han, the concept of land ownership was still inherited from the old nobles. They regarded cultivated land as the private property of the peasants, while non-cultivated land, i.e., forbidden land inherited from the feudal era, was still owned by the public. In other words, it was owned by the royal family. Since the feudal nobles had disappeared and only the emperor was left, inheriting the old feudal tradition, all the mountains, forests, ponds and lakes in the country, according to the concepts of the people at that time, all belonged to the royal family. And then from this concept of ownership affects the tax system, so at that time all the farmland rentals to the farmers, as the government's public expenditure. And the tax of the mountains and seas and ponds and swamps belong to the lesser government, exclusively for the emperor's private use. This difference, if not from the feudal era of the well-field system and other land ownership of the separate transformation said, will not be easy to understand.

Now again, this system of separating public and private taxes was quite reasonable in the beginning. Because of the large amount of cultivated land, field tax was the bulk of the tax, while the commercial tax on mountains, forests, ponds and lakes was only a small part of the tax. The bulk to the state, a small number of allocation to the royal family, it is not the emperor's selfishness and self-enrichment. But below the Warring States, salt and iron profits gradually huge, the social and economic situation has changed, the tax of mountains and seas, ponds and swamps gradually exceeded the national field rent. This change, is the beginning of the customization was not expected. As the end of the Qing dynasty, the Qing dynasty, the Han dynasty is also the same. Gradually, the commercial tax exceeded the field rent, so that the revenue of the lesser government, on the contrary, outperformed the grand priesthood. He did not know that the tariffs on foreign trade in the commercial ports were increasing year by year, but left the matter to the foreigners, and then suffered a great loss. Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty was an ambitious emperor; he had to fight against Xiong Nu and open up the western regions, and the military expenses were so huge that the money of the Grand Agriculturist ran out, and even the wealth of his father (Emperor Jingdi) and grandfather (Emperor Wendi), who had saved for several lifetimes, were all spent. The government was in dire straits, so what could be done? The farmers' rent, a fixed amount of one-thirtieth of a percent, was set, and could not be easily changed or increased again. Emperor Wu had no choice but to be generous himself and take out the economy of the Shaofu, which was tantamount to donating the private money of the royal family to the government. Therefore, at the same time, Emperor Wu also ordered the local rich people, most notably the salt and iron merchants, to donate freely as he did. As a result, the community did not respond well, and those with large assets did not heed the government's call. Emperor Wu of Han could not help but think: Where did your money come from? Is it not because I let you operate the mountains, seas, ponds and lakes, so that you can share the fish and smelt iron, and get rich and make money? Now I donate all my income to the state and you don't respond, so I have to return all the non-cultivated land in the country and let the government run it! This was the so-called Salt and Iron Policy in the era of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty. Salt and iron merchants were the two biggest and most profitable businesses at that time. There was not a single person who did not eat salt, and there was not a single person who did not use iron, but the sovereignty of the mountains and the sea was in the hands of the emperor. Now Han Wu Di no longer allow merchants to operate without authorization, the ownership back, so that the government to send management to burn their own salt, their own iron smelting, and its interest income to the government, so the salt and iron into the state-run and government sales. This system is very much like the so-called national socialist policy first initiated by the Germans in the West in modern times. However, we had already invented such a system as far back as the Han Dynasty, and up to the Qing Dynasty, although there were minor changes, in general, Zong still followed this policy, which was not far away from the so-called National Socialism of the modern times. This system was not exclusively limited to salt and iron. Another example is wine, which is the consumption of life's daily necessities of rice and wheat to make a kind of luxury and enjoyment, therefore, also into the government sale, not allowed to folk free brewing. Behind these systems, naturally, there must be their theoretical basis. If we want to talk about the history of Chinese economic thought, we must pay attention to the measures of various practical systems in history. But when we talk about China's economic system, we should also pay attention to the evolution of this system by the completion of a historical truth. Therefore, when I talk about the salt and iron policy in the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, I go far from the legal distinction between the ancient well-field system and the forbidden land of mountains and swamps, to the distribution of the tax revenue of the Shaofu and the Dasinong between the government and the royal family, and from this to the sale of salt and iron by the government. This is not exclusively a question of thought and theory, but in fact there is a very important historical tradition of the reality of the situation to determine. In order to this issue, in that time also argued for a long time, to the emperor zhaodi of han there are a lot of heated discussion, all over the country people's representatives and the government's minister of finance in the special convening of the meeting table back and forth debate, cross-examine each other. One of the representatives of the people at that time left a record afterward, which is the famous salt and iron theory. Of course, the people advocated openness, and the government advocated state management. The actual merits and demerits at that time cannot be guessed unless one is familiar with the opinions of the people at that time. If we want to discuss the historical system at this moment, we should pay attention to the historical tradition and the historical opinions of the people at that time as the main reference. We shouldn't use the opinions of our time to erase the historical opinions of the time, and this is the right thing to do!

We have summarized the economic policies of the Han Dynasty as described above, which were close to advocating the control of capital for industry and commerce, and the lightening of land rent for the peasants, but did not equalize land rights. During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu advocated a policy of limiting the number of acres of land, and even if it was not possible to distribute the acres of land equally throughout the country, there must be a maximum limit, so that each landowner could not exceed a certain number of acres, but unfortunately, this policy was not even implemented. So Wang Mang got up, it provoked a big reform, all the mu all the way to the state, called the imperial field, redistribute. The intention at that time was to restore the feudal well-field system, but the result was a great upheaval. Wang Mang failed, and since then there has been no more radical reform of the land system in Chinese history.