Why did China suppress commerce in ancient times?

Political personal control alone is not enough to control people's will, and it must be supplemented by economic means. This is the skill of weak (poor) people pursued by successive governments.

The main policy of the weak (poor) people is to emphasize agriculture and restrain commerce, and its fundamental proposition is to take agriculture as the foundation and limit the development of industry and commerce. This is the most basic economic guiding ideology of China's autocratic dynasty, and its purpose is to bind the broad masses of people to the land forcibly so as to be driven away by the rulers at any time.

The policy of emphasizing agriculture and restraining business came into being in the Warring States period. In Shang Yang's political reform, the policy of emphasizing agriculture and restraining business was clearly put forward for the first time, and it was put into practice as the basic content of vigorously promoting the agricultural war policy. Since then, the rulers of China have regarded it as the only way to govern the country.

As early as more than 2,000 years ago, people knew that "to seek wealth from poverty, agriculture is not as good as industry, industry is not as good as business, and embroidery is not as good as relying on the city gate". Therefore, attaching importance to agriculture and restraining businessmen have artificially restrained people from getting rich. Then, why did all dynasties spare no effort to "emphasize agriculture and restrain commerce" or even "return the people to agriculture"

Free commerce based on private ownership can increase the horizontal connection of society, break isolated geographical boundaries, build a bridge of mutual communication and interdependence among independent social individuals, coordinate production and consumption among industries, departments and regions under the role of chasing profits, promote the circulation of commodities and goods, and thus actively promote social development and increase social wealth. The increase of social wealth will inevitably lead to the general improvement of people's living standards, thus increasing their educational opportunities and promoting the development of science, technology and art, while the general improvement of people's cultural quality will inevitably lead to the denial and rebellion against authoritarian rule.

The role of free commercial activities in society is in sharp opposition to the centralized autocratic rule, which requires people's spatial status to solidify, eliminate their horizontal links, maintain the dominant position of small-scale peasant economy, and implement personal control and weak (poor) people's skills. Free commercial activities respect the law of value of equal exchange and are based on equality before money, which is incompatible with hierarchy and privilege system. Commerce can promote human resources and capital. The horizontal flow of technology, information, commodities, etc. This is also a great harm to personal control, which is bound to threaten the foundation of authoritarian system, so it is not surprising that rulers spare no effort to curb its development.

The rulers of China have a natural political intuition. After the development of free economy, they will certainly destroy the two dams of ignorance and poverty, which are the basis of authoritarian rule, and eventually drown and bury the authoritarian rule system, so they spare no effort to control it in the cradle. This intuition has a far-reaching vision, which can be clearly seen from the development of capitalism in western Europe. ?

The development of capitalism in western Europe began in the15th century. Due to the special geographical environment and historical tradition in Europe, free commerce has always been relatively developed (mercantilist schools in the history of Britain and France even believe that wealth comes directly from commercial activities). After gradually controlling the gold power, the merchants further seized the political power, and finally set up a parliament to supervise the king, which became a tool to safeguard businessmen and middle-class intellectuals, leading to the emergence of representative system. As a result, the privileges of kings and nobles were greatly hit and restricted, and their actions were placed under the supervision of the law.

The main measures of China's policy of attaching importance to agriculture and restraining business include: first, the rulers repeatedly emphasized that agriculture is an industry and business is the last industry, strengthened the awareness of putting the cart before the horse, discredited the image of businessmen, restricted businessmen from daily life, and made discriminatory provisions on their clothing, building houses and riding cars, which reduced their social status; Second, on the land issue, adopt a policy of restraining mergers to prevent farmers from going bankrupt in large numbers and stabilize the agricultural production base; Third, strengthen household registration management and limit population flow; Fourth, restrict businessmen and business activities in many ways: first, restrict the political rights of businessmen, block the road of official career, and prohibit their descendants from being officials; Second, the use of tax system to punish businessmen, such as the Western Han Dynasty businessmen double tax; Third, the profiteering industry is run by the government (historically known as "Guanshanhai"), and the distribution is directly monopolized by the state, and businessmen are not allowed to get their hands on it. In China, salt and iron were mainly operated by the government, because there was a large demand for such commodities and there was no price elasticity. Officials and businessmen have replaced their own market prices with monopoly prices, and people's wealth has been continuously gathered unconsciously. The blood and sweat of the people flowed into the national treasury, but the people did not feel the pain. On the contrary, they think that the monarch cares about the people. This means: "See the shape of giving, but not the reason of taking, and the love of the people can be hung on the top." This is a strategy to kill two birds with one stone: to curb the rise of any private forces and ensure the stability of the autocratic system; Create state-owned capital, obtain huge monopoly profits, and cover up the essence of cruel economy plundering people. ?

Production, circulation, consumption and distribution in economic activities must cooperate with each other and promote each other. Industry and commerce provide necessary technology, capital and information for agricultural production, so that agriculture can develop and progress. Artificially opposing it is a serious violation of economic laws and can never achieve the goal of prospering the economy. On the surface, it seems very important to emphasize agriculture and restrain business. In fact, judging from the actual effect of restraining commerce, it not only failed to promote the development of agricultural production. '