Historical Reflections on Socio-Economic Changes in the Late Ming Dynasty

?　　The period from the 16th century to the middle of the 17th century, generally known as the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, was an important turn in the course of Chinese historical development. The Ming Dynasty was the last Chinese dynasty established by the Han landowning class, and it pushed the bureaucratic politics of authoritarian centralization to a new height. The socio-economic development exceeded the highest level of the Song and Yuan dynasties, and from it brewed the impulse to replace the old with the new. Along with the decline of the Ming dynasty, all spheres of social life showed signs of disintegration, and the feudal society of China, which had lasted for thousands of years, entered a late stage of development. It was during this period that medieval Europe underwent revolutionary changes and began its transformation into a capitalist society. The encounter between the forces of early Western colonialism and the forces of Chinese navigation in Southeast Asia and the southeast coast of China. It made it no longer possible to isolate the course of China's historical development from that of the world. These circumstances, different from those of previous dynasties, created a unique historical position and a rich and varied zeitgeist in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang, at the beginning of the Ming dynasty, with his traditional small peasant cultural thinking, tried to restore the construction of a complete set of perfect and can be tightly controlled to the small peasant economy as the core of the socio-economic pattern. The Yellow Book household registration system, the Li Jia management system, the way of collection of taxes and services, and the grassroots social indoctrination system, etc., all tried to make the peasants settle down on the land, and the four people each had their own jobs, forming a super-stable feudal society ruled from the top to the bottom. However, during the period from Zhengtong to Zhengde, the political rule of the Ming dynasty did not follow the course designed by Zhu Yuanzhang as in the past, and various shortcomings emerged. The eunuchs ruled in a tyrannical manner and were politically corrupt; the economy was in disarray and there were financial constraints. The Tartars and Washis rose up, repeatedly knocked at the border and broke into the Great Wall. The Ming court lost the powerful strength to settle the country and secure the borders. Internal and external difficulties. The economic situation of the peasants deteriorated. A large number of people moved to the border areas and mountainous regions, and there were many protests and riots. In contrast, the development of mountainous areas and border areas by migrants and squatters contributed to the improvement of the economic status of the Huguang district: the decline of the tribute trade. Coastal power, merchants and even the death of dependence? The risk of forbidden to pass through the Fan? The rise of private maritime trade. Political corruption and economic development formed a new conflict, the ideological and cultural circles also appeared anti-traditional calls. Wang Yangming founded the "Mindfulness" school of thought, which was the first of its kind in China. The School of Mind, founded by Wang Yangming, soon became a popular school of thought. which soon became popular in the academic world. The new is not the usual, but the new. It became a fashionable trend. During the years of Jiajing and Wanli, the political decline of the Ming Dynasty was evident, and the emperor was corrupted. The chief ministers and eunuchs were in charge of the government, and the courtiers had established cronyism; there were disorganization of the service, lack of finances, and frequent emergencies on the borders and at the sea. In addition to the historical threat of nomads from the north, there were also the challenges of Japanese invaders from the east and early colonialists from the west. Contrary to the decline of the dynasty, the decline of feudal rule provided, to a certain extent, a somewhat favorable environment for civil society to break out of the original pattern of domination and to make progress in the autonomous economy, which tilted toward the development of a commodity economy and increased the degree of agricultural commercialization. Both the landlord and peasant economies became more closely connected with the market, contractual tenancy relationships developed, fixed land rents became common, and land rights became fiercely divided, giving rise to perpetual tenancy rights and "one land, two masters". The development of contractual tenancy relations and fixed rents were widespread. Regional division of labor and specialization in handicrafts developed, and distribution markets expanded. Regional merchant groups were active, and industrial and commercial towns sprang up in Jiangnan and other advanced economic regions, and there were some buds of capitalist production relations in both rural handicrafts and town handicrafts. Chinese and Western economic and cultural exchanges and conflicts began, Chinese pirates, merchants and Portuguese, Dutch pirate merchants competed in the East and West oceans. Moon Harbor? Luzon? The connection of the Pacific Ocean shipping route between the Americas. So that China and the overseas market connection closer. China's overseas trade surplus brought a large number of silver currency (Spanish silver dollar) imports. This had a certain impact on the social and economic life. The townspeople began to show their power, and a trend of profit-seeking and money-worshipping, extravagance and wastefulness was formed. They forgot the righteousness of profit and bullied the weak. The rich and the poor rose and fell irregularly, and the order of superiority and inferiority was confused or even reversed. In the field of thought and culture, there is a trend of The wave of anti-reasoning with emotion and the impact on tradition. The traditional wave of impact, has always been despised by the people of the merchants, common people, such as the Yu Ling rose to shake the Duo lectures, advocating contempt for propriety, the pursuit of personal feelings, the pursuit of happiness in time and other heretical doctrines, scientific works and popular literature and art and compete with each other. Many aspects of social life are permeated with a lively, cheerful and fresh atmosphere of the times. Signs of conflict between the old and the new were revealed. In short, against the background of the new changes in the rural economy, the prosperity of domestic and foreign trade, the development of the urban economy, the expansion of the circulation of goods and money. The expansion of social industries and their division of labor promoted the development of handicraft production and changes in its mode of operation, and the social economy embarked on a course of industrialization that had not been seen in any previous historical period. Pre-modern industrialization? The historical process, thus triggering a series of changes in social habits and even ideological and cultural fields, which is the Ming Jiajing, Wanli period of socio-economic changes in the main features. By the time of the Ming Dynasty, the rule of the Ming Dynasty was at an impasse between the Ming Dynasty and the Chongzhen period. The political chaos was exacerbated by intense party disputes and the dictatorship of the eunuch Wei Zhongxian. The Manchu aristocracy in the northeast established the ? Hou Jin? (later renamed ? Qing?) regime and fought for supremacy in the south, and the Dutch and Spanish colonizers invaded Taiwan. In order to deal with internal and external problems, the Ming rulers consumed the national power and then extracted it brutally from the people. Floods, droughts, locusts, and soldiers added insult to injury, and peasants in the north and south rose up one after another. The Ming court was unable to cope with the situation, and was eventually overthrown by the peasant army led by Li Zicheng. In the process of great upheaval, great division and great combination, the emerging Manchu aristocracy defeated the peasant army. The Qing Dynasty was established. The landlord forces of the Southern Ming Dynasty and the maritime forces represented by Zheng Chenggong also failed in the struggle. Socio-economic accumulation was depleted in civil strife, and the conflict between the old and the new was replaced by a historical change of dynasty. Observed from the standpoint of comparative world history, the heyday of the Chinese feudal dynasty in the early Ming Dynasty was the period of Europe? The Dark Ages. s Middle Ages. The dawn of capitalism revealed in the West was almost simultaneous with the impulse to replace the old with the new in Chinese society since the middle of the Ming Dynasty. The rise of the West and the success of the English bourgeois revolution coincided with the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. It was during this period that Western civilization caught up with Eastern civilization and China went from being advanced to lagging behind. Objectively speaking, during the Ming Dynasty, especially in the mid- to late-Ming Dynasty, there was social and economic development and stagnation in China. The new things that emerged from the rise of the West had similar manifestations in the Ming Dynasty. Marx pointed out that capitalism? This movement of ? historical necessity? is clearly confined to the countries of Western Europe? The sparse presence of the germ of capitalism and other new factors in the Ming dynasty, although not showing the future of capitalism, was a Chinese-style? primitive industrialization? (pre-industrialization before modern industrialization), a change within the traditional system. Late Ming Dynasty. The spread of cash crops and the growth of commercial agriculture. Cottage industries shifted from supplying local markets to supplying *** products for foreign and even overseas markets, and merchant capital penetrated into the crafts industry, resulting in a great quantitative increase in commodity production with limited progress in productivity. This is what? Primitive industrialization? The beginning of primitive industrialization. As the Primitive industrialization The fruits of primitive industrialization. Chinese handmade goods had a competitive advantage of low price and high quality in the emerging world market. The export of large quantities of Chinese handmade goods also prepared the way for the rise of the West. At that time in Southern China, there was really a wave of? A maritime commercial culture of the maritime commercial culture. From? Westernization the criteria of Westernization to understand the traditional Chinese society? Primitive industrialization and later? Modernization are questionable. Moreover, commentators tend to exaggerate the hindering effect of the Ming rulers' sea ban policy. In fact, the private maritime trade was precisely the development of breaking through the ruler's strict policy of sea ban. And? Primitive industrialization? Just synchronized with this. Ming Dynasty, if not from the perspective of policy formulation and implementation, but from the perspective of the actual life of society, the late Ming Dynasty than the early Ming Dynasty should be more open. Chinese private trade at sea, foreigners private trade in China. In the early Ming dynasty that is unthinkable, but in the late but has become the climate, repeatedly prohibited. Until the death of Ming. Zheng Chenggong's maritime power to manipulate China, Japan, Southeast Asia between the bull's-eye of the maritime trade, *** and hold back the Dutch and other Western colonizers of the East is a fact recognized by the world. The Ming Dynasty's policy of maritime prohibition had a significant impact on? Primitive industrialization? process, but it was by no means a decisive factor. The use of maritime trade as a decisive factor in the rise of the West. Thus, capitalist culture is generalized as "maritime culture". Maritime Culture Even today's Western scholars consider this to be a biased argument. It is wrong to describe traditional Chinese culture as agricultural, to deny its diversity, or even to blame traditional culture for China's lagging behind in modern times. As a matter of fact, the socio-economic pattern of the mid- to late-Ming Dynasty had already shown the world the embryonic form of a highly diversified socio-economic society. So, what began after the middle of the Ming Dynasty? Primitive industrialization? Why did it not succeed and recede rapidly? Fundamentally, this is closely related to the influence and constraints of the pluralistic structure of traditional Chinese society. China's traditional social structure has the dual characteristics of precocity and immaturity, which embraces a variety of ethnic groups and regions with different ecological environments, historical development backgrounds, and degrees of economic and cultural development, complementing and constraining each other, and has an adaptability and elasticity that is incomparable to that of other societies. On the one hand, it can flexibly change its surface structure to accommodate various changes; on the other hand, it is good at resisting various changes and keeping its deep structure intact. In this way, new socio-economic factors are often dissolved or absorbed when they have grown to a certain limit. Anti-tradition is ultimately oriented towards strengthening and refining tradition. Within this social structure took place ? primitive industrialization? which, if it had not been interrupted, would have had the potential to develop on its own into something very different from the Western European model of capitalist development. Modernization. However, the dissolving power of the traditional social structure in the late Ming dynasty was quite strong, resulting in the distortion of this process, and the new things either died soon or changed their direction of development, especially in the late Ming dynasty, when China had a serious? institutional? deficiencies, the state system and the social system could not provide a strong guarantee for the new factors of economic and social development. On the contrary, the European colonialists of the same period, their overseas activities were basically recognized and supported by their own country ***, while the Chinese merchant groups of the late Ming Dynasty, on the one hand, they had to compete with foreign powers for the rights and interests of the maritime trade in the East: on the other hand, they had to resist the oppression and suppression from their own country ***. Under such circumstances, the development of new factors in Chinese social economy has become an inevitable trend of difficult twists and turns. From this ? primitive industrialization? development opportunities, it lacked the cooperation of social and environmental conditions. By the end of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming rulers were over-extracted, and there was a persistent and widespread onslaught of mega-disasters. Large-scale civil wars and unrest. Caused great destruction of social wealth and social productivity.? Primitive industrialization. The environmental conditions necessary for primitive industrialization changed dramatically. Coupled with the conservatism and resilience of the traditional Chinese political system and cultural consciousness, it was impossible to guarantee the growth of the new socio-economic factors at the level of the social system. As a result, the mid- to late-Ming Dynasty saw the emergence of the "primitive industrialization", which was the first of its kind in China. Primitive industrialization? Development opportunities, had to be in all aspects of the direct and indirect destruction under the gradual loss. This process was interrupted by the fall of the Ming dynasty and the disappearance of Zheng Chenggong's maritime power. In comparison with the rise of the West, quite similar events led to quite different results. The socio-economic changes of the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty revealed both the vitality of China's historical advance. At the same time, it leaves a stifling regret for future generations. It is undoubtedly meaningful to revisit and learn from the lessons of this period of history. The interruption of the process of socio-economic change and its development of new factors in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. Of course, it is saddening. However, we can not help but optimistically see, the social and economic changes and development of the middle and late Ming Dynasty, to a certain extent, change and nourish people for the traditional Chinese socio-economic model of re-examination. In particular, the impact of the socio-economic changes and developments of the mid- and late Ming Dynasty on the ideology and culture of the time and on the habits of the civil society has cultivated and nourished in the cultural consciousness of the Chinese people the value of accommodating diversified economic components, especially the commodity economy, which is complementary to the traditional agricultural economy. When we study the social and economic history of traditional Chinese society, especially that of the Ming Dynasty. Often neglected to pay attention to this value. In fact, the formation of a social value is often more important than the renewal of a society's economic production model. It is more historically significant in the long run. Because when the existence of such values to accommodate the pluralistic economy once there is a suitable social environment and social system to match. Values will quickly play its potential social functions, for the social and economic transformation to play a very strong role in promoting. Since the Qing Dynasty, China's social environment and social system have become more conservative. Although there was a new economic development peak in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the socio-economic development pattern of this period did not make a breakthrough from that of the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, in terms of the structural pattern of the socio-economic development. As a result, the social economy of the Qing Dynasty was inevitably difficult to find a more effective way of development, and its gradual decline was inevitable. In modern times, China has gone through suffering, and the values of the pluralistic economy fostered in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty still cannot be brought into normal play. Nevertheless. It is still not difficult to see from the trajectory of economic development over the centuries that the Chinese people's pursuit and practice of a pluralistic economy, especially a commodity market economy, has never ceased. Until after the 1980s and 1990s, when China implemented the policy of reform and opening up, both in terms of social environment. The social environment and institutional safeguards have provided increasingly favorable conditions for the development of a diversified economy, especially a market economy, and China's potential values for accommodating a diversified economy have been unleashed as never before. Because of this. When we discuss the evolution of China's socio-economic development. We must not again ignore the role of the pluralistic economic values contained in traditional Chinese culture, especially those that grew up in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. Otherwise, the implementation of any kind of economic policy. If you can not get the echo of the general values of society. Then, the implementation of this policy is bound to be difficult.