Chapter 5 Lecture 1 Han Dynasty-3

3. The Economic System of the Han Dynasty What has been said above is the formation of the government and the distribution of its functions and powers.The main economic issue supporting the government follows, namely, the tax system.In the Han Dynasty, the ideal of light corvee and Fu was realized.During the Warring States Period, Mencius said: "Taxes are taxed, and the king's government is governed." It can be seen that the tax amount in the Warring States Period was more than one tithe. Mencius thought that a tithe tax was very good.However, in the Han Dynasty, the tax amount regulation was only "fifteen taxes and one tax".Moreover, in fact, only half of the tax is paid, and the tax is one thirty.One hundred shi millet, as long as the tax is a little more than three shi.Even people at that time said that there was a tax of one hundred (see Xunyue's "Pre-Han Ji"), and during Emperor Wen's time, all land rents were exempted for eleven years.This is the only time in Chinese history.This is because China has a vast territory and taxation is as light as possible, and it is still inexhaustible to support a government.However, the tax system of the Han Dynasty had a big problem. At that time, the land policy was relatively liberal.The well field system in the feudal era has long been abolished. The tiller owns the land, and the ownership of the land belongs to the peasant, who can use it or sell it freely.When the economy is poor and the land can be bought and sold, a merger is formed.If we ask further, why do farmers have to sell their land when the government tax is reduced?There are of course other reasons for this.This must refer to the population tax and military service tax at that time, as well as the overall picture of the social economy.No time to get involved at the moment.But after the farmer sells his land ownership, he becomes a tenant farmer, and the rent from the landlord to the tenant farmers is very high.Some are as high as fifty percent (that is, five tenths).As a result, the lighter the government's tax, the cheaper the landlord is. After the farmer sells the land, he has to pay five-tenths of the rent to the landlord, and the landlord only needs to pay one-thirtieth of the tax to the government.The government's reduction of land rent only benefits the landlords, and the farmers do not benefit at all.This is about land rent.

But here the issue of land ownership has been involved.In the feudal era, within the four feudal lords, could it be the land of the king, the hair that eats the soil, and the subjects of the king, and the land was exclusively owned by the feudal nobles.Those who cultivate the fields will be paid according to the time, which is one of the main conditions of the well field system.Now feudalism is destroyed, and the land is privately owned by the people.Since it is privately owned, it can be freely bought and sold.The government only collects taxes according to the land, regardless of who owns the land.The seller and the buyer form a contract together.This is purely non-governmental economic and trade relations.Therefore, the big landlords under free trade are not equal to feudal nobles.Feudalism is political, while the landlords at this moment are formed by economic conditions.He is free to buy and sell freely.It is precisely because the land is privately owned and the tiller has the land that there is free trade and mergers, so that the poor have no place to stand.Later in the land policy of Chinese history, on the one hand, they often admired the equal land ownership of the ancient well field system, but on the other hand, they advocated that the tiller should have his own land, and recognized that the cultivated land should belong to the private property of the people.Under the conflict of these two concepts, the issue of land taxation cannot be properly resolved.

Besides, the land in the whole country is not all cultivated land.Then we may ask, whose sovereignty is the non-cultivated land?A mountain, a forest, and a large lake, in the feudal era, naturally belonged to the four feudal lands. Could it be that the land of the king, cultivated land and non-cultivated land, should also belong to the nobles.Cultivated land was opened up, distributed to farmers, distributed equally, and became well fields, while non-cultivated land became undisclosed forbidden land.In the mountains, forests and ponds, the nobles sent administrators such as Yu people to guard them.Later, the situation changed, and the ownership of cultivated land was gradually transferred to the hands of farmers, instead of the restricted area of ​​cultivated land?It was also gradually broken into by the people privately, burning charcoal, logging, fishing and hunting animals, which is an illegal profit.These people who broke into the restricted area from time to time were regarded as thieves at the time, and their production outside the cultivated land was called profiteering.The government has officials to prevent and have the right to levy.After the defense is too difficult to defend, the forbidden area, namely the mountains, forests and ponds, is gradually opened up.Only set up a tax collector at the entrance and exit gates. When fishing and logging in the restricted area, only a fraction of what they get will be collected in kind. This is another kind of tax in addition to land rent.This is the origin of the tax business tax.That's why it's called conquest, which was originally prohibited by conquest, but later only sharing and obtaining was a compromise condition, and the word levy was still used.This kind of transformation has already begun in the late Spring and Autumn Period.Countries with narrow land or dense population, such as Zheng, Jin, and Qi, all have this phenomenon and have this measure.However, until the emergence of the Qin and Han unified governments, the concept of land ownership still inherited the old tradition.They believe that cultivated land is privately owned by farmers, and non-cultivated land, that is, forbidden land passed down in the feudal era, is still owned by the public.In other words, it becomes owned by the royal family.Because the feudal nobles have disappeared, only the emperor's family is left, inheriting the old feudal tradition, and all the mountains, forests, ponds, and lakes in the country belong to the royal family according to the concept of the people at that time.From this idea of ​​ownership to the taxation system, all rented farmland at that time belonged to the Dasinong, which was used as government public expenses.The tax of mountains, seas, pools and lakes belongs to the Shaofu, which is exclusively for the emperor's private use.This difference is not easy to understand if it is not from the well field system and other land ownership changes in the feudal era.

Now let me say that this system of public and private tax sharing was quite reasonable at the beginning.Due to the large amount of arable land, the land tax is the bulk, while the commercial tax on the mountains, forests and ponds is only a minority.It is not the emperor's selfish self-enrichment to assign the large number to the state and the small number to the royal family.However, after the Warring States period, the benefits of salt and iron gradually increased, and the social and economic situation changed. The taxes on mountains, seas, ponds, and ponds gradually exceeded the land rent of the whole country.This transformation was not anticipated when the customization began.Just like in the late Qing Dynasty, they didn't know that the foreign trade tariffs in commercial ports were increasing year by year, but they left this matter to foreigners, and they suffered a big loss later.This was true in the Qing Dynasty, and it was also true in the Han Dynasty.The commercial tax gradually exceeded the land rent, so the income of the Shaofu was better than that of the Dasinong.Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was a talented and generous emperor. He spent a lot of money on military affairs to fight against the Xiongnu and travel to the Western Regions. The Dasinong ran out of money, and even spent all the wealth accumulated by his father (Emperor Jing) and grandfather (Emperor Wen) in several lifetimes.What about the huge government expenditures and embarrassment?Farmers' land rent, one-thirtieth of the quota, has been established, and it is inconvenient to change or increase it easily.Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty had only his own generosity, and took out the economy of the Shaofu, which was tantamount to donating the royal family's private funds to the government.Therefore, Emperor Wu also ordered rich local people, most importantly, salt and iron merchants, to donate freely like him.As a result, the society did not respond well, and those with large assets ignored the government's call.Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty couldn't help thinking: Where did your money come from?Don't I let you manage the mountains, seas and ponds, so that you can cook salt and smelt iron and make money.Now I donate all the income from the Shaofu to the country, but if you don't respond, then I have to take back all the non-cultivated land in the mountains, seas, pools and lakes of the country, and let me let the government run it!This is the famous so-called salt and iron policy in the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.Salt and iron merchants were the two largest and most profitable businesses at that time.There is no one who does not eat salt, and no family does not use iron, but boiling the sea into salt, and mining the mountains to produce iron, the sovereignty of the mountains and the sea is in the hands of the emperor.Now Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty stopped allowing merchants to operate without authorization, took back their ownership, and asked the government to send managers to burn salt and smelt iron by themselves, and all the interest income would go to the government.This system is very similar to the so-called National Socialist policy first initiated by modern Western Germans.However, we have invented such a system as far back as the Han Dynasty. Until the Qing Dynasty, although there were minor changes, we still followed this policy in general, and we still did not deviate from the so-called national socialist line in modern times.This system is not limited to the two items of salt and iron.Another example is wine, which is a luxury and pleasure product made from the rice and wheat necessary for life, so it is also classified as official sales, and free brewing by the people is not allowed.Behind these systems, there must naturally be a theoretical basis.When we want to talk about the history of China's economic thought, we must pay attention to the measures of various practical systems in history.When talking about China's economic system, we should pay attention to a historical truth about the evolution of this system.Therefore, when I talk about the salt and iron policy in the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, I go far from the ancient well field system and the legal distinction between the ownership of the forbidden land of mountains and rivers, and go straight to the origin of the distribution of taxes from the Shaofu and Dasinong to the government and the royal family. This leads to the sale of salt and iron officials.This is not just a matter of thought and theory, but is actually determined by the reality of an extremely important historical tradition.For this issue, there was a long debate at that time, and there was a heated discussion during Emperor Zhaodi of the Han Dynasty. People's representatives from all over the country and the government's financial ministers debated back and forth at the specially convened meeting, criticizing each other.At that time, a public representative left a record afterwards, which is the famous theory of salt and iron.Of course, the people advocate openness, and the government advocates state-run.As for the actual advantages and disadvantages at that time, it is impossible to guess without studying the opinions of the people at that time.When we are going 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 should not obliterate the historical opinions of the time with our opinions of the times, this is the right thing to do!

We summarize the above-mentioned economic policies of the Han Dynasty. For industry and commerce, it is close to advocating the so-called restraint of capital. In terms of land rent for farmers, it has also achieved light labor and light taxes, but it has not equalized land rights.During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu once advocated the policy of restricting land. Even if the acres of land in the whole country cannot be distributed equally, there must be a maximum limit so that each landlord cannot exceed the limit of a certain number of acres. Unfortunately, even this policy has not been implemented.So when Wang Mang got up, he aroused a major reform, and all the land was nationalized, called Huangtian, and redistributed.The idea at the time was to restore the feudal well field system, but the result was a major disturbance.Wang Mang failed, and there has been no thorough reform of the land system in Chinese history since then.