How many times has the regression been repeated? Historians' explanations are varied, some people say that they are freshmen from China.
Cultural tradition is unified, and culture lacks flexibility; Some people say that it is because of the threat of external forces, "nomads-settlers."
The competition for survival brought the China dynasty back to life again and again. Some people say this is because of the traditional hierarchy in China.
Governance mode and frequent conflicts between rulers and ruled make it impossible for each dynasty to maintain long-term stability. There is no doubt,
All the statements have their reasons, which can explain some or even many facts, but this paper focuses on the viewpoint of economics.
On the economic level, how to explain the cycle of the dynasty? What this article wants to emphasize is that every dynasty is powerful in the later period.
The huge losses brought by the big vested interest groups to the national tax revenue have hollowed out the national public finance and destroyed it at the same time.
The ruling mansion of the dynasty. The tension between this vested interest class and national public finance is the foundation of traditional China society.
This problem has far-reaching implications.
1, the decline law of yeomen and the shortage cycle of public finance.
From the perspective of economics, the understanding of American historian Stavri Anoos is particularly noteworthy. He thinks China.
The fundamental reason why the ancient dynasty cycle and empire could not get out of the cycle law from prosperity to decline was the cycle of economic management.
"Every dynasty began to face financial difficulties about 100 years after its establishment" (Stavri Anoos,
P294), and the collapse of public finance directly led to the demise of the empire.
History in the historian's pen, is smooth and vivid, one or two sentences will have an outline and rich summary, just
The success or failure of one dynasty after another is included in it. But history as a process has never been like this.
Calm and plain, how joy and happiness are produced, and how sadness and pain grow, involving concrete and subtle.
People and things, all the clouds of the past will be saturated with confusion and uncertainty, especially for today, who is standing in a different time dimension from the past.
People who observe history to a certain extent are in contact with the past and the present, China and the outside world, and we have special associations arising from observing history.
Some are not easy. How did the cycle of empire happen? How did history mysteriously and quietly divide the former dynasty into later generations?
Together in series? And what possibilities can the past provide for the future? We should ask questions about history.
The cycle of dynasties and the decline of empires are generally a comprehensive result, including politics, economy, culture and so on.
All-round withering will make the ruling order unsustainable. But any civilization, after all, is based on material, the reincarnation of the dynasty.
As Stavri and Anoos said, this is obviously an economic process. But this economic process and a civilization
Politics, culture and social processes are closely linked and mutually causal, and there is social politics in the economic process.
The existence of mechanism and some economic process arising from social and political mechanism will in turn strengthen some political machine.
Causes, and produce some social results.
Or from the lack of public finance, this is an inevitable disease of every dynasty after its later period. And public finance
Why is there a shortage? Excluding natural factors, let's look at some human factors.
Scene. Searching for the economic signs of the post-DPRK, it is not difficult to find that the following points are * * *.
The tax revenue is seriously insufficient. At the beginning of each dynasty, there was a period of peace and prosperity, such as the Han Dynasty.
In the Tang Dynasty, there were Wen Jing Zhi, Zhen Guan Zhi, Kai Yuan Xing and Kang Gan Sheng in the Qing Dynasty.
"The world", the Song and Ming Dynasties also had a harmonious bureau of recuperation, with clear politics, abundant national finance and people's well-being.
noodle However, the good times did not last long. After the emperors before various dynasties, due to the lack of effective monetary system and commerce,
Industry laws and taxes, whether in terms of the amount of extraction or the maintenance of its existing system, have begun to encounter many difficulties, even to the king.
In the late dynasty, everyone was faced with the difficult situation that expenditure exceeded tax.
Self-employed individuals have fallen sharply. The basic driving force for the replacement of Chinese dynasties is the peasant uprising. The average called for by the peasant uprising
The concept of land ownership has a deterrent effect on every dynasty, and because of this, every dynasty was overthrown at the beginning of its establishment.
The original owners of large real estate redistributed the land, so that "land to the tiller" can basically be leveled according to the population.
Both. The result of averaging land is the formation of the yeoman peasant class in the whole country, which accounts for the majority of farmers. In that way
However, this is also temporary. As the rest period passed, taxes increased, and yeomen gradually could not survive.
Under pressure, I had to give my land to the big landlord and become a tenant farmer. This process is usually time-consuming.
Dragon, to the late empire, slowly formed a majority of tenants and serfs farmers, and farmers gradually became a minority.
Situation.
The land is seriously concentrated. The average land ownership is only the landscape at the beginning of each dynasty because of the lack of corresponding commerce and currency.
The system is supported by the legal system, and the wealth of the empire is always in accordance with Matthew's law. The poorer the poor, the richer the rich, and
In an agricultural society, the main symbol of wealth is the amount of land, and those big landlords who collude with the political power are
After several generations of emperors, they accumulated a lot of real estate by exploiting farmers' high-profit commodities.
On the contrary, under the double oppression of increasing corvee tax and unredeemable high-profit goods, the yeoman peasant class gradually lost its self.
With land sovereignty, it became a vassal of the big landlords, and even in the late empire, most of the country's land was occupied by the population.
Divided by several landlords.
The above three points are actually closely related. The concentration of land will inevitably lead to the decrease of farmers, which is inevitable.
Resulting in poor tax revenue and lack of public finance. Among the three, it is particularly noteworthy that the number of farmers has decreased, doubling and doubling.
It is not difficult to find that the decline of yeoman farmers has become an iron law accompanying the process from prosperity to decline of dynasties. self-discipline
Why did the decline of agriculture inevitably lead to the shortage of tax and finance in the dynasty? This is related to the economic reality that traditional China is an agricultural society.
Close. The main economic source of the government and people in agricultural society can only be land, while the majority of the population in agricultural society is
Farmers. Under normal circumstances, the taxes of the dynasty were borne by the peasants, if the land was not concentrated and the yeomen occupied the peasants.
The main reason is that there is generally no big shortage of imperial taxes, especially when the government implements the poll tax system.
A country can usually keep its balance of payments. But in fact, this is often just an "ideal type" because "numbers" have not been realized.
Management ",on the one hand, the imperial tax is not smooth, it is difficult to ensure that all taxes can be implemented, on the other hand, it is difficult to correct.
Land dignitaries intertwined with political power are in power, especially yeomen who are unable to bear the burden of long-distance service and lose their land rights and land.
Decentralized, self-sufficient and comprehensive agricultural economy, when concentrated, often leads to politics under the protection of big landlords.
The government's tax system failed, even though it adopted the method of taxing land and fields (as the "land equalization system" in the Tang Dynasty once did)
In that case), it can't stop this trend.
In the traditional China society, the proportion of farmers in the population has actually become a standard to measure social and economic life.
A touchstone for good transfer. However, the law of the decline and fall of the yeomen carried on the rise and fall of each dynasty without exception.
What is the reason? This is of course closely related to the simplification of Chinese traditional agricultural economy (lack of commercial and market mechanisms)
Relevance is also related to the lack of flexibility in the political system. It should be said that not every generation of kings are groggy and incompetent, on the contrary, we are fat.
At present, many supreme rulers have seen the basic problems existing in China society, and all the emperors have them.
Committed to solving, but limited by the political and economic reality of agricultural society, all efforts eventually failed without exception.
Failure. Corresponding to the law of declining speed of yeoman farmers and the shortage cycle of public finance, we have also observed a phenomenon in rulers.
The repeated pattern of state governance, that is, every dynasty made great efforts to solve the land problem at the beginning,
Strive for equal land distribution, prevent land concentration, and vigorously maintain the dominant position of yeomen in the population structure. The most conspicuous
That's Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The building of the Ming Empire has just been built. For example, Mao Zedong later opposed "land, wealth, anti-evil,
Right ",that is, Emperor Hongwu" even promoted Dayu, opposed bureaucrats, gentry, local and other senior people, and stood high in the court.
From the official level to the private rich, it has a wide range of implications. According to some historians' estimates, more than100000 people died.
Confiscation of criminals' property and redistribution of land, coupled with a large number of immigrants since the founding of the People's Republic, have made
The whole country has become an agricultural society based on farmers. "(Huang Renyu, P 150) Not only that, but also to prevent it.
1434 1 The property of landlords who still have more than 700 mu of property in China will not expand indefinitely, and Zhu Yuanzhang will add a lot to them.
More additional service obligations, "this kind of service is varied and distributed according to the principle of progressive tax, that is, the more families there are."
Rich, its burden is heavier. For example, horses, boats, carts and grain needed by post stations all over the country are completely supplied by large households.
There is no upper limit for the annual supply, and the more officials travel, the heavier the burden. "Huang Renyu,
15 1) Because of this land policy, at the beginning of each dynasty, yeomen occupied most of the national population.
Number, the empire's tax revenue also enriched for a period of time because of the growth of population and land.
Although almost every dynasty tried to average the land and keep the number of yeomen at the beginning, after that,
As a result, the situation of land concentration, sharp decline of farmers and lack of public finance continues. What the hell is this?
Zhang Wuchang, an economist of the institutional school, said that the social display arranged by social class in the "three major social systems"
The typical characteristics of the past, the lack of an open political and economic system, make a seemingly beneficial to the country and the people.
Economic policies cannot be sustained for a long time. Take the Ming Dynasty as an example. Although Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, solved the land problem for a period of time,
But what happened later was inevitably caught in the cycle of history. So even if the Ming dynasty was in jeopardy,
A great official, Harry, was appointed, but Huang Renyu pointed out very accurately that Harry tried to restore the legacy of his ancestors.
This is doomed to be a tragedy. What he can't understand is that this economic and political system of the empire has problems from the beginning.
The land policy in the early Ming Dynasty was completely maintained by the personal charm of Emperor Hongwu, and the charm was lost.
This will mean the failure of this economic arrangement. But after the death of the first emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, where did the later emperor go?
Looking for authority similar to the founding emperor? Their power only comes from tradition, and traditional rule naturally means
Surrender to the current events of the past, including the specific people who formulated and explained these traditions. The emperor's autocratic cause
This is no longer absolute, and the old ministers of the former dynasty and the bureaucratic groups of the present world may all be challenged. When the later emperor
When the legitimacy of the rule is greatly weakened, the economic arrangement is maintained on the charismatic rule, so there is no continuous and effective dimension.
Possibility of protection.
In a closed agricultural society with land as the main economic source, national peace and stability are closely related to land.
On average, only in this way can we maintain a strong team of farmers and rely on state taxes. But the results
The political system of the system (this is the paradox of agricultural society: to maintain the rule of a huge empire, only the hierarchy can be adopted)
It is doomed that the economic arrangement of equal land rights can never be carried out. The tax revenue has dropped sharply, and the national finance is empty.
What will happen to the empire? Historians have long concluded that bureaucracy is the two forces that maintain imperial rule.
The system and the army will be unable to maintain because of lack of financial support, so the empire will first collapse from its own system;
The peasants who are unable to be exploited internally also unite to raise the banner of justice for their own survival, and at this time there are often external ones.
The clan took advantage of the turmoil within the dynasty to attack by force. The empire had to fall apart under the attack of internal and external troubles.
2, another privatization, another ending.
The decrease in the number of yeomen farmers led to financial difficulties in the later period of each dynasty, but public finance was scarce.
Does not mean that the total wealth of the country has decreased. On the contrary, we can find other facts, such as the Tang Dynasty, although it
The rulers did not strictly average the land rights as in the Ming Dynasty, but passed it without depriving the extended family of land.
Other ways to open up new land and distribute it to free farmers, this "land equalization system" measure once stopped semi-feudal land.
The growth of production, at the same time, increased the national tax revenue and strengthened the rule of the early Tang Dynasty. But each dynasty was established for hundreds of years.
After all, it is inevitable that financial resources will be stretched beyond our means, even when the country's total wealth increases.
Here you are. Who caused the yeoman farmers to drop sharply and hollowed out the public finances of the empire?
The problem lies in the private ownership of land in past dynasties.
We have always been used to thinking that private ownership has never existed in China society. For 5,000 years, it has existed in every dynasty.
Privatization is being suppressed. If this is a contrast with the clear property rights system in modern western Europe, we can't say so.
The law is totally unreasonable, and the system of private property rights, which is restricted by the rights protected by law and the tax obligation, has never come into effect in China.
Very long. However, if "the whole leopard" is used to exclude "one spot", it is believed that China society only has the government's excessive control over economic resources
Selfless people have a lot of property, which is inconsistent with the reality that once existed in history. The Big Landlord and Powerful Land in Ancient China
Land annexation has actually created a kind of private land. Although this kind of private ownership is not strict in the modern sense
Legal protection, but the title deed of the land owner and the political power obtained in collusion with the ruler generally make the soil
The state of private land can be maintained and the intrusion of political power can be avoided. However, the problems existing in China's past society are also.
Here it is. Land is centralized and privately owned by big landlords and powerful people, if there is a sound fiscal and taxation system to ensure ownership.
Large property owners also pay corresponding taxes, so private ownership of land will not cause great harm to the country and society. But it is said that private ownership of land will not cause great harm to the country and society.
The irrationality of China's social and political system is precisely the extreme injustice of property owners' rights and obligations.
Balance, on the one hand, imperial rule is not based on technology, similar to what Mr. Huang Renyu called "advanced institutions" and
China's society lacks "low-level institutions", so the tax revenue of the empire can only be enlarged, and cannot be accurately quantified.
This gives big owners the opportunity to evade taxes; On the other hand, more importantly, big owners usually
They are all privileged people. The rule of traditional China society is based on the combination of bureaucrats and local gentry.
Therefore, big landlords can use their influence on the government to effectively evade many taxes that should have been paid. Apply a little modernity.
In other words, in the traditional China society, as big developers with vested interests, they are really suspected of "belittling Yao and being thin"
Fu ",the separation of property ownership and due obligations, led to the shortage of public finance, and became the king in the history of China.
The basic reasons for the rise and fall of dynasties.
The inevitable result of the de facto private ownership of land is that political power is applied to land possession, which further strengthens the private ownership of land.
Some power. Under the background that land is the main wealth of society, the economic benefits can be obtained by using political resources.
Of course, the most frequent benefit will only be land. The concentration of land has created a group of vested interests who are used to it.
The normal mode is bureaucracy+real estate. It is closely related to the family and family concept in China traditional society. After sui and Tang dynasties
On the surface, the imperial examination system created "equal opportunities" in China society, enabling children from poor families to enter the gentry class.
The class opened the door to convenience, but it was not. The idiom "Three generations produce a nobleman" tells the secret of the imperial examination.
Jeremy: Without sufficient financial resources as the basis for years of study and preparation, it cannot be said that taking the imperial examination is learning and learning.
It's impossible. Therefore, most people who can be promoted must have the financial resources of the family and the financial resources of the family behind them, and
Political power naturally returns to the direction of economic power, which promotes the wealth and status of families and families.
For convenience. Bureaucracy and real estate are thus combined. Although this does not include collusion between political power and economic interests.
All types, but the most obvious, popular and common one, are roughly the same in each dynasty. Or think of the Ming dynasty as
For example, after retirement, Ming officials became squires, but according to government regulations, they still enjoyed the same status as when they were in office.
Recent political and economic preferential treatment (in this respect, we once again feel the striking similarity between history and reality), which in itself
It means that they are in a higher position than the average person in owning social wealth. Not only that, they also take
Rural friendship, New Year's Day friendship, marriage friendship, etc. , as a link, keep inextricably linked with other powerful people who directly and indirectly hold power.
They are inextricably linked, so it is extremely natural and smooth for them to transform their acquired political resources into economic resources.
For example, when Jeff, a college student in Wenyuange, retired and returned to Nanzhili, there were thousands of family members.
It is said that 400,000 mu of real estate has been occupied by various means such as usury. (Huang Renyu, P 146) Power and money have existed since ancient times.
Yes. Officials in the Ming Dynasty generally accumulated certain assets by intercepting "fire consumption" and collecting "routine cases", which
Assets can be directly used to buy land, or they can be seized by usury. An official accumulated money while in office.
It is common sense to have money and turn it into land and become a land aristocrat after retirement. A dynasty
When People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded, a group of gentry were overthrown. However, "wildfires start a prairie fire and spring breeze blows high" has experienced a new round of regime change.
The structure and economic resources will be rearranged decades after the establishment of the dynasty. From Ming Dynasty to Wanli, a new land.
Noble people have long existed. "The1more than 4,000 rich people who came to the headquarters for the second time in that year have already been owned by the new rich.
Replace. The vast majority of these newly rich households belong to bureaucrats, gentry or students and enjoy "preferential exemption". number
Then assume the responsibility of' service'. Government officials also have more and more opportunities to cheat. Because the whole country
Cash and physical objects are not always collected and distributed, and the financial system can't pass the strict accounting system and leak from the cracks.
The money and goods will fall into the hands of these people. "(Ren Huang in P 153)
Similar phenomena and processes can be found in all generations. Another example is the Tang Dynasty, when the Tang Dynasty was established, the "land equalization system" was implemented, but
In fact, the "land equalization system" at the beginning was not thorough. It had huge, self-sufficient and tax-free land formed by the previous dynasty.
Fang's large amount of real estate has not been deprived, but has opened up other ways, such as reclaiming land abandoned in the war.
The public gives farmers land, and the state tax is borne by the vast number of small farmers, but the big landlords who hold political power do not need it.
You must pay taxes. This was especially true in the last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty. "Three years to clear the magistrate, a hundred thousand snowflakes and silver" is a vivid way of writing.
Photos.
So far, we can see that in the later period of each dynasty, all subjects surrounding taxation are actually divided into two categories: one is palm.
The vested interests who hold the political and economic power, that is, the land aristocracy, do not have to pay taxes or pay less taxes, through usury.
Exploiting farmers in other ways; The other is farmers (yeomen, sharecroppers, serfs), who bear the government's taxes.
At the same time, it was exploited by the land nobles. This distinction between the poor and the rich has told people that the wealth of the empire is studied.
Where did it go, and what kind of differentiation did society experience? This distinction actually shows that class analysis
Realistic pertinence of traditional China society. The vested interests of a few people and the exploitation of the vast majority of people.
What are the social consequences of human existence?
In the final analysis, economic problems are interests. The interest problem mainly lies in two aspects: one is production, that is, wealth.
Creation; The first is distribution, which means the use of wealth. These two aspects are mutually dominant, and if one of them fails, it will be harmful to the other.
Those that have negative effects often have certain social consequences. The emergence and interests of exclusive vested interest classes
Unfair distribution (not equal to inequality) is precisely the fuse of social crisis. Of course, if you are well off now,
There has been a breakthrough in the emergence of the rich. Although the distribution is unfair, even the poor and weak can have a sip of soup, just like the Tang Dynasty.
As we have done, the social crisis may also be temporarily alleviated. But in a certain period of time, land resources, after all,
There is a limit, one party's gains must be based on the other party's losses. From ancient times to the 20th century.
In the first half, most of the economic and financial sources of traditional China society came from land, and the economic sources of ordinary people,
It's also very simple. Without land, we can only be attached to people, and there is no other opportunity to obtain means of subsistence. Both the poor and the rich are right.
So it is not only the opposition of wealth possession, but also the right opportunity to seek wealth.
Generally speaking, simple inequality between the rich and the poor is not the most urgent problem, but if there is inequality between the rich and the poor at the same time,
The opportunities of the rich are not equal, and the weak have actually been forced to the predicament of no way out and no hope to find.
Resist "being rich and heartless" and let nature take its course. Because of this, the traditional China society presents a turbulent cycle.