What are the characteristics of modernization transformation?
When a society enters modern times from the Middle Ages, there will always be certain unique trends and characteristics. We will list them as follows:
1. Commercialization. Commerce gradually prospered, and the commodity economy gradually replaced the natural economy.
2. Marketization. With the development of the commodity economy, the market has replaced administrative orders and become an important mechanism for allocating resources.
3. Monetization. The development of the market economy not only makes currency a settlement tool for market transactions, but also national taxes and labor, and the country's administrative mobilization, can also be settled with currency, achieving what Mr. Huang Renyu calls "digital management."
4. Urbanization. More and more people are leaving rural areas and land, moving into cities to make a living and becoming city residents. The urban population accounts for an increasing proportion of the total population.
5. Industrialization. The handicraft industry developed, and a handicraft industry emerged that took market exchange as its production purpose and handicraft workshops as its production form.
6. Contractualization. British historian Main said: "All movements in progressive societies up to this point have been a movement of 'from identity to contract.'" One of the core signs of moving from the Middle Ages to modernization is the emergence of "from identity to contract." The transformation from "personal attachment" to "contractual relationship".
7. Liquidity. As personal attachment weakens or even disappears, a modern society will inevitably see increasingly obvious mobility, including mobility between regions and between classes.
8. Civilization. As a privileged class, the hereditary nobility gradually declined, the influence of the civilian class increased day by day, and the secular citizen culture flourished, eventually forming a civilian society.
9. Equality. The result of the decline of the nobility and the rise of the common people is that the status disparity between people based on different origins has been smoothed out, and the strict barriers between classes have been broken down.
10. Utilization. Due to the penetration of commodity economy and the secular evolution of social atmosphere, a modern society will always produce obvious utilitarian trends of thought.
11. Welfare. The experience of modern Europe shows that when a society begins the transformation of commercialization, urbanization, and mobility, a huge class of poor people will inevitably be born. The relief system originally provided by religious groups can no longer meet the needs of society, and must be supported by powerful people. The national finance assumes the responsibility of relief.
12. Expansion. The expansion here refers to the expansion of national economic functions. Some liberals believe that the laissez-faire market economic mechanism can spontaneously promote the construction of a modern economic system. But this has always been an assumption, not a fact. The fact is that the start of modernization is always preceded by the country's mercantilism, and the economic departments established by the government expand significantly. Only in this way can the foundation be laid for the expansion of the market.
13. Centralization. The country's power structure was transformed from aristocratic feudalism to royal power. Some scholars pointed out: "Whether sooner or later, almost all countries must go through the stage of autocratic kingship before they can enter the door of the modern world. Failure to complete the transformation from a feudal country to an autocratic system means that it has failed to enter the modern world. The starting point of politics, which means the country's complete failure in the first stage of modernization. "If the word "autocracy" here is replaced by "royal system", it will be more accurate.
14. Civilization (rationalization). With the establishment of the royal system, the political power of the nobility was gradually replaced by a hierarchical civil service system. In Weber's view, civil service and rationalization are almost synonymous. The establishment of civil service heralds the rationalization of national governance. The distribution and exercise of political power are regulated by clear procedures and systems, thus getting rid of private will and rationalization. Emotional interference.
15. Rule of law. The gradual unfolding of modernization has created a complex society of strangers and a complex governance system. Acquaintance relationships, customs and morals are no longer enough to cope with this complexity. Therefore, the country needs to create more complex laws to cope with this complexity. Adapt to the changing times.
Then the question is: Did these modernization indicators involving economic changes, social transformation and political construction all appear together in the Song Dynasty? Yes, they all appeared together.
The Commercial Revolution of the Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was another prosperous period of commerce after the early Han Dynasty. The wave of commercialization swept across the entire Song Dynasty. Yi Zhong". A person from the Song Dynasty saw, "People in the Song Dynasty have money capital, which is mainly used for parking, disposing of goods, and trading boats and boats. How can they buy gold and spend it at home?" When people in the Song Dynasty had spare money, they invested it. Some sinologists even suggested that "a veritable commercial revolution took place" in the Song Dynasty.
Since it is called a "business revolution", of course it requires revolutionary economic performance. There were indeed revolutionary changes in the economy during the Song Dynasty:
——"The land system was not established", that is, the state recognized complete private property rights (the land equalization system was implemented before the mid-Tang Dynasty, and the free transaction of property rights was restricted. ).
——Agricultural productivity has been revolutionaryly improved, especially the introduction of early-maturing rice varieties and the promotion of re-cultivation technology, so that the same area of ??land can feed more people. Only in this way can it be possible to obtain more crops from the land. Precipitating more surplus population and agricultural products, flowing into cities and industry and commerce.
——The market system that originally restricted the freedom of commerce completely collapsed in the Song Dynasty, and the street market system began to take shape. “From the streets to the alleys, there are shops, large and small, with doors, that is, there are no empty houses. Every morning in the early morning, there are hundreds of markets on the two streets and alleys, and the business is lively." Before the Song Dynasty, this was unimaginable.
——Overseas trade was highly prosperous. At that time, the entire coastline of the Song Dynasty, from Jiaozhou Bay in the north, through Hangzhou Bay and the Golden Triangle of Fuzhou, Zhangzhou, and Quanzhou in the middle, to Guangzhou Bay in the south, and then to Qiongzhou Strait. Opening up to the outside world and developing trade with countries in the West and Southeast Asia. The Municipal Shipping Department (Customs) collects nearly 2 million taels of tax from maritime trade every year (after the "Longqing Switch" in the Ming Dynasty, the customs tax collected only tens of thousands of taels of silver each year), and the total import and export trade exceeds 20 million taels.
——Commercial credit is very developed. From the Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty, convenience money (similar to a bank draft), cash receipts (similar to cash checks), tea Yin, salt Yin, and fragrant medicine Yin have appeared one after another. , Alumin (similar to securities), Jiaozi and Huizi (legal currency) and other commercial credit. Without developed commercial credit, large or cross-regional market transactions would be impossible.
——The deepening of commercialization is reflected in the national fiscal and tax structure, that is, the proportion of agricultural taxes has decreased, and the proportion of commercial taxes has increased. During the Chunxi-Shaoxi years of the Southern Song Dynasty, fiscal revenue from non-agricultural taxes was close to 85% , agricultural taxes became insignificant. This is a unique thing in Chinese history. It was not until the late Qing Dynasty in the 19th century and after the Westernization Movement that the proportion of land tax of the Qing government dropped to 48%.
The development of commercialization in the Song Dynasty was also a process of deepening marketization. Marketization not only means that the people's basic necessities of life, food, clothing, housing and transportation can be solved through the market. Many farmers in the Jiangnan area during the Song Dynasty basically stopped farming and "depended on traders for their livelihood." Moreover, the state also abandoned the method of administrative orders and adopted Market mechanisms acquire government consumer goods, allocate public supplies, and even use the threat of economic sanctions to maintain peace with neighboring countries.
The trend of monetization was also very obvious in the Song Dynasty. The Song government minted huge amounts of currency every year to meet private transactions. The highest annual coinage in the Northern Song Dynasty was 5.7 million guan, and it remained between 1 million and 3 million guan in normal years. The total amount of coins minted in the past 300 years of the Ming Dynasty, Song It took two years for people to cast it.
Why did the Song people have to mint a large amount of currency? Because it needs to meet the needs of the monetization era. Not only were market transactions settled in currency (in the era of natural economy, barter could also be used); the remuneration of officials and employees was also paid in currency. Before the Song Dynasty, wages were mainly in kind, and currency only accounted for a small part of it. The state's taxation in the Song Dynasty also transitioned from being mainly in kind to mainly based on currency. In the second year of Zhiping in the Northern Song Dynasty (1065), the proportion of monetary annual revenue of the Song government exceeded 50%; Wang Anshi's reform even converted labor service into monetary settlement. , showing that monetization has become a general trend.
Urbanization in the Song Dynasty also had revolutionary manifestations: the proportion of urban population reached the highest peak in history. The urban population accounted for 20.1% in the Northern Song Dynasty and reached 22.4% in the Southern Song Dynasty. According to Shiba Yoshinobu's opinion, the urbanization rate during the heyday of the Southern Song Dynasty may have reached 30%. The urbanization rate in the middle of the Qing Dynasty (Jiaqing period) was about 7%, and it rose to about 10% in the Republic of China. By 1957, the urbanization rate was only 15.4%. Some researchers therefore proposed that an "urban revolution" occurred in the Song Dynasty.
Some historians believe that "proto-industrialization" occurred in the Song Dynasty. An example that best reflects the "proto-industrialization" of the Song Dynasty is the production of iron: due to the large-scale mining and application of coal mines in iron-making, iron production in the Northern Song Dynasty showed a rapid development momentum, while Britain did not develop until the early industrialization of the 16th century. Produce a similar "coal and iron revolution." A large amount of science and technology has also been applied to handicraft production. Dr. Joseph Needham of the University of Cambridge in the UK said: "China's technological development reached its peak by the Song Dynasty, and in many aspects it actually exceeded the level of Britain or Europe before the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century. . ”
The Social Transformation of the Song Dynasty
We have described the modernization performance of the Song Dynasty from the perspective of economic changes. Next, we will observe the Song Dynasty from the perspective of social transformation——< /p>
During the Tang and Song Dynasties, a very profound change took place in Chinese society: in the Tang Dynasty, there were bubu, serfs who farmed for generations of noble families, without independent household registration; slaves in the Tang Dynasty did not have independent household registration. They have legal personality and do not have independent household registration. They are pariah households attached to the head of the family. After the Song Dynasty, with the disintegration of the aristocratic families, both tribes and pariahs became free citizens. Tenants and landlords in the Song Dynasty no longer had a personal dependency relationship, but only formed an economic tenancy relationship. The tenancy relationship was based on the voluntary union of both parties, evidenced by the contract. In the Song Dynasty, the relationship between slaves and their masters was not a personal dependence relationship, but an employment relationship in an economic sense. The employment relationship was also based on a voluntary contract between both parties. The core meaning of such a structural social change is "contractualization" - the transformation from "personal attachment" to "contractual relationship".
This process of contracting is also a process of equalization. Whether they were servants or servants, they were all untouchables before the Song Dynasty. However, these untouchables basically disappeared during the Song Dynasty. In other words, the former untouchables have now obtained the status of free citizens and have become the country's "household registered households". "Qi Min" has equal legal subject qualifications: "Qi, etc. There is no distinction between high and low, it is called Qi Min".
The demise of the nobility heralds the advent of a civilian society. Before the Song Dynasty, politics was almost monopolized by the aristocracy. Although the Tang Dynasty had an imperial examination system, there were only a handful of civilian bureaucrats who were promoted through the imperial examination. The situation changed in the Song Dynasty, and scholars were recruited regardless of their family background. "Those who rose to the upper echelons of politics were all made up of white-clothed scholars, and there was no trace of the ancient feudal aristocracy and family tradition left behind" (Qian Mu). According to scholars' statistics on the "Dengkelu" written in the fourth year of Baoyou's reign (1256) in the Southern Song Dynasty, among the 601 Jinshi in the Song Dynasty, 417 were from civilians, 184 were from officials, and the vast majority were from poor families.
As a symbol of civilian society, education, culture and art and other fields in the Song Dynasty also showed obvious civilian characteristics. Before the Song Dynasty, the aristocracy had unique educational resources. However, schools in the Song Dynasty were open to all people, including children of "industrial and commercial miscellaneous students" who could attend state and county schools. Before the Song Dynasty, literature, music, and art were also high-end products enjoyed by the upper class. After entering the Song Dynasty, literature and music forms that belonged entirely to the common people (citizens) were produced, such as storybooks, burlesques, etc.; we can learn from the art works before the Song Dynasty. There are almost no traces of common people. Only by unfolding the paintings of the Song Dynasty, such as "Ta Ge Tu" and "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", can the atmosphere of the common people and the market come to your face.
At the same time, as the state of personal dependence was lifted, extensive and continuous mobility emerged in Song Dynasty society. This mobility included both horizontal mobility in the geographical sense, that is, the freedom to move from one place to another. One place; it also includes vertical mobility in a class sense, that is, the solid hierarchical structure is broken, and anyone can get the opportunity to rise through their own efforts.
The people of the Song Dynasty discovered that "in ancient times, the countryside and fields were the same as the well, and everyone settled down and moved to a distant place. They had no money to support them, and they were slaves and suffered humiliation for their whole lives. People in modern times left their hometowns lightly. Moving around will definitely not cause trouble. "The "modern times" here, of course, refers to the Song Dynasty. In modern terms, people in the Song Dynasty had the right to "free movement".
The people of the Song Dynasty also discovered that "in the system of the previous kings, the nobles became rich, and the humble ones did not get rich. The rich and the poor, the noble and the humble, were separated into four, starting from the later generations." The "posterity" here also refers to Song Dynasty. The meaning of "the rich and the poor, the noble and the humble, are separated into four" means that starting from the Song Dynasty, these four can be freely combined. The poor can be rich or noble; the humble can be noble or rich; the rich can be noble or humble. ; The noble may be rich or poor; the rich and the poor may be in a state of flux. To use the concept of modern sociology, social classes are not "rigid". As a result, society is full of vitality.
The structural transformation of the entire society and the in-depth development of the commodity economy also caused a huge change in the social atmosphere of the Song Dynasty - people were not afraid of profit, "Everyone wants to be rich, and as for farmers and merchants, , A family of hundreds of workers must work day and night to seek profit. "The pursuit of wealth has become a matter of course. Money worship, consumerism, and hedonism are prevalent. This utilitarian state of the world is the general social scene that has begun to dawn in the capitalist era, whether it is the Song Dynasty, the late Ming Dynasty, or modern Western European cities.
The changes in state functions in the Song Dynasty
Now, let us look at the modernization performance of the Song Dynasty from the perspective of the construction of national governance functions——
Researchers found that in In Europe in the 16th century, when the economic structure transitioned from the feudal system to the capitalist system, a feature emerged, that is, a large number of urban poor emerged due to economic disorders. The welfare policies gradually developed by modern European countries were to deal with this structure. The economic transformation of sex. Britain also promulgated a series of "Poor Laws" in the second half of the 16th century when modernization began, and the government took on the responsibility of relieving the poor. China's national welfare system also happened to reach its peak during the Song Dynasty. The emergence of this "welfare" state function was not a coincidence, but the result of the pressure generated by modernization.
The relief for the poor in the Song Dynasty mainly consisted of two systems. The first was the "Law for Benefiting Beggars" implemented in the 10th year of Xining (1077), the reign of Emperor Shenzong of the Song Dynasty: after winter began in October every year, state governments "sent officials" Examine those who are old, sick, poor and unable to survive on their own, internally or externally, and give each person "one liter of rice and beans a day, and half for children." The definition of "beggars" in the Song Dynasty was different from today's. All poor people were included in the scope of beggars; first, the "Residential Care Law" promulgated in the first year of Yuanfu (1098) by Emperor Zhezong of the Song Dynasty: each state established residential care homes, "widows, widows, lonely and poor people" Those who cannot live by themselves live in official houses and are given rice and beans every month, and those who are sick are still given medicine." Simply put, the "Law for Supporting Beggars" refers to the government distributing rice money to the poor; the "Law to Support Beggars" refers to the "Residential Support Law". State welfare institutions take in poor people who have nowhere to live.
In order to cope with the challenges of modernization, the state must not only develop welfare functions, but also need to be deeply involved in economic activities, including taxation, borrowing, investment, market development, market regulation, formulation of business rules, and maintenance of market order. Etc., this is the expansion of state economic functions under mercantilism. The Song Dynasty was undoubtedly the most mercantilist dynasty in history. The government established many economic departments to participate in the market economy, including the Municipal Shipping Department, Salt Well Supervision, Lou Dian Wu (real estate company), Liquor Service (brewery), Quyuan (workshops that make distiller’s yeast), shipbuilding, textile institutes, dyeing institutes, mills (grain processing plants), tea mills (tea processing plants), etc. Economic departments with financial functions include cargo services, money services, Submit it to Ziwu, Municipal Yiwu, Young Crops Law, Inspection and Examination Treasury, Responsible Office, etc.
It can be said that the state in the Song Dynasty played the role of a "super businessman". Liberals may sneer at this, but historically speaking, the commercial engine of modernization is inseparable from the power of the state. to start. Is a government that is indifferent to commercial development and does nothing, such as the Ming government established by Zhu Yuanzhang, really more conducive to the expansion of modernization?
Perhaps there is an example that illustrates the importance of the state's mercantilist policy for the rise of capitalism: the Song Dynasty implemented a free trade system for salt on Hebei Road and Jingdong Road, and implemented a salt quota system in other places (the state indirectly monopoly). Logically speaking, the ban on salt should hinder the development of the private commodity economy and retard the emergence of capitalism. However, scholars’ research has found that in the Salt Free Trade Zone of the Song Dynasty, “there was no progress or innovation in production technology, and the production scale There has been no expansion, the capital growth rate of salt merchants does not seem to be fast, and there are no very wealthy big salt merchants.” On the other hand, in the restricted areas where salt production was implemented, “obvious improvements and innovations in production technology and processes can be found, and the emergence of new production relations seems to have emerged in the production of well salt. We can also see prosperity in the southeastern salt areas where the salt production system is implemented.” The great salt merchant who made a fortune."
Precisely because the start and development of modernization cannot be separated from the support of national power, a country can only successfully realize modernization after completing the centralization of the country, regardless of whether it is modernization first. Continental Europe and England, as well as Japan, which was late to modernize, have all shown this point. In contrast, China's centralization was completed very early. The Qin Dynasty established the system of prefectures and counties, which announced the advent of the royal system. Premature centralization may not be in line with historical trends, so China saw a resurgence of aristocracy during the Wei and Jin dynasties, and aristocratic families formed during the Northern and Southern Dynasties - Sui and Tang dynasties. After the changes in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the politics of "monarchy and dictatorship" were completely established.
It needs to be reminded that the "monarchy" we are talking about here only refers to a political system that is opposite to aristocracy. It means that government agencies are placed under the direct command of the emperor; it does not mean that the monarch Unrestricted, can be arbitrary. On the contrary, the Song Dynasty has formed a system of "virtual monarchy", in which the monarch "takes orders as his duty", but "everything is decided by the prime minister", that is, the prime minister holds the specific power to govern the country; If there are "someone who is not in compliance with the decree", it will be impeached and promoted by "Tai Jian", that is, Tai Jian has the power of supervision and review to check and balance the ruling power of the prime minister. , the three powers are relatively independent, "each has its own profession and cannot invade each other."
China's civil service system was also established early, at the same time as the establishment of the county system. However, it was not until the Song Dynasty that the civil service system developed sufficient rationality. Rationalization is the core meaning of the civil service system, that is, the classification, functions, examination and recruitment, assessment, rewards and punishments, training, promotion, transfer, and dismissal of civil servants, as well as the initiation, transmission, review, execution, feedback, and accountability of power orders are all complete. The systems and procedures can be followed to isolate the influence of private factors to the greatest extent. Emperors who did not want to be restrained would have the urge to break through the civil service system. For example, Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty activated an "inner dynasty" composed of eunuchs, attendants, relatives, ministers (the emperor's personal secretary) and other close associates and ministers, and led the three princes. The "outer court" was put aside; the Ming Dynasty simply abolished the prime minister and established a new "cabinet", which was actually the emperor's secretarial team. Only in the Song Dynasty for more than 300 years, there was no "internal dynasty" that destroyed the civil service system, and the operation of the civil service system was very stable.
The modern governance order also has another characteristic: the rule of law. Most people today think that "rule of law" is a Western specialty, and that China's governance tradition is "rule by people." However, people in the Song Dynasty did not think so. The people in the Song Dynasty claimed to "advocate the law." Thinkers Chen Liang and Ye Shi of the Southern Song Dynasty summed it up: "In the Han Dynasty, people were appointed by others; in the Tang Dynasty, people followed the law; in this dynasty, people were appointed by the law"; "My ancestors governed the world, no matter how big or small, as soon as they heard it The so-called "according to the law" and "one listen to the law", to use modern terminology, mean "ruling the country by law".
The legal system of the Song Dynasty may be more complex than many people imagine. Ye Shi, a native of the Song Dynasty, described it this way: "In today's world, no matter how small a thing or a trivial crime, there is a law to deal with it. People in this generation are surrounded by worries, and suddenly they get a piece of wisdom, which they think is very strange. , and the law is already prepared, which is the secret of the law. "A smart man spent his whole life's wisdom to come up with a piece of legislation, thinking that it was novel, but when he checked the law collection, he found that similar laws had already been enacted. .
These complicated laws include civil and commercial legislation. The civil and commercial legislation of the Song Dynasty is very complete. Loans and property inheritance are regulated by comprehensive laws. The people of the Song Dynasty themselves said, "In official regulations, transactions are the most detailed, which is why they want to avoid disputes." The developed civil and commercial legislation has led some researchers to believe that there were signs of "legal modernization" in the Song Dynasty.
If we agree with the previous summary of the characteristics of modernization and the description of the performance of modernization in the Song Dynasty, then we should admit that China in the Song Dynasty has indeed entered the threshold of modernity.
(Excerpt from the preface of "Song: The Dawn of Modern Times".
Published by Guangxi Normal University Press in September 2015)