Different from other major dynasties, the Song Dynasty did not attach too much importance to agriculture, and the commercial trade in the Song Dynasty has always been very developed. In the Song Dynasty, due to the constant border problems, the annual tribute was always the routine expenditure of the imperial court. The huge army and bureaucracy also need the country to have enough income to pay for it. In the case that the land area is smaller than that of Han and Tang dynasties, the expenditure has increased greatly. It is very important to increase the country's financial resources. Obviously, the income from relying on land is definitely limited. The land tax is too heavy to support the people and too light to support the political power. The development of trade was the main source of the imperial court's income increase.

The trade in the Northern Song Dynasty was very developed. During the Southern Song Dynasty, trade became more important to the country's economic status. It can even be said that the Southern Song Dynasty was a trading country. The development of trade promotes the prosperity of commerce, which in turn promotes the development of handicrafts and large-scale industries.

During the Song Dynasty, China's gold, mining and ceramics industries were very developed. During the Northern Song Dynasty, a large number of mineral deposits such as gold, silver, copper, iron and coal were mined, and the earliest manufacturing plants and processing plants in the world history also appeared all over the country. Such as shipyards, firearms factories, paper mills, printing plants, weaving factories, official kilns and so on. In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were seven or eight thousand craftsmen in the Military Equipment Institute, and the workers in the factory were paid on time. Because industry and commerce need advanced technology, three items of four great inventions of ancient china were invented or widely used in Song Dynasty.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, the output of steel surpassed that of modern British industrial revolution. Professor Robert Hartwall, an American scholar, calculated that the iron output of Song Shenzong Yuanfeng in the first year (1078) was about 7.5- 15000 tons, which was 2.5-5 times that of the British industrial revolution 1640. /kloc-the iron output of the whole European countries (including Russian Europe) in the 0/8th century is roughly between14 ~180,000 tons, so the iron output of China Song Dynasty in the 01th century can basically reach the level of modern industrial revolution in western Europe.

Tokyo (now Kaifeng, Henan), the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, is already a metropolis with a population of more than one million, and Lin 'an (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang), the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, is also a bustling metropolis with a population of one million (this scale is remarkable even in modern times). People cooked and burned coal instead of firewood (the coal output in the Song Dynasty was undoubtedly the highest in the world and the mining technology was very advanced). This shows the industrial level and the life of ordinary people at that time. In Song Dynasty, the main body of national fiscal revenue was no longer agriculture, but industry and commerce, and the agricultural society gradually moved towards the industrial society. The huge financial revenue in Song Dynasty did not aggravate the exploitation of farmers, but was the result of the rapid development of national economy, the extremely prosperous industry and commerce and the improvement of productivity. As a traditional agricultural country, the direct collection of agricultural taxes on a large number of "small farmers" has always been the basis of state rule, which is really unique in the Song Dynasty. Due to the high prosperity of industry and commerce, the country adopted paper money-jiaozi. In the first year of Song Renzong Tiansheng (1023), the Song government formally established Jiaozi service. With the increase of paper money circulation, more and more regions use this convenient currency. The earliest paper money in the west was issued by Stockholm Bank in 166 1 year, but the bank soon closed down. By 1694, the Bank of England began to officially use paper money, which was about 700 years later than the Song Dynasty in China.

With the development of industry and cities, business activities are becoming more and more active. The development of commerce in Song Dynasty was first manifested in the expansion of market scale and the substantial increase of market quantity. In the Tang Dynasty, the city implemented a strict market system, separated the commercial areas from the residents, and prohibited doing business in the residential areas. Song dynasty gradually broke the pattern of square market, allowing businessmen to do business, and shops could be opened everywhere on the street. In particular, Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, and Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, both had urban populations exceeding one million, making them the largest and most prosperous metropolises in the world at that time. According to some scholars' statistics, there are more than 6,400 large and medium-sized businessmen and 8,000-9,000 vendors in Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. Many large and small markets have gradually formed around the main roads in cities and rural areas. This kind of market is called "market" in Lingnan and "grass market" in North China. These fairs, also known as workshops, spread all over the country, forming a dotted exchange network, all indicating that commercial activities in the Song Dynasty were unprecedentedly active.

At the same time, the overseas trade in Song Dynasty was unprecedentedly prosperous. According to Zhou's "Qu Fei answers the generation outside the ridge", there are more than 50 countries that maintain trade with the Song Dynasty, so the overseas trade scope of the Song Dynasty is greatly expanded compared with the previous generation. The merchant ships of the Song Dynasty in China were not only durable, but also had huge hulls, which enabled them to sail at sea. According to Lu, the large merchant ships in the Song Dynasty could accommodate 500 to 600 people. More importantly, the merchants who went to sea in the Song Dynasty mastered the most advanced navigation technology in the world, the most important of which was the application of compass in navigation, which greatly developed overseas trade.

The high prosperity of industry and commerce and trade objectively requires the matching of technology and technology. So it is not surprising that China was obviously ahead of the world in technology in Song Dynasty. It is not a coincidence that three of the four great inventions appeared and matured in the Song Dynasty, but the objective requirement and inevitable result of high economic development and prosperity. Today, we look at the Song Dynasty with an indifferent attitude. Isn't that ridiculous?

In short, no matter from which aspect we look at the political economy of the Song Dynasty, we can find all kinds of familiar shadows from China's modern national politics and modern world politics. It can be said that the Song Dynasty at that time, with an unusual maturity, surpassed all civilizations of its time. This is also the fundamental reason why European and American historians are obsessed with the history of China in the Song Dynasty. Frankly speaking, due to the limitation of language, they don't know much about the humanistic achievements of the Song Dynasty, so they can't fully grasp and understand the real situation of the Song Dynasty.

Since the Yuan Dynasty, all dynasties have destroyed the Song Dynasty unusually, and the Song Dynasty has become synonymous with backwardness and weakness. Let's imagine that if Europe and Asia had not experienced the catastrophe of the Mongols, the trade of the Song Dynasty would have been in line with overseas. With the open attitude of the Song Dynasty and the urgent pursuit of improving industrial scale, when the industrial revolution occurred in Europe, I think the Song Dynasty would immediately know and understand the contents of the industrial revolution and the subsequent Cultural Revolution. Secondly, those technologies and equipment that can greatly increase production output will be introduced soon, and Song people will learn from the wisdom of the people at that time, even without considering innovation and development. If so, China will not miss the industrial revolution, and China civilization will not lag behind western civilization as a whole. What a pity!