Jiangxi has a developed economy and a very active commodity economy.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the population of Jiangxi Province was nearly 5 million, ranking first in the country. During the Ming Dynasty, the population of Jiangxi Province was still the second in China, second only to Zhejiang.
Throughout the Song Dynasty, paying taxes and paying grain was the first in the country. At that time, Jiangxi was rich in grain, tea, cloth and ceramics. Jingdekou earned foreign exchange), and its ceramics went to the world (the technical level was far ahead of other parts of China in the same period). At that time, Jiujiang was a prosperous port along the Yangtze River with a prosperous economy. At that time, in Jiangsu, there was a saying that "there was no food ship in Jiangxi for three days, and there was a food shortage in the city", so that Jiujiang later attracted long-coveted foreign powers. It can be seen how prosperous Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Jiangxi were at that time!
I once thought that if there were no Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to rely on in the Southern Song Dynasty, it would be much faster to eliminate busyness. How can there be the phrase "when the West Lake stops singing and dancing, and when Hangzhou becomes Bianzhou"? Do you think Jiangxi was awesome at that time?
At that time, Jiangxi's culture was very prosperous, with many officials and many cultures.
In the Ming Dynasty, there was a saying that "scholars in Jiangxi were half in Jiangxi", which meant that the number of top scholars and scholars in Jiangxi in the whole Ming Dynasty ranked in the top three in the country (second only to Zhejiang), and there were countless Jiangxi people who were officials in the court (Yan Song was from Yichun, Jiangxi). Confucianism was also very mature in Jiangxi, so we can say a lot. Before the Qing Dynasty, at least the cultural prosperity of Jiangxi Province was one of the best in China.
Three of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties we are familiar with are from Jiangxi, and Ouyang Xiu, Wang Anshi and Ceng Gong are all from Jiangxi. Bailudong Academy, one of the four ancient Chinese academies (equivalent to what we call Tsinghua Peking University Fudan Nankai), is located in Lushan Mountain, Jiangxi Province.
From the perspective of modern economics, cultural prosperity is one of the manifestations of economic prosperity. It can be seen that Jiangxi's status at that time was like the current "Northern Guangzhou and Shenzhen".
As we all know, in ancient times, population was the primary productive force, and the rapid decline of Jiangxi was related to the massive emigration of its population.
There were two relatively large-scale immigrants in Jiangxi. Once, at the end of the Song Dynasty, the people in western Jiangxi, southern Jiangxi and northwestern Jiangxi spontaneously moved from their native places with dense population, sparse population and saturated social accommodation to Hunan, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan, which are sparsely populated and have great development space. This is determined by the scale of economic development, which cannot be changed. Just like today, a large number of working people have entered the "North to Guangzhou and Shenzhen", which has promoted the economic prosperity of the place where they moved in and destroyed the population structure of the place where they moved out, and gradually the economy will be depressed.
Another time, in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the residents around Poyang Lake and even the whole Jiangxi Province to move out to Anhui, Hubei, Henan, Sichuan, Hunan and other places on a large scale, under the auspices of the government, forcing people to move on a large scale. This policy has led to a large number of young people moving out, with a population of several million! This completely destroyed the economic foundation of Jiangxi, and Jiangxi declined.
We must build roads first, and the economy will be active if the roads are easy. Jiangxi was the only way for South China to reach the north of Central Plains in ancient times. From the Central Plains to Guangdong and Guangxi, and from the southwest to Jiangsu and Zhejiang, we all have to pass through Jiangxi. Jiangxi, once a traffic fortress, is the thoroughfare of east, west, north and south. During the Qing Dynasty, the economic center moved south, Guangzhou became the largest commercial center in China, and the trade and economy between Guangdong and Guangxi took off, which became a serious injury to Jiangxi.
Especially the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the biggest war in Qing Dynasty, pushed Jiangxi's economy to a dead end again. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in Qing Dynasty dealt a devastating blow to Jiangxi's economy and population. After the Opium War to the Westernization Movement, western learning was gradually introduced into China, but the ancient trade route from Jiangxi to Guangzhou had declined. The construction and opening of the Guangdong-Han Railway made it unnecessary to pass through Jiangxi from Guangdong to Guangxi, which made Jiangxi gradually move away from Guangzhou, the center of the new school of reform. At this point, Jiangxi began to decline in an all-round way and was gradually surpassed by neighboring Hunan and Hubei.
Since the reform and opening up, Jiangxi has not enjoyed much policy dividend because it is located inland, has no sea, no special economic zone, no municipality directly under the central government and no free trade zone. Compared with Guangdong, Fujian and other coastal provinces, it has gradually widened the distance. Historical factors have accelerated the economic activities of Jiangxi population, such as going out to work and doing business, and the local economic structure is not so harmonious.