Business In Ancient China Essay Research Paper

Business In Ancient China Essay, Research Paper

The Merchant Class In Traditional China

The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, also referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners-the mercantile class-arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Many merchants were rich enough to visit and bribe princes and dukes. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige.

Once the canals were built, some merchants and craftsmen became rich. A really successful merchant might ride in a cart with a coachman, buy a title from an emperor, and built a mansion surrounded by pools and gardens. This absolutely infuriated officials and peasants. The merchants didn’t till the soil. They weren’t nobles. There ought to be a law, to stop them from doing this, and for a while, there was a law, forbidding them from riding in carts and chariots and also from wearing silk.

Huo Kuang sponsored a conference to inquire into the grievances of his emperor’s subjects. Invited to the conference were government officials of the Legalist school and worthy representatives of Confucianism. The Legalists argued for maintaining the status quo. They argued that their economic policies helped maintain China’s defenses against the continued hostility of the Hsiung-nu and that they were protecting the people from the exploitation of traders. They argued in favor of the government’s policy of western expansion on the grounds that it brought the empire horses, camels, fruits and various imported luxuries, such as furs, rugs and precious stones.

The Confucianists, on the other hand, made a moral issue of peasant grievances. Also they argued that the Chinese had no business in Central Asia and that China should stay within its borders and live in peace with its neighbors. The Confucianists argued that trade was not a proper activity of government, that government should not compete with private tradesmen, and they complained that the imported goods spoken of by the Legalists found their way only into the houses of the rich.

In old China, there was a wide gulf in power and prestige between the rulers and those being ruled. The old Chinese society was traditionally divided into four classes, which in the descending order were the scholar- administrator, the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant. The scholar administrator as an educated man, was presumed to be morally superior, exercising the power under the supreme authority of the Emperor who was normally considered as the son of heaven mandated to rule the country, consequently dominating all aspects of public life.

This concept and practice of the superiority of educated men was clearly related to authoritarian family pattern of old China, which provided a basis for social order in political as well as domestic life. The role of the emperor and his officials was merely that of the father. Just as the emperor was the father of the whole nation, so a county magistrate was called “parent ” of the people in that county. In feudalistic China only educated men could become officials through a special kind of examination; the Imperial Examination System. Even today many young people still hold an ideal of ” study hard for officialdom “.

During the late traditional period another group of scholars developed. These came from different classes. Before the Spring and Autumn Period, what learning there was had been monopolized by the nobles; they alone could use the books and documents stored by the government, and other people could not share this right. The great political and social changes during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods broke the monopoly of learning by the nobles. At all levels of society-declining nobles, new landlords, free citizens, even poor people-there were people who made an effort to study and turn themselves into scholars. When rulers of states wanted wise advice that would help them to make their states rich and strong, they turned to scholars for such help and often put them into important positions.

The Han rulers modified some of the harsher aspects of the previous dynasty; Confucian ideals of government, out of favor during the previous Qin period, were adopted as the creed of the Han empire, and Confucian scholars gained prominent status as the core of the civil service. A civil service examination system also was initiated. Intellectual, literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished. The Han period produced China’s most famous historian, Sima Qian ( 145-87 B.C..), whose Shiji ( Historical Records) provides a detailed chronicle from the time of a legendary Xia emperor to that of the Han emperor Wu Di ( 141-87 B.C.). Technological advances also marked this period. Two of the great Chinese inventions, paper and porcelain, date from Han times.

Throughout the centuries some 80 to 90 percent of the Chinese population have been farmers. The farmers supported a small number of specialized craftsmen and traders and also an even smaller number of land- and office-holding elite fam