Did ancient China really value agriculture over commerce Fourth

Reasons for emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business:

Agricultural production was the foundation of the country, coupled with the low productivity at that time.

Qin, Shang Dynasty reform of the law first advocated the policy of "heavy agriculture and suppression of business", the people are divided into four levels, that is, the so-called scholars, farmers, industry, and merchants "four people", scholars are the most expensive, agriculture is second, industry and commerce are second, this kind of thinking has been used by all dynasties, the feudal dynasties, especially the newly established dynasties, have emphasized the importance of agriculture, emphasizing "agriculture-oriented", and deeply rooted in the people's thoughts.

All subsequent rulers inherited the policy of pro-agriculture and suppression of commerce, with the aim of protecting agricultural production and the small-scale peasant economy, ensuring the conscription of service and rent, and consolidating feudal rule.

In the final analysis, the adoption of such measures by successive dynasties is determined by their economic foundation. The basis of the economy of the feudal state was a self-sufficient natural economy, and the main sector of this economy was agriculture. Agriculture was the decisive sector of production in ancient times, and the state of agricultural production was directly related to the rise and fall of the country.

Because in ancient times it was believed that merchants were not engaged in production. Therefore, the status of merchants is very low. Therefore, in ancient times, agriculture was heavy and commerce was suppressed.

Because in ancient times, agricultural production directly determined the lifeblood of the empire. Business has no decisive impact on the survival of the state, and the general public does not have much demand for it.

In ancient times, it was an agrarian society, and in order to encourage farmers to actively produce, merchants were suppressed to encourage farmers.

Agriculture was almost the only mode of production that generated direct income in ancient timesAlmost all of the soldiers, food, and money used by the ancients to fight came from agriculture. After recognizing the essence of this problem, Shang Ying proposed a strategy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing merchants, which led to the later strength of the Qin state.

Heavy agriculture has several advantages, first of all, it is conducive to household registration management. When all the people in the world are engaged in agriculture, they need to settle down and not be homeless. Once they settle down in this family, how many people, how many strong laborers, how many people will be well fed, how many can serve as soldiers, these are all calculable.

One of the drawbacks of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce is that people are poor. A peculiarity of agriculture is that it has a long cycle, which is calculated in years. In ancient times, yields were low and the whole family cultivated the land.

Without natural disasters, they would hardly be able to make ends meet. In the event of a natural disaster, they will sell their children and survive the disaster year. Because in the year of the disaster, the court gets food, and in the year of the disaster, the landlord has to pay rent, but there is no grain on the land.

People live below the poverty line for long periods of time. This system was deliberately created by the Legalists led by Shang Ying, who needed people to become poor. The official warehouses of the official families were filled with gold and silver, and the people only had to starve.

People, shame, honor, weakness, poverty, rewards. It is a pleasure to rule the people by punishment; In order to reward the people in the war, suicide.

This is the thinking of the Legalists. A merchant is different from a farmer. Businessmen wander around and stay on top of all kinds of news.

They go to places where exotic goods live. They don't have a sense of statehood. The cash turnover cycle of a businessman is very short.

It is much easier to make money than a farmer. They will not be stupid enough to boycott this pole for the sake of 50 pieces of gold. Even if they see someone taking the pole away, they question it.

China is a country dominated by agrarian civilization, the small peasant economy is the basis of feudal society, and the people are mainly agricultural, which is conducive to the management of the rulers, if there are too many merchants, the population is highly mobile, which is not conducive to governance.

Because of the Qing Dynasty's emphasis on the basics and the suppression of the end, it is simply the adoption of the influence of closing the country to the country.

I think there are three points:

First and foremost, the low mobility of peasants is easy to manage, which is conducive to maintaining the centralization of power.

Second, commercial output is not visible, while agricultural products are, and rulers always think that it is a bit unorthodox to engage in commerce.

Finally, the thinking of the whole society despises businessmen, such as: valuing righteousness over profit, etc.

That's pretty much it.

Ancient China had the most developed agriculture, and it was natural to attach importance to agriculture.

The political structure of ancient China called for the emphasis on agriculture and the suppression of commerce, because the supreme ruler was also a large landowner.

1. Feudal society is also an agrarian society, and the ruler's taxes mainly come from land.

2. On the one hand, the rise of commerce has caused some farmers to give up their land and reduce tax revenue, and on the other hand, the mobility of people is large, the control over the population has weakened, and the unstable factors have increased.

3. Confucian culture has always despised businessmen, believing that businessmen are profit-oriented and treacherous.

The country needs grain and grass for war, and it also needs grain and grass to govern the people, and the people take food as the sky.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, because of the development of commerce, merchants made a lot of profits, so that most people abandoned agriculture and business, and social production declined.

The influence of Confucianism.

In ancient times, the social hierarchy was that of scholars, farmers, and businessmen, and people and rulers also recognized this hierarchy and did not want to be reduced to the bottom of the ranks.

In ancient times, the agricultural civilization was developed, agricultural science and technology were developed, and the emphasis on agriculture and the suppression of commerce were conducive to the consolidation of feudal rule.

Ancient feudal society, based on the small peasant economy, just like the emperor, the aristocracy and everything were big landlords, and agriculture was the decisive production sector in ancient times, providing people with the most basic means of subsistence, and the state of agricultural production was directly related to the rise and fall of the country. Therefore, we must pay attention to agriculture. Through the development of agriculture, the feudal state could levy a stable land tax to ensure fiscal revenue, and it was also conducive to social stability, which bound the peasants tightly to the land.

The rulers believed that the development of industry and commerce was not only not as secure as the management of land, but would also aggravate the loss of labor from the land, and that the people who were engaged in business generally had a lot of ideas, which was not conducive to the ideological or social stability of the time, and caused various social problems.

As for the prohibition of merchants, if there is no prohibition of commerce, there will be no circulation of goods at all, then the burghers will be very sad, and there will be no way to exchange goods.

As long as it was determined by the social conditions of the time, the basis of feudal society was agriculture.

Emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce was the most basic economic guiding ideology of China's feudal dynasties, which advocated attaching importance to agriculture, taking agriculture as the foundation, and restricting the development of industry and commerce. From the incentives for ploughing and warfare stipulated in the Shang Dynasty Reform Law, to the heavy agricultural measures of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, until the adjustment of the recovery economy in the early Qing Dynasty, they are all the embodiment of the policy of heavy agriculture and suppressing business.

1. The reasons for the emergence of the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business.

It is by no means accidental that the policy of valuing agriculture and suppressing commerce is by no means accidental with the feudal system, and what kind of economic policy a country or regime implements is, in the final analysis, determined by its economic foundation and the interests of the ruling class. The economic basis of China's feudal society is a self-sufficient natural economy, for people to own land can extract huge wealth, and land rent income is relatively stable, is the best means to make a fortune; At the same time, as far as the feudal country is concerned, the development of agriculture can enable the people to live and work in peace and contentment, the people can prosper, and the granary of the state treasury will be full, so that there will be no food shortage and turmoil at home, and there will be no worries about intrusion outside. As a result, successive rulers regarded the development of agriculture as the "foundation of the country" and suppressed commerce (and sometimes handicrafts) as the "last industry".

At the same time, in the eyes of the feudal emperors, on the one hand, the private industrial and commercial owners exploited the peasants through commodity exchange and usury, and on the other hand, the rich profits of commercial activities attracted a considerable number of peasants to "abandon their roots and move towards the end", thus greatly weakening the ruling foundation of the dynasty.

In addition, the latest research believes that the emergence of the policy of "valuing agriculture and suppressing business" is not only due to economic or material reasons, but also to cultural reasons, that is, the influence of the concept of "valuing righteousness over profit".

2. Performance and evaluation of the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business.

In ancient times, the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce was mainly manifested in: 1. The rulers repeatedly emphasized that agriculture was the primary industry and commerce was the last industry; 2. On the land issue, we should adopt a policy of curbing mergers and acquisitions, prevent a large number of peasants from going bankrupt, and stabilize the foundation of agricultural production; 3. Strengthen household registration management and restrict population movements; Fourth, restricting businessmen and commercial activities in many ways: restricting the political rights of businessmen, blocking the road to official careers, and not allowing their descendants to become officials; using the tax system to punish businessmen; Adopt official management of important industries, and businessmen are not allowed to get involved; Restrictions on businessmen in their daily lives, discriminatory rules on how they dress, how to build houses, how to ride cars, and so on.

Comment: In the early days of feudal society, the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce played a positive role in the development of agriculture and social economy, and in the consolidation of the power of the emerging landlord class. For example, the Shang Dynasty reformed the law, implemented the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, and encouraged the development of agricultural production, which promoted the continuous growth of Qin's economic strength and laid the material foundation for the later unification of the six kingdoms by Qin Shi Huang.

However, the policy of "valuing agriculture and suppressing business" also led to the continuous annexation of land by the landlords and bureaucrats, resulting in a high degree of land concentration, bankrupt and exiled the peasants, which affected the development of agricultural production, intensified class contradictions, and caused peasant uprisings to break out continuously. The landlord bureaucracy was also further corrupted by the frenzied annexation of land. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, the budding capitalism had already emerged in China, but the ruling class still adhered to the policy of "valuing agriculture and suppressing business" and implemented a series of measures that were not conducive to the development of capitalism.

These practices have violated the objective law of economic development, led to the backwardness of the country, and caused it to lose its initial positive role.