Policy Adjustments And Thoughts Arguments In The Domain Of Power

Western Han Dynasty played a significant role during the development of feudal empire in China, which served as a connecting link between what comes before and what goes after. In other words, as the unified country monarchical power autocracy and the reinforcement of the centralization came true, the whole society in Western Han Dynasty changed a great deal, influencing the history development after this about 2,000 years. Under such circumstances,“Salt and Iron Theory”was born, considered to be an important political economy work. This dissertation aimed to make a historical investigation and a political explanation of the“Salt and Iron Theory”in the domain of power. The content involved the society construction of Western Han Dynasty, the economy policy, the relationship between the monarchical power and the thoughts and culture, and the like.The theory that“it is the monarchical power that dominates the society”could be regarded as a key to open the door of our ancient society. In addition, it is also the password of answering the questions in Chinese traditional politics. This theory tells us that, political power (monarchical power) was embodied in almost every aspect in the ancient society both theoretically and practically. Furthermore, it became the center, at the same time, the domination force of the whole society. In other words, the main body of power, the monarchical power as its core, was developing and even swelling without any obstacles, exploring and extending in every fold and every corner of the society. As a result, the whole society moved and developed under the cover of this power system.As to the content of“Salt and Iron Theory”, we found, through the quantitative analysis method of sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, that it covered many issues of the empire, such as the issues of economy, the society, the politics, the thoughts and even the Huns. In others words, it referred to the concrete aspects of the empire, like the financial policies, the official thoughts, the governing plans, the diplomatic principles and the populaces’lives. This dissertation tries to shed light on all of these questions. Through the investigation of“Salt and Iron Theory”, we indicated that, in order to satisfy their interests and to carry out their specific political goals, the imperial rulers absorbed all kinds of social resources broadly and compulsorily. After this, they possessed, dominated and made good use of all these resources, which could be considered as a main characteristic of them. Based on this, this dissertation posed several arguments as follows. In the domain of economy, salt and iron policy changed from the free business model in the early Western Han Dynasty into the monopoly policy under the intervention of the imperial government. This transformation illustrated that the monopoly of salt and iron was not only an economic question, but also a political one, which reflected the exploitation and domination on economy by imperial political power. In the domain of thoughts and culture, the arguments (different political value and governing thoughts) initiated from the evolvement of the salt and iron policy were not the results of the free thoughts, and not mean that there existed fundamental differences in the two sides, either. The essence of these arguments was the politicization of culture. At the same time, it was a process in which the imperial ruler tried to explore the more favorable leading thoughts for their imperial politics. So, the thoughts arguments can not get rid of the domination of power, as a result of which, thoughts fell back in the system of monarchical power politics. Of course, the restriction and limitation of the economical resources’flexibility and the domination and conformity of the thoughts and culture done by monarchical power was realized through the great bureaucratic machinery. Consequently, the highest ruler was willing to reinforce the dependence of the bureaucratic machinery to them through the continual adjustment and reform in the political system. The establishment of empire central inner-government, the renovation of the official election system and the improvement of the central financial institutions referred in this dissertation were all within the network of monarchical power. It can be said that Western Han Dynasty was a society of highly politicization“power- dependence”model, in which, politics, economy and culture were integrated tightly. Monarchical power and all-embracing politics was one of its typical characteristics.As far as the writer concerned, the significances of this study are as follows. On one hand, this study took the interaction between politics and culture, thoughts and society as a starting point. It not only investigated the social characteristics of Western Han Dynasty reflected in“Salt and Iron Theory”and the function of them in the development of thoughts and culture, but also broke through the traditional practice of only paying attention to the surface differences of the arguments. This study announced that there existed a common logical premise in these arguments that monarchical power politics, centralization and order unity were unshakable. On the other hand, through these reflections on the dilemma confronted by monarchical power, some historical mirrors could be offered, which will benefit us a lot in certain areas, such as, how to better deal with the relationship between state and society, how to achieve effective transformation of government functions, how to foster the healthy development of market economy and how to promote the construction of socialist new culture in the process of modernization.