The Research Of Tea Trafficking In Song Dynasty

With the development of tea production,the activity of tea trade and the expansion of tea consumption in Song Dynasty,the tea,as one of the daily materials,had been attached growingly importance among the entire economy system of ancient Chinese society.Accordingly tea had become one of the monopolized commodities as important as salt and wine.In order to gain the maximum share of profit in the tea distribution,the Song government implemented the tea monopoly system to monopolize the tea and to guarantee the government’s monopolization of tea profit.The starting point of tea monopoly system in Song Dynasty was based on the vital interest of the dominance hierarchy.The trafficking of tea was accompanied by the tea monopoly system.The tea trafficking issue had been emerged since the implementation of tea monopoly system since the middle period of Tang Dynasty.Especially in the Song Dynasty when governmental management and administration towards tea trade and operation had been increasingly strengthened,the tea trafficking was booming dramatically,far beyond the situation in Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties periods.The tea trafficking had the wide market and the high profit in Song Dynasty,which induced the traffickers from all social stratums to risk their lives to smuggle tea and to participate in the tea trafficking through various smuggling approaches.Throughout the two Song Dynasties,the folk tea trafficking had never been interrupted,which greatly troubled the Song’s dominance hierarchy.Although the Song government had issued the order repeatedly to prevent and strike the illegal tea trade activities,but it produced little effect.The compulsory means executed by the government was temporarily effective and the tea trafficking has been never eliminated through repeated prohibitions,becoming the stubborn illness in tea trade of Song Dynasty.The cruel tea monopoly system executed in Song Dynasty will inevitably lead to the tea trafficking.Hence this illegal trade pattern will never be eliminated or forbidden by any cruel punishments.The disadvantages of tea monopoly system compelled the government to carry out the policy adjustment,and furthermore it indicated that the tea trafficking was certainly rational.To some extent,the tea trafficking exerts the function which cannot be replaced by the government.The tea trafficking in Song Dynasty,as an economic activity for gaining profit,has progressi,vely become the major approach for merchants and tea peasants to compete with the government for gaining more tea profit.The booming of tea trafficking greatly affected the tea monopoly system implemented by the Song government and broke government’s monopoly for tea market.The state’s fiscal revenue had been accordingly affected,and the normal social economic order also had been destroyed.In order to reduce the tea trafficking activities and to ease the contradiction between the government,tea peasants as well as the middle and small merchants,the government had to adopt the countermeasures to relieve the control and exploitation towards tea peasants and middle and small merchants as to provide the certain space for them to living.The rapid development of tea economy in Song Dynasty boosted the development of social economy to a certain extent.However,as an independent economic sector,the tea economy had its own development regularity and operation mechanism.Accordingly the reasonable administrative intervention towards the tea economy will be beneficial to the development of tea industry.