The Prices, Taxation, And Fiscal Systems Under Yuan China

After the Tang-Song transformation, on the basis of progressive improvement of agricultural productivity, the market economy in China, espacially in the leading area lower Yangzi Delta, has been expanding fastly, which leads to the two periods of market prosperity in the Southern Song and during the middle Ming and the middle Qing. The Southern Song is a peak of market economy, marked by the development of long distance trade, prosperity of cities and market towns, and the creation of new financial institutions. Accordingly, the government has its increasingly large part of taxation collected from the commercial sector, and tends to make use of market to relocate resources in large scales. On the other side, since the middle Ming, thanks to the expand of overseas trade and the inflow of foreign silver, the market economy in the Yangzi Delta starts another round of prosperity.However, in the 13-15th century, the Jiangnan market economy experienced a recession. The turning happened in the middle Yuan, and can be observed from the following aspects. The first aspect is the monetary policy and market prices. The monetary policies of the Yuan government is largely different from that of the Song. During the Yuan, the currency in the market is largely unstable, which leads to serious inflation in the first half of Yuan, namely 1276-1305. However, later during 1325-1350, contrasting to the former period, there is a general downward trend of the prices, which marked a decrease of the scale of market economy.Another aspect is the financial management of the Yuan government which, represented by its salt monopoly policy, transforms from replying on the market to rely on the state force. The yanyin (盐引) system is the peak of the development of indirect salt monopoly since the Northern Song. This policy has largely promoted the salt market and relevant commercial activities, though it also has the function of relocating resources for the government. However, since the middle Yuan, the salt policy has turned to the compulsory salt apportion (计口摊派). This transforms the salt tax into a direct tax, substantially destroy the salt market, and leads to the Jikou Shiyan (计口食盐) policy in the early Ming.Besides, the deterioration of public governance as a result of the dynastic succession from the Song to the Yuan is the fundamental cause of the recession of market economy in Jiangnan area. The Southern Song bureaucracy has the best capacity in terms of public governance such as water conservancy, social security, and disaster relief. Although the civil governance has already been growing, and the Southern Song bureaucrats has consciously cultivate the civil capacity of governance, they never withdraw from the society. However during the Yuan, the bureaucracy is not only comparatively small than that in the Song, but also performs much more inefficiently. Thus their capacity and willingness to maintaining a good public order is much lower than their counterparts in the Southern Song. As a result, the government capacity for public governance decreased, but the civil capacity for public governance has not fully developed like in the late Ming and Qing, therefore the overall Social governance has sharply deteriorated, which has done a substantial damage to the market economy.