The Historical Analysis Of The Relationship Between The Government Official And The Private In China Transport Industry

The transportation holds the running order of social system, and is the lifeblood of politics, economy and military in every dynasty. The transportation infrastructure construction and transport operation cost a great amount of human, capital, energy, materials and other social economics resources both in the present era and in the tranditional water and land transportation period during which the transport cost was more and abnormally expensive. At all times and in all countries, transport is a field which the Government Official and the Private participate together in the development. In transport industry, the government should play the role of the government, and the private should play the role of the private. Merely in different countries and different eras, the two parts’division of labor and the proportion in the industry are different. The relationship between the Government Official and the Private is vitally important to transport industry.From the economic time-space and the new institutional economics (especially the public choice economics) perspective, this dissertation studied Chinese ancient transport organization and institution development, and got the different thinkings from other scholars. Why are the government operated transport and the civil operated transport always coexist? Why can the official power hinder the civil operated transport even hinder total transport industry automaticly upgrading and evoluting? Why can the gradually deteriorated relationship between the Government Official and the Private in transport industry intensify social contradictions and form a kind of disintegrating force to the whole system? As across the great temporal and spatial domain, is there the evolution regular pattern in the transport industry’s "government and people game" and its influence on social cost? What is that evolution regular pattern?This dissertation mainly used demonstration analysis, historical research and case study methods. It took Chinese ancient transport organizations and institutions development as the research object, took the development and the evolution of the total industry as the background, and took the policy and organization evolution, and contradictions and games between the government and the people as the thread. Based on property theory, institution change theory, rent seeking theory of the public choice theory and the economic time-space analysis theory, this dissertation firstly established the institutional interpretation framework to analyze the government and people game and social cost evolution in transport industry. Finally, this dissertation established the dynamic game evolution analysis model of the public sector expanded trap. The main contents of the dissertation were consisted of the following 5 aspects.First, through the reviewing of Chinese ancient transport organizations and institutions development, it was found that in every Chinese ancient dynasty, except Qin and Sui Dynasty, the transport public sectors all showed the same gradually expanding character. At the start of the dynasty, the transport public sectors promoted road network development to satisfy the politics and military demands. In the middle of the dynasty, the transport public sectors continually expanded, and maladies it leaded to began to appear. In the end of the dynasty, all kinds of maladies concentrated outbroke, and these maladies even heavily intensified social contradictions. If regarding all dynasties of Chinese ancient as a whole dynasty, transport organizations and institutions from Qin to Qing also showed the character of "the public sector expanded trap". That to say, the transport public sectors also continually expanded, and transport organization and management work became more and more difficult. The demand to technology change was urgent but public sectors had no self-adaptive ability. When the difficulty of governance exceeded the range which society could withstand, the government would be forced to adjust relative policy. During all this process, the civil operated transport was squeezed, prohibited, disturbed and destroyed again and again, but it still remained a tenacious and continually developing situation.Second, the time-space character of transport demands and cost-benefit constraint condition which is a specific character of transport industry codetermined the transport supply mode. This dissertation put forward a supply perspective based on time-space and cost compound constraint, through which to discuss elements evolution during transport development, and the interactiving mode among these elements. This supply perspective helped to explain the logic how the government and people coexistence transport industry framework and multiple correspondence relationship come into being, and show the base structure of transport industry organization and institution. This explaination framework mainly came from the study to the Chinese ancient transport in the original stage.Third, this dissertation established the institutional explaination framework of transport government and people game and social cost evolution in temporal and spatial structure. The characteristic of transport industry led that official power was relatively easy to occupy numerous resources or gain benefits, relatively being difficult to control themselves. The combined action of transport inner institution elements, mainly including public sectors inappropriate expanding, the convenience of rent seeking, the favouritism during the implementation process, the difference of negotiating ability, and official intervening acts which led to the exchange cost and property elements change, resulted in the gradually deteriorated relationship between the government and the people. The tolerance to transport costs of any society is limited, especially the numerous external costs of public sectors added fuel to the direct transport costs which was formerly very costly. When society tolerance became gradually narrowed so that there was almost no tolerance, transport system would become stagnant even paralysis. If a dynasty could not efficiently manage its own transport system, transport system would exhaust social material and institutional resources. Transport system became the field in which the social underlying conflicts and contradictions concentrated outbroke again and again. The influence rapidly diffused and amplified because of transport industry network effects, and the callapse of transport system inevitably led to the loss of the regime base.Fourth, the dissertation hackled the process of the gradually deteriorated relationship between the government and the people in transport industry in Song Dynasty, to verify the applicability of the institutional framework of government and people game and social cost evolution in transport industry. Through analyzing how official power restricting the development of the civil operated transport, for example, the civil operated inns and Biaoju, the dissertation verified the negative influence by "the state advances and the private sector retreats" and "the lack or unsuitable management to public sectors" on the civil operated transport. Furthermore, by reviewing the case that the stiff ban on maritime trade or intercourse with foreign countries in Ming Dynasty badly damaged the private shipping industry and had brought about a series of enormous institutional cost, the dissertation verified that the policies which disobeyed the inner regular rules and the incentive structures would serious raised the exchange and production cost. And the social cost would be extrumly disastrous.Fifth, the dissertation further discovered that all the social contraditions intensified by transport industry and above-mentioned typical cases in the end of every dynasty were caused by the continually expanding of unlimited public sectors in government and people game. To more deeply reveal a series of bad results led by transport industry which was enslaved to the public sector expanded trap evolution, such as endangering social stability, this dissertation established the dynamic game evolution analysis model of the public sector expanded trap, and specially analazed the matching between this model and the same collapsing form of ancient post and water transport of grain systems in the end of every Chinese dynasty. This dissertation pointed out that this economic phenomenon wasn’t the samsara or the fate, it was just a deep institutional problem being enslaved to the public sector expanded trap rule.The following were the principal conclusions. The time-space character and cost-benefit constraint of transport demand determined the official and the private coexistence character of transport supply. Government allocated resources, initially increased the whole social economic incomes. Under the action of the reguar rule of the public sector expanded trap, the official continually intervened and seized the private transport normal incomes, the game between government and the people gradually turned into Negative Sum Game, and enomous social cost firstly transferred to the system bottom organizations and people who had the least negotiating ability. After the relationship deterioration of the government and the people, through the huge financial burden, the huge social and economic running costs, and the social contradictions, transport industry heavily harmed the stable of the economic, the society, even the regime. Overall, the public sector expanded trap harmed the running of transport industry, and after badly deterioration, the trap would disintegrate existing system and endanger the stable of politics.