Pipe Economic Thought

Guanzi, the great politician, thinker and financier before the Pre-Qin Times, acts as the Prime Minister of Qi state for 40 years. Have not used the military force, Huan'gong realizes the great achievements of " dominate the seigneurs and seek hegemony throughout the kingdoms " with his assistance. As everyone knows, these achievements should mainly owe to his original thought of managing the state affairs by economy. Compared with those theoreticians who are just " sitting back and pontificating ", Guanzi is a " doing and pontificating " practices His economic thought is not merely of deep theory, but of abundant practice, opening, compatibility and improvement even more. Therefore, probing into the economic thought embodied in Guanzi's practicing in managing the state affairs have undoubtedly an important academic value and more realistic meaning.This article regards the economic thought of Guanzi as an intact system, based on the predecessors' studies, organically combines the long-term researches both about Guanzi himself and the economic thought incarnated in the book " Guanzi ". Through developing a deep grasp of the train of thought to the Guanzi era, the author gives a full exposition to the true economic thought of Guanzi overall and systematically, and seeks its mutual objective connection. The thesis is divided into eight chapters altogether:Chapter One mainly explains the social background of the Guanzi era and historical origin of his economic thought, seeks the historical basis of his economic thought emphatically, establishes a foundation for discriminate his thought systematically. During The Spring and Autumn Times, enormous changes had taken place in the society, politics and economic condition, different advanced train of thought were emerging constantly. Due to the existence of a series of subjective and objective factors, the Grade and Enfeoffment System of Zhou Dynasty were been disintegrated day by day, the national politics and economic development between the States were extremely unbalanced, and the economic gap was progressively widened. In Qi State, Guanzi relied on the abundant marine resources and long-term commercial tradition, absorbed the marrow of the eastern nationalities' culture,inherited Taigong's abundant experience in industry and commerce, and realized prosperous and strong of Qi State. Simultaneously, Guanzi set up and developed his peculiar economic thought gradually. This is an inevitable outcome of the development of the era.Chapter Two to Four mainly explain the macroeconomy thought of Guanzi in terms of the country's macro regulate and control. As the Royal Court and patriarchal clan system were on the decline, the traditional wealth control system, social organizational form and public regulation mechanism has already come to a dead-end, and the social contradiction was aggravated little by little. Therefore, Guanzi gave a full play to the role of national macro-control, implemented a whole control by the State over the resources, carried out the social professionalism of " divide people into four industries ", proposed the thought that the society regulates of " limited the gap between the rich and poor ", stabilized the governance of Qi's regime, and created the favorable social conditions for realizing Qi's ruleship over the kingdoms. Meanwhile, in the constructing of social organization, he creatively proposed to combine the administrative organization system with military organization closely, realized " reside soldiers in farmers ", thus improves the fighting capacity of the army greatly, stabilizes the Qi's hegemony among the kingdoms.Chapter Five to Eight probes into Guanzi's thought about the development of agriculture, industry and commerce, People First thought, land and levy system, and Currency and Qingzhong Thought in microcosmic aspect. Guanzi carried on an overall and systematic analysis of the objective situation of Qi State, complied with the request of the development of the era, readjusted the social production relations, directly accelerated the extinction of slavery and the growth of feudal factor. To realize the dominating request of Huan'gong as soon as possible, Guanzi scientifically made an overall economic development tactics to strengthen agricultural, industry and commerce by stages, and regarded the three parts as equally important. He implemented the levy system that" confirm the amount of tax according to the quality of the land ", changed labor rent into kain, mitigated the personal adherence relationship under the Slave system, impelled the transformation from slaves to peasants and slave owners to feudal landlords, and greatly raised the laborer'senthusiasm for production; He did his utmost to advocate improving the laborer's social status, and put forward the great proposition "People First"; The talent system he implemented breaks the noble's hereditary system, propelled the politics transform from noble hereditariness to feudalism; His flexibility uses of currency and Qingzhong had effectively promote the economic development of Qi State in an all-round way. The practices of Guanzi accelerated the transition of Qi State from slavery to feudalism and created favorable terms to the maturity of the developing landlord class, made Qi become the comparatively most rich States and the strongest country with military strength in the early and middle period of the Spring and Autumn Times within shorter period.After having Carrying on fundamental changes to the economic relation of Qi state, Guanzi not merely made Qi state become strong rapidly, " dominate the seigneurs and seek hegemony throughout the kingdoms ", but also gave an inchoation to a series of social reforms through the Spring and Autumn Periods and the Warring States Periods.