Research On GaoGong's Economic Thought And Reformation

Gaogong used to play a very important role in the national stage of Ming Dynasty. After his revival in the period of Qinglong, he took making the country rich and strong as his responsibility, he built channels through which criticisms and suggestions may be communicated to the leadership, reformed the bureaucracy, removed the corrupt customs of the government officials, stimulated the activity of the ruling classes; he reformed the army system, quelled local rebellion, contributed to the accommodation between Mongolia and Ming Dynasty; he emphasized the importance of commerce and performed a lot of policy that benefit commerce, revived the economy; his reform measures related to every all aspects of the society. He made many contributions to the society, and made the Ming Dynasty performed a resurgence.The emphases of this paper are Gaogong's economic thought and his economic reform. It is very great for him to presenting ideas that"以义为利"", and summon the whole society to learn the economic knowledge in an agrarian society. According to his economic thoughts Gaogong performed many measures to improve merchants'social position, developed the commodity economy, regulated the market order, put theory into practice, did a lot of work for the economic resurgence in the Jiaqing period. Furthermore, in this paper the relationship between Gaogong and the single tax in silver policy was focused on. single tax in silver policy is a important revolution in the history of tax system. Most researchers considered that the single tax in silver policy is due to Zhangjuzheng, ignored the contributions made by Gaogong. In the last part of this paper we demonstrated that Gaogong also made a historical contribution to the performance of the single tax in silver policy. The fundamental work did by Gaogong, made it is possible for Zhangjuzheng to perform the single tax in silver policy in the whole country.