On The Controlling Ways Made By The Song Government To The Private Merchants

The private merchants mean the businessmen whose businesses based on the privatecapital and aimed to profit for themselves. In Song Dynasty, the group of private merchantsalso contains the farmers, the government officials, the noblemen and the scholars who madeprofits by doing business in their spare time. Compared with the state enterprisers, the privatemerchants spread in a wilder scope. As the development of the commodity economy and theguilds, the number and the capital of the private merchants had an outstanding increase andthe private merchants got more and more forces.Because of the development of the actual strength, the influences of private merchantsspread everywhere. But their negative influences to the society led to the conflicts betweenthe government and the private merchants. They encroached on the small-peasant economy.They strove with the government for labor force and the commercial profit. They disturbedthe political order and economic order. They disturbed the traditional thoughts and nationalsecurity.The rulers in Song Dynasty made some policies to control such negative influences.These controlling ways contains three aspects, namely: the controlling way to the privatemerchants’ number; the controlling way to their business; and the controlling way to theirsocial locations. These control ways weakened their negative influences and preserved theirpositive influences extremely.These controlling ways succeed in three points. First they baffled the merchants’ plan totransport for sale over a long distance. Second they baffled the market to bring the function inthe collecting and distributing of commodities to play. Third they baffled the commercialprofits of the merchants to turn into the capital for the reproduction on an extended scale.But the government did not fulfill all the controlling ways. The humanities control couldnot affect the development of the commodity economy sometimes. And in Song Dynasty, theFailure to abide by the law in handling affairs and laxity in law enforcement are commonoccurrences.