The Study On Economic Crimes Of The Officials In States And Counties Of Song Dynasty

At the beginning of the Song dynasty, because of the unhealthy ways and customs, the phenomenon of local official’s economic crimes was prominent, which included corruption bribe and misuse of authority. Economic crimes of local officials made the local efficiency decrease, life getting worse, aggravation of contradictions, and also the decrease of central government revenue, all these were hard to the Song dynasty. Except the shortcoming of feudality, there are four reasons why local official’s economic crimes happened so much. First, the salaries of local officials were low. Although the government increased salary several times, the balance of high level officials and low level officials was huge, and the inflation made it worse. Secondly, the local public finance were poor, local officials had to increase revenue. Third, petty official tempted local officials to break the low. Fourth, the government treated local officials leniently. Government took a lot of actions to avoid economic crimes of local officials, and also took a lot of actions to punish local officials. The first and second emperors punished local officials strictly; most of local officials who broke the law were dead. Then, government was more and more lenient, at the end of Song dynasty, struggling against corruption was failed at last.