Let's bring our dreams back to the Song Dynasty:
1 Developed economy.
Fu Song, it has always been a historical conclusion that other dynasties "suppressed commerce", except the Song Dynasty.
At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, Mao Zhao Kuangyin said that the idea of attaching importance to the economy was to "accumulate more money in the city's farmland, leave children and grandchildren, and sing and dance to enjoy eternal life". Later, Song Taizong and posthumous title "make the two systems discuss politics and enrich the people's economy", "put money first" and "take money as politics" ran through the Song Dynasty, which was a very important prerequisite to ensure economic development.
In the early Song Dynasty, officials studied the ways of managing money and seeking money. In Song Dynasty, the traditional practice of emphasizing criminal law over civil law was adjusted, and monopoly laws such as salt law, liquor law and tea law were specially studied and implemented. The Song Dynasty became one of the most active periods of economic legislation in ancient China. The economic laws and regulations of the Song Dynasty unified the distribution of interests between the state and economic actors, which was very scientific and legal. These correct policy orientations have made the commercial tide flourish, commerce develop rapidly, and handicrafts develop rapidly. This is unique in the Song Dynasty! Even banks can borrow money to pay in different places. Even in modern times, it is a very advanced economic management system. Geographically, the development of the Song Dynasty is not limited to the old areas such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan, and even the social, economic and cultural development in mountainous areas and ethnic minority areas is greater than that in the Tang Dynasty, which is also very surprising.
As far as handicrafts are concerned, pit mining, tea, salt, shipbuilding, paper making, sugar making, textile and porcelain making are all more advanced than those in the Tang Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, the handicraft industry not only expanded its production area and increased its output, but also significantly improved its technology. For example, the production technology of "sugar ice" (rock sugar) and the fine excavation of Song porcelain all reflect the maturity and innovation of technology, and the rise of commerce and handicraft industry has liberated a large number of farmers captured on the land and put them into commercial handicraft industry. During the Northern Song Dynasty, a large number of gold, silver, copper, iron, coal and other mineral deposits began to be mined, and the world's earliest manufacturing plants and processing plants such as shipyards, paper mills, printing plants, weaving factories, firearms factories and official kilns appeared all over the country. It can be seen that the prosperity of handicraft industry at that time was unprecedented!
As early as the Northern Song Dynasty, China had learned to make steel by burning coal. The big handicraft industry employs hundreds of full-time industrial workers, while the two military industries of the government employ 8,000 workers-this is already the scale of heavy industry! Taking 1078 as an example, the annual output of iron and steel industry in northern China reached1250,000 tons, while that in Britain was only 76,000 tons at the beginning of 1788 industrial revolution. In addition, mining, metallurgy, paper making, porcelain making, silk weaving and navigation are also very developed. Song Dynasty was the home of "high-tech" before modern times, and it was the overlord of world handicraft industry at that time!
From the commercial point of view, cities in the Tang Dynasty tended to be administrative centers, while towns in the Song Dynasty tended to be industrialized. The trading areas in the Tang Dynasty were strictly controlled by officials, while the Song Dynasty was more free. Due to the further development of commodity economy, the boundary between residential area and commercial area gradually disappears. Some of these "new" cities in the Song Dynasty have developed to a very large scale, such as Kaifeng and Hangzhou, with a population of one million, while the latter. Even at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the largest city outside China was Baghdad, with a population of only 300,000-500,000. Hundreds of years later, Arab traveler Ibn Betuta called Hangzhou "the largest city in the world"! The population engaged in industry and commerce has gradually increased, the output has increased, and the investment capital has greatly expanded. Therefore, it is not only agriculture that constitutes the main body of national fiscal revenue, but the proportion of industry and commerce has surpassed that of agriculture.
And in its commercial operation, there are also advertisements printed on copper plates, which are more than 300 years earlier than western capitalism. For Su Dongpo, a bachelor, he once made an advertisement poem for an old woman who cooked oily food, which made her business prosperous.
More interestingly, the tabloids similar to modern newspapers and the earliest trademark Xiaoke appeared in the Song Dynasty, which marked the gradual improvement of the commercialization system in the Song Dynasty.
In addition, Shen Kuo, a famous scholar, wrote: It has reached the level of modern monetary theory.
The prosperous commercial tide in the Song Dynasty was also the earliest mother of capitalism in the world, and the rapid economic development in the Song Dynasty created unprecedented wealth and prosperity.