Introduction TOC Preface Introduction Appendix Translation of the Yen T'ieh Lun Glossary Yen T'ieh Lun: Chaps. XX-XXVIII		<Next Section>

I. Historical Backgrounds of the Debate

When Wu-ti ¹ , the "Martial Emperor" of the Han dynasty, lay on his death bed, after a reign of no less than fifty-four years (140—87 B. C.), the first period in the history of the Chinese Empire was drawing to its close. Ended was the era of prodigious activity in every department of life, when all the latent forces of the consolidated Chinese state sought freedom of expression. The first cursory inventory of Chinese civilization was being completed. Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien ² had just written the last pages of his great history. Everywhere scholars were applying themselves to the task of digesting mentally the accumulated literary material of preceding centuries.

Though a Canon was not yet established, the Biblia of Chinese moral philosophy were already taking shape. Saints were being allotted their respective niches in the Pantheon, and fragments of ancient lore were being collected in sufficient number to supply numerous preachers with unanswerable and unshakable texts. At whatever date be fixed the origin of one of the most fundamental ideas of Chinese civilization, the concept that the principal function of government is education,³ there is no doubt that in the middle Han period it formed the corner-stone of Chinese political science. An article of faith, it speedily became a method. Chinese thought was set in didactical forms. The homilies of the Han pamphleteers, all written ad usum delphini, set the standard for future literary productions.

The scholars of the Han renaissance, the "Literati", whose models were the itinerant sages of old, aspired again to the position of permanent pedagogue at the side of the "Son of Heaven". They have for ages deplored the fact that during Wu Ti's reign, when blood and iron policy ruled supreme, the gentle, ceremonious method of rule of their paragons of Imperial virtue, the Emperors Wên and Ching, ⁴ was shaken to its foundation. This resulted from pernicious influences at the Court, where the combined forces of Taoist quacks and unprincipled adventurers, devoid of culture and refinement, as the "Confucian" scholars viewed them, brought again to light the sinister methods and the fatal policies of the execrated Shang Yang and his like. ⁵ It is clear, nevertheless, that behind the veil of gross superstition upon which the later Confucian historians loved to dwell, to show the depth of depravity reached by the Court, a battle of ideological principles went on between two traditions. On the one hand was the party repository of technical knowledge, the Legalists, with their reliance on Power and their relationship to the Taoists, and on the other hand that of the moralists, later to be distinguished sharply as the Confucian school.

The great stage of history is, however, occupied by those whose primary concern is "real politik", "les hommes de grandes affaires", whose philosophical and religious affiliations are not always clear. Such are the two outstanding personalities of the age, Sang Hung-yang, ⁶ the Lord Grand Secretary of the Yen T'ieh Lun, and Ho Kuang, ⁷ the "king-maker", men who, busy with the government of the far-flung empire, have little time to bother with ideological subtilties and yet are unconsciously swayed by them, and too often see their policies checked by the doctrinaire arguments of the despised "intellectuals".

Sang Hung-yang's whole economic policy, dictated by the exigencies of his master's imperialistic activity, was subjected to the fire of a vicious attack by the men of letters during the famous forum on "Salt and Iron" in the sixth year of Chao Ti's reign (81 B. C.). This debate serves as the canvass on which Huan K'uan embroiders many a dialectical gem, and into which he weaves the red thread of "Confucian" aphorisms and "sacred texts".

The effective consolidation of the Chinese Empire first took place at the end of the third, and the beginning of the second century before the Christian era. Numerous feudal states, largely autonomous, and hitherto constantly at war with one another save for the brief period of Ch'in's supremacy, were now united under the strong hand of the first emperor of the Han dynasty, Liu Pang, posthumously canonized as Kao Tsu ⁸ The Middle Kingdom developed rapidly in industry and commerce, as well as intellectually, from the fifth century onward. Energetic individuals, distinguished for their great wealth, began to appear, and the names and deeds of many of them are found preserved in the chronicles of the time. ⁹ Two of the early Chinese industrialists, I-tun and Kuo Tsung, ¹⁰ are recorded as having amassed princely fortunes through the production of salt and iron. The one resided in Lu, ¹¹ in the modern province of Shantung, traditional site of salt manufacture, the other was a citizen of Han-tan. ¹² The Cho family ¹³ of Shu, ¹⁴ the K'ung family ¹⁵ of Yüan, ¹⁶ and the Tsao Ping family ¹⁷ of Lu, were all prosperous iron workers, while a certain Tiao Chien ¹⁸ of Ch'i ¹⁹ accumulated a colossal sum through salt manufacturing and fisheries.

Prior to the Han period, the statesmen and scholars of China, had all, irrespective of the "school" of thought to which later centuries assigned them, stressed the importance of agriculture. ²⁰ Farming was looked upon as the fundamental of national wealth; industry and commerce as merely accessory to the cultivator, "so that his iron implements might be supplied by the artisan and his produce distributed by the trader". Apart from this basic agreement on all sides, various shades of opinion arose. Generally two groups of thinkers dominated, schools which in time came to be designated as the School of Law, the fa-chia,²¹ and the "Confucian School", ²² the ju-chia, which based itself on the transmitted doctrines of Confucius and his successors.

The jurists or writers on law, representing the fa-chia, were not, so far as their extant works indicate, a numerous class, though many lost books are also cited in the catalogues. They did not compare in popular esteem with their antagonists, the austere followers of Confucius. ²³ The Kuan-tzŭ,²⁴ the Shang-chün-shu²⁵ and the Han-fei-tzü²⁶ exhaust the names of their greatest texts. But as the dominant politicians of the times, having by their effective financial resource fulness the ear of their sovereign, the power and importance of the writers of the School of Law continued to grow. The influence of their methods is clearly discernible into Han times.

The opponents of the representatives of the fa-chia, the ju,²⁷ are defined in the introductory sentence of chapter XI of the Yen T'ieh Lun as those who "venerate Confucius as their intellectual progenitor, and intone lauds in praise of his virtue as being unsurpassed from high antiquity down to the present time." ²⁸ The ju were thus the Han representatives of the school of Confucius. The strife in words as disclosed in the Yen T'ieh Lun, represents the conflict between the economic and political ideology of this group and that of the Han administrative officials, who may be described as the inheritors of the principles of the fa-chia writers of the preceding centuries.

This strife did not have for its actual backgrounds merely ideological disputation. According to the Confucian tradition, the adherents of the school did not assume to be philosophers. Confucius believed himself to be a man of action, an administrator and politician, capable of conducting the world in the true Way. His ambition was not to record his ideas but to put them into operation through the government of a principality, entrusted to him by his sovereign. Those who followed him, his disciples, did not, accordingly, look to him for a philosophical system, but for a science of government. Displaced in the councils of their princes by the practical administrators of the fa-chia, they were not prepared to resign themselves to the passive role of disseminators of ideas, after having expected to be the rulers of men. ²⁹ On the other hand, the School of Law could not properly be designated a school, in-so-far as claiming to be based upon the principles of a founder; it consisted merely of such persons as were inclined to think of government after a certain fashion, and who attempted to associate their empirical view of the world with the principles of such school as that to which each one may have belonged. ³⁰

In early Chinese economic and political thought we find then, on the one hand, the administrators, the responsible officials, advocating certain methods of government, adumbrated in the writings of the fa-chia, and, on the other, the intellectuals not in office, the ju, pursuing certain ideas ascribed to Confucius and his successors. It may generally be said that the School of Law emphasized the problem of production, while their opponents, the men of letters, stressed the problem of distribution. They were frankly in favor of trading activities, as clearly exposed in the writings of Mencius. ³¹ In the late Vth and early VIth centuries, a work assigned to Li K'uei ³² applied the principles of the law writers and employed scientific statistical methods to problems of political economy. The two central points of his policy were 1) full utilization of soil productivity, and 2) equalization of grain prices. This policy was directed to the encouragement of agriculture. As industry and commerce began to prosper after the middle of the Warring States period, two branches of the School of Law came into being. First, the agrarian branch was represented by the Shang-chün-shu laying stress on agriculture; second, the commercial branch was represented by part of the Kuan-tzŭ text, laying more emphasis on commerce.

The school of the Kuan-tzŭ emphasized especially the importance of the currency and of grain, a suitable control of which would contribute to the wealth of the nation. It held that evils resulting from powerful combinations were due to private manipulations of money and of grain prices. To prevent private competition and the resultant inequality of wealth among the people, what may be termed nationalization of capital was proposed, and the undertaking of commerce by the state. It further advocated nationalization of the salt and iron industries as a source of public revenue. Whether agrarian or commercial, the writers of the School of Law all based their economic policy on national aims, i.e., "I can expand the territory and enrich the treasury for the Prince".

The school of Mo Ti, the Mo-chia,³³ emphasized production also. But the concept of production was connected with consumption, i.e., to them regulated consumption meant equally production. It is from this theory of regulated consumption that the school attacked the observance of funeral rites, the performance of music, and aggressive warfare. It maintained the theory that by manufacturing necessities to the exclusion of luxuries, the productivity of a nation would naturally increase.

The Confucianist economists emphasized the word Equality, chün.³⁴ Confucius said, "The ruler of a kingdom or the chief of a house is not concerned about his people being few, but about lack of equitable treatment". The idea is to stress the problem of distribution. But the problems of production and consumption are considered too. The Ta Hsüeh³⁵ of the Confucian School says, "Let the producers be many and the consumers few. Let there be activity in the production, and economy in the expenditure. Then the wealth will always be sufficient". This school purports to concern itself primarily with the "people's economy" or "social economy", in the modern terminology popular in China. The belief was held that if the problem of social economy were solved, the political or fiscal regimen would take care of itself, thus relying upon Confucius, "If the people enjoy plenty, with whom will the Prince share want? But if the people are in want, with whom will the Prince share plenty?" ³⁶ Hence the strong condemnation of this school upon the law writers' policy of "enriching the state". The legalist financiers were condemned as "money grabbers", ³⁷ or "small men", probably because when the ruler and the state were not distinctly differentiated, to enrich the state was to enrich the ruler; and also because concentration of wealth in the government would discourage individual initiative. The Confucianists would not therefore adopt the policy of state interference in individual activity. The function of the government was to remove all obstacles to the productivity of labor, or to equality in the distribution of wealth. The rest would be left to the people. ³⁸

Now there would appear a reversal of policy or principle on the part of what may be termed the Confucian school of the early Han era. Due to the development of the state, the scholars, unlike their most articulate prototype Mencius, ³⁹ no longer whole-heartedly favor trade. This seems to have come about due to the fact that practical statesmen, such as Sang Hung-yang, responsible for financing an extravagant government, sought to control the profits of industry and commerce for the benefit of the public exchequer. Confucianism, as represented in the writings of Mencius, called for a laissez faire policy, government by remote influence, the impressive but inactive "virtue" of the Ruler. ⁴⁰ The Han Confucianists now resented the interference of the state in industry and trade, and hence are made to appear to oppose such activities on general principles, which was certainly not the case.

Per contra, the Han dynasts, parvenus as they were, even compared with the house of Ch'in which preceded them, erected a façade of conformance to "Confucianism". To acquire prestige, they professed to follow the practices, largely fictive, we may believe, of the venerated house of Chou. They were prepared to conform to the outward ceremonies and observances of traditional antiquity. But in the actual administrative measures of the state, they reverted to the execrated policies of the legalist statesmen of Ch'in, whose aim had been to unify the state, by controlling all activities. While in Shang Yang's time, as Prime Minister of Ch'in, all was subordinated to agriculture and war, now state control of industry and commerce in the expanded Han Empire, was of equal importance. It was at this point that in the early Han reigns the "Confucianists", represented by the Literati of the Yen T'ieh Lun, and the legalist statesmen, such as Sang Hung-yang, diverged. The former, desirous of reviving "antiquity", harked back to a perhaps largely factitious "feudal" period; the latter sought to revive and restore in practice the state control of private undertakings of the Ch'in regime. Seeming paradoxes ⁴¹ in the Yen T'ieh Lun where the men of letters, the ju, oppose trade, and the Secretary, Sang Hung-yang, advocates the practices of antiquity, are only intelligible in the light of this interpretation.

The first of the Han Emperors, Kao Tsu, favored agriculture at the expense of industry and commerce, by discriminations enforced against the mercantile classes. This included ineligibility to public office. Kao Tsu's agrarian policy was continued by his immediate successors by the reduction of the land tax. ⁴² This bore fruit in China's "golden age of agriculture". Within little more than two generations, however, the Chinese Empire appears to have increased greatly in population, with large numbers of people congregating in growing urban centres. Constant "treasury deficits", represented actually by lack of supplies for the armies on the frontiers, were incurred through costly campaigns which extended the boundaries of China to the most distant regions of eastern Asia. ⁴³ In the distress of the people and the state, new sources of revenue had to be devised. ⁴⁴

To meet the fast approaching bankruptcy of the government, various expedients were resorted to. Notably the yen-t'ieh-kuan,⁴⁵ officers to control the salt and iron industries, were instituted in 119 B.C., in Han Wu-ti's reign. Salt and iron were the two most universal necessities, after grain, in the ancient Chinese commonwealth. Their sale by government agency, on the plea of adjusting the price, was maintained at such a high rate as to yield a heavy profit. In the year 115 B.C., officers to "equalize distribution", chün shu,⁴⁶ which may be termed equable marketing, were appointed. These functionaries undertook to regulate commercial transactions throughout the Empire. Their duty appears to have been to purchase staple commodities when cheap and sell them when dear, thus preventing prices from falling too low or becoming excessively high. A bureau of "equalization and standardization", p'ing chun,⁴⁷ to regulate the system of equable marketing, was set up at the Capital in 110 B.C. This was done at the instance of Sang Hung-yang, who had been promoted Grain Intendant, Sou-su-tu-wei,⁴⁸ in the same year.

While treasury deficits now disappeared, with adequate stores of grain accumulating in the public granaries, and the armies on the frontiers once more receiving adequate supplies, the country at large seethed with discontent. ⁴⁹ Due to its high cost, people were often forced to eat without salt. The iron implements employed on the farms, as supplied by the government monopoly, were criticized as inferior and unsuitable. ⁵⁰ To deal with the situation, the representatives of the Literati and Worthy classes, to the number of sixty, were summoned to present the popular grievances before the Throne, in the sixth year of the shih-yüan era of Chao-ti's reign (81 B.C.). ⁵¹ It fell to the statesman and economist, Sang Hung-yang, to defend his and the government's policies, against the demand of the representatives of the people for the abolition of state control over essential commodities, and a return to the laissez faire system of earlier times. It is the record of this memorable debate which Huan K'uan, ⁵² a scholar of Hsüan-ti's time (73-49 B.C), has preserved in the Yen T'ieh Lun.

Huan K'uan's work, though nominally representing a debate on the state control of salt and iron, actually covers a far broader field than the title indicates. It touches various problems of government, domestic and external policies, social and economic questions. ⁵³ Though classed among the ju-chia writers, Huan K'uan cannot be charged with withholding the most telling arguments of his antagonists, the legalist administrators. The work is notable for its impartial and objective exposition of the principles of the two opposing groups of the Han period. The arguments advanced on either side receive equal attention.

The literati attacked the state monopoly of salt and iron, the imposition of the wine tax and the system of equable marketing, i.e., equalized or balanced transportation, on the grounds that it was the competition of the state with the people in commerce. This, they held, created an atmosphere of greed and extravagance among the people leading them from the essential (agricultural) pursuits to nonessential (commercial) enterprises. ⁵⁴ The officials are represented as replying to the charge with arguments based on reasonsof national defence. The Hsiung Nu, fierce nomads beyond the northern frontiers, were a national menace. To protect the inhabitants of the marches, fortresses must be established and garrisoned. To finance these operations, the very measures complained of had been adopted. ⁵⁵ This is the fundamental reason for the introduction of the state administration of essential commodities in Han Wu Ti's time, called into being primarily by the urgent needs of frontier defence.

Again these realistic statesmen pointed out that the wealth of salt and iron was concealed in remote mountains and lonely marshes, and could be exploited only by rich and aggressive individuals. Prior to the institution of state control, there were the examples of Ping of Chü among the commoners, and among the nobles there was Prince P'i of Wu. ⁵⁶ The possession of the resources of the mountains meant the rapid accumulation of wealth, firstly by coinage of money, and secondly by the manufacture of arms. The salt industry was highly profitable. Both the salt and iron industries favored seditious enterprises and full-blown rebellions. ⁵⁷ It was because of the existence of such evils that state monopolies had been introduced. These measures had centralized financial power in the imperial government as against over-powerful nobles on the one hand, and prevented, on the other, exploitation of the poor by the rich.

The literati, however, had their own arguments to advance. They refuted the effectiveness of the grandiose military display and advocated pacifying the Huns through the all-rewarding influence of a benevolent rule. ⁵⁸ They saw no value in the cold barren lands, the desolate wastes, inhabited by the Hsiung Nu, and emphasized the self-sufficiency and wealth of the Middle Kingdom. ⁵⁹

The spokesmen for the government maintained, on the other hand, that the repeated incursions of the Hsiung Nu at the frontier could only be held in check by military force. As the financing of the troops depended upon revenue from salt and iron, the abolition of the government monopoly would mean the cessation of military expeditions and injury to the prestige of the Empire. ⁶⁰ Neither did they hold that the lands of the barbarians ⁶¹ were valueless. They recalled how in former days the central districts of the Empire were over-populated. Supplies of water and fodder were insufficient and the hot damp summers were unfavorable for raising horses ⁶² and cattle.

All labor being done by men, production was meagre. Even the old and the weak had to carry burdens on the roads and the ministers and officials had often to ride in ox carts. But after the extensive conquests of the Warrior Emperor in the south, in the west, and over the Hsiung Nu of the north, the standard of living had been greatly improved. Exotic products filled the palace, and fine horses the Imperial stud. The populace could now ride on excellent mounts and enjoy delicious fruits. ⁶³ A curious argument was put forth too. The new system placed in the hands of the state the trade whereby the barbarians were deprived of their wealth. ⁶⁴ This novel theory was developed as a means of getting control of the wealth of the barbarians:

"Now the treasures of the mountains and marshes and the reserves of the equable marketing system are means of holding the balance of natural wealth and controlling the principalities. Ju Han gold and other insignificant articles of tribute are means of inveigling foreign countries and snaring the treasures of the Ch`iang and the Hu. Thus a piece of Chinese plain silk can be exchanged with the Hsiung Nu for articles worth several pieces of gold and thereby reduce the resources of our enemy. Mules, donkeys, and camels enter the frontier in unbroken lines; horses, dapples and bays and prancing mounts, come into our possession. The furs of sables, marmots, foxes and badgers, colored rugs and decorated carpets, fill the Imperial treasury, while jade, and auspicious stones, corals and crystals, become national treasures. That is to say, foreign products keep flowing in, while our wealth is not dissipated. Novelties flowing in, the government has plenty. National wealth not being dispersed abroad, the people enjoy abundance. ⁶⁵

To meet the Scholars' advocacy of a return to agricultural pursuits, Sang Hung-yang asserted that state control of salt and iron would concentrate the people on the land, thus actually encouraging agriculture. ⁶⁶ His Literati opponents, with bitter irony, maintained the contrary, "Far-sighted and far-reaching in intent is your policy but contiguous with profit for powerful families. The aim of your prohibitory laws is profound indeed, but manifestly leading you into the path of wild extravagance . . . . The result is that we see the farmer abandoning his plough and toiling no more; the people becoming vagabonds or growing idle — and why? Because while they toil, others reap the fruit of their labor. Wasters continue to compete with each other, unceasingly trying to reach higher levels of extravagance. This is the only explanation for the people increasing in dishonest practices and the dwindling number of those who turn to fundamental occupations [agriculture]." ⁶⁷

The Literati, and their associates the Worthies, had been summoned to discuss "the grievances of the people". ⁶⁸ These were the various forms of injustice, extortion and inconvenience, which the people were subjected to by the salt and iron monopolies, the liquor excise and the system of equable marketing. The men of letters were concerned in opposing, as a matter of principle, state interference in commerce and industry. For such policies were those of the legalist school represented by Shang Yang, Ch'ao T'so and Li Ssŭ, all of whom are criticised by the Literati in the debate. ⁶⁹

There is, however, a deeper motivation for the courage of the "country intellectuals", as represented at least in Huan K'uan's composition, in opposing the policies of the powerful Minister, Sang Hung-yang. This is their determination to recover the "Confucian" prerogative of advisor to the Throne, a position wrested from them by the adroit legalist statesmen, in actual control of state affairs. Their vigorous denunciation of the administrators of the Ch'in and early Han periods, turns at times to a violent invective upon the actual government authorities participating in the debate (usually returned with interest by the latter). ⁷⁰ The Yen Ti'eh Lun thus plays its role among those inspired documents which, like the Hsin-yü of Lu Chia ⁷¹ of a century and more earlier, were designed for the express purpose of accomplishing the reinstatement of the scholars in their traditional position of mentor to the Son of Heaven.

	Introduction TOC Preface Introduction Appendix Translation of the Yen T'ieh Lun Glossary Yen T'ieh Lun: Chaps. XX-XXVIII		<Next Section>

Published by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, © Copyright 2003 by Anne Kinney and the University of Virginia