The Song Dynasty was not weak —— 1. The economy of the Song Dynasty

Song, commonly known as "Song snot", gives people a feeling of weakness. "Sixteen States" not only failed to recover, but repeatedly gave way to Liao and Xixia and died in Jin and Yuan Dynasties.

From the perspective of politics and geopolitics, the Song Dynasty first fought against Liao and Xia, and then fought against Jin and Xia. The actual control territory of Liao and Jin was also larger than that of Song Dynasty, and Song Dynasty never gained the upper hand in military competition with them. In terms of territorial unification, the Song Dynasty was not comparable to the previous Han and Tang Dynasties, nor to the later Ming and Qing Dynasties.

But the Song Dynasty was not as weak as we thought. Let's start with why. First of all, talk about the economy of the Song Dynasty.

The highest fiscal revenue in the Song Dynasty reached 65.438+0.6 billion yuan, and it could reach 80-90 million yuan in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty. Even if the Southern Song Dynasty lost half of its territory, the national treasury revenue was as high as 1 100 million yuan. More than 300 years after the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty, the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was less than110 in the Northern Song Dynasty and less than 1/6 in the Southern Song Dynasty, although the territory of the Ming Dynasty was much larger than that of the Song Dynasty. The financial situation of the Qing Dynasty was better than that of the Ming Dynasty. Until the end of the Qing Dynasty, the annual fiscal revenue of the country reached the level of the Song Dynasty, but by this time, the population of China was close to 400 million, about four times that of the Song Dynasty.

The huge financial revenue of the Song Dynasty was not the result of aggravating the exploitation of the people, but the result of the rapid development of the national economy, the extremely prosperous industry and commerce, and the improvement of productivity. Take the ten years in Xining, Song Shenzong as an example. Of the fiscal revenue of 70.7 million yuan, agricultural tax accounts for about 30%, and industrial and commercial tax accounts for about 70%. This figure shows that agriculture is no longer the main body of national fiscal revenue, but industry and commerce. During the Ming Dynasty 1570- 1580, the average annual fiscal revenue was 30.78 million, and in the Song Dynasty it was 65,438+. More importantly, agricultural taxes accounted for 8 1% of the total revenue of the Ming government, while industrial and commercial miscellaneous taxes only accounted for 12% of the total revenue. Agricultural tax was also the main tax in Qing dynasty, and it was not until the end of Qing dynasty that industrial and commercial income surpassed agricultural tax again.

In a bird's-eye view of China's thousand-year history, Sun Jilong said that the iron and steel industry in Song Dynasty was highly developed, and large enterprises usually employed hundreds of full-time industrial workers, while the two military factories of the government employed as many as 8,000 workers. 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 the industrial revolution. The mining industry was developed in the Song Dynasty, and there were hundreds of thousands of miners in a copper mine in Lead Mountain, Xinzhou. Coal has become the main energy source in the capital. "There are millions of households on the side, and no one burns wages."

During the Tang Dynasty, the main channel of foreign exchange was the northwest land. In the Song Dynasty, due to the war, the northwest land traffic was intermittent, and the foreign economic and cultural exchanges mainly depended on the southeast sea traffic. The Song Dynasty pioneered the "Road of Marine Ceramics" for the first time, and the "Five Famous Porcelains" in the Song Dynasty became famous all over the world. There were more than 300 kinds of importers and exporters, becoming the most developed shipping country at that time, which not only promoted world trade, but also introduced the three great inventions of printing, gunpowder and compass in Song Dynasty to Europe.

Shipbuilding and navigation in Song Dynasty were in the leading position in the world. There are many warehouses on both sides of the Yangtze River, and merchant ships from Guangzhou, Quanzhou and Fuzhou sail to Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan. In foreign trade, most China and foreign businessmen use ships made in China. Its merchant tonnage and quantity are the highest in the world. At that time, the number of seagoing ships reached 300 tons, while the number of Columbus ships hundreds of years later was only 120 tons. A 300-ton seagoing ship navigated by a compass crosses the Indian Ocean as far as the east coast of Arabia and Africa.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, the prosperity of overseas trade far exceeded that of the previous generation. In order to increase fiscal revenue and buy imported materials to meet the needs of the royal family and bureaucrats, the Song government attached great importance to overseas trade. As early as 97 1 year (four years of Kaibao), the company was established in Guangzhou. Later, the government of the Northern Song Dynasty successively set up urban shipping companies or urban shipping service agencies in Hangzhou, Mingzhou, Quanzhou, Banqiao in Mizhou (Jiaoxian) and Huating County in Xiuzhou (Songjiang).

Overseas trade in the Southern Song Dynasty surpassed that in the Northern Song Dynasty. At the end of Emperor Gaozong's reign, scholar's income reached 2 million yuan, more than twice the income of 630,000 yuan in the Northern Song Dynasty. Due to the development of commerce and foreign trade, the demand for currency casting is in short supply. In foreign trade, a large number of copper coins flowed out. Paper money has replaced copper coins as the main means of exchange.

Madison, a famous British economic historian, estimated that the gross national product (GNP) of Xianping in the Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1000) was about 50 billion dollars, accounting for 80% of the world GDP at that time, and the per capita GDP was about 500 dollars. At the peak of the Song Dynasty, the per capita GDP was about 600 dollars. What is this concept? Probably better than the level of China in the early 1950s. 1950 China's per capita GDP was only $439, and 1952 reached $537.

Imagine if the historical old man could give the Song Dynasty some more time, would there be the seeds of capitalism and industrial revolution?