The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

The Era of Chinese Predominance, 1000–15 00 29

shift from taxes in kind to taxes in money gained rapid headway.
According to one calculation, annual tax receipts in cash rose from
sixteen million strings of cash early in the Sung dynasty (i.e., soon
after A.D. 960) to about sixty million per annum in the decade
1068–78.^13 By that time more than half of the entire governmental
income probably took the form of cash payments.^14
Obviously, such changes registered far-reaching alteration in society
and the economy, at least in the most developed parts of China. What
seems to have happened was that with the improvement of transport,
through canal building and removal of natural obstacles to navigation
in streams and rivers, local differences in landscape and resources
allowed even the very humble to specialize their production. Agricul­
tural yields rose markedly as diverse crops suited to differing soils and
climates began to supplement one another. Improved seed and sys­
tematic application of fertilizers also worked wonders. Innumerable
peasants began to supplement what they produced for their own sup­
port by buying and selling in local markets. On top of this, part-time ar­
tisanal activity eked out agricultural income for millions. Proliferating
market exchanges—local, regional, and trans-regional—allowed spec­
tacular increases in total productivity, as all the advantages of special­
ization that Adam Smith later analyzed so persuasively came into
operation.^15
A rising level of population meant that poverty did not disappear.
On the contrary, while some became rich by skillful manipulation of
the market, others became paupers. Their plight became painfully
conspicuous in the imperial capital and other cities. Impoverished
rural folk swarmed into towns hoping for gainful employment, and
begged or starved when it was not to be had. Efforts to organize public
relief, beginning in 1103, were only sporadically effective, as a memo­
rial of 1125 makes clear:

In winter the collapsing people are not being cared for. The

beggars are falling down and sleeping in the streets beneath the

the accumulated reserves of gold and silver in the province concerned would be moved

elsewhere.” Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past. p. 160, translating Li Chien-nung, Sung-

Yüan-Ming ching-cloi-shih-kao (Peking, 1957), p. 95. A cash was a small coin, punctured

in the center and used for larger transactions attached to strings of standard length.

13. Edmund H. Worthy, “Regional Control in the Southern Sung Salt Administra­
    tion,” in Haeger, Crisis and Prosperity, p. 112.


14. Yang, Money and Credit, p. 18.


15. Yoshinobu Shiba, “Commercialization of Farm Products in the Sung Period,”
    Acta Asiatica 19 (1970): 77–96; Peter J. Golas, “Rural China in the Song," Journal of
    Asian Studies 39 (1980): 295–99.