Chapter 7 China 253be pulled by oxen, was discovered, an invention that fueled another phase of
the agricultural revolution and another round of population increase. The
canals and irrigation works that had been going on for a very long time got a
new boost; new areas came under intensive cultivation. A wealthy merchant
class began to be documented in the oldest records, but since merchants pro-
duced nothing and only made their wealth by the suspicious and undervalued
process of trading things for other things, they were put at the bottom of the
emerging class system:
warrior-administrators
peasants and primary producers
artisans and secondary producers
merchants
This class structure remained the frame of reference into the twentieth century,
when even the Communists, who received their aversion to the bourgeois mer-YanJinQinChuWuZhou
Chen
CaiZheng SongLuQiTanWei
CaoDengXuYellow
SeaMap 7.2 Fifth-century B.C.E. China.