292ĈčĆĕęĊė 10
Liturgical Services and Business Fortunes:
Chinese Maritime Merchants
in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth
Centuries
The Elevated Place of Commerce and Merchants
Discussions about Chinese merchants often begin with the familiar
image of their low status in the Confucian social hierarchy that ranked
them after scholars, farmers and artisans. In traditional China, the
Confucian purists held merchants in low esteem because they believed
that the latter:
... tended to be cunning and crooked and interested only in proβit.
Their speculation and manipulation of prices and hoarding of
commodities or currency were ... harmful not only to consumers
(especially the helpless peasants) but also to the whole economy.
Such activities were contrary to the principles of justice and
stability and had to be controlled.^1This perception of merchants has led many scholars to assume that trade
conβlicted with Confucian values and a profession in commerce was
disdained in traditional China as dishonorable, even detrimental.
However, the theoretical social hierarchy, as Yang Lien-sheng asserts,
“is at best an over-simpliβication”.^2 In late imperial China, the attitude
toward merchants was ambivalent and “a policy combining restriction,
taxation, and utilization of merchants was consciously adopted”.^3
- As explained in Yang Lien-sheng, “Government Control of Urban Merchants in
Traditional China”, Tsing-hua Journal of Chinese Studies, new series (Taipei), 8
(1/2) (1970): 187. - Ib id.
- Ib id., p. 188.
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