Condensed translation from Chinese by Sherwin Lu
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a condensed translation of a fourth excerpt from the book China Saves the World – Chinese culture being the solution to current human crises (《中国拯救世界—应对人类危机的中国文化》, “Introduction” ), a book written in Chinese by Mr. Yuzhong Zhai (翟玉忠), general editor of the New Legalist website, Chinese and English sections. It is actually a sequel to the third excerpt posted previously discussing how ancient Chinese governments managed to bring about near equality among naturally unequal human beings “Equality via Apparently Unequal Treatment (维齐非齐)”.
THE TEXT
II. Four Occupational Groups: Necessity for Division
Long before Adam Smith researched and wrote about needle manufacturing industry, ancient China had already developed a perfect theory about social division of work. Born in the age of agriculture, this theory did not appear to be as meticulous as the 18th century theory about intra-enterprise division of work in Western European handicraft industry, but actually the former contains much more significant content and has attained an academic height beyond the reach of Western economics so far.
Ancient Chinese thinkers found that the whole population was divided into four occupational groups: scholar-officials, peasants, craftsmen, and merchants (“四民分业”). For instance, Discarded History of the Zhou Dynasty, a book of remote antiquity, already emphasized repeatedly the importance to economic efficiency of division of work into the above four groups: “Scholar-officials should not be involved in handicrafts and trade businesses. If merchants are not honest and kind, or craftsmen not skilful, or peasants not working hard, administration cannot be effective.” (士大夫不杂于工商。商不厚、工不巧、农不力，不可力治。《逸周书·程典解》)
This thought was later carried on by the author of Guanzi (《管子》)and the theory about the four occupational groups appeared to be quite mature already during the times from the Warring States through Qin and Han dynasties.
When Xu Xing (许行) of the Warring States period held that wise men should till the land and cook the rice together with peasants before doing administrative work, his view was refuted by Mencius, who proposed the classical thesis that “Mental workers administer others and menial laborers are administered by others.” (劳心者治人，劳力者治于人。) Although what he stated was a fact about social stratification, it was actually also a kind of division of work.
Mencius went on to show the importance of this division by citing facts from the reigns of the three generations of sage-kings. (The following passage also serves well as an account about the origin of the state in ancient China.) At the times of Yao (尧), Mencius said, flooding was widespread and the land was infested with wild beasts, ravaging crops and threatening people’s lives. Deeply worried about the situation, Yao appointed the virtuous Shun (舜) to solve the problems. Shun sent somebody to set fires over the wilderness and marsh areas to scare away the wild beasts and assigned Yu (禹) the task of dredging the nine major rivers so that people could survive. Yu worked hard away from home for eight consecutive years, not visiting his family for once, not even when passing by his home for three times. “Even if he would like to do farm work to raise crops, was it possible?” Mencius asked. After the rivers were tamed, Mencius went on to say, “Houji (后稷) taught people how to raise and reap crops so that they were able to feed themselves. Then, human beings must behave according to rules, because even if they are well fed, warmly clothed and securely housed but if not properly educated, they would be little different from beasts. The sage-king was concerned about this and appointed Qi (契) as Situ (司徒) in charge of educating people on the moral principles regarding human relations… The sages paid so much attention to people’s welfare, how could they have time to do farming?” (《孟子·滕文公上》)
With the division into four groups of people there inevitably arose conflicts of interest between them. Classical Chinese theory regarding how to balance the relations between the four groups was much more sophisticated than Western theories of division of labor. Following is a much simplified illustration (craftsmen and merchants being grouped together and some other measures omitted, both for simplicity):
II. Balance between the Four Occupational Groups
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And here are more detailed explanations:
A) Regulation of relationship between scholar-officials and the other three groups
Mencius termed this relationship as between “superiors” (大人) and ”inferiors (小人)”, or between “mental workers (劳心者) ” and “menial laborers (劳力者) ”, with the former functioning as political administrators while the latter as producers and traders of material wealth. He said: “Without superiors, countrymen would not get governed; without countrymen, superiors not supported.” (无君子莫治野人，无野人莫养君子。《孟子·滕文公上》)
Therefore, the two parties are mutually interdependent, same as between Yin and Yang, with each party morally entitled to claim against the other for fulfillment of their respective indisputable duties to oneselves. A traditional popular metaphor for this relationship is the image of a boat on water: Water, as the symbol for the people, is both obliged to support the boat, which symbolizes the ruling body, and entitled to overturn it when it fails its duties to them.
According to classical records, among the basic principles for Shang (商) and Zhou (周) government, there was one which said that, when faced with difficulties, the ruler “should seek advice from one’s inner heart, from the ministers, from the common people, and from divination”.( 《尚书·洪范》) Records also show that the commoners were counseled on the following three major occasions: “First, when the state is facing a crisis; second, about moving the capital to another place; third, about the appointment of a new king.” (《周礼·秋官·小司寇》) Numerous recorded facts in Zuo Zhuan (《左传》) reveal that, in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, ordinary people intervene through various channels in such state affairs as the dethroning or appointment of kings, diplomatic policies, and issues of war or peace.
If the ruler was despotic, doing whatever he pleased but failing to protect and feed his subjects, the people were morally entitled to depose him. For instance, in 559 bc, the tyrannical Duke Xian of Wei (卫献公) was dethroned by his people. When Duke Dao of Jin (晋悼公) accused the Wei people of going too far, his minister Shikuang (师旷) argued that it served Duke Xian of Wei right because he had been autocratic and arrogant and failed his duty to govern properly.
B) Regulation of capital
Classical Chinese political-economic theory paid special attention to the regulation of capital in order to prevent the merchant class from monopolizing state power. This policy made it possible for China to have a neutral government for long periods of time, which represented the general interests of the entire population and stayed away from the quagmire of capitalism. As a contrast, it is just the political domination by the big merchant class in the U.S. that has led to the imbalance in social relationships, to the crises in financial economy and in political credibility today.
It is worth noting that the regulation of capital did not mean the elimination of capital or of the capitalist class; neither was it targeted at the merchants only. For instance, in Chinese history government-paid officials were prohibited from competing with merchants for profits.
Before the industrial age, farming was the major basic source of wealth. Therefore, regulating trade while paying more attention to agriculture as an important aspect of capital control was China’s state policy for thousands of years running. According to ancient Chinese thinkers, the four groups of people did not enjoy the same advantage. The merchant class was in a better position and more likely to monopolize social economy, which would lead to a general imbalance in the political and social structure. The Grand Historian Sima Qian explained this very clearly: “All registered common people would humble themselves before those ten times richer, fear those a hundred times richer, work for those a thousand times richer, and be enslaved by those ten thousand times richer. This is the way of things. For the poor to earn more wealth, peasants are at a disadvantage as compared with craftsmen, and craftsmen at a disadvantage as compared with merchants.” (《史记·货殖列传》)
The Grand Historian should have added that merchants are at a disadvantage as compared with officials. For instance, Lü Buwei (吕不韦), at first a business giant of Wei and later the prime minister of Qin in the Warring States period, understood very well the profitability of investing in politics, just as do American Jews of today. According to what his father taught him, while farming could make as much as ten times profit and trade in jewelry a hundred times, enthroning a king would bring about uncountable benefits which would reach down to many generations. (。《战国策·秦策五》) The merchants’ profit-seeking instinct determines their tendency towards political speculation, that is, to turn capital into political power, so as to reap excessively huge profits unobtainable through market competition.
In view of the above, Guanzi, while attaching much importance to commercial trade, kept reiterating the basic significance of agriculture and objecting to the production of luxury goods so as to prevent profiteering. (《管子·治国第四十八》) For this purpose, the author of the Book of Lord Shang proposed to raise the prices for grains and taxes on commercial profits as a leverage for adjusting the interests of peasants vs. those of merchants. (《商君书·外内第二十二》). This idea is still relevant to contemporary times.
At the same time, the policy of “prohibiting salaried officials from competing with people for profits” served to prevent political power from being turned into profit-producing capital, thus effectively protecting a normal market order. Dr. Chen Huan-Chang, in his book The Economic Principles of Confucius and his School. wrote a separate chapter entitled “Exclusion of the ruling class from the economic field” (Chap 28). He believed that “promoting the character of the ruling class to a higher ethical standard, taking away their favorable condition and powerful competition from the economic field, and giving a great chance to all common people -- these are the objects of this principle. It has been a great scheme of social reform, and its tendency has been toward economic equality.” (P. 544, Gordon Press, 1974).
As was quoted by Chen in his book, Dong Zhongshu (董仲舒,179 -104 bc), in his proposal to Emperor Wu of Han, argued for the above principle. Dong gave a more polished explanation of this principle in his book Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, calling it “the Heavenly principle”. He quoted Confucius as saying that the superior man do not take all the benefits but give the excess to common people. After quoting from the Book of Poetry, Dong said that, therefore, wise sages follow the way of Heaven and institute standards so as to prevent those salaried officials from competing with people for extra profits, as this is the principle of Heaven (《春秋繁露·度制第二十七》).
C) Regulation of Market: The typical classical Chinese way
A typical Chinese way in ancient times to regulate the market is the institution of Regulatory Granary (常平仓). Its purpoase, the same as that of the policy of prohibiting land annexation, was for the government to prevent market speculations by commercial capital and to protect the interests of producers and consumers.
Food is people’s prime necessity and has always played a special strategical role in social economic life in history. The regulatory granary was first instituted in 54 bc. It served to stabilize food prices and balance the interests of peasants and merchants. In abundent years, in order to protect the peasants, grains were bought at higher than market prices and stored in the regulatory granary, to be sold on market at average prices in lean years. Although this policy is not in agreement with liberalist economic theories, it benefited the people without harming the state. Even if it might incurr some cost to public finance, still the social benegits from it were far greater.
The regulatory granary was the most typical institution for balancing the market. It was not for a special type of market economy but rather represented classical Chinese economists’ view of the regular market, i.e., that the market tended not to balance itself and, therefore, it was necessary for the state to intervene in the market so as to “remove where there is excessand add where there is lack”. (Laozi: Dao De Jing, 77, Trans. by Charles Muller.)
Unfortunately, contemporary Western mainstream economics, deriving its idea about market balance from Newtonian physics, believes that the market can spontaneously reach a balance by iteself, that price deviations are but accidental, that government intervention is liable to errors while the market itself is not and, so, that a lassez-faire policy should be implemented in economic affairs. But the reality is: The market has a tendency toward self-reinforcement, that is, accelerating deviation from balance, as seen everywhere on the commodity and financial markets. This is actually the very cause for the current financial crisis, just as the famous investor George Soros rightly pointed out: “All human constructs have defects. Financial markets are not necessarily bound to reach balances. If solely relying on the market mechanism, they may go to extremes of frenzy or dispair.” (Back transl. from a Chinese version of乔治·索罗斯：《索罗斯带你走出金融危机》，刘丽娜、綦相译，机械工业出版社，2009, P 99.)
Classical Chinese economics stood for the government as a neutral aurhority representing the whole population to supervise over and regulate the market by “removing where there is excessand adding where there is lack” so as to realize a dynamic balance. As recorded in classical literature, “The wild animals captured by the king while hunting are not to be stocked in the royal palace; nor is the wealth collected from the people to be stored in the government treasury. They are to be used to benefit the people. The monarch, being concerned about the country and the people, uses the wealth to relieve those in need and implements Propriety rules to restrain excessive desires.” (《大戴礼记·主言第三十九》)
Indeed, to promote social balance was the very purpose of the Propriety system of ancient China. “What Propriety is about is to save from abundance to make up for insufficiency so that nothing is squandered away in good years and nobody in want in bad years, i.e., to reduce gaps between the rich and the poor.” (《白虎通·卷二·社稷》) And this was also the purpose of the institution of the Regulatory Granary, whose precursor could be traced back to the Five Equilibriums mechanism (五均制度) of Western Zhou. According to historical records, “Checkpoints were installed and roads built… Water wells were drilled every ten li, and farmhouses constructed every twenty li for traders coming from afar to store their wares. There were official market regulators making sure prices stay the same from morning till night. It was the priority of officials to take care of the coming and going merchants, to relieve the poor, and aid the old, the weak, the disabled, the orphans, widows and bachelors.” (《逸周书·大聚解》)
During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, Sang Hongyang (桑弘羊) implemented state monopoly over salt and iron, price stabilization schemes, etc. with historically recognized successes. This can be regarded as the Former Han version of the above-mensioned Western Zhou Five Equilibriums mechanism. Sang Hongyang said the following in self defence at the government policy debate in 81 bc: “The purpose for the state to issue decrees about official monopoly over salt and iron is not only to make some profits but also to promote agriculture, regulate private businesses in trade and handicraft industry, dissolve local separatist forces, ban indulgence in extravagance and waste, and stop land annexations.” (《盐铁论·复古第六》)
To sum up, it is the at least 3000 years old idea about a balanced relationship among all people inside a society and about external harmony between man and nature that has been the cultural gene for the sustainable development of Chinese civilization. This idea can be traced back to the Propriety system of Western Zhou. The principles contained in the system are now, in modern times, embodied separately in Chinese politics, economics, core values and lifestyle, all together shaping up the Chinese tradition.
This over 5000 years old East Asian civilization, characterized and sustained for so long by its harmonious relationship with the ecological environment, will break through the modern Western pattern of civilization being imposed on it, which has been based on plundering limited natural resources out of unlimited human desire. The former will lead the whole human community into a sustainable new era. In this sense, it can be said that Chinese civilization will serve as the Noah’s Ark for the 21st century world. |
