Talk about the deep-rooted consciousness of small farmers

Going back more than three generations, almost every Chinese person’s ancestor is a farmer. For nearly two thousand years, the small-scale peasant economy has become the traditional DNA of China. The Chinese nation relies on the small-scale peasant economy to feed its population and continue to prosper. The famous sociologist Fei Xiaotong puts it bluntly: China is a rural society, and the consciousness of small farmers is deeply rooted in the national character of the Chinese people.

But China was not a small-scale peasant economy from the beginning. From the Warring States Period to the early Han Dynasty, China's urban industry and commerce were quite developed. If it continues to evolve in this direction, China may not have a city-state culture similar to ancient Greece. The flow of history took a big turn during the Han Dynasty. According to the research of the famous historian Xu Zhuoyun, China's unique small-scale peasant economy of intensive farming only appeared in the Han Dynasty. The emergence of this production model has had a profound impact on China's economy.

During the Western Han Dynasty, the total population at least doubled, perhaps quadrupled. In some core areas, population pressure has gradually become apparent. The government tried to reduce the tax burden on farmers, but it still failed to alleviate the dilemma of many people and little land. The government supported population migration, especially to the strategic northern frontier. However, the rate of opening up new farmland has never kept pace with population growth. The per capita area of ??cultivated land is getting smaller and smaller, and more and more farmers are losing their land and becoming refugees wandering around.

As early as the early Western Han Dynasty, far-sighted ministers like Jia Yi and Chao Cuo wrote letters asking the court to take measures to develop agriculture. The response measures in the early Western Han Dynasty were to emphasize the basic and neglect the weak, believing that agriculture was the foundation and commerce was the last. On the one hand, it improved the status of agriculture, and on the other hand, it suppressed commerce. During the period of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, he had cracked down on powerful people in the area, but the most lethal ones were the Suan Min Order and the Gao Min Order issued by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.

Suanmin is a property tax levied by the government on merchants. After the fortune-telling order was announced, the rich scrambled to hide their wealth. As a result, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty launched a vigorous appeal campaign. The so-called denunciation is to encourage the masses to expose businessmen who conceal their property. Once exposed, all the property of these merchants will be confiscated. This prosecution campaign had far-reaching consequences. From then on, the rich no longer dared to invest in industry and commerce, but instead bought land because land was not subject to taxation. Coupled with strict commercial taxes and preferential agricultural taxes, this encourages businessmen to invest in land. This has led to rising land prices, and ordinary farmers cannot afford to purchase large tracts of land and can only dig soil on a small piece of land for food.

The warning order is an external shock coming from outside the economic system. The economic system will naturally deviate from its original track when encountering external shocks, but it will gradually adjust back. Fundamentally speaking, China's small-scale farmer economy is likely to be related to the technology needed to grow local crops. In order to grow cereals, Chinese farmers spend more labor and time on farm work than the combined labor and time required for sowing and harvesting. The same is true for rice.

Since the Han Dynasty, a small-scale peasant economy with intensive farming and commerce has appeared in China. This transformation began with the violent impact of policies, but in the final analysis, it is a transformation made under China’s unique resource endowments. Best choice. Once we embark on this evolutionary path, history will never be the same again. Two thousand years have passed with a snap of the fingers, but wherever I look, I see a faint green sky.