by Joseph Lee As we all know, Sima Qian, was a Chinese historian of the Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his work, the Records of the Grand Historian, which contains the general history of China, covering more than two thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to his time, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. Although he worked as the Court Astrologer, later generations refer to him as the Grand Historian for his monumental work; a work which in later generations would often only be somewhat tacitly or glancingly acknowledged as an achievement only made possible by his acceptance and endurance of punitive actions against him, including imprisonment, castration, and subjection to servility.
The interesting fact that we don’t quite discuss about Sima Qian is that, from the ‘Records of the Grand Historians of China’, we are able to observe that Sima Qian has been not only one of the greatest Chinese historians but an economist as well. Via his works, there were vast accelerating developments in private businesses. He states that successful business men or money makers are beneficial for the economical development as a whole. By letting these men play an essential role in the society, some specific industries will succeed and flourish. Nevertheless, his thoughts are already in use in our modern economic theories and thoughts. During the Han Dynasty, Sima Qian’s point of view and statements related to business and money making have been strongly disagreed or criticized. By reading the Han-Shu, which is the official history recording book during the Han Dynasty, the educated people are treated as a high-end level of the society, with farmers on the second level, workers on the third, and merchants (regardless of whether they play a pivotal role of bringing new technologies and business) are placed on the lowest level. The role and the point of 'The Money Makers’ is that whether they be an individual or a group, businessmen are immoral. This is because they are not personally involved in primary production, but rather involved in the business making, which can be also translated as supplying business jobs and opportunities. In ancient China, no matter how successful or rich, they were viewed and treated as a lower class in the society. Young people or people who ought to choose their living would be encouraged to be farmers so that there will be enough agricultural supplies and crops to honor their own country.The main reason of the suppression of business in ancient China was that the ruling class did not want the number of wealthy merchants to increase. They were aware of the situations that via the increase of the rich businessmen would cause social problems, which might have lead to the mindset of inequality of wealth distribution. For instance, farmers, who work enormous hours for living, were easily being controlled by the ruling class. On the other hand, the wealthy merchants were not easy nor able to fully in control by them. In ancient China, there were several regulations to maintain with regards to the size of the private business. The reason behind these regulations were, “all land and resources belong to the King.” As the quote states, most of the land, resources and even industries were owned and being controlled by the rulers. The profits made by the merchants could have been described as dark spots by the rulers. Going by this mindset, the whole economy belonged to the King, and the rulers were wary of the rising power of the merchants and businessmen, and were equally terrified of losing their own influence. Sima Qian is only a discharged historian in early Han Dynasty, but his monumental contribution to Chinese civilization is to finish one of the most important Chinese historical texts, Records of the Grand Historians of China (Shiji). Though his ideas were written more than 2000 years ago, yet he foresees and has advanced knowledge in economic thoughts. His chapter on ‘‘The Money-makers’’ is insightful and his intuition in pointing out the advantages brought by the vast development of the private business sector to the betterment of the economic development of a state is being increasingly echoed by modern economic thoughts. If his opinions were taken seriously by any Chinese King, then the growth and progress of the economy in China might have completely been different. a
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May 2024
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