Commerce And Trade In Divide Chin Northern And Southern Song

Siu Tsz Kin

Chan, Lok-Lam. “Commerce and Trade in Divide China: The case of Jurchen-Jin versus The Northern and Southern Song.” Journal of Asian History 36.2 (2002): 135-183.

After the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, migration and resettlement of the Jurchens in north China transformed their social and economic environment (p.136). The Jin Dynasty became relying on commerce and trade to increase national revenue and support the government and the state treasury. Therefore, the article mainly focuses on the development of commerce and trade activities in the Jin Dynasty, and economic interaction with the Song Dynasty and other tribes. The main economic concept in the article is “macroeconomic” which presented the commerce and trade activities

After the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, the government controlled a large share of the country’s production and the trading markets directly, but still left some spaces for private merchants to trade on the local and inter-regional level (p.144). The government controlled the trading markets and frequently created the markets when they were found necessary, and some were abolished when they were no longer needed (p.144-145). It ensured that there were enough supply and demand at the market in different regions and stabilized the market prices of commodities to avoid scarcity. For the private merchants, they played an important role that not only in supplying commodities to the markets, but also in promoting trade between administrative capitals and the center of production in north China (p.144). Private merchants had to comply with government regulation and paid specified taxes, which bought lucrative revenues to the treasury (p.145). Moreover, the government also regulated the measures and the prices. According to Wittfogel and Feng, the Jin government adopted either the Tang or the Song measurement standards (p.146-147). Furthermore, due to lack of the coinage, the Jin government adopted to establish the paper currency, called Chengan baohuo, and the Song coins. After that, the Jin government also fixed the exchange rate of the Jin

Before the consent of peace treaty between the Jin and the Southern Song, the Jin government traded with the South through the puppet ruler of Qi (p.158-160). After the establishment of the peace treaty, both Jin and the Southern Song government set up government-supervised markets along the border of Huai and Han River for mutual trade (p.158-162). Merchants who wanted to trade at those markets had to pay a fixed amount taxes to enter the markets (p.161). For instance, the annual income of Si Prefecture market totalled 43,467 guan from 1161 to 1189. In 1196, this was increased to 170,893 guan 653 wen (p.164). Therefore, the evidence shows that the Jin government had lucrative revenue from taxing the merchants in the government-supervised markets. The Jin government also traded with other tribes, such as Xi Xia, the Mongol, and Koryo etc, although the profits of trading with these tribes were not as much as trading with the Southern Song, it still helped the Jin stay in a peaceful relationship with these tribes (p.166-167). As a result, the development of foreign trade made the Jin government have a lucrative revenue by taxing the merchants. Furthermore, the Jin government and the Southern Song government also encouraged illicit traffic secretly. In order to stabilize the market prices and fulfill the demands, merchants evaded the heavy taxes and smuggled the prohibited products to each