Economy of the Han dynasty

Under Han rule, industrialists, wholesalers, and merchants—from minor shopkeepers to wealthy businessmen—could engage in a wide range of enterprises and trade in the domestic, public, and even military spheres.

The wealthy landlords eventually dominated commercial activities as well, maintaining control over the rural peasants—upon whom the government relied for tax revenues, military manpower, and public works labor.

During the Warring States period (403–221 BC), the development of private commerce, new trade routes, handicraft industries, and a money economy led to the growth of new urban centers.

[8] Market officials were charged with maintaining order, collecting commercial taxes, setting standard commodity prices on a monthly basis, and authorizing contracts between merchants and customers.

[16] Peasants obtained coinage by working as hired laborers for rich landowners, in businesses like breweries or by selling agricultural goods and homemade wares at urban markets.

40–85 AD), Governor of Shu Province (modern Sichuan), described his subordinate officials' wealth not in terms of landholdings, but in the form of aggregate properties worth approximately 10,000,000 coin cash.

[21] Angus Maddison estimates that the country's gross domestic product was equivalent to $450 per head in 1990 United States dollars—a sum that was above subsistence level, and which did not significantly change until the beginning of the Song dynasty in the late 10th century.

[18] After Shang Yang (d. 338 BC) of the State of Qin abolished the communal and aristocratic well-field system in an effort to curb the power of nobles, land in China could be bought and sold.

[26] Officials at the court of Emperor Ai of Han (r. 7–1 BC) attempted to implement reforms limiting the amount of land nobles and wealthy landowners could own legally, but were unsuccessful.

[30] Although the central government under Emperor He of Han (r. 88–105 AD) reduced taxes in times of natural disaster and distress without much effect upon the treasury, successive rulers became less able to cope with major crises.

Li Kui and Chao Cuo both emphasize the extreme precariousness of Han agricultural life, a view summed up by Cho-yun Hsu, who writes that Han and pre-Han farmers had only "a relatively small margin left to meet other expenses": "An account of the income and expenditures of a small farm in the pre-Ch’in (Chan-kuo) period cited in the Han-shu gives a deficit of 10 percent of the annual income, presumably in a year of mediocre crops… In the time of [Chao Cuo] the situation remained very much the same.

[55] Historian Charles Hucker writes that underreporting of the population by local authorities was deliberate and widespread, since this reduced their tax and labor service obligations rendered to the central government.

[56] Though requiring additional revenue to fund the Han–Xiongnu War, the government during Emperor Wu of Han's reign (141–87 BC) sought to avoid heavy taxation of small landowners.

[16] The sale of certain offices and titles was reintroduced in Eastern Han by Empress Dowager Deng Sui—who reigned as regent from 105 to 121 AD—to raise government revenues in times of severe natural disasters and the widespread rebellion of the Qiang people in western China.

In addition to paying their monetary and crop taxes, all peasants of the Western Han period aged between fifteen and fifty-six were required to undertake mandatory conscription duties for one month of each year.

[66] Emperor Gaozu passed laws levying higher taxes, forbidding merchants from wearing silk, and barring their descendants from holding public office.

[49] The Eastern Han central government lost an important source of revenue by relinquishing its salt and iron industries and purchasing its armies' swords and shields from private manufacturers.

[88] Bronze calipers from the Xin dynasty, used for minute measurements, had an inscription stating that it was "made on a gui-you day at new moon of the first month of the first year of the Shijian guo period."

About 150,000 conscripted workers, serving in consecutive periods of thirty days each over a total of five years, worked on the massive defensive walls of Chang'an, which were completed in 190 BC.

Iron goods were often used for construction and farmwork, such as plowshares, pickaxes, spades, shovels, hoes, sickles, axes, adze, hammers, chisels, knives, saws, scratch awls, and nails.

[105] Other common goods included: consumables (liquor, pickles and sauces, sheep and pigs, grain, yeast for fermentation, bean relish, dried fish and abalone, dates, chestnuts, fruits and vegetables), raw materials (cattle hide, boat timber, bamboo poles, dyes, horns, cinnabar, raw lacquer, jade, amber), clothing and clothing materials (silk fabrics, fine and coarse cloth, sable and foxskin garments, felt and mats, deerskin slippers), eating utensils (bronze utensils and chopsticks, silver, wood and iron vessels, ceramic wares), art objects (lacquerware, ceramics), elegant coffins (made of catalpa, locust, juniper, and lacquered wood), vehicles such as light two-wheeled carts and heavy oxcarts, and horses.

Common trade items from the region of modern Shanxi included bamboo, timber, grain, and gemstones; Shandong had fish, salt, liquor, and silk; Jiangnan had camphor, catalpa, ginger, cinnamon, gold, tin, lead, cinnabar, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell, pearls, ivory, and leather.

[108] ... fourteen pieces of pottery; wooden objects such as a horse, pig, ox, chicken, chicken coop, and a single-horned animal; seventy copper cash; a crossbow mechanism made of bronze; a writing brush; a lacquer-encased inkstone; a lacquer tray and bowl; a wooden comb; a jade ornament; a pair of hemp shoes; a straw bag; the remains of an inscribed banner; a bamboo hairpin; two straw satchels; and a stone lamp.

[109] Cui Shi (催寔) (d. 170 AD), a local commandery administrator who later served as an official in the central government's secretariat, started a winery business in his home to pay for his father's funeral.

[111] Cui Shi's book provides descriptions of rituals for ancestor worship, festival and religious holiday celebrations, conduct for family and kinship relations, farmwork, and the schooling season for boys.

[117] In addition to Cui's work, the inventor, mathematician, and court astronomer Zhang Heng (78–139 AD) wrote a rhapsody describing the rich countryside of Nanyang and its irrigated rice paddies.

No doubt a large proportion of what the Chinese court chose to call tributary missions were in fact shrewdly organized commercial ventures by foreign merchants with no diplomatic status at all.

This was unquestionably the case, most notably, with a group of traders who appeared on the south coast in 166 AD claiming to be envoys from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

Indian merchants brought various goods to China, including tortoise shell, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, fine cloth, woolen textiles, perfume and incense, crystal sugar, pepper, ginger, salt, coral, pearls, glass items, and Roman wares.

[142] Indian merchants brought Roman styrax and frankincense to China, while the Chinese knew bdellium as a fragrant item from Persia, although it was native to West India.