What was the reason for the heavy money and light goods during the Tang Xianzong period?
Inflation refers to the fact that the supply of money is greater than the actual demand, resulting in a decrease in the purchasing power of money, which in turn makes prices persistent and pervasive for a period of time**. This can lead to a decline in the purchasing power of ordinary people, shrinking assets, and reduced incomes, triggering an economic crisis that is difficult to control.
Deflation, on the other hand, refers to an imbalance between goods and money. Like inflation, it is a representation of this relationship.
When the amount of money is significantly reduced, the market equilibrium is often upset, as the supply of goods and services exceeds the demand. Deflation is no less harmful than inflation.
Even in feudal societies, constant deflation was one of the important reasons for the fall of the empire.
In 581 AD, Yang Jian established the Sui Dynasty after Emperor Jing of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and unified China the following year, ending the situation that lasted for nearly 300 years. After Yang Jian completed the great cause of unification, he made great efforts to create another prosperous era after the Han Dynasty - the prosperous era of Kaiyuan.
However, the good times of the Kaiyuan era did not last long. During the reign of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, the national strength declined rapidly due to frequent foreign wars and large-scale projects such as the construction of the imperial palace and the Grand Canal.
Coupled with his pampering of traitorous ministers, indulging in pleasures, and neglecting political affairs, the originally powerful Sui Dynasty quickly declined, and the final fate was as short and tragic as that of the Qin Dynasty.
The complex situation left by the Sui Dynasty brought many troubles to the later Tang Dynasty, the most important of which was economic problems.
At the beginning of the Sui Dynasty, Yang Jian implemented the equalization system and adjusted the servitude to reduce the production pressure of the peasants. Subsequently, measures were taken to check household registration, such as the large-scale search for the appearance of the household and the identification of lost household registration, which increased the state's fiscal revenue to a certain extent.
Although these measures have alleviated the economic pressure brought about by centuries of war to a certain extent, they have improved the material life of the people. However, the Sui dynasty was too short to adequately adjust the balance resulting from economic policy adjustments, which led to the risk of out-of-control exchange of goods and currency.
When the society fell into the whirlpool of war again in the last years of the Sui Dynasty, the people began to frantically reserve materials in order to survive in the troubled times. However, the currency of the Sui Dynasty became useless because of this, and even in the process of people's exchange of goods, there was a phenomenon of private coinage.
As a result, in the early Tang Dynasty, there was a large number of privately minted currencies among the people, which seriously interfered with the implementation of the monetary unification policy.
In the Tang Taizong's"The rule of Zhenguan"Later, the national strength of the Tang Dynasty once again reached a new peak, even surpassing the prosperity of the Kaiyuan Dynasty, and the living conditions of the people gradually stabilized.
However, due to the lessons of the past, people are still reluctant to exchange their goods and private currency for Tang currency, so this problem has never been effectively solved.
In the early Tang Dynasty, despite the financial crisis brought about by the collapse of the centralized system, with its strong national strength, it was still able to enrich the treasury through rich gifts in kind. In terms of foreign tribute, the Tang Dynasty often gave gifts of silk, exquisite pottery and grain, and the value of these physical objects far exceeded that of Tang coins, so foreign missions gladly accepted them.
At the same time, private taxation has also widely adopted the method of replacing money in kind, and grain has become a common tax substitute.
During the Tang Dynasty, due to the incomplete unification of the currency, there were hidden dangers in the goods, and once the problem broke out, the harm to the country was huge. For example, the Anshi Rebellion in the later period of Tang Xuanzong led to an abrupt end to the glory of the Tang Dynasty, and went to a downhill road of the collapse of centralized power and the continuous depletion of national strength.
At this time, the collapse of the market led to a shortage of materials, and the role of money began to appear, and the problem of "money over goods" that had always existed in the Tang Dynasty also began to appear.
After the Anshi Rebellion, the power of the feudal towns in the frontier grew day by day, which led to the gradual weakening of the control of the Tang Dynasty. In an instant, warlord rebellions and peasant army uprisings broke out in various places.
In order to stabilize the situation, the Tang Dynasty had to send troops to quell the rebellion. As the saying goes, "When the cannon sounds, it is the consumption of 10,000 taels." "The mobilization of the army required a large amount of materials and money and food, but at this time, the treasury of the Tang Dynasty had already had a large-scale deficit, and the materials in the market were also swept away due to the panic caused by the war.
Due to the inability to afford a large amount of military spending and the inability to provide rewards for military generals, the combat effectiveness of the army was seriously damaged, and it was difficult to achieve victory on the battlefield. In this case, the strength of the ** army declined, giving opportunities to some other local forces that wanted to expand their power.
This led to the fact that for a long time, the Tang Dynasty fell into a vicious circle in which the power of the local feudal towns continued to grow.
After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty faced an extremely serious problem of "heavy money and light goods" during the Tang Xianzong period. If measures were not taken to rectify it, the decline of the Tang Dynasty would be inevitable.
Fortunately, Tang Xianzong is a monarch who dares to be outstanding and has great ambitions. Upon his accession to the throne, he immediately became aware of the crisis and immediately introduced a series of reform policies to address it.
Tang Xianzong took decisive measures to abolish the erroneous policies of the Shunzong Dynasty, and belittled Wang Shuwen, Liu Zongyuan and other opponents, and selected Du Huangshang, Huangfu Rong, Li Jifu and other capable people and sages to start repairing and improving the imperial political system, opening the door to political recovery in the Tang Dynasty.
After solving the political problem, Tang Xianzong turned his attention to the chaotic economic situation, and he appointed Pei Yan as the prime minister, and through reform measures, he took the rich Jianghuai region as a breakthrough point and transferred funds from other places to reduce the tax burden of the Jianghuai people, so that they could pay taxes in their own states first, and the shortfall would be borne by their own states, thus effectively stabilizing the economic order.
As a result of this reform, the war-torn Jianghuai region has regained its former vigor. With the economic recovery of the Jianghuai region, the market across the country has also been able to re-energize.
In order to deal with the negative impact of military pressure on the economy, Tang Xianzong ordered Li Jiang to lead his troops north to carry out the "camp field and raise troops" plan. In more than four years, Li Jiang cultivated 4,800 hectares of fields, harvested more than 40 million grains, and saved more than 200,000 yuan of expenditure every year.
This program has allowed the border guards to save money and to have it sufficient**, not only to save a lot of money on military spending, but also to enrich the daily expenses of the state treasury.
After a series of reforms eased the economic situation, Tang Xianzong began to pay attention to the most serious problem of the time—the danger of feudal power. Although the feudal system promoted ethnic integration in the early Tang Dynasty and provided important support for the Tang Dynasty's control over foreign ethnic groups, after the collapse of the ** centralization, this local power became an uncontrollable scourge.
The group needs a large amount of financial expenditure every year to maintain its operations.
The power of the Tang Dynasty's feudal towns became increasingly large, and both the appropriation of ** and the self-sufficiency of the local government caused huge financial pressure on it. In particular, some of the hard-to-control feudal towns are like vampires, only knowing how to absorb the country's resources, but unable to provide any substantial contribution.
In order to change this situation, Tang Xianzong decided to take measures to reduce the feudal domains in order to govern these feudal towns. In the first year of Yongzhen (805), Jiannan Xichuan Jiedu made Wei Gao die of illness, and his deputy envoy Liu Pi, who claimed to be the queen of Liu, held his position and asked the imperial court to agree to him to concurrently serve as the position of Sanchuan, which aroused the vigilance and disgust of the imperial court.
After Liu Pi's request to Xianzong was denied, he immediately sent troops to besiege Li Kang, the envoy of the Dongchuan Festival in Zizhou, as a way to rebel against the imperial court. This action ignited the fuse for Kenjong's policy of reducing feudal domains.
Subsequently, Xianzong began to reuse Du Huangshang and Gao Chongwen, who were staunch supporters of the policy of cutting feudal domains. Under their leadership, the ** army successively defeated Liu Pi, Li Qi, Wei Bo and the feudal forces of the Huaixi tribes, thus alleviating the hidden dangers of the feudal towns in the later decades of Tang Xuanzong to a certain extent.
In the past 100 years, the Tang Dynasty once again reproduced the scene of "Zhongxing".
During the Yuan and He periods, although Tang Xianzong tried his best to save the Tang Dynasty through a series of reform measures, he tried to get rid of the dilemma of "money is heavy on goods and light on goods". His efforts have allowed a situation that was on the verge of collapse to be revived and sustained.
However, under the torrent of history, the influence of "Yuan and Zhongxing" seems insignificant. After a long period of time, the Tang Dynasty's feudal system had long been entrenched, and the issue of currency unification had still not been completely resolved.
In the late Tang Dynasty, the problem of feudal town division was serious, which led to the reappearance of unsolvable contradictions after Tang Xianzong's ruling energy was exhausted in the later period, and began to erode the Tang Empire, which had not yet recovered.
Tang Xianzong realized that he could not completely change the situation, and felt desperate, and began to neglect political affairs and pursue the elixir of immortality. Eventually, he was killed by eunuchs in the courtyard of the deep palace.