15 Structures and Dynamics of the Early Imperial Chinese Economy

Abstract

In order to broadly situate the early imperial economy within the course of Chinese economic history and in relation to economies of other regions, a couple of its defining features may be introduced as a start. The early imperial economy was, like that of the preceding Warring States period, a largely agrarian economy. Nevertheless, it developed several new features that distinguished it from its predecessors. With its increasing monetization of the fiscal system, the legalization of private land purchases, and the extension of wage labor markets, it featured what economic historians commonly point to as fundamental stimuli for market exchange. Accordingly, symptoms of growing private markets can be easily discerned in different kinds of Han sources. However, and unsurprisingly, the early imperial era was also determined by some fundamental features that characterized all ancient economies.1 Above all, the absence of modern transport and information facilities put extensive transregional integration of markets out of reach. In early imperial China, scarcity of large-scale private trading organizations may be seen as a further factor in favor of localized or regionalized supply structures. Yet state institutions, acting on an expressed awareness of supply and demand imbalances from an imperial perspective, stepped in both as producers and distributors, often on a massive and longdistance scale. How effective these state involvements were, and what broader, long-term economic consequences resulted from them, is still a matter of debate and ongoing research.