William Guanglin Liu

The Economic History Review Vol 68 No. 1 (Feb 2015)

I have never read about Chinese economic history assuming the lack of data. I was surprised & convinced by the arguments put forward in this article. It had a clear step by step explanation of song dynasty move into a fiscal state.

1. Song dynasty moved a significant & large portion of fax revenue from direct taxes on land to indirect taxes (ie excise). Indirect taxes were collected from tea, salt & alcohol trades.

2. The state developed tax professional and processes to deal with tax collection across the land.

3.The state began to use promissory notes.

The thing I have been wondering is, why China, who had rather obvious developements in the past sort of forgot all these advancements. What if technological advancements were not born out of need but of intellectual curiosity? Need may not be a practical need – it could be for the desire to brag as well. If there was no need for the country to brag, to compete, to fight, to show off in general, the desire to innovate won’t be much supported.

So bragging has its benefits for a nation.