DOCSLIB.ORG

The Political Economy of Chinese State Intervention During the New Policies Period (1068-1085)

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Political Economy of Chinese State Intervention During the New Policies Period (1068-1085) Ideas in Practice: the Political Economy of Chinese State Intervention During the New Policies Period (1068-1085) The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Luo, Yinan. 2015. Ideas in Practice: the Political Economy of Chinese State Intervention During the New Policies Period (1068-1085). Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:14226107 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Ideas in Practice: The Political Economy of Chinese State Intervention during the New Policies Period (1068-1085) A dissertation presented by Yinan Luo to The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts January 2015 © 2015—Yinan Luo All rights reserved Advisor: Professor Peter K. Bol Author: Yinan Luo Ideas in Practice: the Political Economy of Chinese State Intervention during the New Policies Period (1068-1085) Abstract I take the New Policies period (1068-1085) to be a critical juncture in Chinese history during which, for the first time, the Chinese state initiated systematic intervention into the market. This period witnessed the failure of plans to shape the collective action of bureaucrats and coordinate market actors through a host of organizing mechanisms. I explain why the policy makers in this historical process failed to incorporate and organize the ideas and interests of social actors, political elites and relevant bureaucracies into the state‘s authoritative action. I argue that this failure was an outcome of the interaction between the political philosophy of the drafters of the New Policies and their historical context. In particular, it was a result of the incapacity of the drafters‘ worldview to correctly explain and resolve unexpected problems in the policy environment, including the influence of political philosophies that were in fundamental conflict with the ideas of Wang Anshi, as well as the reaction of political elites to the New Policies, the rationales and behavioral modes of bureaucrats in financial markets and state monopolies, and unpredictable changes in the marketplace that bedeviled bureaucrats. iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... V INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 1 PART ONE THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGIN OF STATE-BUILDING DURING THE NEW POLICIES ERA (1068-1085) ....................................................................................71 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 71 CHAPTER ONE WANG ANSHI'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ON STATE-BUILDING .......................... 77 PART TWO THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF DEBATES ON THE RURAL CREDIT POLICY (1069-1071).......................................... 129 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 129 CHAPTER TWO THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE DEBATES ON THE RURAL CREDIT POLICY ......................................................................................... 140 CHAPTER THREE FROM TOLERATION TO EXCLUSION: POLICY FORMATION MECHANISMS AMONG POLITICAL ELITES DURING THE RURAL CREDIT POLICY MAKING PROCESS (1069-1071) ............ 192 PART THREE STATE INTERVENTION IN THE SALT AND TEA MARKETS DURING THE NEW POLICIES PERIOD (1071-1085): PERSPECTIVES AND PRACTICE ..................... 255 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 255 CHAPTER FOUR CHANGING POLICY PARADIGMS IN THE CONTROL OF POND SALT VOUCHER PRICES DURING THE NEW POLICIES PERIOD (1072-1080) ............................................................ 258 CHAPTER FIVE REGULATION AND BUREAUCRACY IN THE STATE MONOPOLY OF TEA AND SALT MARKETS (1080-1085) .............................................................................................. 320 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 383 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................... 393 iv Acknowledgements This dissertation owes a deep debt to my two mentors, Peter K. Bol and Peter A. Hall, who have guided my intellectual odyssey during my life as a Ph.D student at Harvard. I learned from Professor Bol that history is a process in which different choices emerge and are eclipsed. I can still remember the question he asked me nine years ago: why did certain choices prevail during some historical periods while others disappeared? I will keep that question in mind throughout my future work as a historian. I believe that the power of historians is rooted in our discovery of the past choices, paired with optimism about the hopes that we human beings hold on to as we face the future. This dissertation is the result of one phase of my exploration into that question. Although he is best known as a great scholar in the field of modern comparative political economy, Professor Hall‘s ideas on ontology, methodology, the relationship between ideas and institutions, and the state-market relationship have greatly influenced my thinking about eleventh-century China. I believe that his thoughts will provide inspiration and wisdom to other scholars of my generation who are devoted to promoting dialogue between different academic disciplines to celebrate the significance of Chinese history to the modern social sciences. I was also privileged to have Anthony Saich and Daniel Ziblatt as my teachers and readers of my work. Professor Saich provided useful feedback that triggered me v to rethink the connection between the Chinese state in the pre-modern and modern periods. Professor Ziblatt introduced me to the field of state-building in the summer of 2007, and his work on European state-building and democratization helped build the solid basis for my studies in the field of comparative politics. I would also like to express my gratitude to my other teachers for their encouragement and guidance, including Deng Xiaonan, Yan Buke, Ge Zhaoguang, Charles Hartman, Huang Kuanchong, Paul Smith, Huge Clark, Xue Lan, Wu Yongping, Roderick MacFarquhar, Nancy Hearst, Song Jaeyoon, Elizabeth Perry, Zhu Tianbiao, Ralph Thaxton, Kathleen Thelen, Michael Szonyi, and Vivien Schmidt. I also would like to thank Tina, Macabe and Javier for their thoughtful comments and candid challenges. My original research was supported by a Harvard-Yenching Doctoral Scholarship, a Harvard GSAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, a Fairbank Center summer research grant, the Chinese Government Scholarship for Oversees Chinese Students, and The China Times Cultural Foundation. I deeply thank Jorge Espada at the Harvard Asian Center and Lydia Chen at the Harvard Fairbank Center for their generous sharing of the academic resources in those centers. I also thank Jim Zigo, my department coordinator, who has helped me during the past seven years with great patience. I thank Alexander Akin for his critical reading and editorial assistance on my dissertation. My parents have always stood behind me and provided every possible support in every moment when I encountered great difficulties. There is no way to thank them vi enough, but I will devote my whole life to taking care of them. vii Abbreviations of Titles SHY XCB SS QSW viii INTRODUCTION In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. -James Madison In the early summer of 1944 the Vice-President of the United States, Henry Wallace, paid an official visit to China, a country that had experienced a century‘s turmoil, disease, warfare and disasters, yet sought her rejuvenation amid the hard times of the Second World War. As a key member of President Franklin Roosevelt‘s New Deal movement, Wallace had been noted for his initiation of the ― Ever-Normal Granary‖ plan that distributed farm loans while he was the Secretary of Agriculture (1933-1940). The plan represented the first systematic intervention by the U.S. government into the agricultural credit market to stabilize commodity prices, oversee farm income goals and provide non-recourse loans to farmers.1 On 22 June 1944, Wallace gave a speech at the luncheon party hosted by the Chinese National Government. We have some notion of his comments from a Chinese translation published in a contemporary newspaper, which quotes him as stating, in part, It was ten years ago that I learned for the first time about the famous Chinese New Dealer who lived about 900 years ago, Wang An-shih. Under very great difficulties he was faced in the year of 1068 with problems which, allowing for the differences between historical periods, were almost identical to the problems met by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The methods that he 1For an introduction to Henry
Load more

Recommended publications
  • An Ethnography of the Spring Festival
    IMAGINING CHINA IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL CONSUMERISM AND LOCAL CONSCIOUSNESS: MEDIA, MOBILITY, AND THE SPRING FESTIVAL A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Communication of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Li Ren June 2003 This dissertation entitled IMAGINING CHINA IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL CONSUMERISM AND LOCAL CONSCIOUSNESS: MEDIA, MOBILITY AND THE SPRING FESTIVAL BY LI REN has been approved by the School of Interpersonal Communication and the College of Communication by Arvind Singhal Professor of Interpersonal Communication Timothy A. Simpson Professor of Interpersonal Communication Kathy Krendl Dean, College of Communication REN, LI. Ph.D. June 2003. Interpersonal Communication Imagining China in the Era of Global Consumerism and Local Consciousness: Media, Mobility, and the Spring Festival. (260 pp.) Co-directors of Dissertation: Arvind Singhal and Timothy A. Simpson Using the Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year) as a springboard for fieldwork and discussion, this dissertation explores the rise of electronic media and mobility in contemporary China and their effect on modern Chinese subjectivity, especially, the collective imagination of Chinese people. Informed by cultural studies and ethnographic methods, this research project consisted of 14 in-depth interviews with residents in Chengdu, China, ethnographic participatory observation of local festival activities, and analysis of media events, artifacts, documents, and online communication. The dissertation argues that “cultural China,” an officially-endorsed concept that has transformed a national entity into a borderless cultural entity, is the most conspicuous and powerful public imagery produced and circulated during the 2001 Spring Festival. As a work of collective imagination, cultural China creates a complex and contested space in which the Chinese Party-state, the global consumer culture, and individuals and local communities seek to gain their own ground with various strategies and tactics.
    [Show full text]
  • Cataloguing Chinese Art in the Middle and Late Imperial Eras
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Spring 2010 Tradition and Transformation: Cataloguing Chinese Art in the Middle and Late Imperial Eras YEN-WEN CHENG University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Asian Art and Architecture Commons, Asian History Commons, and the Cultural History Commons Recommended Citation CHENG, YEN-WEN, "Tradition and Transformation: Cataloguing Chinese Art in the Middle and Late Imperial Eras" (2010). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 98. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/98 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/98 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tradition and Transformation: Cataloguing Chinese Art in the Middle and Late Imperial Eras Abstract After obtaining sovereignty, a new emperor of China often gathers the imperial collections of previous dynasties and uses them as evidence of the legitimacy of the new regime. Some emperors go further, commissioning the compilation projects of bibliographies of books and catalogues of artistic works in their imperial collections not only as inventories but also for proclaiming their imperial power. The imperial collections of art symbolize political and cultural predominance, present contemporary attitudes toward art and connoisseurship, and reflect emperors’ personal taste for art. The attempt of this research project is to explore the practice of art cataloguing during two of the most important reign periods in imperial China: Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty (r. 1101-1125) and Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (r. 1736-1795). Through examining the format and content of the selected painting, calligraphy, and bronze catalogues compiled by both emperors, features of each catalogue reveal the development of cataloguing imperial artistic collections.
    [Show full text]
  • Dressing for the Times: Fashion in Tang Dynasty China (618-907)
    Dressing for the Times: Fashion in Tang Dynasty China (618-907) BuYun Chen Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2013 BuYun Chen All rights reserved ABSTRACT Dressing for the Times: Fashion in Tang Dynasty China (618-907) BuYun Chen During the Tang dynasty, an increased capacity for change created a new value system predicated on the accumulation of wealth and the obsolescence of things that is best understood as fashion. Increased wealth among Tang elites was paralleled by a greater investment in clothes, which imbued clothes with new meaning. Intellectuals, who viewed heightened commercial activity and social mobility as symptomatic of an unstable society, found such profound changes in the vestimentary landscape unsettling. For them, a range of troubling developments, including crisis in the central government, deep suspicion of the newly empowered military and professional class, and anxiety about waste and obsolescence were all subsumed under the trope of fashionable dressing. The clamor of these intellectuals about the widespread desire to be “current” reveals the significant space fashion inhabited in the empire – a space that was repeatedly gendered female. This dissertation considers fashion as a system of social practices that is governed by material relations – a system that is also embroiled in the politics of the gendered self and the body. I demonstrate that this notion of fashion is the best way to understand the process through which competition for status and self-identification among elites gradually broke away from the imperial court and its system of official ranks.
    [Show full text]
  • Lu Zhiqiang China Oceanwide
    08 Investment.FIN.qxp_Layout 1 14/9/16 12:21 pm Page 81 Week in China China’s Tycoons Investment Lu Zhiqiang China Oceanwide Oceanwide Holdings, its Shenzhen-listed property unit, had a total asset value of Rmb118 billion in 2015. Hurun’s China Rich List He is the key ranked Lu as China’s 8th richest man in 2015 investor behind with a net worth of Rmb83 billlion. Minsheng Bank and Legend Guanxi Holdings A long-term ally of Liu Chuanzhi, who is known as the ‘godfather of Chinese entrepreneurs’, Oceanwide acquired a 29% stake in Legend Holdings (the parent firm of Lenovo) in 2009 from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for Rmb2.7 billion. The transaction was symbolic as it marked the dismantling of Legend’s SOE status. Lu and Liu also collaborated to establish the exclusive Taishan Club in 1993, an unofficial association of entrepreneurs named after the most famous mountain in Shandong. Born in Shandong province in 1951, Lu In fact, according to NetEase Finance, it was graduated from the elite Shanghai university during the Taishan Club’s inaugural meeting – Fudan. His first job was as a technician with hosted by Lu in Shandong – that the idea of the Shandong Weifang Diesel Engine Factory. setting up a non-SOE bank was hatched and the proposal was thereafter sent to Zhu Getting started Rongji. The result was the establishment of Lu left the state sector to become an China Minsheng Bank in 1996. entrepreneur and set up China Oceanwide. Initially it focused on education and training, Minsheng takeover? but when the government initiated housing Oceanwide was one of the 59 private sector reform in 1988, Lu moved into real estate.
    [Show full text]
  • Rome and China Oxford Studies in Early Empires
    ROME AND CHINA OXFORD STUDIES IN EARLY EMPIRES Series Editors Nicola Di Cosmo, Mark Edward Lewis, and Walter Scheidel The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium Edited by Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires Edited by Walter Scheidel Rome and China Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires Edited by Walter Scheidel 1 2009 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rome and China : comparative perspectives on ancient world empires / edited by Walter Scheidel. p. cm.—(Oxford studies in early empires) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-533690-0 1. History, Ancient—Historiography. 2. History—Methodology. 3. Rome—History— Republic, 265–30 b.c.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae for RICHARD L
    Richard L. Davis, CV Curriculum Vitae for RICHARD L. DAVIS 戴仁柱 Office Department of History, Lingnan University Address: 302 Ho Sin Hang Bldg., Tuen Mun, NT Hong Kong tel. 852-2616-7007; fax 852-2467-7478 Home: Apt. G, F-18, Tower 1, 8 Waterloo Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong tel. 852-3486-2918 e-mail: [email protected] Date of Birth: April 12, 1951 Buffalo, New York, USA EDUCATION Ph.D.: 1980, Princeton University, East Asian Studies Department Major field of concentration: Tang-Song (A.D. 618-1279) political and cultural history (劉子健 James T.C. Liu, advisor) Minor fields of concentration: Yuan-Ming (A.D. 1271-1644) cultural history (Frederick W. Mote advisor) and modern Chinese politics (Lynn White III advisor) Dissertation: “The Shih Lineage at the Southern Sung Court: Aspects of socio-political mobility in Sung China” M.A.: 1977, Princeton University, East Asian Studies Department M.A.: 1975, State University of New York at Buffalo, History Department B.A.: 1973, State University of New York at Buffalo, Political Science and Asian Studies double major Non-degree Fall 1977-Spring 1979, Academia Sinica (Taipei), Institute of History Programs: & Philology, visiting research fellow 中央研究院/史語所 Summer 1973-Summer 1974, National Taiwan Normal University, 2 CV for Richard L. Davis Mandarin Training Center, post-graduate language training 國立台灣師範大學/國語中心 Summer 1976, Middlebury College, intensive Intermediate Japanese Summer 1972, Stanford University, intensive Classical Chinese Languages: Modern Chinese – fluency in reading and speaking Classical Chinese
    [Show full text]
  • Hardships from the Arabian Gulf to China: the Challenges That Faced Foreign Merchants Between the Seventh
    57 Dirasat Hardships from the Arabian Gulf to China: The Challenges that Faced Foreign Merchants Between the Seventh Dhul Qa'dah, 1441 - July 2020 and Thirteenth Centuries WAN Lei Hardships from the Arabian Gulf to China: The Challenges that Faced Foreign Merchants Between the Seventh and Thirteenth Centuries WAN Lei © King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, 2020 King Fahd National Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lei, WAN Hardships from the Arabian Gulf to China: The Challenges that Faced Foreign Merchants Between the Seventh and Thirteenth Centuries. / Lei. WAN. - Riyadh, 2020 52 p ; 23 x 16.5 cm ISBN: 978-603-8268-57-5 1- China - Foreign relations I-Title 327.51056 dc 1441/12059 L.D. no. 1441/12059 ISBN: 978-603-8268-57-5 Table of Contents Introduction 6 I. Dangers at Sea 10 II. Troubles from Warlords and Pirates 19 III. Imperial Monopolies, Duty-Levies and Prohibitions 27 IV. Corruption of Officialdom 33 V. Legal Discrimination 39 Conclusion 43 5 6 Dirasat No. 57 Dhul Qa'dah, 1441 - July 2020 Introduction During the Tang (618–907) and Northern Song (960–1127) dynasties, China had solid national strength and a society that was very open to the outside world. By the time of the Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasty, the national economic weight of the country moved to South China; at the same time, the Abbasid Caliphate in the Mideast had grown into a great power, too, whose eastern frontier reached the western regions of China, that is, today’s Xinjiang and its adjacent areas in Central Asia.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mechanism of Paper Money in Yuan China
    The Silver Standard as a Discipline on Money Over-Issuances: The Mechanism of Paper Money in Yuan China Hanhui Guan (School of Economics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China; [email protected]) Jie Mao (School of International Trade and Economics, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, 100029, China; [email protected]) Corresponding with the author: Hanhui Guan. School of Economics, Peking University, No. 5 Yiheyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100871, P. R. China. Email: [email protected]. Phone (office): +86-10-62753493. The Silver Standard as a Discipline on Money Over-Issuances: The Mechanism of Paper Money in Yuan China Abstract: The Yuan was the first dynasty both in Chinese and world history to use paper money as its sole medium of circulation, and also established the earliest silver standard. This paper explores the impact of paper money in Yuan China. We find that: (1) At the beginning of its regime, due to the strict constraints of the silver standard on money issuances, the value of paper money was stable. (2) Since the middle stage of the dynasty, the central government had to finance fiscal deficits by issuing more paper money, and inflation was thus unavoidable. Our empirical results also demonstrate that fiscal pressure from multiple provincial rebellions was the most important factor driving the government to issue more paper money; however, the emperor’s largesse, which had been viewed as another source of fiscal deficits by most traditional historians, had no significant effect on the over-issuance of paper money. (3) When the monetary standard switched from silver to paper money, the impact of fiscal deficits, which were driving more paper money issuances, became much more severe.
    [Show full text]
  • Fuzzy Flexible Flow Shops on More Than Two Machine Centers
    The Subtle Path to Heterodoxy: Reflections on the Concept of ‘Yiduan’ in the Jinsilu Milan Hejtmanek1 ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Available Online October 2013 Neo-Confucian philosophy in - Key words: partook of a moral discourse that drew extensively on Song Chinese Heterodoxy; texts from the 11th and 12theth centuries. Korean Chosǒn Among period these, (1392 the Jinsilu1910) Korea; ; 1175 proved especially influential. This paper examines in detail a Neo-Confucianism; central(Reflections theme on of Things the Jinsilu: at Hand), heterodoxy compiled or by yiduan, Zhu Xi situatingand LüZuqian it both in Jinsilu.Chosǒn dynasty within the broader traditions of earlier Confucianism and as well as within the context of Neo-Confucian thought or daoxue as it was developed the 11th century, by the brothers Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao. It identifies three distinct, if overlapping conceptions of heterodoxy in the Jinsilu. The paper argues that the most pessimistic and aggressive attitude toward the danger of straying from the orthodox way and the condemning of those who had done so derived from Cheng Yi. His thought and sense of near dread concerning heterodoxy would prove highly influential in Chosǒn Korea. Introduction It is a remarkable feature of recorded human civilization that discourse drawn from a wide variety of times and places displays fierce struggles over what constitutes proper moral behavior and correspondingly what should be castigated as wrong and evil. Moral traditions in the West as diverse as Judaism, Islam, and in the East Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism ha rhetorical strategies to argue both sides of complex ethical issues. The production and reproduction of dogma and its antithesis, heresy or heterodoxy, isve a bequeathed central activity prolific of any discourses system of deploying moral thought.
    [Show full text]
  • A Geographic History of Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism: the Decline of the Yunmen Lineage
    decline of the yunmen lineage Asia Major (2019) 3d ser. Vol. 32.1: 113-60 jason protass A Geographic History of Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism: The Decline of the Yunmen Lineage abstract: For a century during China’s Northern Song era, the Yunmen Chan lineage, one of several such regional networks, rose to dominance in the east and north and then abruptly disappeared. Whereas others suggested the decline was caused by a doctri- nal problem, this essay argues that the geopolitics of the Song–Jin wars were the pri- mary cause. The argument builds upon a dataset of Chan abbots gleaned from Flame Records. A chronological series of maps shows that Chan lineages were regionally based. Moreover, Song-era writers knew of regional differences among Chan lin- eages and suggested that regionalism was part of Chan identity: this corroborates my assertion. The essay turns to local gazetteers and early-Southern Song texts that re- cord the impacts of the Song–Jin wars on monasteries in regions associated with the Yunmen lineage. Finally, I consider reasons why the few Yunmen monks who sur- vived into the Southern Song did not reconstitute their lineage, and discuss a small group of Yunmen monks who endured in north China under Jin and Yuan control. keywords: Chan, Buddhism, geographic history, mapping, spatial data n 1101, the recently installed emperor Huizong 徽宗 (r. 1100–1126) I authored a preface for a new collection of Chan 禪 religious biogra- phies, Record of the Continuation of the Flame of the Jianzhong Jingguo Era (Jianzhong Jingguo xudeng lu 建中靖國續燈錄, hereafter Continuation of the Flame).1 The emperor praised the old “five [Chan] lineages, each ex- celling in a family style 五宗各擅家風,” a semimythical system promul- gated by the Chan tradition itself to assert a shared identity among the ramifying branches of master-disciple relationships.
    [Show full text]
  • An Analysis of Chao Jiong's Conception of the Three Teachings
    chao jiong’s three teachings douglas skonicki Getting It for Oneself: An Analysis of Chao Jiong’s Conception of the Three Teachings and His Method of Self-Cultivation fter retiring from office in 1026, the Northern Song literatus Chao A 5Jiong 晁迥 (951–1034) chose to devote the remaining years of his life to reading, contemplation, and self-cultivation. Isolating himself within his family compound in the capital, Chao engaged in rigorous textual study, gymnastic exercises, and various forms of meditation that were designed to prolong his life, calm his mind, and facilitate his realization of the Dao. Chao eschewed rigid sectarianism and he utilized the teachings and practices of Buddhism, Daoism, and Con- fucianism to help him realize these objectives. Furthermore, he wrote about his post-retirement activities in detail, penning three separate texts in which he recorded his observations on the Three Teachings, the term traditionally used to refer to those three major practices, and their utility in furthering his efforts to cultivate the self. Chao’s texts — Zhaode xinbian 昭德新編 (New Compilation from Zhaode), Fazang suijin lu 法藏碎金錄 (Record of Golden Fragments from the Buddhist Canon), and Daoyuan ji 道院集 (The Daoist Cloister Collection) — contain a wealth of material on his conception of the Three Teachings and their methods of practice. As the most detailed and comprehensive literati statement on these matters surviving from the early Song, Chao’s works consti- tute an invaluable source for understanding early-Song approaches to the Three Teachings and self-cultivation. Yet, despite the intrinsic interest of these works and their po- tential to shed light on the early Song intellectual milieu, they have not attracted much scholarly attention.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital RMB: Assessing the Benefits—And Challenges—Of China's New
    CFO Insights January 2021 Digital RMB: Assessing the benefits—and challenges—of China’s new currency Throughout last year, China reported The possibilities are not lost on CFOs. In important implication of DC/EP for MNCs substantial progress on its digital renminbi fact, in Q4 2020 CFO Signals report, almost concerns changes to China’s electronic (RMB) and electronic payment system 40% of respondents expect the RMB’s payment capabilities and usage. Chief (DC/EP), and is now testing it in a growing use as a trading currency to increase, and among those is greatly enhancing the number of cities. And as these new 41% expect digital currencies for business ability of the People’s Bank of China’s capabilities are introduced and evolve, CFOs transactions overall to rise (see Figure 1). (PBOC) to monitor payments and clearing at multinational companies (MNCs) have a And in this issue of CFO Insights, we’ll discuss data, which will strengthen its ability to fight leading role to play in understanding how to both the introduction and evolution of fraud, illegal foreign exchange transactions, help capture value from them. electronic payments in China, as well as the tax evasion, and capital flight. implications for MNCs going forward. First, combined with the government’s China’s ruling party has long focused on recent moves to regulate the country’s Timeline: Diversification of electronic direct control over financial services as a dominant e-payment processors, the DC/ payments major lever for economic management, EP could help MNCs make inroads into the While a great deal of attention has been with just a couple of dominant e-payment country’s large and growing e-payment devoted to China’s digital RMB―which will systems receiving regulatory approval and market.
    [Show full text]