Research On The Origin Of Private Ownership Institution In The Chinese Feudal Society

Economists of property rights school think that the character of a society can be recognized from property rights institution practiced in this society, and therefore it is very important exploration to compartmentalize society by the criterion of property rights institution organizing economic activity. I think there was no land ownership in feudal society. And villain's cropland and homage's cropland is the means to partition labor. During the early periods of the West Zhou in ancient China, it was not worthwhile to invent and carry out any land ownership institution under the condition of excessive land and labor scarcity. How to allot labor was the very important institution of private labor ownership in feudal society. With the growth of population, cropland became scarcity and so the increment of land value was placed in public domain, people contested and occupied land madly. Land tangle with each other was mounting up steadily. It made a tension on the old institution. Under the pressure many seigneurs found private land ownership institution. On the one hand private land ownership institution reduced the cost of possessing land for every land-owner, on the other hand it increased the revenue of the government.It does not mean when private land ownership institution found it will exist forever, as many famous scholar think so. Modern property rights theory thinks private property rights for any resource is found under the conditions of resource endowment; when the conditions of resource endowment have changed thoroughly, the private property rights institution for the resource will not exist. With careful review of our Chinese history we find that from the population valley during A.D.222-280 to A.D.755 private land ownership institution was broke off and found again after the middle period of the Tang dynasty. The ration of population and land was the most important variable in our analysisAfter liberation, most scholars recognize the evolution of social institution from the change of productive tool, so it makes much chaos in the scholar cycle. If we recognize the social history from the criterion of property rights institution, most chaos and paradoxes are resolved right away. I think feudalism is an institution to economize labor. Whenever and wherever the same endowment conditions comes up, the feudal society will be found by mankind. Owing to the different ration of population and land in the different area, the feudalism society is created and destroyed at the different step.Studying the origin of private ownership in feudal society, most economic scholars focus on land, they create the concept of exclusive common land ownership and think that with population increasing, land value must becoming higher and higher, and so it result in common land tragedy. As a response to the common land tragedy, private land ownership emerged in the Chunqiu period and Zhanguo periods. I think land ownership is not a good outset of studying the feudal society because land is not a scarce resource in early Chinese history. And the common land tragedy is not appropriate for studying the origin of private land ownership because the scarce is the precondition of the common land tragedy. However, according to the theory of property rights school economists, the cost practicing private ownership toward not scarce resource must be higher than the revenue of that. If practicing land ownership is a fact in the feudal society, the fact be beyond economists'understanding and a challenge to property rights theory.Labor axiology is a default position for a theoretical construct of the exclusive common land ownership in Chinese academic circle. But labor axiology and property rights theory are very different from each other. Property rights school economists think labor expended in a resource is not the cause of creating the property rights toward a resource. As long as the revenue practicing a property rights institution is higher than the cost of that, the private property rights institution must emerge in the society. Maybe a resource is a product expended labor, but the resource is not scarce and then the private property rights institution is not necessary for the resource. Maybe a resource is a natural product not expended labor, but the resource is scarce and very important in the society and then the private property rights institution is necessary.The dissertation conforms the existence of private labor ownership institution using certain literature in the Xizhou periods and the progress of originating private land ownership institution with population increasing. We should give emphasis to the result that the institution change is not correlated to productive tool in early Chinese history. The same institution change can be recurred at the different productive tool level. The originating and abandoning of private land ownership is response to the change of resource endowment condition. After viewing the Xizhou history at the outset of private labor ownership we find that property rights theory not only has stronger explanation for early Chinese history but also eliminate the challenge of land ownership to property rights theory in the Xizhou period.