Research On The Financial Audit In The Song Dynasty

The financial audit of the Song Dynasty is an important part of the financial history and audit history of the Song Dynasty.The research on financial audit of the Song Dynasty has been a relatively weak research field of financial history.Since 1990 s,scholars have yielded some achievements in verification of the audit system and audit institutions.But there is no systematic research on the financial audit of the Song Dynasty.After the long historical evolution of Chinese ancient audit,the financial audit of the Song Dynasty made great progress with the maturity of the account books and the development of the audit law in the Song Dynasty.The development of the audit in the Song Dynasty was closely related to that of society and economic,but with obvious characteristics itself.The financial audit legal system in the Song Dynasty was fairly developed and systematic.For example,the financial audit institutions of the Song Dynasty were set up from the central to local government with sophisticated systems and mutual check mechanism.The central audit institutions had experienced several major adjustments at the beginning of the Song Dynasty,during the Yuan Feng reform period and in the Southern Song Dynasty,but the local audit agencies were kept relatively stable,to ensure the collection of taxes and local financial supervision.The Song Dynasty was rich in the audit laws and regulations.There were detailed provisions from the contents of the financial audit to the specific audit methods.In addition,there was also a clear afterwards accountability for the responsibility of the audit staff.Thus the audit mechanism with checks and balances,reward and punishment was formed.And the audit law had been kept continuously.For example,the feature was particularly evident for the departure audit laws for officials in the Song Dynasty.The official departure audit laws were relatively stable in the Southern Song Dynasty.Especially after the compilation of codified statutes and rules in“Qingyuan”,the government had only carried out a few complement and improvement in the detailed rules.According to the newly found “Wuyi Xu Weili document in Southern Song Dynasty”,the law has been obeyed and implemented fairly well.At the same time,the financial audit of the Song Dynasty ran through the whole process of economic operation.From the audit procedures for financial revenue and expenditure,warehousing and transportation process,the supervision to local finance was very strict in the Song Dynasty,which coincided with the phenomenon that the local audit institutions was relatively stable.The specific effect of financial audit in the Song Dynasty was quite successful,not only promoting the progress of the legal system,but also mastering the management state of financial revenue and expenditure.At the same time,the financial audit of the Song Dynasty had the distinct characteristics of the times.Although the main contents of the audit were still about finance,finance policy and property,attention had been paid to local debt and detailed fiscal revenue in the Southern Song Dynasty.It can be seen that economic law was gradually refined with the improving of economy management level.The Song Dynasty carried out strictly audit in the fiscal balance,storage and transport process,with various methods and supervision laws.Especially sophisticated pre audit had appeared during financial spending auditing,which played an important role in financial supervision and corruption preventing.During more than three hundred years of the northern and southern Song dynasties,the military expenditure was huge due to powerful surrounding enemies.However the society was maintained stably,and the economic and culture were well-developed,with mature financial audit supervision playing an important role.The accounting books were sophisticated in the Song Dynasty and there was a set of related laws for them.There was universal application of four column settlement method and the pre audit appeared.All these lead to a fairly high financial supervision level of the feudal society in the Song Dynasty.On the one hand,the Song Dynasty mastered the macroeconomic management state through financial supervision and examination,to reach a reasonable allocation of property,on the other hand,the Song Dynasty further improved the financial audit law system and the supervision of officials through the analysis and study on financial audit results,to make the country embarked on the road of standardization.