Research On County Finance Of Song Dynasty

To stop re-emergence of the local military governor's sundered situation of the late Tang and the Five Dynasties, the Song Dynasty carried out a series of policies of strengthening the central authority. In terms of financial management, the early Song Dynasty's financial institution experienced three changes, decentralization of Hu bu, Zhuan Yun shi's local jurisdiction and the central to the local of San Si's power. The financial system of centralization and decentralization adjusted frequently in the Song Dynasty, but the maximum right had always been controlled by the central authorities.The county finance was the most basic units of Song financial systems. Under the influence of more serious financial crisis,county finance became more embarrassed. When the county officials collected taxes, they had to increase additional tax by the ways of Jia hao, Humian to keep its own financial balance. The county's administrative jurisdiction within the scope of national defense expenditure, relief assistance and other social welfare, education, administrative office expenses, raising money and goods were the basic items of the county financial expenditure. The income over expenditure of finance strengthened the county's manipuility of raising money, the every possible means of seeking wealth during the embarrassment, to a certain extent, promoted the county financial independence.Continuing growth of the county financial expenditure inevitably led to the embarrassment. The reasons of this situation were various, including two important aspects of higher government's unrestrained expenditure and its difficulty of raising money. This situation subsequently brought negative effects, such as the county official's salary were ungeiven and civil administration was difficult, and ultimately led to a series of drawbacks of corruption in the Song Dynasty's grass-roots administration and official management's unclear.