Zhu Xi Income Distribution Thought

The Song Dynasty witnessed a peak of the development of our nation’s commodity economy. However, the continuous development of the commodity economy expaned the poor-rich gap of the Song Dynasty increasely. With the emergence of the new economic situations and new social hierarchies, a economic development trend different from the past ermerged, in which the land sales prevailed especially. As the most important means of production in ancient sociaty, land was the only source of income for the vast majority of people, so the production and living conditions of a family depened on the amount of land possession. However, with the annexation of land prevailed increasely, a increasing number of farmers lost their land, this phenomenon further exacerbated the severity of the gap between rich and poor. However, the gradual rise of tenancy relationship made part of the bankrupt farmers continue to survive by renting lands from landlords, yet there were still a lot of bankrupt farmers immgrating into cities, which left these cities a new pattern of development. The influx of a large number of the populations could inject a certain amount of labors to the development of these cities, however, these cities didn’t have enough capacities to absorb these labor forces because of the low levels of productivity in ancient society. Thus, it not only caused many problems to the development of these cities but also made some diffculties in the management of the public security for these cities. The acquiescence attitude of Song government to the development of commerce eased the population pressure on these cities to some extent. However, the development of commerce resulted an ethos of pursuiting wealth in the sociaty of Song. A large number of people chose to be a merchant, part of them who were business-minded got a lot of wealth, but most people still hovered at the poverty line, which further exacerbated the seriousness of the poor-rich gap of the Song Dynasty. Based on these situations, different thinkers in the Song Dynasty gave their own opinions on the new emerging social phenomenons. Among them, Zhu-xi and thinkers from Zhedong School were prominent. Thinkers of Zhedong School whose ideologies were thick into utilitarian colors advercated and surpported the new social situation and the new emerging class. As a representative of the Neo-confucianism, Zhu Xi sticked to the traditional Confucian thoughts on the one hand and changed his attitude toward the new economic situations on the other hand. So this dissertaion will mainly illustrate Zhu Xi’s thoughts of income distribution. Based on previous research achievements and the disscussion on Zhu Xi’s thoughts of income distribution.this dissertation will explore the main contents of Zhu Xi’s economy thoughts. Besides, this paper also will be hoped to make some contributions to country’s current practices of income distribution by showing the efforts that the thinkers in Song Dynasty made to solve the problems of rich-poor polarization and unfair income distribution.This paper will include three parts.The first will be the the contents of introduction,which will explain the topic-selecting reasons and the academic significances of this topic. And then some concepts relating to income distribution and social security in the paper will also be illustrated in this part. The theories and research methods applied in this paper will be finally elaborated in this part. Nowadays, with the continuous social and economic development of our country, the wealth gap is also particularly sharp. The Song Dynasty witnessed a peak of the development of our nation’s commodity economy in the pass. Facing the new socio-economic situations as well as the emergence of the wealth gap, the elites in Song Dynasty put forward their own views. So what remedial measures were actually take to deal with the widening gap trend in this dynasty? How the practical significances of these measures were? With these questions, This paper will seek to provide some help to solve our current problems of wealth gap through analyzing the thoughts of the Neo-confucianism master of Zhu Xi.The second section will describe Zhu Xi’s thougts of initial distribution, secondary distribution and third distribution. On the initial distribution, this part will mainly discusse principles and problems that were illustrated by Zhu Xi about the allocation of productivity elements. Zhu Xi elaborated for land, capital, management, technology, labor, and other distribution principle of five elements in the production principle of distribution elements. In the second assignment, mainly discusses the Song Zhu Xi tax adjustment for Social Security and the views of the two issues. By analyzing Zhu Xi’s attitude towards social upper, middle, lower three levels of taxation and social security, and then the secondary distribution of dialysis Zhu Xi thought. Zhu Xi’s three distribution Zhu Xi thinking mainly elaborated for three classes of society should bear the responsibility for the views of non-governmental charitable and philanthropic folk different types of views, which can be divided into kinship private charitable charitable, philanthropic geopolitical karmic charitable and philanthropic teach margin of four types,The third part will summarize Zhuxi’s income distribution thoughts. Zhu Xi’s income distribution is thought to summarize. Analysis of the income distribution ideological characteristics of Zhu Xi, the real impact. Thus summed Zhu Xi still adhere to traditional thinking, the new social problems and social class holding the attitude of denial. The idea is to maintain the essence of the traditional social order and for the rule of arrogance. However, Zhu Xi’s income distribution was thought to protect the social objective lower people’s production and life, in the face of some natural disasters have a more comprehensive social security system play a role, so in a way to reduce the disaster for the people of lower production and living impact, so Zhu Xi’s income distribution ideas had certain significance for maintaining the stability of the social production.