Book Title: The Way to Enrich the Nation: Classical Chinese Economic Thoughts and Thirty-Six Stratagems (《国富策：中国古典经济思想及其三十六计》，In Chinese)
Author: Yuzhong Zhai (翟玉忠), contract research fellow of Center for Chinese and Global Affair, Peking University; financial critic; and general editor of the New Legalist website (Chinese and English sections). Previously, he was director of the international division of China Industrial Economic News, and director of the news division of Legal News magazine (a publication of China News Press, Hong Kong). He has authored Daoist-Legalist China: Towards a rejuvenation of Chinese culture in the 21st century (2008), and translated The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School (Columbia, 1911) into Chinese (Central Compilation and Translation Press, China, 2009).
Publishing date and place: Jan. 2010, China Friendship Publishing Company, Beijing, China
Introduction
to The Way to Enrich the Nation:
Classical Chinese Economic Thoughts and Thirty-Six Stratagems
Different civilizations have given rise to different systems of knowledge.
Guanzi • Sixteen Chapters on Weighing and Balancing Economic Factors is an economic thoughts system born of the Chinese civilization. It was rooted in West Zhou social institutions, matured in West Han period, and has had a direct impact on contemporary Western economic thoughts. It is actually the equivalent of The Wealth of Nations written by the Chinese.
As is different from Western classical economics, ancient Chinese scholars incorporated ecological factors into their economic thoughts from the very beginning, and also laid emphasis on the dynamic balance between different social groups and between the society and nature. This is the major cause why the Chinese nation could have survived and kept growing and developing continuously for five millennia.
As the market is never able to achieve equilibriums automatically, classical Chinese economics advocated a kind of market economy based on a division between the public and private sectors with the state as a participant playing a guiding role. Under this system, the government, which was neutral in nature as representing the interests of the society as a whole, was the key factor in maintaining equilibriums within the market and between man and nature.
Based on Guanzi • Sixteen Chapters on Weighing and Balancing Economic Factors and through rigorous textual researches, the book The Way to Enrich the Nation hasrestored the content of Financial Strategies (《乘马》), Nine Government Offices (《九府》), and Weighing and Balancing Economic Factors (《轻重》), the three classics in ancient Chinese economics that the Grand Historian Sima Qian once read in the West Han royal library two millennia ago. This book expounds from various angles the essence in ancient Chinese strategical financial thinking and its topical significance in dealing with contemporary economic problems, including the current financial crisis. What is more, the author has also reorganized the originally not very systematic content of Weighing and Balancing Economic Factors into thirty-six strategies illustrated by ancient and contemporary factual happenings, making the book a very enjoyable one.
A Comment
by Mr. Henry C.K. Liu, formerly investment adviser with the Rockefeller Corporation, currently Chiaman at Liu Investment Group, and author of The Financial War Between China and U.S.：
In The Way to Enrich the Nation: Classical Chinese Economic Thoughts and Thirty-Six Stratagems, Mr.Yuzhong Zhai makes a very important research to correct the general neglect of the early contribution to the science of economics by Chinese civilization.
The oldest recognized written work in the West in the field of economics is Economics, a book on farming and household management, written by the Greek philosopher Xenophon (430-355 b.c.). Three centuries earlier, Guan Zhong (管仲,770~476 B.C.) of the Spring and Autumn period, dealt with systemic policy relating the methods to enrich a nation, not simply households.
The first writings on utilitarianism in the West can be traced back to English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), which is derived from the Greek philosophy of Hedonism, the fundamental principle of which is that people naturally seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, as expressed in Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780). For Bentham, utilitarianism was not merely an explanation of cause and effect in human behavior, but an ethical standard, a justification for self-interested behavior, a distinguishing aspects of Western culture, in contrast of the Chinese concept of communal harmony (和).
On the other hand, the book of Guanzi (《管子》) , complied a millennium earlier than Bentham’s book, approaches political economy as a moral issue and emphasizes the rule of legalism, which is not to be misunderstood as the simplistic and static Western concept of rule of law.
The view that the social sciences cannot be detached from moral philosophy is a key element in Chinese philosophy and is of particular significance in this time of the global collapse of neo-liberalism and market fundamentalism. |
