International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2020

Pursuing an armistice for people’s resilience: the policy discourse on reduction and exemption of taxes and corvee after the Shaoxing Peace Treaty

(Abstract)

YANG, Yu Hsun

The imperial court of the Southern Song Dynasty had added many financial sources to overcome the insufficient military expenditures before the Shaoxing Peace Treaty, which could be described as building army with heavy taxation. As the treaty was signed, the court succeeded in withdrawing military power from generals, the Emperor Gaozong’s captured mother returned and his father’s coffin was received and mourned, the policy to desist from armament and promote culture and education was carried out as scheduled. Under the guideline of making peace, the emperor and his ministers tried to change policies from heavy taxation for military to pursuing an armistice for people’s resilience to provide a new basis for their political legitimacy. During the twenty years after the treaty, their financial actions were: 1) to reduce or exempt taxes and corvee; 2) to have garrison troops or peasants open up wasteland and grow food; 3) to demarcate plots of field; 4) to check officials’ properties. The actions had three meanings: to reduce people’s burden; to increase state’s revenue; to make taxes and corvee more rational. The emperor’s efforts, of course, were none other than a political strategy. His real aim was utilitarian, i.e. to stablise the regime.