Weak Song Dynasty

Song dynasty was a controversial period in Chinese history regard to its political corruption and military weakness. As a result, it was always being called “Weak Song”. However, in economics perspective, Song dynasty instead was super strong and unprecedentedly prosperous. The revolutionary breakthrough in economy in terms of social productivity, great inventions and international trade pushed Song dynasty on the throne of the economic center of the world at that time.
The increase of social productivity laid the foundation for society transformation. Improvement on tools of agricultural production and import of high-yielding crop made it possible to sustain a much larger amount of population, which in turn provided more labor forces back for agriculture and industry production. Peasants in Song dynasty not only satisfied of self-sufficiency but also started to growing commercial crops mainly for trading (Ebrey/Walthall, 132). This also stimulated the appearance of other elements for trade such as market and money. As a result of frequent trade, city market played an important role in city residents’ …show more content…
Though Song Dynasty was portrayed as weak and ineffective in terms of defending territory, its powerful economics strength still suppressed other states. The steppe in northern continent and desert in western part for Liao or Jin and Xia made their natural environment really difficult to reach a high productivity as Song Dynasty did. Especially for daily necessities, they relied a lot on the trading with Song society so that they did not have to completely rely on nomadic life as their ancestors did. Even though under deterrence of their military power, Song Dynasty needed to pay tribute to them, it actually got more money back through trading. For example, the exports of silver from Song Dynasty to Liao normally exceeded the imports (Ebrey/Walthall,