Toward a Study of the Economic Views of Sang Hung-Yang
The study of the economic views of the eminent Han statesman and thinker Sang Hung-yang (152-80 B.C.) permits various approaches. One tendency has been to examine his ideas within the context of the general history of economic thought. T'ang Ch'ing-tseng, for instance, has attempted to find modern European parallels in his analysis of the Yen t'ieh lun (especially those theories attributed to Sang). Later attempts, however, which examine Sang's economic ideas in the context of the history of Chinese economic thought itself seem more fruitful. For example, V. M. Stein has convincingly established the connection between the Kuan-tzu and Sang's views in the Yen t'ieh lun. Stein concluded first that Sang was “a Legalist of a new formation” who “approved of any source of income,” even of the kind of “profiteering” which was later endemic to the society of Peter the Great of Russia; and, second, that he was a practical financier, who borrowed the theoretical basis for his measures to regulate the economy from the Kuan-tzu, but disregarded the “deep-laid ethical basis” of this work.