What were the key social and economic developments that occurred during the period of the Song dynasty in China?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Social developments of the Song dynasty
1. Song China must have had well over 100,000,000 inhabitants
a. state had the most basic resource: labor
b. it needed food and space
2. new opportunities lay in a further shift in the center of gravity of the
empire to the southwest
a. colonization needed peaceful condition and the native tribes had
to be suppressed
b. Song divided the region into two administrative units called
"routes"
3. towns grew spectacularly
a. Kaifeng was not just a seat of government but a thriving place
of manufacture and trade
4. role of women
a. never enjoyed the same status in China as among the pastoral
cultures of the steppeland, where the sexes collaborated in
managing herds
b. women were traded as commodities
c. foot binding
B. Economic developments of the Song dynasty
1. Sichuan was stripped of forests and planted with tea and with
mulberries for silk production
2. salt mines became resources of the Chinese Empire
3. new methods of exploitation
a. environmental change fed the growing population
b. wetlands were drained
c. new varieties of rice arrived from Vietnam, adapted to local
conditions by trial and error
d. planting and harvesting two crops a year effectively doubled
the capacity for food production in the Yangtze valley
e. state promoted agriculture by making loans to peasants for seed
grain, at favorable rates
f. deforestation continued, stimulated by a tax on unharvested
timber
4. money economy boomed
a. a million strings of coins a year in the early years of the
century, six million in 1080
b. paper money became a state monopoly from 1043
5. Song Empire brimmed with wealth
a. new bridges, flourishing commerce, boats crowded together