Guanzi
管子 (Guanzi)
Effective statecraft requires managing the material foundations of the state, granaries, currency, and the balance of trade, as carefully as it requires managing ritual and law, because a hungry or impoverished population cannot be governed by moral appeal alone.
- economic statecraft: granaries, currency, salt and iron monopolies
- honorific attribution to the semi-legendary minister Guan Zhong
- composite Jixia Academy compilation across three centuries
- early proto-Daoist breath cultivation chapters
A sprawling, multi-authored compendium honorifically attributed to Guan Zhong, the semi-legendary 7th century BC minister credited with making the State of Qi a hegemon, but actually assembled over some three centuries by scholars associated with Qi's Jixia Academy, the era's leading center of philosophical debate. It ranges from proto-Daoist meditation texts (the 'Xin Shu' and 'Neiye' chapters, among the earliest surviving descriptions of breath cultivation) to detailed economic policy on price stabilization, state monopolies on salt and iron, and currency manipulation, making it one of the richest early sources for Chinese economic thought alongside its philosophy. It was edited into its current 86-chapter form by the Han bibliographer Liu Xiang.
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