Discourses on Salt and Iron

Monopolies, empire, wealth, morality and state control. Compiled in the 1st century BC by the scholar Huan Kuan, Discourses on Salt and Iron (鹽鐵論) records the great court debate of 81 BC, where Confucian scholars clashed with imperial officials over the economy and moral direction of the Han Dynasty.

The ritual codes, philosophical discourses, educational primers and religious classics that shaped Chinese civilization for over two millennia. Where the narrative classics tell China’s stories, these texts encode its institutions, its ethics and its inner life.