For the answer to the question above, the Chinese state does not control commercial development. Responsible for popular welfare, it emphasizes the production of staple food crops; merchants are viewed as unproductive and constitute the lowest class in the traditional Confucian hierarchy. From the Tang dynasty (618-907) onward, however, with growing population and expansion of territory, state control of the economy is gradually reduced. Except for strategic goods like salt and certain metals like copper and lead needed for currency, the state does little to control commerce. (This contrasts with European states where cities are required to be chartered by the royal house, and with Japan, where cities are allowed to develop only in the castle towns of the daimyo and in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, which has special functions in the central government.) Moreover, the Chinese government does not rely very heavily on commercial taxation; its main source of income are land and salt taxes. (This contrasts with Western Europe where government taxes on commerce are heavy.)
The long-term consequences. Firstly, they provided a new stimulus to European thinking on nature, man, society, religion, law, history, and civilization, and brought into being new areas of intellectual inquiry, such as anthropology, comparative history, linguistics, biology, and sociology. Secondly, they produced an impressive array of printed travel accounts and historical writings, through which the deeds of European adventurers, conquistadores, and navigators entered into national historical narratives. Travel and voyage accounts such as the Jesuits' multi-volume
