Page "Hongwu Emperor" Paragraph 28

Supported by the scholar-bureaucrats, Hongwu accepted the Confucian viewpoint that merchants were solely parasitic.

Hongwu felt that agriculture should be the country's source of wealth and that trade was ignoble.

As a result, the Ming economic system emphasized agriculture, unlike the economic system of the Song Dynasty, which had preceded the Mongols and had relied on traders and merchant for revenues.

Hongwu also supported the creation of self-supporting agricultural communities.