In the early days of the Han Dynasty, war's devastation left the state treasury empty and the people in dire poverty.
Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty, clearly recognized this reality and prioritized a series of policies to rest and recover, placing the promotion of production and economic development at the forefront.
Emperor Liu Bang, witnessing merchants profiteering from war by hoarding goods and manipulating prices while farmers' fields lay barren, imposed strict restrictions: merchants were forbidden from wearing silk, riding horses or carriages, carrying weapons, holding official positions, or purchasing the children of starving peasants as servants. He also sharply increased commercial taxes. In contrast, he enacted favorable policies for farmers and artisans, reducing their taxes to revive agricultural production.
After Liu Bang's death, Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing of Han continued to uphold this established national policy. As a result, the common people of the early Western Han enjoyed sixty to seventy years of recuperation and rejuvenation; the state prospered, the people escaped past poverty and hardship, and their lives gradually began to improve. This period is historically known as the "Reign of Wen and Jing."
By the time of Emperor Wu of Han, the Han Dynasty had become a world-renowned superpower. According to Sima Qian's *Records of the Grand Historian*, "The capital's treasury held tens of millions in coins, the strings binding them rotted away, making them impossible to count; the grain in the imperial granaries piled up year after year, until it rotted and could no longer be eaten." This meant the state's coffers overflowed with wealth, and its storehouses burst with grain left to spoil in the open.
"The idiom 'Chen Chen Xiang Yin' originally meant old grain piled upon old grain. Later, it often describes blindly following old patterns without innovation or creation."
Source: *Records of the Grand Historian*, "The Treatise on the Balanced Standard"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "陈陈相因" came to describe how blindly following old patterns without innovation or creation.