for the use of the peasant, as well as stabilizing the price of many essential goods. They also claimed that private workshops were too small, unspecialized, and poorly equipped. Modernists claimed the government workshops offered better working conditions and access to more materials than private workshops. In addition, the modernists claimed that the expansionist campaigns were necessary to defend China from barbarian incursions, and that by nationalizing the salt and iron industries the state could obtain the funds needed to defend the empire without imposing additional burdens on the peasantry. Legacy The modernists survived this debate with most of their policies intact, with only the monopoly on liquor abolished, although Sang was later executed in 80 BCE for treason. Reformists gradually gained more power through the rest of Former Han, due to the growing unsustainability of the Modernists' policies. They briefly succeeded in getting the central government monopolies on salt and iron abolished from 44 to 41 BCE, though this was unsuccessful and the monopolies resumed until the end of Wang Mang's (r. 9–23 CE) regime, which imposed ultra-modernist policies. After his overthrow, the government of later Han resumed earlier laissez faire policies and relinquished control of these industries to private businessmen. References Sources Kuan Huan, Translated by Esson McDowell Gale. Discourses on Salt and Iron: A Debate on State Control of Commerce and Industry in Ancient China, Chapters I-XIX (Leyden: E. J. Brill Ltd., 1931; rpr, Taipei, Ch'engwen, 1967, including Esson M. Gale, Peter Boodberg, and T.C. Liu, "Discourses on Salt and Iron" Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 65: 73-110 (1934)). The translation, with Chinese text, is available online at Discourses on Salt and Iron The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. See also Crowding out (economics) Salt in Chinese history Han dynasty Economic history of China Economic liberalization