Not only did the Ming emperors nationalise much of industry and trade, creating state monopolies in salt, iron, tea, alcohol, foreign trade and education, but they interfered with the everyday lives of their citizens and censored expression to a totalitarian degree. Ming officials had high social status and low salaries, a combination that inevitably bred corruption and rent-seeking. Like all bureaucrats they instinctively mistrusted innovation as a threat to their positions and spent more and more of their energy on looking after their own interests rather than the goals they were put there
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