<P> The scholar - officials' dependence upon the economic activities of the merchants became more than a trend when it was semi-institutionalized by the state in the mid Ming era . Qiu Jun (1420--1495), a scholar - official from Hainan, argued that the state should only mitigate market affairs during times of pending crisis and that merchants were the best gauge in determining the strength of a nation's riches in resources . The government followed this guideline by the mid Ming era when it allowed merchants to take over the state monopoly of salt production . This was a gradual process where the state supplied northern frontier armies with enough grain by granting merchants licenses to trade in salt in return for their shipping services . The state realized that merchants could buy salt licenses with silver and in turn boost state revenues to the point where buying grain was not an issue . </P> <P> Silver mining was increased dramatically during the reign of the Yongle Emperor (1402--1424); production of mined silver rose from 3007 kg (80,185 taels) in 1403 to 10,210 kg (272,262 taels) in 1409 . The Hongxi Emperor (r . 1424--1425) attempted to scale back silver mining to restore the discredited paper currency, but this was a failure which his immediate successor, the Xuande Emperor (r . 1425--1435), remedied by continuing the Yongle Emperor's silver mining scheme . The governments of the Hongwu and Zhengtong (r . 1435--1449) emperors attempted to cut the flow of silver into the economy in favor of paper currency, yet mining the precious metal simply became a lucrative illegal pursuit practiced by many . </P> <P> The failure of these stern regulations against silver mining prompted ministers such as the censor Liu Hua (jinshi graduate in 1430) to support the baojia system of communal self - defense units to patrol areas and arrest' mining bandits' (kuangzei). Deng Maoqi (died 1449), an overseer in this baojia defense units in Sha County of Fujian, abused local landlords who attempted to have him arrested; Deng responded by killing the local magistrate in 1447 and started a rebellion . By 1448, Deng's forces took control of several counties and were besieging the prefectural capital . The mobilization of local baojia units against Deng was largely a failure; in the end it took 50,000 government troops (including later Mongol rebels who sided with Cao Qin's rebellion in 1461), with food supplies supported by local wealthy elites, to put down Deng's rebellion and execute the so - called "King Who Eliminates Evil" in the spring of 1449 . Many ministers blamed ministers such as Liu Hua for promoting the baojia system and thus allowing this disaster to occur . The historian Tanaka Masatoshi regarded "Deng's uprising as the first peasant rebellion that resisted the class relationship of rent rather than the depredations of officials, and therefore as the first genuinely class - based' peasant warfare' in Chinese history ." </P> <P> The Hongwu Emperor was unaware of economic inflation even as he continued to hand out multitudes of banknotes as awards; by 1425, paper currency was worth only 0.025% to 0.014% its original value in the 14th century . The value of standard copper coinage dropped significantly as well due to counterfeit minting; by the 16th century, new maritime trade contacts with Europe provided massive amounts of imported silver, which increasingly became the common medium of exchange . As far back as 1436, a portion of the southern grain tax was commuted to silver, known as the Gold Floral Silver (jinhuayin). This was an effort to aid tax collection in counties where transportation of grain was made difficult by terrain, as well as provide tax relief to landowners . In 1581 the Single Whip Reform installed by Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (1525--1582) finally assessed taxes on the amount of land paid entirely in silver . </P>

What geographical challenges did china's early rulers face