The reason why foreigners have a low evaluation of the Song Dynasty is mainly because foreigners will not look at the Song Dynasty from the perspective of "great unification". It will only focus on the system and economic development level of the Song Dynasty.
(1) The chinese people's evaluation of the Song Dynasty is not low, and the economic and cultural evaluation of the Song Dynasty has always been not low and fair
Referring to the demeaning of the Song Dynasty in the past, people on the modern Internet often criticize the four words of "poverty and weakness". However, it should be noted that "poverty and weakness" refers to the "fiscal surplus" problem of the Song Dynasty government, as well as external compromise. Now some people often talk about the annual revenue of the Song Dynasty, and the fiscal revenue is indeed very high, but why don't you talk about the financial expenditure and the profit and loss of revenue and expenditure?
If it is not the problem of "poverty" caused by the "three redundancies", why did Wang Anshi change the law? Why increase fiscal revenue? And the criterion for the success of Wang Anshi's transformation method is based on the premise of "how much will the fiscal revenue increase"?
Therefore, "poverty and weakness" is from the perspective of the state rather than from the perspective of people's income. At the same time, the economic development of the Ming Dynasty was not "economic development of the whole people". Because the northern, northwestern, and western parts of the Northern Song Dynasty were all squeezed by the Liao state and the western Xia. The Northern Song Dynasty had no ability to take it back, and could only open up sea passages. The Problem was even more serious in the Southern Song Dynasty.
From this, we see that people with power, people with armies, officials and their relatives, and subordinates often receive most of the economic benefits. The vast majority of the people of the Song Dynasty, especially the citizen class, because the Song Dynasty earned more wealth through foreign trade, these people had greater consumption power, which led to the development of all walks of life. On the whole, the overall level of the people of the Song Dynasty and even the per capita level is better than that of other dynasties, and we can understand these problems now.
But don't forget that this does not conflict with "poverty and weakness", and the Song Dynasty's "poverty and weakness" is aimed at the state rather than society.
(2) Foreigners who evaluate the Song Dynasty will not have Chinese emotions, so they only look at the superficial aspects of economy and culture that most people value most
Foreigners evaluate the Song Dynasty high mainly as the economy and culture of the Song Dynasty. But the problem is that these are not all the subjects for a country, but also the dignity of the state and the nation, although these words did not exist at that time, but connotative words such as the imperial court, Han Chinese, etc. also show that no matter how cheap dignity and self-esteem are, they also exist.
In addition, the Song Dynasty, as the weakest dynasty (the Southern Song Dynasty was not a dynasty but a political power), it was very despised by the chinese people militarily, territorially, and nationally. But foreigners don't pay much attention to this.
Even if you look carefully at the foreigners' evaluation of the relatively high economic problems of the Song Dynasty, it can only be said that the narrow vision is caused.
I have neither interest nor trust in the view that the Song Dynasty accounted for 70% or 80% of the world's GDP at that time. Because GDP is only a very small category for evaluating how well a country is governed. But whether abroad or today, "GDP as a criterion" is the only evaluation criterion for some people.
But gdp evaluation ignores GDP per capita and whose gdp is distributed among them. Obviously, this requires the Ming Dynasty's patriarchal system, political environment, military system and many other aspects of consideration. For example, Song Taizu allowed the economy to engage in economic activities from the beginning, and in the process of military participation in economic competition, it was bound to use the state power of the Song Dynasty; at the same time, the members of the clan were also members; especially officials. Then, this is bound to involve the issue of "polarization".
After these problems are over, there is also the problem of urban and rural populations. Why was the economic level of the Song Dynasty so high? The problem of "drowning children" in the Northern And Southern Song Dynasties was still so serious?
And so on, just looking at foreign trade under GDP, we can only say that foreigners' vision is narrower.