Guan Zhong

Guan Zhong (died 645 BC) was a Chinese statesman who served as chancellor of the state of Qi during the Spring and Autumn period and whose reforms are credited with making Qi the most powerful state of its time under Duke Huan, the first of the Five Hegemons. Among his fiscal innovations was a policy later described as balancing the light and the heavy, using state monopolies on salt and iron to raise government revenue with less public resistance than direct taxation would provoke. He is the traditional namesake of the Guanzi, a large compilation of statecraft, economic and philosophical writing later assembled at the Jixia Academy, and some scholars regard his administrative reforms as an early source for what would become Chinese Legalist thought.