Why is mencius important

Chinese historical land distribution method

"Jingtian" redirects here. For the actress, see Jing Tian.

The well-field system (Chinese: 井田制度; pinyin: jǐngtián zhìdù) was a Chinese land redistribution method existing between the ninth century BCE (late Western Zhou dynasty) to around the Warring States period.

Though Mencius describes examples from the Xia and Shang dynasties, these could be mythological or imagined.^[1] The name comes from Chinese character井 (jǐng), which means 'well' and looks like the # symbol; this character represents the theoretical appearance of land division: a square area of land was divided into nine identically sized sections; the eight outer sections (私田; sītián) were privately cultivated by farmers, or nong in Chinese, one of the occupations of the four occupations system; and the center section (公田; gōngtián) was communally cultivated on behalf of the government, or in some cases, the landowning aristocra