Economy of Expenditures (Jie Yong)

The organizing principle is stated most compactly in the formula 'sufficient, then stop' (zu yi, ze zhi). Mozi applies this to every category of expenditure: food should satisfy hunger and strengthen the body, not pursue rare delicacies; clothing should ward off cold and heat, not display ornament; dwellings should provide shelter and security, not luxury. What this framework rejects is the entire economy of status consumption that Mozi associated with Confucian ritual propriety. Elaborate funerals, prolonged mourning, and sumptuous court display are not neutral choices but active harms, because they extract resources from the people without returning any benefit. Frugality for Mozi is not a private virtue but a public obligation incumbent on rulers .

They are the economic foundation for both polemics. Jie Yong establishes the general criterion—no expenditure without benefit to the people—and the Anti-Music (Fei Yue) and Simple Funerals (Jie Zang) chapters apply it to specific target practices. Mozi argues that the production of musical instruments requires heavy taxes, that performances consume the time of able-bodied people who could be producing food and goods, and that the pleasure of music benefits no one's material welfare. Similarly, elaborate funerals and prolonged mourning bury wealth in the ground and incapacitate mourners for productive work. The three doctrines form a coherent program: Jie Yong states the principle, Jie Zang and Fei Yue draw its conclusions. A 2026 study in China Leadership Science describes this as a 'complete thought system' oriented toward utility and rooted in the people's livelihood .

The comparison is instructive but imperfect. Like classical utilitarians, Mozi evaluates practices by their consequences and treats benefit (li) as the measure of right action. Unlike Bentham or Mill, however, Mozi does not seek to maximize aggregate happiness or pleasure. His standard is negative and sufficientarian: eliminate useless expenditure, and stop once basic needs are met. There is no injunction to maximize production or consumption beyond sufficiency. A 2026 Chinese scholarly analysis identifies two distinct foundations in Mohist frugality: a 'Heaven's Will' framework that gives the doctrine sacred authority, and a utilitarian framework that gives it rational purpose. The first answers the question of why one is obligated to be frugal; the second explains what frugality is for. This dual grounding distinguishes Mozi from secular Western utilitarianism .

The Mozi was originally organized with many doctrines presented in triplets—Part I, II, and III—reflecting competing versions circulating among different Mohist factions. For Economy of Expenditures, only Parts I and II survive in the received text; Part III is traditionally considered lost. W. P. Mei's 1929 translation marks it as '*†' and notes that chapters so marked 'are traditionally considered lost or were never completed in the surviving historical manuscripts' . This loss matters for interpretation: the surviving two parts may represent only a portion of the full Mohist argument on expenditure. Scholars such as Watanabe Takashi have analyzed the triplets to reconstruct the text's compositional history, treating the surviving parts as evidence of a living tradition rather than a single authorial voice .

Recent Chinese scholarship has revived Jie Yong as a resource for resource conservation and anti-corruption governance. A 2026 article in China Leadership Science argues that Mohist frugality contains three contemporary values: a resource-conservation orientation relevant to sustainable development, a thrift ethic relevant to civilizational continuity, and a governance logic of restraining power consumption while safeguarding livelihood resources . This reading emphasizes the doctrine's populist dimension—frugality is demanded of rulers precisely because their extravagance comes at the expense of the common people. The term jieyong itself is standard in Chinese political discourse, often invoked alongside Confucian and Legalist sources to argue that officials should not abuse public resources for private comfort .

Both Confucians and Mohists advocated jieyong, but with different criteria and scope. The Analects records Confucius praising a ruler who 'acts economically and loves the people,' but Confucian frugality is embedded in a broader framework of ritual propriety: expenditure should be proportionate to status and occasion, not reduced to bare utility. Mozi rejects this relativity entirely. For him, the standard is not social appropriateness but demonstrable benefit to the people's material welfare. A ruler who spends on ritual display, even if moderate by aristocratic standards, is still diverting resources from food, clothing, and shelter. The conflict is sharpest over funerals and music, which Confucians defended as essential to social harmony and which Mozi condemned as useless expenditure. Later Confucian critics, including Xunzi, attacked Mozi's frugality as undermining the distinctions that make civilized life possible .