"In the twelfth year of his reign, to regulate foreign trade, Song Emperor Taizu [972 c. e.] decided to appoint a superintendent of maritime trade in the southern port city of Guangzhou," and afterward other superintendents in the ports of Hangzhou and Hangzhou as well. The emperor then appointed another superintendent to oversee the activities of all Arab, Sumatran, Javanese, Bornean, Philippine, and mainland Southeast Asian barbarians whose trade passed through China. These maritime merchants, both Chinese and barbarian, would usually take from China the following goods: gold, silver, strings of coins, lead, tin, many-colored silk, and porcelain. They would usually bring into China spices and aromatics, rhinoceros horn, ivory, coral, embers, pearls, fine steel, sea-turtle leather, tortoise shell, gemstones, foreign cloth, ebony wood, and other such things." History of the Song, official history of the Song dynasty, commissioned by the Mongol Chief Minister of Emperor Shundi of the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, 1345
(a) Identify ONE claim made in the passage about the policies of Chinese rulers.
(b) Identify ONE way in which the passage illustrates the economic development of China under the Song dynasty.