Controlling the masters of destiny

From Isabella Weber's "How China escaped Shock Therapy", a passage from The Guanzi, which was apparently composed by Chinese planners and advisers in the years around 200 BC, between the Western Zhou and the Quin dynasties. How to use market interventions, instead of command-and-control, to manage the economy. 

Generate revenues without raising taxes, while being seen as a benevolent government.  

If the Government didn't do this, merchants certainly would, so the Government is intervening in a process which would have occurred anyway.