Abstract: Why did the "Jiangnan" literati association flourish in the late Ming Dynasty? Academic circles attribute it to the prosperous commodity economy in Jiangnan. This is a universal law that economic prosperity promotes literary prosperity. We have no intention to question this, but we should also analyze it in detail. We know that after ten years of reform in the early Ming Dynasty, the social economy once again presented a brilliant situation, but this did not stop the historical fate of the overall decline of society in the late Ming Dynasty. Under such a historical background, does Jiangnan economy still maintain a prosperous and strong trend? If the social economy in the south of the Yangtze River also began to decline under the background of the overall decline of society in the late Ming Dynasty, then the theory of cultural, social and economic prosperity may be a false proposition. In this regard, we must distinguish.