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Re-thinking the Late Imperial Chinese Economy: Development, Disaggregation and Decline, circa 1730–1930
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
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In this paper, I want to explore a very simple contrast which has many potential implications. China at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century was, by most measures, a very poor society. China in the latter part of the eighteenth century seemed – both to its own members and to most, though not all, visitors from abroad – a very rich society. So what happened in between?
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References
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5 See, for instance, Ho, Ping-ti, ‘The Introduction of American Food Plants Into China’, The American Anthropologist 57 (1955) 191–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, ‘Meizhou zuowu di yinjin zhuanbo qi dui Zhongguo liangshi shengchan de yingxiang’ (‘The Introduction and Diffusion of American Crops and their Effect on Chinese Food Production’) in: Dagongbao zaigang fukan sanshi zhouji jinian wenji II (Hongkong 1978) 673–731.
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14 Particularly striking accounts may be found in the novels Jin ping mei and Xingshi yinyuan zhuan – striking in part because they deal with a medium sized city and a small town, respectively, in North China rather than with any of the country's great metropolises. For some reflections on consumption in China by a leading historian of early modern European consumption, see Burke, Peter, ‘Res et Verba: Conspicuous Consumption in the Early Modern World’ in: Brewer, John and Porter, Roy eds, Consumption and the World of Goods (London 1993) 148–161Google Scholar. I deal with this at much greater length in Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton 2000) chapter 3Google Scholar.
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21 DeVries, Jan, ‘Peasant Demand and Economic Development: Friesland 1550–1750’ in: Parker, William and Jones, E.L. eds, European Peasants and Their Markets (Princeton 1975)Google Scholar table 6–16; Buck, John L., Land Utilization in China (New York 1964/1937) 456Google Scholar.
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23 If one adds the three soybean crops on the North China plot, versus two clover crops for the British crop, the North China land is probably a better total food producer.
24 Very wide observed variation around mean for individual cases of both clover and soybeans – relatively little is known about what.determines these variations.
25 Compare Chung-li, Chang, The Income of the Chinese Gentry (Seattle 1955) 303Google Scholar and Jinzan, Wu, ‘Zhonghua Mingo linye fazhan zhi yanjiu – Minguo yuan nian zhi Minguo sanshiwu nian’ (PhD thesis, Zhongguo Wenhua Daxue, Taibei 1982) 99Google Scholar, dividing by a population of 380,000,000.
26 See, for instance, the estimate of-roughly 2.2 pounds of sugar consumption per capita for the 1930's cited by Daniels, ‘Agro-Industries: Sugarcane Technology’, 85. For cotton, see Gang, Zhao (Kang Chao), The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China (Cambridge, MA 1977) 233Google Scholar.
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28 The effect of the regional redistribution of population alone would lower an average consumption of 4.3 pounds to about 2.5, and Buck reported average consumption of centrifugal sugar of 2.2 pounds. Sugar processed in other ways, plus what was eaten raw in producing areas (where sucking on cane was common) could easily, make up the remaining difference.
29 Susuma, Yamamoto, ‘Shindai Shikawa no chi-iki keizai’ (‘Regional Development in Qing Dynasty Sichuan’), Shigaku Zasshi 100/12 (12 1991) 1–31Google Scholar; idem, ‘Shonin seisan kenkyu no kiseki’ (‘Directions in Research on the Production of Commodities’) in: Mori Masao ed., Min Shinjidaishi no kihon mondai (Tokyo 1997).
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128 Jinzan, Wu, ‘Zhonghua Mingo linye fazhan zhi yanjiu – Minguo yuan nian zhi Minguo sanshiwu nian’, 71–73Google Scholar; Pomeranz, , The Making of a Hinterland, 140Google Scholar.
129 Pomeranz, , The Making of a Hinterland, 138–142Google Scholar, 146–152.
130 It is worth noting that one important ‘modern’ investment which could potentially have been spread widely across the landscape – the provision of public schooling – lagged seriously, and since it was funded locally or provincially, was concentrated in richer areas. I have argued elsewhere that Chinese literacy rates may well have declined between 1750 and 1930, though the evidence is thin. It is also probably true that the share of the central government budget going for uses besides the military, debt service, and support of the court declined in the century after 1850; this would be in very sharp contrast to most of Europe, where those three items had often taken up almost the entire state budget before the nineteenth century, but declined gradually thereafter.
131 Pomeranz, , The Making of a Hinterland, 159–162Google Scholar, 201–211.
132 Ibid., 21.
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