Full text of DOI:10.1111/1468-0289.00150

Economic History Review, LIII, 1 (2000), pp. 1–28
A critical survey of recent research
1
in Chinese economic history
By KENT G. DENG
hina is a resilient dinosaur. It has a longer history than the other
C
great empires in Eurasia—the Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Arabian,
Ottoman, and Tsarist-Soviet. The Chinese empire kept expanding until
the mid-nineteenth century when it effectively reached the physical limits
for a predominantly agrarian economy. The size and wealth of the
Chinese economy, the variety of its produce, and the degree of commer-
cialization and urbanization made China one of the most popular inter-
2
national trading destinations from Roman times. With the rise of the
opium trade in the early nineteenth century, however, the Chinese econ-
omy was severely impoverished, at least in relative terms. In response,
from the 1870s, the Chinese sought to rescue their civilization by adopting
a wide range of foreign examples in social engineering for social experi-
3
ments and reforms. Nevertheless, China’s per caput GDP is still very
low despite its political influence in the world since the 1970s. Thus, it
is justifiable to view China as a case of growth failure in recent centuries.
The study of Chinese economic history is as old as China’s modern
4
history itself. The field has been led and dominated by the West.
Scholarly attempts have been made since the beginning of this century
to explain China’s premodern success and its downfall after the Opium
1
I thank Patrick O’Brien (Institute of Historical Research), Nick Crafts (LSE), Eric L. Jones
(
(
Universities of Melbourne and Reading), Ramon H. Myers (Stanford University), Gareth Austin
LSE), Janet Hunter (LSE), Alan MacFarlane (Cambridge), and Gerry Martin (Renaissance Trust)
for their invaluable advice and extensive comments on this work.
2
As an illustration of China’s disposable wealth in 1884: Japan invaded Korea and three provinces
of north China and forced China to pay 200 million Chinese ounces of silver (7,460.3 tons) as war
reparation. The amount has been estimated as one-quarter of the Japanese total national income.
This sum was used by the Japanese to balance their trade deficit and to establish a gold standard.
Contemporary Japanese scholars counted China’s reparation as windfall of ‘foreign capital’. See
Minami, Economic development of Japan, pp. 12, 201.
3
The Meiji Restoration was mirrored in China’s 1870-95 ‘Westernization movement’ and the
1
1
898 ‘One-Hundred-Day Reform’. The 1789 French Revolution was copied in Dr Sun Yat-sen’s
911 Revolution to end the monarchy. A Chinese version of the Bolshevik Revolution was witnessed
in the Communist attempts under various leaders to reunite the country and cleanse society. The
Stalinist ISI and command economy was transplanted c. 1956-8 in order to industrialize without
the pains of capitalism. The Yugoslavian-Bulgarian institutional reform was imported in 1978 to
soften the economic crisis under communism. The Asian tigers’ EOI was followed since the mid-
1
980s and reached its climax with China’s recent bid for its WTO membership. Malthusian birth
control was carried out in the early 1970s.
4
This is not only because of the systematic, effective destruction of the Chinese academia under
Maoism in the 1950s-1970s but also in terms of the analytical tools and methods in use, including
Marxism, as well as the sheer volume of scholarly works. No doubt, Chinese studies has become a
large enterprise in Japan (see Elvin et al., Water control in China and Brook and Blue, eds., China,
pp. 110-57). However, since few such works have been translated into other languages, their
influence has remained minimal outside Japan.
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kent g. deng
War. Two approaches can be identified: the ‘Sinological approach’ which
refers to China only and the ‘comparative method’ which compares China
with the West. The former tries to find out what achievements China
managed to make and when and how it made them, and the latter seeks
to understand why premodern China was not industrialized.
I
The findings of the ‘Sinological approach’ can be categorized under five
5
headings. First, China seems to have enjoyed superiority in premodern
6
Eurasia in science and technology, agricultural productivities (in labour,
7
8
of land, and total factor productivity), and military power. Various
studies have indicated that the Chinese probably reached a premodern
9
ceiling for development in all these areas. For example, the Chinese
almost certainly held the world record on the eve of the European
Renaissance with a long list of diverse inventions including metallurgy,
gunpowder, the compass, the manufacture of silk and of porcelain,
paper making and paper currency, block printing, mechanical clocks, and
examinations to recruit civil servants.
Second, by premodern standards China achieved a high degree of
commercialization and urbanization. Favourable conditions for commerce,
including the use of paper currency and the establishment of credit
institutions, existed in China much earlier than in Europe: for example,
10
capitalist elements were evident in China long before the birth of Christ.
Moreover, the construction and maintenance of long-distance roads
throughout the country, the waterway arteries (known as the grand
canals), the investment in large-scale irrigation and drainage schemes,
the circulation of minted currencies, the manipulation of grain prices,
and the use of standardized weights and measures lowered transaction
11
costs throughout the economy. Furthermore, a remarkable degree of
social mobility as well as internal migration provided citizens with some
12
incentives to study and to accumulate wealth. The non-agricultural
population, which accounted for some 20 per cent of China’s total,
formed the cornerstone of the domestic market for cash crops, especially
foodstuffs (including tea) and textiles. Apart from professional merchants
and despite the fact that commerce was more highly concentrated in
13
some favoured regions of the empire, the main feature of China’s
5
Mokyr catalogued the Chinese technological superiority into as many as 10 categories in Lever
of riches, pp. 209-18.
6
Needham, Science and civilisation in China; Temple, Genius of China; Merson, Roads to Xanadu.
Ho, ‘Aspects of social mobility’; Perkins, Agricultural development; Rawski, Agricultural change,
7
chs. 3, 6; Elvin, Pattern; Hsu, Han agriculture; Bray, ‘Agriculture’; Huang, Peasant economy; Smith,
‘
Commerce, agriculture and core formation’; Deng, Development versus stagnation.
8
McNeill, Pursuit of power, ch. 2; Levathes, When China ruled the seas.
Typically see Elvin, Pattern.
9
1
1
1
0
1
2
Ibid., chs. 11-12; Jones, Growth recurring, p. 74.
Elvin, Pattern.
Ho, ‘Aspects of social mobility’; idem, Ladder of success; Eberhard, Social mobility; Hartwell,
‘
Patterns of settlement’; Deng, Chinese maritime activities, chs. 4-5.
13
Rawski, Agricultural change.
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commercialization was the ‘entrepreneurialization of the peasantry’: an
ordinary peasant participated regularly and actively in the market by
14
trading a considerable percentage of his output. According to Perkins
and Feuerwerker, from the Ming period (1368-1644) to the early twenti-
eth century as much as 20-40 per cent of China’s agricultural output
was marketed, amounting to about one-sixth to one-third of the country’s
15
total GDP. Even in relatively poor northern China, 25-40 per cent of
16
rural households earned their income from non-farming activities. In
terms of the scale and scope of the market, in Skinner’s account, China’s
multi-regional, multi-layered trading network consisted of as many as
4
5,000 market towns, each of which had in its hinterland 15-20 villages
17
on average.
Based on a stable surplus of food produced by the agricultural sector
and the seasonality of farming, China had a fully fledged, rurally based
proto-industrialization system which paralleled that of Europe until the
18
nineteenth century. By Song times (960-1279), the total annual output
19
of iron, for example, was estimated at 150,000 tons. Under the Song,
large quantities of heavy iron coins were minted for circulation. Because
of their weight they were used as ingots, not currency tokens. Thus iron
must have been regarded as a monetary metal with great value—a fact
which says much about the economy. During the heyday of the porcelain
trade in the seventeenth century, exports of Chinese ceramics alone could
20
often have reached a level of 1 million pieces per year. As late as 1800,
China accounted for roughly one-third of the total world manufacturing
output and was still ahead of the West. By about 1830 the shares were
21
comparable. Household spinning and weaving in rural regions were
already important before the Ming period. Subsequently, the trend moved
22
towards full-time by-employment. In parts of China, ‘tilling by the male
and weaving by the female’ implied that it was then the norm for at
least one adult in a rural household to be engaged in non-farming
production all year round. Household industry retained a competitive
edge over factory production until the first quarter of the twentieth
23
century. This division of labour and the pervasive by-employments
supported the trade network that was manned by professional merchants
to move goods over long distances across the empire, a phenomenon
1
1
1
4
5
6
Latourette, Chinese, p. 575; Skinner, ‘Chinese peasants’, pp. 272-3; Gates, China’s motor.
Perkins, Agricultural development, p. 115; Feuerwerker, State and society, p. 86.
See Skinner, ‘Marketing and social structure’; idem, ‘Chinese peasants’; idem, City; Myers,
Chinese peasant economy, pp. 12-13.
1
1
1
7
8
9
Skinner, ‘Chinese peasants’, pp. 272-3; see also idem, ‘Marketing and social structure’.
Chao, Man and land, pp. 24-5; Wong, China transformed, chs. 2-3.
Harrison, Chinese empire, p. 290; cf. Elvin, Pattern, p. 85; Hartwell, Iron and early industrialism;
idem, ‘Markets, technology, and the structure of enterprise’; idem, ‘Cycle of economic change’.
2
2
2
2
0
1
2
3
Deng, Maritime sector, ch. 1, section 1.
Huntington, Clash of civilisations, p. 86; also Kennedy, Great powers, p. 149.
Fairbank, Cambridge history of China, vol. 11, pp. 17-18, 21.
Li, ‘Husband and wife tilling together’; see also Huang, Peasant family, pp. 44-57; idem, Peasant
economy; Chao, Cotton textile production, pp. 174-80.
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which has been described as ‘petty production at the household level and
24
great circulation of commodities in the economy’.
The production of non-food cash crops was on such a scale that during
the period between 1750 and 1875, southern China was the main supplier
25
of tea and of silk to the rest of the world. The empire traded with the
outside world not just as a diplomatic gesture but of necessity. For
example, China depended on imported war horses for the army and
imported raw materials for medicines and coinage. Although foreign trade
was often subject to state monopoly, bans on private trading represented
26
only short episodes in China’s long-term history. In terms of exports,
China supplied industrial goods such as lacquerware, ceramics, textiles,
metal products (made of iron, lead, copper/bronze, silver, and gold),
non-metal handicrafts, stationery, and books to Asia and, sometimes,
27
beyond. Not until the early nineteenth century was China downgraded
28
to the status of a primary exporter. Still, in the late Qing period (1760-
833), the ratio of domestic to international trade was 2.3-3.1:1 in
volume, thereby reflecting the importance of foreign trade in the econ-
1
29
omy. It is perfectly valid to depict the Chinese government as protecting
farming and tolerating trade and to represent the traditional Chinese
30
economy as an ‘agrarian commercial’ one.
Third, China protected and nurtured producers’ incentives with reason-
31
ably well-defined property rights. Thus, Tawney described the typical
figure in Chinese country life not as the hired labourer, but the landhold-
ing peasant. Similarly, Rawski maintains that ‘for at least the last millen-
nium, Chinese agriculture has been dominated by a large number of free,
32
small-scale farmers, working under a system of private land-ownership’.
This pattern of landholding remained dominant until after the First World
33
War. Internally, the widespread system of ‘village-based responsibility for
criminal offences’ and ‘neighbourhood watch’ systems safeguarded law
and order upon which the property rights and their enforcement depended
34
heavily. To guard its resources and investments, China had by the third
century bc built an effective defence line marked by the Great Walls
2
2
4
5
Zhang, ‘Petty production’.
During the Qing period when tea and silk formed at least 90% of the total value of Chinese
exports to Britain. For more information see Deng, Chinese maritime activities, ch. 5.
26
Morse, Chronicles; Hall, ‘Notes on the early Ch’ing’; Boxer, ed., South China; Wang, ‘Nanhai
trade’; Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kuo; Rossabi, ‘Tea and horse trade’; Le Corbeiller, China trade
porcelain; J o¨ rg, Porcelain; Chang, ‘Chinese maritime trade’; Ng, Trade and society; May and Fairbank,
eds., America’s China trade; Tampoe, Maritime trade; Cushman, Fields from the sea; Fan, ‘Long
distance trade’; Manguin, Trading ships’; Gardella, Harvesting mountains; Deng, Chinese maritime
activities, chs. 4-5; idem, ‘Foreign staple trade’; see also Greenberg, British trade; Iwao, ‘Japanese
foreign trade’; Furber, Rival empires; Chaudhuri, Trading world; idem, Trade and civilisation.
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
4
Deng, ‘Foreign staple trade’.
Idem, Chinese maritime activities, ch. 5.
Rawski, Economic growth, p. 193.
Wong, China transformed, p. 138.
Deng, Premodern Chinese economy, chs. 2-3.
Tawney, Life and labour, p. 34; Rawski, Agricultural change, p. 3; cf. Elvin, Pattern, ch. 15.
Fei, Peasant life; Buck, Land utilization.
Waverick, China: a model.
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against looting and killing by nomads and was the only ‘walled empire’
in world history.
Even when peace and internal law and order prevailed, to maintain
such a landholding peasantry over the long run was a major institutional
achievement, given that landed property is an ideal commodity for busi-
ness speculation and that China had an active market in land. In addition,
the Chinese practised partible inheritance which split family property by
the generation. Most of the time, China managed to keep a balance,
avoiding the concentration of property ownership, as the imperial state
maintained reliable communications for gathering information about dis-
asters and fluctuations in food prices, and held disposable resources such
as cash loans. It also took initiatives in respect of food storage, to provide
the peasantry with relief so that individual households rarely lost all their
property. The land-saving technology and high yields of Chinese agricul-
ture also mitigated the shortage of land.
The ideology of physiocracy (‘agricultural fundamentalism’) current
among the Confucian meritocrats also helped to check excessive rent-
seeking by the state, although local instances of corruption and occasional
35
derailment of the state apparatus occurred. This physiocratic policy
pushed the expansion of the empire in all directions including offshore
Taiwan. Such territorial expansion was the ultimate solution for land
shortages. Until the second half of the nineteenth century when Tsarist
Russia conquered parts of Siberia and Turkestan that had been controlled
36
by the Qing, the empire possessed a territory of well over 10 million
square kilometres, compared with 1.6 million square kilometres under
37
the Shang (c. 1520-1030 bc).
Fourth, some long-term patterns of China’s premodern growth have
been established. This work was pioneered by Elvin in 1973 and con-
tinued by Skinner in 1985. Both studies recognize regional shifts in the
centre of economic gravity and changes in technology, productivity,
demography, institutions, and economic structures. Both authors identify
the Song period (960-1279) as the premodern peak, after which no
significant progress took place. Elvin refers to this situation as a ‘high-
38
level equilibrium trap’ and Skinner writes of ‘regional cycles’.
Last but not least, although scholars have generally agreed that China’s
39
population experienced a rapid rise after the seventeenth century, some
studies have suggested that average standards of living in the advanced
south-eastern region (roughly Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, and Guangdong)
3
3
3
3
3
5
6
7
8
9
Deng, Development versus stagnation, ch. 2.
CBW, Encyclopaedia (1989), p. 1596.
Song, Regional cultures, p. 201.
Elvin, Pattern, p. 313; Skinner, ‘Structure of Chinese history’, p. 270.
Numerous works, e.g., Ho, Population of China; Perkins, Agricultural development in China,
pp. 192-216; Fei and Liu, ‘Population dynamics of agrarianism in traditional China’; and Lee, ‘Food
supply and population growth in southwest China’. A good summary is offered by Maddison in his
Chinese economic performance in the long run, ‘Appendix D’.
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4
0
matched standards in western Europe during the eighteenth century,
an observation which is well supported a fortiori by evidence from trav-
elogues and commentaries of Europeans. Levels of education and popu-
41
42
lar literacy in China also remained high.
II
The credibility of those findings, however, is subject to debate. Although
the information available on China’s socio-economic conditions over three
millennia is extensive, it is incomplete. Speculative estimates are inevitable
43
and contradictory conclusions are not uncommon. In terms of method-
ology, there have been two main problems for the Sinological approach.
First, what was the relationship between regions and the empire as a
whole? Second, where did ecological and political forces enter long-term
economic history?
To deal with an empire such as China which has multiple regions with
different climatic, hydraulic, topographical, and soil conditions, and
diverse sub-cultural groups and behavioural patterns, studies of short-
and medium-term developments of regions not only make sense but are
also easily manageable. Since the late 1950s, there has been a clear trend
towards studies of economic history by area or period although the
44
groundwork was laid much earlier, in the 1930s by Chi.
Regional studies over the short or medium term have contributed
greatly to the understanding of the mechanisms of Chinese development.
Yet, they often overlook a basic structural factor—namely that for most
of the time most of China had a nationwide market, a single government
(
which was active in maintaining food supply, famine relief, and price
control), a standardized written language, a uniform calendar and system
of weights and measures, a dominant Confucian code of conduct, a
nationwide transport network, and the mechanisms for social mobility
and inter-regional migration. Together, to some considerable degree,
40
K. Pomeranz, ‘Rethinking eighteenth-century China: a high standard of living and its impli-
cations’, paper presented at All-U.C. Group in Economic History conference (Davies, Cal.), Nov.
997; idem, Economy, ecology, comparisons and connections; Wong, China transformed, pp. 27-8; see
also Bairoch, Economics and world history, p. 95; for a more conservative estimate see O’Brien,
Intercontinental trade’, pp. 85-6.
1
‘
41
See, e.g., Barrow, Travels in China, p. 527; Ellis, Late embassy to China, vol. 2, pp. 128-9;
Bairoch, Economics and world history, pp. 106-8; Brook and Blue, eds., China, pp. 57-70.
4
4
2
3
Rawski, Education and popular literacy; Deng, Development versus stagnation, chs. 2, 7.
Fairbank, ed., Chinese thought and institutions; idem, United States and China; idem, Cambridge
history of China; Wittfogel, Oriental despotism; Balazs, Chinese civilization; Qian, Great inertia; Skinner,
Marketing and social structure’; Elvin, Pattern; Tang, ‘China’s agricultural legacy’; Deng, Chinese
maritime activities, ch. 4. See also Chao, Man and land, ch. 1; Mokyr, Lever of riches, ch. 9.
‘
44
Chi, Key economic areas, influenced numerous works, including Wang, ‘Nanhai trade’; Hartwell,
Iron and early industrialism; idem, ‘Cycle of economic change’; Twitchett, ‘Merchant, trade and
government’; Ho, ‘Loess and Chinese agriculture’; Myers, Chinese peasant economy; Shiba, Commerce
and society; Rawski, Agricultural change and peasant economy; Wang, Land taxation; Skinner, City;
Hsu, Han agriculture; Huang, Peasant economy and social change; idem, Peasant family and rural
development; Marks, ‘Rice prices, food supply, and market structure’; Rawski and Li, Chinese history
in economic perspective.
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these factors were able to iron out regional differences. Thus, these
differences may be less significant than some scholars suppose.
In contrast to the strong growth in regional studies, long-term and
empire-wide studies are becoming an endangered species, although these
two approaches are largely complementary and Chinese economic history
needs both. One reason for the scarcity of the wider studies is the
information and knowledge constraint that any individual faces. For
example, The official histories of the twenty-five dynasties contains over 33
45
million words in classical Chinese. It takes at least 10 years’ linguistic
and historical training for a student to be able to understand the material.
In addition, long-term and empire-wide studies which take a ‘broad-
brush’ approach are notoriously inclined to overgeneralization, which
easily attracts criticism. All these make long-term and empire-wide studies
46
a risky business. Nevertheless, some heuristic attempts have been made.
Turning to the second problem, it is acknowledged that the main
difference between economics and economic history is that economics
makes certain parti pris assumptions about the environment and the
political framework for economic activity. But throughout its history
China was not only invaded many times by nomadic peoples from outside
its borders but was also turned upside down many more times by its
own citizens, mainly the peasants: in all, there were 1,109 main military
conflicts between the Chinese and the northern nomads from 215 bc to
47
ad 1684 and as many as 225,887 recorded armed rebellions between
48
2
10 bc and ad 1900. The impacts of these conflicts and rebellions were
not trivial in terms both of accounting costs and of opportunity costs, as
huge numbers of people and animals were killed, vast areas of cultivated
land abandoned, and farming equipment and facilities destroyed. Severe
natural disasters such as the periodic flooding of the Yellow River had
similar effects. To ignore disasters such as these in dealing with China’s
economic past can thus be very misleading. Although periodic outbreaks
49
of political turmoil are now recognized by all Sinologists, it was not
until the early 1980s that the disaster as a major factor in long-term
economic history was systematically explored by Jones, who saw the
Mongol invasion of Song China during the thirteenth century as the
50
turning point leading to economic downfall for the Chinese. For a more
recent period, Rawski gave great weight to the economy-wide damages
51
caused by the invading Japanese in the period 1937-45.
4
4
5
6
S and S, Official histories.
Lee, Economic history of China; Elvin, Pattern; Bray, Science and civilisation in China (the vol.
on agriculture); Chao, Man and land; and more recently, Wong, China transformed.
4
4
7
8
Fu et al., Military history.
Li et al., Peasant rebellions; Fan, Chinese history; Liu et al., Pre-modern China; CBW, Encyclopaedia
(
1979), pp. 4766-816; Zhang and Zheng, Struggle of the Chinese peasantry.
4
5
5
9
0
1
See, e.g., Fairbank’s ‘dynastic cycle’ in his United States and China, ch. 5.
Jones keeps nothing as a constant. See his European miracle and ‘Real question’.
Rawski, Economic growth.
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III
The ‘comparative’ approach is more complicated and controversial than
the Sinological approach. The main debate in the field of premodern
Chinese economic history focuses on the key question of why China
failed to advance further from its outstanding achievements under the
Song. The implicit benchmark for such comparison is west European
economic growth since the Renaissance, especially the British industrial
revolution. Jones’s well-known statement that China came within a hair’s
breadth of industrializing in the fourteenth century sums up the prob-
52
lem. Needham asked the same question when he investigated why the
Chinese never passed the threshold required to develop controlled scien-
tific experimentation of the post-Renaissance type.
With very different clusters of endowments, very different price struc-
tures for factors of production, and equally different institutions, China
and western Europe were almost different ‘Darwinian species’ and com-
parison is problematic, because in the end the question inevitably becomes
53
why China was not another western Europe. Philosophically, although
the growth in western Europe was real and thus ‘Darwinian positive’,
the use of the European experience as a gauge to measure China can be
‘
Hegelian normative’ due to its built-in ‘counterfactualism’. This acultural
and non-endowmental approach is deeply rooted in European beliefs
54
such as Marxism, in a unilinear and unipotent developmental path. It
is worth noting that the fantasy of unilinear development violates Marx’s
own ‘historical materialism’ which is Darwinian in nature.
55
A recent work by Wong viewing China as a distinct system of economic
functions/mechanisms marks an important step towards the Darwinian
56
end, although one also needs to be careful not to glorify ‘Darwinian
longevity’ simply because survival in itself is not a necessary criterion of
growth and development. In the long run, as Keynes has told us, we are
all dead.
Alternatively, it would be possible to compare different economic per-
formances during different historical periods to see trends within the
same civilization—an approach pioneered by Jones who asks why the
57
Chinese did not repeat their Song achievements. Although he departs
from a simplistic acultural and non-endowmental comparison, the
approach posits socio-economic hegemony under the Song and socio-
economic inferiority afterwards. Hegelism will always be with us.
5
5
5
5
5
2
3
4
5
6
Jones, European miracle, p. 160.
Wong, China transformed, pt. 1.
Hegel, Philosophy of world history; Marx, ‘Manifesto’; Rostow, Stages of economic growth.
See Darwin, Origin of the species.
Marx claims that ultimately the ‘force of production’ determines ‘relations of production’ and
thus determines the developmental path. His ‘force of production’ is clearly ‘shaped’ by the
relationship between nature and man. If societies live in dissimilar physical environments with
different endowments, price structures, and institutions, how can they be destined for the same end
and in the same way? In other words, how can fatalistic Hegelism (which ranks superiority with
developmental paths) and naturalistic Darwinism (which rejects a unilinear path and allowed for
mutation and extinction and defines superiority as survival) ever be combined?
57
Jones, ‘Real question’.
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Yet, no matter how conscious economic historians are of the differences
between China and the West, the ready convertibility of Chinese econ-
omic performance to indices of west European performance has made
comparisons attractive (with a long list including per caput outputs and
incomes, man-to-land ratios, crop yields, population densities, degrees of
commercialization or urbanization, and standards of living measured by
58
calorie intakes).
The development of acultural and non-endowmental comparison
approaches probably also has something to do with the constraints of
knowledge about the world. Thus, some visible or tangible universal
yardsticks are needed to measure technological and economic status. It
is easy to gauge superiority by rank in a technical, economic, and military
pecking order. Thus, to some extent, it is justifiable to use western
Europe as a benchmark. Nevertheless, this European benchmark will,
pace Darwin, remain as a second-best solution regardless of opposition
from both the camp of the ‘reference’ (western Europe) and the ‘compa-
ree’ (China).
IV
When post-Renaissance Europe is used as the benchmark for comparison,
China’s past presents a huge paradox. Given all the achievements men-
tioned earlier, China seems to have possessed nearly all the important
ingredients for further development and at times even displayed major
59
characteristics of an incipient industrial revolution. It appears to have
been a genuine candidate to become the first industrialized society and
60
yet it never did so. The Hegelian development broke down. So much
61
so that China has been labelled ‘exceptional’ and ‘counterfactual’.
However, from a Darwinian perspective, a linear development is not
62
only optional and probably random but also relative. China is indeed
factual and anti-theoretical instead. Whether the economy was ever truly
63
a candidate to become the first industrialized society becomes irrelevant.
In this light, China seems much less puzzling. Sinologists tend to favour
this Darwinian vision, viewing China as unique. Nevertheless, attempting
to explain China’s failure to develop along European lines has been
mainstream historical practice. There are numerous comparative works
which have contributed to our understanding of the premodern Chinese
economic performance.
Nine schools of thought are singled out in this survey: those for which
5
5
6
6
6
8
9
0
1
2
A recent attempt was Maddison’s Chinese economic performance in the long run.
Elvin, Pattern.
See, e.g., Lin, ‘Needham puzzle’.
See Elvin, ‘China as a counterfactual’.
I reject the application of Darwinism the way ‘social Darwinism’ presents it, especially in terms
of competition for resources with non-peaceful means and pursuit of political, military, and economic
hegemony. Rather, my application of Darwin’s idea is limited to a process of evolution with a set
of specific economic conditions. Thus, my approach should be termed ‘socio-economic evolution’
rather than ‘social Darwinism’.
63
See, e.g., Wong, China transformed, pp. 101, 111.
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the key hypothesis is, respectively, ideological determinism, the market
model, environmental determinism, the class-struggle paradigm, popu-
lation models, technological determinism, the rent-seeking government
and exploitative landlordism conjecture, the role of the state, and the
world-system paradigm.
Ideological determinism owed much to Hegel who believed that socio-
economic development is determined by spirit. Such spirit can be inter-
preted as religions, ideologies, and ideas. Since religions, ideologies, and
ideas are not difficult to identify and they are often more or less unique
to individual civilizations or ‘cultures’, everything can be attributed to
64
them. For ideological determinists, a conclusive answer to China’s
puzzle can thus be given. For example, Weber represented the Chinese
mindset as the main reason for China’s lack of indigenous capitalist
65
growth. Fairbank in 1957 and Qian in 1985 went further and pointed
to ‘deficiencies’ in Chinese ideology and cultural values, deficiencies that
froze Chinese creativity, misled talent, wasted energy, and led the econ-
omy into backwardness. Needham, the doyen of the study of Chinese
premodern science and technology, is among those who agree with
66
such views.
Although such studies promote cultural understanding, the approach
has the flavour of fatalism, associating development with pre-programmed
choices that have been made for later generations long before they are
born. More significantly, it is known that in history peoples who shared
similar cultures or beliefs had very different paths of economic develop-
ment. In Asia, one can ask why the Confucianized (or partly
Confucianized) Japanese succeeded in adapting Western industrialization
while the Chinese who had patented Confucianism did not; neither, until
after the Second World War, did the other Confucian peoples (such as
the Koreans and Vietnamese). Similarly, the adoption from Europe of a
‘
modern’ ideology (Marxism-Leninism) after 1949 did not help much in
mainland China’s economic growth, whereas during the same period the
Confucian values supported rapid growth in ‘Asian tigers’. There can be
little doubt that ideology and cultural values do not provide sufficient
conditions for the explanation of growth or retardation.
The entrepreneurial spirit is often attached to this school of thought,
and China’s problem is frequently attributed to
entrepreneurship. But this suggestion is incompatible with the volume
and range of Chinese inventions and innovations in premodern times or
with the scale, scope, and profitability of Chinese commercial activities.
As regards the market model, a great many scholars view the market as
a
lack of
67
68
64
Weber, Protestant ethic; see also Tawney, Rise of capitalism. A renewed attempt was made by
Landes, Wealth and poverty of nations. When this bulky, narrative book is stripped to the kernel, the
subject is ‘culture’ and cultural determinism.
6
6
5
6
Weber, Religion of China, pp. 199-200.
Fairbank, Chinese thought and institutions; Qian, Great inertia; Needham, ‘History of scientific
thought’; idem, Grand titration, p. 115; see also Mokyr, Lever of riches, pp. 227-9.
67
Scherer and Perlman, eds., Entrepreneurship; see also Leff, ‘Entrepreneurship and economic devel-
opment’.
68
Needham, Science and civilisation in China; see also Deng, Chinese maritime activities, ch. 4.
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69
a locomotive for economic growth. Hicks elaborated this idea. According
to Hicks, Europe enjoyed favourable conditions for the diffusion of
markets, including the rise of an agricultural surplus, specialization, pro-
fessional traders, the establishment and maintenance of law and order,
70
money and credit, as well as mercantile policies. Alas, Hicks ignored
the fact that Europe was not unique. These conditions also existed in
China, where private ownership and basic property rights emerged as
early as the sixth century bc. China had a highly productive agricultural
sector which yielded a surplus, and was considered by Europeans to be
71
one of the most orderly and lawful societies on earth. In terms of the
market economy, China had a sophisticated monetary system and exten-
72
sive domestic and international trading networks.
As Feuerwerker
observed, ‘from the Song onward, China’s economy was essentially a
market economy in which most of the economic results were determined
73
by decisions made and actions taken in the private sector’. A recent
work by Kelly shows that Song China had an ‘economy-wide market’
74
without parallel elsewhere in the world until the eighteenth century.
Perhaps Hicks’s model is too romantic about the function of the
market. Why these favourable conditions did not lead China anywhere
near the achievements of western Europe becomes far less puzzling if we
go back to the basics of classical and neo-classical economics. Although
a functioning market can optimize the allocation of resources, it does not
automatically give rise to sustained technological and economic develop-
ment. Instead, the market may lead to a general equilibrium and hence
a Ricardian ‘stationary state’. Indeed, China merely looks like an economy
with a high degree of commercialization in a stationary state. So, the
market model itself has a problem: it expects too much from the market.
Deep in Hicks’s market model is the core of environmental determinism.
This was revealed unmistakably when he cited Europe’s geographic advan-
tages over Asia and consequently attributed growth to the bounty of
7
5
76
nature. Such a view is still influential. But what is often overlooked
77
is that there is an ‘Asian Mediterranean’ in the China seas. In the past,
different peoples met, migrated, and traded there. Monsoon winds fav-
oured shipping in the Asian Mediterranean and there is no reason to
view Asia as geographically inferior to the Mediterranean on the other
side of Eurasia. Therefore, geographic difference no longer provides a
safe haven for environmental determinism in studying China. Elvin’s
study of long-term environmental changes in China in fact indicates that
78
6
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Hicks, Theory of economic history, p. 7.
Ibid., pp. 23-6, 42, 68-71.
Waverick, China: a model; Elvin, Pattern; Hsu, Han agriculture; Bray, ‘Agriculture’.
See Skinner, ‘Marketing and social structure’; idem, City; Elvin, Pattern.
Feuerwerker, ‘State and the economy’, p. 304.
Kelly, ‘Smithian growth’, pp. 952-62.
See Hicks, Theory, pp. 38-9.
See Diamond, ‘Peeling the Chinese onion’.
Deng, Chinese maritime activities, chs. 1-2.
Ibid., chs. 2-3.
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it was human economic activities that determined environment rather
79
than the other way round.
There are two inter-related aspects to the marxist class-struggle paradigm.
First, a society is made up of rival classes with contrasting economic
interests: slaves versus their masters, serfs versus feudal lords, wage
workers versus capitalists, and so on. Secondly, political and economic
struggles between rival classes are the driving forces of socio-economic
80
change. But it is extremely doubtful whether a population can or should
be divided into different interest groups in the way portrayed. It is even
more questionable to view the tension between classes as the norm since
half Eurasia was under Marx’s own classless ‘Asiatic mode of production’.
Moreover, from this particular paradigm, a classless society may well be
the end of growth. Marx’s communism turned out to be a Pandora’s box.
Fundamentally, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism are not universal.
They were largely absent from China where landholding peasants were
much less divided by ‘class’ than their counterparts in other parts of
81
Eurasia. At best, China had a ‘gentry’ stratum, partly rural and partly
urban with possession of land and a good Confucian education and an
82
easy access to state power at the highest level. Ordinary members of
the gentry were involved in grass-roots administration.
Numerous works published during the 1950s and 1960s revealed dis-
tinct differences between the Chinese gentry and the feudal landholding
83
class in medieval western Europe and Tokugawa Japan. The Chinese
gentry was in principle non-inheritable and non-rigid. The average land-
holding of its members was in real terms far smaller than that of the
84
feudal upper classes of medieval western Europe and Tokugawa Japan.
Even if the Chinese gentry can be treated as a feudal class, the fact
that the feudal landholding class in these comparable societies facilitated
capitalism, and the Chinese gentry did not, presents a paradox. Treating
the Chinese gentry as a feudal class, as many marxist historians have
done, is utterly misleading, and represents a major step backward from
Marx’s ‘Asiatic mode of production’ which at least admits classless
features in Asia. It is worth noting that historians in mainland China
have divided into two deeply opposed camps in accordance with Marx’s
own contradictory views on the Eurasian world: the ‘party scholars’ are
die-hard class-strugglers who stick to the ‘Hegelian Marx’, while the
‘
liberal scholars’ are attracted by the ‘Darwinian Marx’ with the ‘Asiatic
7
8
8
9
0
1
Elvin, ‘Three thousand years of unsustainable growth’.
Marx, ‘Manifesto’.
See, e.g., Fei, Peasant life, pp. 191-4; Tawney, Life and labour, pp. 34-5, 38, 71; Buck, Land
utilization, pp. 194-7; Mousnier, Peasant uprisings, pp. 237-41; Hsu, Han agriculture, pp. 10-11,
3-14, 66-7; Chao, Man and land, chs. 7-8.
1
8
2
Overall, the landholding of the gentry class was more or less that of the middle or upper-
middle, well-to-do peasants. This was the pattern in the most advanced Jiangsu province during the
920s; see Li, ‘ “Ten Mu” per farmer’ and Buck, Chinese farm economy.
1
83
See Fei, China’s gentry; Chang, Chinese gentry; Marsh, Mandarins; Ho, Ladder of success; Eberhard,
Social mobility.
84
Rawski, Education and popular literacy, p. 23; see also Chang, Chinese gentry.
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85
mode of production’ as an alternative view on China’s past. As the
liberal Darwinian Marx was proved politically incorrect in Mao’s era, the
debate on ‘the preliminary stage of capitalism’ based on the Hegelian
86
Marx has reached a fruitless dead-end.
Population models are the next key presumption. Those who regard
population growth as having a negative impact on socio-economic devel-
opment are Malthusians whose model has been one of the most frequently
87
used in explaining China’s past. Chao portrayed over-population as the
88
main source of Chinese economic backwardness, but his work was
based on four questionable assumptions: that there existed no economic
divergence in peasant households which produced almost the same things
generation after generation; that there were few technological and/or
structural changes, especially in the later period of the empire; that the
supply of land was inelastic; and that there was no preventive check on
population growth. Thus the decline in the man-to-land ratio was taken
as the sole indicator of economic deterioration in China.
Recent research has suggested a different picture. China’s rural econ-
omy was highly divergent during the Ming-Qing period when vigorous
population increase occurred. In places such as the Yangzi Delta surplus
rural labour was absorbed almost completely by handicraft industries so
89
that the actual land-labour ratio in farming changed little. During the
same period technological changes continued to stave off diminishing
returns. For example, the vast interior region of the Yangzi-Han Plain,
some 400,000 square kilometres, was redeveloped and transformed into
a highly productive, remarkably commercialized and urbanized regional
economy, renowned for its regular net export of large quantities of rice,
raw silk/cotton, and cloth. This development was underpinned by a new
method of land use and reclamation (known as ‘diked paddies’), new
crops, and new market opportunities. The total annual grain output of
the region was at least doubled between the Chenghua reign (1465-87)
and the Yongzheng reign (1723-35) to 2.21 million tonnes. Of this
90
output, 62 per cent was marketed.
During the same period, in Shandong in the north east, a province
91
with one of the poorest man-to-land ratios in China, similar changes
took place. The acreage under cultivation was doubled, and a multi-
cropping system was adopted with a range of newly introduced plant
species. Consequently, despite a doubling of the population, Shandong
maintained its position as a net exporter of salt, wheat, dried fruits, soy
beans and groundnut products, raw cotton/silk and cloth, raw and
8
8
5
6
Brook ed., Asiatic mode of production in China.
For this lasting debate see Sanlian, ed., Issue of preliminary stages of capitalism in China; Yin,
‘
Preliminary stages of capitalism in Chinese agriculture’; Fang, ‘Economic structure’; Li, ‘China’s
landlord economy’; Xu and Wu, eds., Preliminary stages of capitalism in China.
8
8
8
9
9
7
8
9
0
1
Malthus, Essay on population.
Chao, Man and land.
Li, ‘ “Ten Mu” per farmer’; idem, ‘Husband and wife tilling together’.
Zhang, ‘Impact of agricultural development’, p. 42.
Liang, Dynastic data, pp. 207, 263, 272, 274.
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processed tobacco, pottery, and bamboo or sorghum mats, with an
92
estimated aggregate value of 2,050-2,240 tonnes of silver a year.
Evidence also shows that in some of the richest farming areas of Jiangsu
province, population control was practised, resulting in a growth rate of
93
only 0.3 per cent per year. Recent research has indicated that the
observed increase in food prices (often quoted as evidence for the alleged
deterioration of the man-to-land ratio in Qing times) was in effect a
symptom of a ‘price revolution’ caused by the importation of large
quantities of silver over time, together with the impact of China’s inte-
94
gration into the capitalist world economy. After all, there was no empire-
wide famine in Ming-Qing China as evidence of a universal shortage
of food.
Since agricultural technology and the amount of land under cultivation
were both elastic, it is unlikely that any crisis of diminishing returns
occurred in the advanced farming regions where rural ‘over-employment’
95
rather than ‘under-employment’ was the norm. Therefore, the Malthu-
sian man-to-land ratio approach loses its appeal in explaining China’s
economic performance in the late imperial period, because, overlooking
other vital variables, a man-to-land ratio remains almost meaningless, like
the face value of any unconverted currency in a foreign market.
In contrast to Malthus, Boserup argued that there is a built-in mech-
anism in human society to have sustainable technological growth at times
of increase in human biomass and that in history population pressure
could be a generator of technological change rather than a retardant for
96
it. Similarly, neo-institutionalism views population pressure as the driv-
ing force throughout history of institutional changes which in turn gener-
97
ated growth. Elvin is among a few ‘Boserupians’ who indicated that
continuous technological change in late traditional China was a key
factor in allowing the empire to cope with population pressure until the
98
seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the Boserupian model cannot explain
why densely populated east Asia lost its superiority to the less populous
western Europe. Boserup treated China as an exception by arguing that
the Chinese population went too far away from the ‘Boserup space’, an
9
9
optimal range for population growth and technological advancement.
She then slid into the Malthusian camp.
As regards technological determinism, Elvin’s core thesis is that China’s
9
2
3
4
Xu, ‘Economic growth of Shandong’.
Li, ‘ “Ten Mu” per farmer’, p. 3; idem, ‘Low population growth’.
P. Eng, ‘The silver standard and Asia’s integration into the world economy, 1850-1914’,
9
9
Working paper no. 175, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National Univ. (1993). Deng,
Chinese maritime activities, app. 3; idem, Premodern Chinese economy, app. 2; see also Flynn and
Gir a´ ldez, ‘Born with a “silver spoon” ’; Bjork, ‘Link that kept the Philippines Spanish’; Geiss,
‘
Peking under the Ming’, pp. 159-64; Cartier, ‘Les importations de metaux mon e´ taires’, p. 464.
9
9
9
5
6
7
Li, ‘Rational application of agricultural resources’.
Boserup, Agricultural growth, chs. 1-2, 4-5; see also Grigg, Population growth, p. 46.
As presented in North’s 1993 Nobel Prize winning work entitled Structure and change in economic
history, p. 126.
9
9
8
9
Elvin, ‘Skills and resources’, pp. 112-13.
Boserup, Population and technical change, pp. 87-90; see also Coleman and Schofield, eds., State
of population theory, p. 123.
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problem was chiefly technological in that rapid population growth finally
100
ate up the benefit of earlier, high-level technological achievements, and
101
thus handicapped the country’s growth. He described this as ‘quantitat-
ive growth, qualitative standstill’, or extensive growth with no improve-
ment in per caput income. Elvin’s more recent works have suggested a
technology-cum-investment lock-in which led to low-growth path depen-
1
02
dency.
Similarly, Kelly attempted to portray the Song period as a case
of one-off growth of a Smithian type without technological break-
throughs.
103
Technological determinism describes the Ming-Qing period fairly well
because unprecedented population growth did occur. Alas, it does not
explain how and why China managed to reach such a high technological
level in the first place. It it hard to prove the case that while early
generations were able to delay the impact of diminishing returns by
inventing new technology by ‘guessing right’ ahead of time, the later
generations lost this ability to some extent. It is particularly doubtful
whether technological growth really slowed down during Ming-Qing
times. If historians take account of the ‘green revolution’ which was
marked by the adoption of the European calendar-making technique, a
wide range of new crops from Europe (such as the potato) and from the
New World (sweet potatoes, maize, chilli, cotton, and groundnuts), it is
indeed a period of technological ‘windfall’. Also, in reality technical
inventions and innovations do not always translate directly into output
and income. It is normal to have a time lag between inventions and their
applications. So, invention rate alone is not the sufficient condition for
an economy to slow down at the same time and to the same degree.
China’s economy may not have been ‘trapped’, as a recent study suggests
that living standards there were still high by world standards during the
104
late Qing.
Furthermore, although the efficiency of traditional technology was not
continuously improvable, it certainly had a very long ‘shelf life’. In
Europe, ‘traditional’ technology based on trial and error promoted some
far-reaching changes including geographical discoveries in the fifteenth
century and a long line of technical improvements to machinery at the
hands of artisans including James Watt. In China, according to Buck, as
much as 25 per cent of agricultural growth during the 1930s was attribu-
105
table to streamlining of traditional technology.
If the invention rate
and new technology are not sufficient conditions for modern growth to
take place, China’s retardation is likely to have been much more than
merely a failure to take full advantage of the indigenous technology or
to adopt European technology.
1
1
1
1
1
00
01
02
03
04
Elvin, Pattern, chs. 17-18.
Ibid., p. 313; see also Fei and Liu, ‘Population dynamics’.
Elvin and Su, ‘Engineering the sea’; also see Elvin, ‘Environmental legacy’.
Kelly, ‘Smithian growth’.
Pomeranz, ‘Rethinking eighteenth-century China’ (see above, n. 40); idem, Economy, ecology,
comparisons and connections.
105
Buck, Land utilization, p. 203.
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Bray blamed the unique technical feature of rice cultivation which is
allegedly able to suck in any amount of capital and labour inputs without
106
reaching the point at which the marginal product of labour equals zero.
Thus, rice farming has no negative returns since its potential is never to
be fully realized. Rice-farming Asia, she argued, has little surplus labour
and capital available for non-agricultural and non-rural development. Her
theory indicates that an Asian rice economy will only break away from
this trap when subject to external shocks. Naturally one would ask why
rice-producing Japan modernized and why China, which never had a
mono-crop agriculture, did not make it. The fact that greater external
shocks like the Opium War were felt in Qing China than in Tokugawa
Japan helped but little. Wet rice cultivation is thus not the determining
factor in development in east Asia. To find a way out, Bray treated
Tokugawa Japan as a petty commodity producer that could escape from
the constraint of rice farming, ignoring the fact that China was a far
107
more ancient and active petty commodity producer than Japan.
In light of the rent-seeking government and exploitative landlordism conjec-
ture, a revisionist view treats China as a unique case in which owner-
farmers and small landlords prevailed, in contrast to the large feudal
holdings in much of medieval Europe and pre-Meiji Japan. Based in
mainland China and orchestrated by Maoism, scholars of this school held
that smallholdings farmed by their owners could barely maintain subsist-
ence because of the combination of their low productivity and heavy tax
burdens. Most tenants on larger estates also lived at subsistence level for
they were ruthlessly exploited by landlords for rent. Because the govern-
ment had only non-productive fiscal policies while landlords were inter-
ested only in re-investing in land and maintaining an extravagant lifestyle,
the economy as a whole was locked into stagnant agriculture with a lack
of economies of scale, weakness in the social division of labour, and a
deficiency in the formation of both the capitalists and the proletariat—
all harmful to capitalist industrialization. The school thus claimed that
China’s indigenous capitalist growth potential was retarded by the coun-
1
08
try’s income distribution system.
Western imperialism was often added
as another key retardant for native modern growth.
Some scholars have attributed China’s stagnation to the widespread
small scale of family farming. Bray viewed the underdevelopment of
capitalism in Chinese agriculture as a result of the overwhelmingly small
109
landholding pattern in the entire post-Han period (220-1911). Huang’s
study suggests that since around ad 1000 the ‘familization’ of rural
1
1
1
06
07
08
Bray, Rice economies.
Ibid., p. 217.
Numerous works from this school have been published, e.g., Han, Commercial economy; idem,
Society and the economy; Sanlian, Preliminary stages of capitalism; Xie, Selected materials; Li, ‘China’s
landlord economy’; Fang, ‘Economic structure’; idem, ‘Petty peasant economy’; idem, ‘Peasant
commercial production’; Liu, ‘Why capitalism never developed’; FDL et al., Bourgeoisie in modern
China; Wang, ‘Emergence of capitalism’; Wu, Capitalism and the domestic market; Zhou and Xie,
Study of tenancy; Cao, Agricultural economic history. See also Lippit, Economic development of China;
Riskin, ‘Surplus and stagnation in modern China’.
109
Bray, ‘Agriculture’.
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production in the Yangzi Delta, China’s most advanced farming zone,
110
led to economic ‘involution’.
But in terms of tiny holdings, China was
not alone. Land reforms in Russia (1906-11), Japan (1873) and South
Korea (1947-8) all aimed to create small farms with owner occupiers as
111
a necessary step towards capitalist industrialization. Large-scale farming
is thus not necessary to help industrialization, a phenomenon which is
called ‘diseconomies of scale’ in agriculture. Why, then, should such a
landholding pattern be perceived as a problem for Chinese economic
development?
Regarding exploitation, supposing that all the agricultural surplus were
taken away from the producers in the forms of rent and tax, the ordinary
farmer would have little left to support a bigger family. Population growth
would thus have to be modest simply because of the prevailing poverty
among the vast majority in society. Indeed, the Tokugawa feudal system
put the Japanese population under such a check, as convincingly argued
112
by Feeney and Hamano.
On the other hand, if population increase is
a sign of the retention of agricultural surplus by the masses, the notion
of the excessive rent-seeking landlord class/state collapses.
Despite the fact that the rise in landlordism is often represented as its
central feature, the period between the mid-eighteenth century and the
end of the nineteenth saw China’s population triple, at an annual rate
113
of 1.45 per cent.
One possible explanation could be that the Chinese
landlords and bureaucrats generated the population growth by their good
life. If so, the annual growth by these two strata would have to be
impossibly high: 2.5-4.8 per cent (if landlords and bureaucrats with their
families accounted for 40 per cent of the total population) or 3.3-6.3 per
cent (if they represented 30 per cent), both being too high a proportion
in the population according to most works, or 5-19 per cent (if they
114
constituted 10 to 20 per cent, which is more likely).
However, these
rates are beyond the human biological capacity for reproduction. So, a
rapid demographic growth must have been a result of a better material
life among the general public.
To elaborate this point further, it is often mentioned that during the
Ming-Qing period the tenancy rate was higher in southern than in
115
northern China.
The landlord determinism thesis expects to see less
population growth in the south than in the north. But evidence shows
just the opposite. Southern China had a higher population growth than
northern China, which means the landlord class was unable to siphon
1
1
10
11
Huang, Peasant family.
Gatrell, Tsarist economy, p. 111; Francks, Japanese economic development, p. 133; Hasan and
Rao, eds., Korea, p. 206.
112
Feeney and Hamano, ‘Rice price fluctuations and fertility’; cf. Hanley, Everyday things in
premodern Japan, ch. 6.
113
Based on the data for 1741-1851 and 1863-87 from Liang, Dynastic data, pp. 4-11, 251-4,
2
56-7; cf. McEvedy and Jones, Atlas of world population history, p. 167.
1
1
14
15
See Chang, Chinese gentry; Rawski, Education and popular literacy, p. 23.
Chao, ‘Land ownership patterns’; Li, ‘Intensification of rice production’; idem, ‘Rational
application of agricultural resources’; idem, ‘ “Ten Mu” per farmer’; idem, ‘Husband and wife
tilling together’.
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off the agricultural surplus. In the north, where the tenancy rate was
low, population growth was also strong which suggests that the govern-
116
ment was inefficient in tapping away the surplus, too. Here, population
growth itself provides an acid test of the rent-seeking government and
exploitative landlord explanation. In reality, the rent-seeking tendency of
the Chinese state was checked by society and the bureaucracy was fairly
117
professional by most standards.
After all, the state controlled only a
118
low percentage of GDP.
Moreover, if excessive rent seeking by the landlord class and the
government had taken place, the marxian concept of ‘primitive capital
accumulation’ and the formation of a ‘proletariat’ should have been
present, and China should have headed for capitalism. That was not
the case.
The role of the state was given strong emphasis by Gerschenkron, North,
119
and Thomas in explaining growth in the West. The same ‘visible hand’
approach appears in analysis of the Asian tigers’ miracle growth experience
120
in recent writings by Alam, Amsden, Wade et al..
With the benefit of
hindsight, the contemporary concept of ‘predatory’ and ‘developmental’
states has been used to examine China both implicitly and explicitly.
Bureaucratic efficiency and rent-seeking behaviour are neatly embodied
in many depictions of the Chinese state including ‘Oriental despotism’
1
21
(
referring to the state apparatus),
‘conservatism’ (applied to the entire
122
elite),
and ‘all-encompassing’ power of the state (combining both the
123
apparatus and elite).
At its centre, Fairbank’s ‘dynastic cycle’ has a
highly efficient predatory state. Mokyr’s recent view that Chinese tech-
124
nology depended on the state is another conjecture.
The Marxian
Asiatic mode of production, which portrays the Oriental state as the sole
125
economic decision-maker, falls into the same category.
In any case,
the state is held responsible for China’s retardation. The underlying
assumption of these works is that the Chinese state was highly efficient
in expropriating resources from the economy, distorting the market mech-
anisms, jamming business links, and hindering further growth. For
example, Fairbank maintained that as a well-organized institution the
imperial bureaucracy possessed enormous coercive power to control the
merchant class and to obstruct any undesirable or ‘non-orthodox’ growth
in the economy. Moreover, as an attractive profession, state service
1
1
1
1
16
17
18
19
Liang, Dynastic data.
Deng, Premodern Chinese economy, chs. 2-4; Wong, China transformed, pt. 2.
Feuerwerker, ‘State and the economy’, p. 322; Will, Bureaucracy and famine.
Gerschenkron, Economic backwardness in historical perspective; North and Thomas, Rise of the
western world.
120
Alam, Governments and markets; Amsden, ‘Theory of government intervention’; Amsden, Asia’s
next giant; Wade, Governing the market; Adelman, ‘Prometheus unbound’; Lall, ‘Malaysia’; Aoki and
Okuno-Fujiwara, eds., Role of government.
1
1
1
1
1
21
22
23
24
25
See Wittfogel, Oriental despotism.
See Wright, Chinese conservatism.
Landes, Unbound Prometheus, p. 15.
Mokyr, Lever of riches, pt. 3.
See Krader, Asiatic mode of production; Brook, ed., Asiatic mode of production.
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siphoned off a continuous supply of the best educated and most tal-
126
ented citizens.
Some evidence can certainly be found to support claims that the
Chinese state was both efficient and rent-seeking. China has remained
one of the largest political units since the time of Christ. From the
thirteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, hundreds of thousands
of tons of grain from taxation were shipped each year from southern
China to feed the northerners. This formed the most enduring, long-
distance, non-market-driven shipment of goods in world history. The
Great Walls, the most expensive defence system in the premodern world,
were initiated and supported by the state with huge material and labour
inputs. Most dramatically, there were cases of the sudden abandonment
of the multiple voyages by the Ming imperial navy to south-east and
south Asia, the Middle East, and (probably) east Africa and the sweeping
127
imposition of embargoes on shipping along the empire’s coastlines.
However, to balance extreme versions of the predatory state, there is
also plenty of evidence to suggest that the Chinese state was benign and
weak—or it appeared benign because it was a very inefficient predator
for rent. How can the widespread market activities (regional, inter-
128
regional, and overseas) be explained over the long run?
By definition,
commercialization on that scale can hardly be ‘engineered’ and ‘con-
trolled’ by a single centre of power, even with modern information
technology. Given the scope of commercial activity, one must assume
either that the anti-market policies of the state were cancelled out by the
market, or that the state was persuaded to be friendly to markets. A lack
of control explains why arts, urban centres, science, and technology
129
flourished in China. These achievements in turn dispute the judgement
that an institutional barrier was more prohibitive in bureaucratic China
than in Europe where an authoritarian bureaucracy was supposedly
absent. After all, the first recorded large-scale intensive growth (growth
130
in per caput terms) occurred in Song China, not in Europe or Japan.
Also, for argument’s sake, if the postulation of a super-efficient Chinese
bureaucracy were accepted, historians would still ask what the incentive
was for the Chinese state to distort the market, interfere with business,
and hinder growth, and why the Chinese state persisted in ‘misusing’ its
power over the centuries. Given the degree of economic sophistication
that China managed to reach, such a policy could only have entailed
enormous opportunity costs for the economy as a whole as well as for
the revenue and popularity of the government and thus backfired for
the state.
126
Fairbank, Chinese thought and institutions; idem, United States and China; idem, Cambridge history
of China. See also Balazs, Chinese civilization; Qian, Great inertia. Perkins, ‘Government as an
obstacle’, put it straightforwardly: the Chinese state was an obstacle to economic growth in the
nineteenth century. Many scholars support such views.
1
1
1
27
28
29
Cf. Deng, Chinese maritime activities, chs. 1, 4.
Skinner, ‘Marketing and social structure’; idem, City; Elvin, Pattern.
See Needham, Science and civilisation in China; Skinner, ‘Marketing and social structure’; idem,
City; Elvin, Pattern.
130
Jones, Growth recurring; see also Goudsblom et al., Course of human history, ch. 5.
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Turning to the drain of talent, evidence shows that openings in the
1
31
bureaucracy were extremely limited.
In the Northern Song dynasty
(
960-1127), the national average candidate success ratio was 10.2:1; while
the estimated ratio for the Qing dynasty was even poorer, varying between
132
30:1 and 100:1.
The long-term pass rate in the examinations is esti-
133
mated as less than 10 per cent of all candidates.
Only a minority of
the educated became officials. The majority of the Chinese literati had
to, and did, make a living outside officialdom, which inevitably benefited,
134
rather than harmed, the economy with quality human capital.
Alternatively, perhaps China’s failure was rooted in its centralized
state structure which overruled internal competition while inter-state
competition in Europe worked in ways comparable to market competition
135
and led western Europe towards an industrial revolution.
Mokyr’s
suggestion does not explain why and how this centralized state tolerated
growth in China until at least the sixteenth century and possibly later.
More important, China always faced competition from the Steppes and
increasingly so after ad 1000: from the Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus,
to name just a few. So, competition among political units does not seem
to have been a necessary condition for growth to continue after the Song.
Many scholars tend to forget that the traditional Chinese state was
premodern, if not primitive. It was neither ‘predatory’ nor ‘developmen-
tal’. Compared with early modern states in western Europe and Japan,
the Chinese state looks weak and inefficient. It is therefore not valid to
blame the Confucian state for something for which it was not designed
136
and over which it had virtually no control.
In particular, in the
Gerschenkronian model the role of the state is relevant to objectives to
generate modern growth. This agenda looks rather irrelevant to the
Chinese bureaucracy of premodern times (whose designed tasks and
commitments were chiefly to maintain social order and to secure people’s
137
other basic needs).
It would be asking too much of the premodern
Chinese state to demand that it should behave like a developmental
institution since that kind of state of ‘good behaviour’ was yet to be
developed, tested, and refined.
The last hypothesis to be considered in this context is the world-
system paradigm. Both Lenin and Wallerstein wrote of the existence of a
developmental hierarchy in a super-macro system embracing the entire
131
See Deng, Development versus stagnation, app. I; Fei, China’s gentry, pp. 71-82; Chang, Chinese
gentry; Ho, Ladder of success, pp. 35-6; Eisenstadt, Decline of empires, ch. 8; Chaffee, ‘Education and
examination’, chs. 3-5.
132
Wang, Civil examinations, pp. 65-6; see also Chang, Chinese gentry, pp. 83-92; Fairbank, Chinese
thought and institutions, pp. 251-68; Ho, Ladder of success, p. 262; Deng, Imperial examination system,
pp. 163-4.
1
1
1
1
33
34
35
36
Eisenstadt, Decline of empires, p. 60.
See Deng, Development versus stagnation, espec. app. 1.
Mokyr, Lever of riches, ch. 9.
Feuerwerker, ‘State and the economy’, pp. 321-4; Jones, Growth recurring, ch. 8. Any forced
analogy between the Soviet command economy under Stalin’s totalitarianism and the function of
the premodern Chinese state is misleading.
137
Wong, China transformed, pt. 2.
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138
world.
Within this world system, economic growth in less developed
societies is dictated by the advanced countries. Imperialist/colonialist
powers exploit the underdeveloped countries in the interests of the metro-
politan populations. It is in the interest of such powers not to see modern
economic growth taking place in the Third World. It is an appealing
thought, with the diktat imposed on China by the West, Russia, and
Japan after 1840, exemplifying the point. The symmetry in timing of the
downfall of China vis- a` -vis the rise of the West and of Japan since the
Opium War in 1840 implies that some kind of worldwide causality may
have been at work. But given that China and western Europe reached
more or less the same technical and economic levels around the seven-
139
teenth century,
world-system determinism does not tell us how and
why followers eventually became leaders and vice versa, as if the world
order is given both ab extra and a priori.
Goldstone suggested from another angle that there existed a macro
system across Eurasia during the early modern period. Key societies
(
namely England, France, Germany, the Ottoman empire, China and
Japan) synchronized in at least two areas— population pressure and
resource constraints (as seen in food prices, elite employment opport-
unities, and government budgets). Crises and ‘revolutions’ were the
140
universal result.
If this is true, why did revolutions in seventeenth-
century England, eighteenth-century France and, to a certain extent,
nineteenth-century Japan, usher in a new era of industrial growth, but
proved unhelpful to their Ottoman and Chinese counterparts? To put it
another way, why did a further developmental synchronisation have
to fail, which left mainland Asia to poverty but led Western Europe
to abundance?
No doubt, it is always easier to blame external factors for internal
problems. World-systems analysis serves such purposes. The world-system
paradigm has been the official line in mainland China and appeared in
most textbooks there. We only have to ask why economies such as
Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia, which had been treated
just as badly as China by the same world system, have so far developed
so much further than China.
V
The sheer number of possible hypotheses reviewed here shows just how
many variables need to be taken into account in dealing with the Chinese
experience of the past millennia. This survey also indicates just how far
apart scholars are in solving the paradox in China’s past. These hypoth-
eses are valid in explaining the development in many parts of the world
or for some parts of the Chinese past. But when dealing with long-term
1
1
38
39
Lenin, ‘Imperialism’; Mao, Selected works; see also Wallerstein, World-system.
Hartwell, Iron and early industrialism; idem, ‘Cycle of economic change’; Elvin, Pattern; idem,
‘
China as a counterfactual’; Bray, ‘Agriculture’.
140
Goldstone, Revolution and rebellion, ch. 1 and pp. 352-3, 355, 359-60.
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kent g. deng
premodern Chinese history as a whole, they become in one way or
another inadequate. A synthesis is far from being easy. The real challenge
comes from how to embrace numerous variables, none constant, in a
framework to explain how rational choices led a sophisticated system to
a developmental dead end. With such pluses and minuses, caveat emptor.
There are two common problems. First, although all these models have
offered sensible hypotheses of why China declined, they cannot satisfac-
torily explain why China rose in the first place, or vice versa. The cause
of this problem is the seeming inconsistency or incompatibility between
China’s achievement and decline, which forms the very core of China’s
paradox. Second, in the use of Europe as a universal benchmark the
factors contributing to European growth are often taken as the norm. If
a society enjoyed these conditions or factors, growth is expected to have
taken place. If not, something must have gone wrong. In searching for an
answer, anything which made China distinct from the West is inevitably
considered to have been responsible for China’s downfall. One tends to
fall into the trap of counterfactualism.
To avoid these common pitfalls, my own framework for explaining
Chinese economic history over the long term is that there existed a
convergent and self-regulating ‘three-pronged structure’ of agricultural
dominance, the landholding peasantry, and physiocratic government. This
structure created an overall equilibrium and allowed long-term growth of
a particular type. In this system, the peasantry, not the state, played a
141
central role in determining China’s path.
VI
Economic history seeks to understand the nature and pattern of economic
change over time. Chinese experience over the last millennia reached
premodern peaks in terms of the sheer size of territory, the extent of the
market, the number of people, the magnitude of output, range of techno-
logical inventions, degrees of environmental manipulation, types of insti-
tutions, varieties of policies/regulations, scopes of international influence,
and so forth. The Chinese experience thus forces economic historians to
treat the country’s development as seminal. Also, with rich historical
materials to work on, China embraces in its past almost all the key issues
for economic history. The country’s importance and utility in world
economic history will remain, and research in Chinese economic history
will attract even greater attention from the scholarly world in this new
millennium. Among the great diversity of topics, the function of the
Chinese state including the standardization of time, language, roads,
currency, weights and measures, as well as construction and maintenance
of the Great Walls and grand canals, may well have been the state
response to the demand for public goods from the general public to
lower transaction costs in the economy rather than the means to
142
strengthen imperial rule.
Although regional, sectoral, and short-term
141
Deng, Premodern Chinese economy.
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studies will continue to play their roles in the study of Chinese economic
history, there will be a good chance for general, cross-regional/sectoral
and long-term studies to gain in importance because of their comparative
advantage to reflect scale, scope, duration, and aggregates. New analytical
tools will doubtless be used to facilitate wider research into China’s
143
long-term experience.
Methodologically, a positive approach will be
consciously preferred to a normative approach. In particular, actual devel-
opment in the economy will overrule what the imperial court said about
the economy. For example, the effectiveness of government control cannot
be fully assessed unless one goes beyond the government sector and
144
even beyond the Chinese territory.
Last but not least, study of the
transformation of the Chinese socio-economic system will tell us more
about the nature of the Chinese system in the past. Such a task will rely
heavily on horizontal comparisons between mainland China and other
‘
Chinas’— Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and millions of ‘overseas
145
Chinese’.
Systematic comparisons in ideologies, family structures,
inheritance patterns, market responsiveness and incentives, policy sensi-
tivities, economic propensities, and so forth will help to identify the
critical conditions necessary for China either to change or not to change.
London School of Economics and Political Science
1
1
42
43
See Wong, China transformed, pt. 2; cf. Landes, Revolution in time, p. 33.
Among them, Jones’s macro- and multidimensional, comparative framework which can be
defined as a ‘panorama model’, may be more widely adopted because of its obvious advantages over
many other frameworks. See, e.g., Jones, European miracle.
1
1
44
45
See Deng, Chinese maritime activities.
For Taiwan, see Chao and Myers, First Chinese democracy.
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