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Misunderstanding the Chinese Economy—A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Susan Mann Jones
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Abstract

Four recent studies of the modern Chinese economy show how the disciplines of economics and history have produced different judgments about the economic changes of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. These differences are overridden, however, by shared disciplinary concerns with problems of inequality and the growth of the modern state. Economists have demonstrated statistically that regional variations (particularly urban-rural differences), coupled with the size of the Chinese polity, continue to pose many of the same administrative problems for the modern state that they posed during the late empire and in turn have produced some similar strategies for ruling. These enduring problems are located squarely in the order of production in China's agrarian peasant communities and in the logistical problems of distributing what is produced there through an integrated political and economic system.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , May 1981 , pp. 539 - 557
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1981

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References

1 Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976)Google Scholar, developed the conceptual framework for the use of this term.

2 Here again I generalize. Some economists, e.g., Carl Riskin and John Gurley, clearly do not conform to this stereotype; nor do historians such as Myers.

3 Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Skocpol, pp. 14–18.

5 On state-building, see work by Kuhn, Philip A.: “Local Self-Government Under the Republic,” in Frederic Wakeman and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 257–98Google Scholar, and “Local Taxation and Finance in Republican China,” in Jones, S. M., ed., Proceedings of the NEH Modern China Project, 1977–78 (Chicago: Center for Far Eastern Studies, University of Chicago, 1979), pp. 100–137Google Scholar. See also essays by P'eng-yuan, Chang, Fincher, John, and Chūzō, Ichiko in Wright, Mary C., ed., China in Revolution: The First Phase (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and essays in Gray, Jack, ed., Modern China's Search for a Political Form (London: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. More general discussions may be found in Wakeman, Frederic, “Introduction: The Evolution of Local Control in Late Imperial China,” in Wakeman, and Grant, , eds., pp. 1–25Google Scholar; and in Eastman, Lloyd, The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On distribution and inequality, see discussions of regional variation by G. William Skinner, cited in n. 8 below; Riskin, Carl, “Surplus and Stagnation in Modern China,” in Perkins, Dwight, ed., China's Modern Economy in Historical Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 49–84Google Scholar; and work by Watson, James L.: “Transactions in People: The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs,” in Watson, , ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Oxford and Berkeley: Basil Blackwell and University of California Press, 1980), pp. 223–50Google Scholar, “Hereditary Tenancy and Corporate Landlordism in Traditional China:A Case Study,” Modern Asian Studies 11, 2 (1977): 161–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Chattel Slavery in Chinese Peasant Society: A Comparative Analysis,” Ethnology 15, 4 (Oct. 1976): 361–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On sexual inequality, a topic not even broached in the studies reviewed here, see essays in Wolf, Margery and Witke, Roxane, eds., Women in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

6 See Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1962), Chap. 1Google Scholar.

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8 Skinner, G. William, “Regional Urbanization in Nineteenty-Century China,” in Skinner, , ed., The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), pp. 287–88, 230–36, 247Google Scholar.

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10 I refer here to work available in English—short stories by Hsun, Lu and Hsiao-t'ung's, FeiChina's Gentry: Essays in Urban-Rural Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar. Maurice Meisner and Guy Alitto have each discussed the attitude of twentieth century urbanites toward the countryside, from different perspectives. Meisner terms it “agrarian populism”; Alitto calls it “antiindustrialism.” See Meisner, Maurice, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (New York: Atheneum, 1970), pp. 197–209Google Scholar; and Alitto, Guy S., The Last Confucian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 94–96Google Scholar. Chinese journals of the 1920s and 1930s published vigorous critiques of the evils and enticements of city life. Two good examples are: Chia-yueh, I, “Chung-kuo tu-shih wen-t'i” (Urban problems in China), Min-to tsa-chih 4, 5 (July 1923): 1–25Google Scholar; and Ju-chou, Tung, “Tu-shih yü nung-ts'un” (Cities and villages), Chien-kuo yueh-k'an 9, 2 (Aug. 1933): 1–6.Google Scholar

11 See Skinner, G. William, “Cities and the Hierarchy of Local Systems,” in Skinner, , ed., The City, pp. 307–46, esp. pp. 338–41.Google Scholar

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14 Work by Ho Ping-ti (in one of his many intellectual guises), Dwight Perkins, Albert Feuerwerker, and Mark Elvin has shaped American perspectives on Chinese history. Ho demonstrated the historical significance of migration, cropping patterns, and new seed strains for demographic change. Perkins pressed the question of food production and population growth into the present by posing the problem of diminishing exreturns in agriculture and the need for technological innovation. Elvin's model of a “high-level equilibrium trap” is still generating supporting evidence and antagonistic revision from economists and historians. Feuerwerker's studies of the Chinese economy pulled together little-known research findings, fragmentary secondary literature, and data from his own research to provide the only coherent overviews of nineteenth and twentieth century economic development available until the publication of Myers' book. See Ho, , Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perkins, , Agricultural Development in China, 1368–1968 (Chicago: Aldine Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Elvin, , The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Feuerwerker, , The Chinese Economy, ca. 1870–1911 and Economic Trends in the Republic of China, 1912–1949 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1969 and 1977).Google Scholar

15 Unfortunate grammatical lapses here are exreturns amples of careless editorial work on this book that may undermine its otherwise extraordinary usefulness for teaching. Dr. Myers provided me with the following list of errata that readers should note: p. ix, line 7, should read 1949, not 1945; p. 7, the population figures in the graph should be read as millions, not thousands, and rates of growth are annual averages; on p. 16, figures 1–3, only the left column of figures should appear under each category; and on p. 30, the last column represents dollars, not percentages.

16 See Chen, Fu-mei Chang and Myers, Ramon H., “Customary Law and the Economic Growth of China during the Ch'ing Period,” Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i (Problems in Ch'ing History) 3, 5 (Nov. 1976): 1–32Google Scholar; 3, 10 (Nov. 1978): 4–27. See also Ramon Myers, “Merchants and Economic Organization during the Ming and Ch'ing Periods,” Ch'ing shih wen-t'i 3, 2 (Dec. 1974): 77–97.

17 These terms are defined in the text for the novitiate (pp. 61–63): the product market consists of the formal and informal marketplaces where buyers and sellers exchange commodities—rice, tea, silk, cotton cloth. The factor market is the market where services and resources (land, labor, and capital) are bought and sold. Land, for example, offers factor services that are paid for by rent; labor is paid for by wages; money by interest, investment by profit.

18 See King, Frank H. H., A Concise Economic History of Modern China, 1840–1961 (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 11Google Scholar.

19 See Yeh-chien, Wang, “The Secular Trend of Prices during the Ch'ing Period (1644–1911),” Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong 5, 1 (Dec. 1972): 347–68Google Scholar. Wang's most recent research on this subject appears in Chi-ming, Hou and Tzong-shian, Yu, eds., Modern Chinese Economic History (Taipei: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 1979), pp. 425–52Google Scholar, in an essay entitled “Evolution of the Chinese Monetary System, 1644–1850.”

20 See Jones, S. M. and Kuhn, Philip A., “Do- dimenmestic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion,” in Fairbank, John K., ed., The Cambridge History of China 10, I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978): 107–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar. New research, as yet unpublished, by Benjamin Elman at the University of Pennsylvania will add an important dimension to this argument by demonstrating changes in historical consciousness among the Ch'ing literati during the eighteenth century.

21 See Skinner, G. William, “Introduction,” in Skinner, , ed., The City, p. 25Google Scholar.

22 An assessment of the relationship between land tenure patterns and redistribution in Kiangsu is offered in an exhaustive survey of available data by Faure, David, “The Rural Economy of Kiangsu Province, 1870–1911,” Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong 9, 2 (1978): esp. 383–404Google Scholar. Faure's data only permit him to generalize about changes in tenancy rates and their relationship to the standard of living in rural areas; he does not address the question of differential access to rights over land and capital that divided tenants from landlords, and his complex argument should persuade any reader that quantitative answers to such questions are a long way off. I am grateful to Ramon Myers for providing me with a copy of this important article.

23 Myers, Ramon H., The Chinese Peasant Economy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.Google Scholar)

24 As an economist, Eckstein believes that the government had other options to pursue in agriculture. It could have chosen, e.g., the costsaving strategy of investing in improved railway networks to carry imported grain supplies into North China rather than opting to curtail foreign trade and pour investment into expensive water control systems in low yield areas (p. 311). Here, Univeras as throughout his study, he acknowledges the critical role of politics and ideology in shaping economic decisions (in this case, the decision to opt for agricultural self-sufficiency as opposed to reliance on foreign trade). Unfortunately, due to limitations of space, I have sidestepped the issue of foreign trade in the modern economy, which is an important aspect of both Eckstein's and Howe's analyses and is critical to an understanding of the development of the modern sector discussed by Rawski.

25 Kuhn, Philip A., Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Wakeman, Frederic, Strangers at the Gate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966)Google Scholar; and Murphey, Rhoads, The Outsiders (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

26 Parish, William L. and Whyte, Martin K., Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

27 See Parish, William L., “Socialism and the Chinese Peasant Family,” Journal of Asian Studies 34, 3 (May 1975): 613–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Edict of Yung-cheng 7 (1729), reprinted in Hsin-an (Kwangtung) County Gazetteer of 1820, in the prefatory section entitled “Imperial Edicts,” Part A, pp. 23–24.