China: 600 years history 1368-1968

Maddison's "The world economy, a millenial perspective" (link). contains an extensive analysis of the course of population, total output, and per capita product over the past 2000 years. There is a greater mass of survey material on Chinese population for the past two millennia than for any other country, thanks to the bureaucratic system and its efforts to monitor economic activity for tax purposes. Until 1840, China was more advanced, technically, economically and socially, than the western powers of Europe that had embraced the enlightenment in the 18th century soon followed by the industrial revolution that sarted in England.

In assessing the growth of agricultural output, Perkins (1969) is a masterpiece of scholarly endeavour, covering the period 1368–1968, on which I relied heavily. Perkins’ analysis is basically Boserupian. He feels that China responded successfully to population pressure, and managed to sustain more or less stable per capita consumption over the period he covers. This was achieved by increases in cultivated area, in per capita labour input, and land productivity. It involved heavy inputs of traditional fertilisers, irrigation, development of crop varieties and seeds which permitted multiple cropping, diffusion of best–practice techniques by officially sponsored distribution of agricultural handbooks (available at an early stage due to the precocious development of paper and printing). Crops from the Americas were introduced after the mid–sixteenth century. Maize, peanuts, potatoes and sweet potatoes added significantly to China’s output potential because of their heavy yields and the possibility of growing them on inferior land. Tobacco and sugar cane were widely diffused in the Ming period. The pattern of Chinese food consumption was heavily concentrated on proteins and calories supplied by crop production which makes more economic use of land than pastoral activities. Chinese consumption of meat was very much lower than in Europe and concentrated on poultry and pigs which were scavengers rather than grazing animals. Milk and milk products were almost totally absent. Chinese also made very little use of wool. Ordinary clothing came largely from vegetable fibres (hemp, ramie, and then cotton). Quilted clothing supplied the warmth that wool might have provided. The richer part of the population used silk. Silk cocoons were raised on mulberry bushes often grown on hillsides which were not suitable for other crops.

Chinese rural households had many labour–intensive activities outside farming. They raised fish in small ponds, used grass and other biomass for fuel. Important “industrial” activities were centred in rural households. Textile spinning and weaving, making garments and leather goods were largely household activities. The same was true of oil and grain milling; drying and preparation of tea leaves; tobacco products; soybean sauce; candles and tung oil; wine and liqueurs; straw, rattan and bamboo products. Manufacture of bricks and tiles, carts and small boats, and construction of rural housing were also significant village activities. Chinese farmers were engaged in a web of commercial activity carried out in rural market areas to which virtually all villages had access. All these non–farm activities appear to have intensified in the Sung dynasty (960–1280). Thereafter some proportionate increase seems plausible because of the growing importance over the long term of cash crops like cotton, sugar, tobacco and tea. In the nineteenth century well over a quarter of GDP came from traditional handicrafts, transport, trade, construction and housing and most of these were carried out in rural areas. It seems likely that their proportionate importance was just as large in 1500 as it was in 1820. On the basis of Rozman’s (1973) rough estimates, it would seem that there were no dramatic changes in the proportion of the urban population (persons living in towns with a population of 10 000 or more) in China between the Tang dynasty and the beginning of the nineteenth century. This is in striking contrast to the situation in Western Europe, and is a significant piece of corroborative evidence of the comparative performance of China and Europe.

Another type of evidence which is very useful is the detailed documentation and chronology of Chinese technology in Needham’s magnum opus on Chinese science and civilisation. Although it is weak in analysing the economic impact of invention, it is an invaluable help in assessing comparative development in agriculture, metallurgy, textile production, printing, shipbuilding, navigation etc. and in its assessment of Chinese capacity to develop the fundamentals of science.

The big advance in Chinese land productivity, and the more modest advance in living standards came before the period we are examining here. The big shift from wheat and millet farming in North China, to much more intensive wet rice farming south of the Yangtse came in the Sung dynasty (tenth to thirteenth century). The evidence strongly suggests that per capita GDP stagnated for nearly six centuries thereafter although China was able to accommodate a large rise in population through extensive growth.

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Mis à jour le 12/05/2016 pratclif.com