Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
Understanding our Past, Informing our Present:
A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta
Bozhong Li
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Paper presented to CAGE Conference on Accounting for the Great Divergence
The University of Warwick in Venice, Palazzo Pesaro Papafava
Venice, Italy 22-24 May 2014
I. The golden opportunity for and the grim reality of Chinese economic historiography
II. A new approach: the GDP study of pre-modern economy
III. The study of the GDP of the Huating-Lou area of 1823-29
IV. The major findings
V. The Yangzi Delta: an early modern economy in East Asia in a global perspective
In the past decade, I have been working on a study of China’s early modern economy
before the West arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, by means of reconstruction of the GDP
of the Yangzi Delta in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The major results of the study
have been published.1 This paper, in some sense, summarily presents the study.
I. The golden opportunity for and the grim reality
of Chinese economic historiography
During the past three decades, China’s economy has experienced a great transformation
which is rarely seen in terms of speed and scale in world history. Understanding this
economic miracle is impossible without some knowledge of China’s long-term economic past.
This gives Chinese economic historians a great opportunity to look afresh at China’s
1
They mainly include: Li 2010, 2012A, 2012B and forthcoming.
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
economic past, in particular China’s real economic situation during the centuries before the
arrival of the modern West in the mid-nineteenth century. These centuries is also called
China’s early modern times.2
Views on this theme are highly divergent in previous scholarship. At one extreme, some
scholars assert that the Chinese economy had fallen into unending and ever-deepening
“involution” well before the mid-nineteenth century. At another extreme, other scholars hold
that the Chinese economy had performed so well that an indigenous capitalism, or “Chinese
capitalist sprouts,” had been well under way in the late imperial period. This debate has been
going on for nearly a century, but is still far from over; just the contrary, it is intensified by the
recent row regarding the claim of a “Great Divergence” between China and Europe around
1800, and will surely continue to be a focus of scholarly discourse about China for a long time
(Pomeranz 2000).
This is compounded by the widespread availability of data for economic history of early
modern China. Since historical materials are the basis of historiographical research, the
availability of the materials often determines the research. This high dependence of the study
of economic history on the sources has been highlighted much more in our era of “data
explosion”. With more and more new (or previously unknown) materials being discovered,
and the amounts of the sources available for the economic historians become surprisingly
huge today and they are still increasing at an inconceivable speed.3 Moreover, with the rapid
advance of information and digital technology, great amounts of historical materials are open
to almost all scholars.4 Since these materials could be used only by very few scholars before.
they can be regarded “new” to the majority of historians. The use of the new materials has led,
and it is pretty sure that it will continue to lead, to more new explanations of the past.5
2
The term ‘early modern times’ is used mainly in European history. It usually covers the period between 1500 and 1800,
more or less corresponding to the Ming and Qing dynasties of China (actually the latter half of the Ming dynasty and first
half of the Qing), a periodization often encountered in China’s economic histor. For this reason, ‘early modern times’ is used
to denote the period between 1550 and 1850 (Li 2000B). The term ‘modern times’ also originated in the West. When used in
this book, it refers to the nineteenth century in the Western European (especially Dutch) context, and the twentieth century in
the Chinese context.
3
One example is a great number of original business documents (deeds, contracts, leases and so on) on rural areas
which were produced during the period from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries have been discovered recently
in the remote Qingshui River 清水江 Valley in Guizhou, Southwest China, which a total which is estimated between
300,000 and 500,000 pieces. These documents have never been known before.
4
For example, the First Historical Archives of China in Beijing is carrying out an ambitious program of the Qing
Archival Documents Database 清代档案文献数据库 to digitize more than 10 million pieces of archival documents of the
Qing government and royal house which are stored in the archives. A great part of the job has been finished and can be easily
used.
5
In fact, based on the newly discovered materials, a few significant new explanations, some of which are really
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
All these are great opportunity to economic historians who should feel excited and
encouraged. But the reality is somehow disappointed: the discipline of Chinese early modern
economic history has manifested an ominous downward tendency after it reached its “Golden
Age” in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1991, in her review of the international scholarship of
Chinese history, Evelyn Rawski summarized: “Ming-Qing [early modern times in Chinese
history] socio-economic history is thriving. In terms of publication volume and the number of
active researchers, it is probably the single largest specialization in the field of Chinese
history.”6 Two decades later, however, a conference was held in Taipei, with a name of “the
Forum of the Study of Ming and Qing China at a Crossroads.”7 Since economic history has
been occupying an extreme important position in Chinese historiography (Li 2008), the plight
that the study of Ming-Qing China can be seen the epitome of Chinese historiography. The
sharp contrast of the situations in which the discipline was two decades ago and in the present
day raises a question: What has happened in the discipline of Chinese economic history
during the two decades?
One of the underlying causes of the decline of Chinese economic history, in my opinion,
lies in the nature of history. Among all branches of knowledge or academic disciplines,
history may be the oldest one, which is commonly defined as "the study of the way history
has been and is written – the history of historical writing" (Furay & Salevouris 1988: 223).
Perhaps because the object of research of this discipline is the human experience in the past,
which did happened and has not changed since it took place, many people believe that this
discipline also has for a long time remained largely unchanged. However, as Christopher Hill
wrote: “History has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not
change, the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past and finds new areas
of sympathy as it re-lives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors”(Hill 1991).
I think that Hill is right, although he ignores some other reasons of why history has to be
rewritten. For each generation, not just new questions are asked, but the materials and
methods with which history is written also change: the discovery of new materials and
invention of new methods make new interpretations of the past to be possible and necessary.
This issue is not the central concern of this article. Here I just want to emphasize: it is really
revolutionary or subversive to the conventional wisdom, have been produced. One example is Lee and Wang 2000, which
based on their analysis of a large quantity of primary records, overthrew one of the long-standing assumptions in Chinese
studies: the Malthusian Paradigm.
6
Rawski 1991. This review is limited to materials in French, English, Japanese, and Chinese covering the period
1500-1840. This review does not cover institutional, political, or intellectual history, nor does it treat the voluminous
literature on popular uprisings, ably surveyed by Wakeman 1977.
7
This forum was organized by The Committee for Promotion of the Ming-Qing Studies of Academia Sinica and held in
Academia Sinica on December 14, 2012.
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
the time of change for the discipline when it is facing more and more challenges. Since I have
been working in early modern economic history of the Yangzi Delta, I’d like in this paper to
address this issue from the field.
The Yangzi Delta under this study,8 or Jiangnan area in Chinese, has been the most
economically advanced area of China in the past millennia (and of East Asia before the rise of
modern Japan in mid-nineteenth century). More recently, the failure of the delta to produce its
own modern development makes it one of the leading roles in the story of “the Great
Divergence.” No wonder that it has been under the very intensive study in the past century in
China, Japan and the West. As a result, we have much better knowledge of early modern
economic history of this area than of any other parts of China. Yet in the previous scholarship
no consensuses have been reached even in most basic points of view of the general economic
state of the early modern Yangzi Delta. The delta had been seen “the richest area in the world”
(fu jia tianxia) in Chinese literature which was also convinced by foreign observers who
visited this area before the Taiping Rebellion.9 But the view changed greatly in the twentieth
century. In most of the century, most Chinese historians believed the delta was so poor that
the majority of the people who was living in this area lived in an extreme poverty.10 This
point of view is shared by China scholars in the West, though “population pressure,” not
“feudal exploitation,” is regarded the chief culprit behind the pauperisation.11 In the late
8
The delta is also spelt as the Yangtze delta in the Wade-Giles spelling system.
9
For example, Isidore Hedde, who visited the Yangzi Delta in 1843 as a member of a French trade mission to China,
wrote in his, he called Suzhou, the center of the delta, “the largest city in the world,” “the source of arts and crafts of superb
taste and of national fashion.” He emphasized that “this city is the capital of Jiangnan (i.e. the Yangzi Delta and neighboring
areas) which is called ‘the country of tea and silk’. It is not only the queen of arts and fashion, but most active industrial
center and most important commercial center and distributing center of goods. In short, it is the paradise on earth” (Hedde
1959 [1842]). It is worth noticing: this is an impression from a sharp eye of a businessman from Paris, one of the wealthiest
cities and the fashion leader of the West.
10
Most Chinese historians of older generations believe that the “feudal exploitations” (i.e., rents, taxes, usury loans, and
the like) were so severe that most peasant families could hardly survive if they had relied only on farming. Even when they
found new sources of income from textile handicrafts, they still lived at a minimum level of living. For example, Chen
Zhenhan (1955) argued that “rents did take not only all the surplus labors of peasants, but also most of their necessary labor.
As a result, what peasants owned could not maintain their bodies. Bai Gang (1984) also suggested that “landlords used rents,
commercial profits, and interests of usurious loan to exploit the products of peasants’ all surplus labor and necessary labor,
and hence lowered their standards of living to the lowest level needed for survival.”
11
They believe that the pressure created a growing surplus of labour which led peasants’ living standards to a
‘minimum subsistence’ level. Even worse, the living standards in the delta had been falling during the period between the
mid-thirteenth and late twentieth centuries. The more recent representative of this theory is Philip Huang’s “agricultural
evolution.” The basic idea of “involution” in the Yangzi Delta was put by Huang in this way: “[During the six centuries
before the 1980 reform, there was no] improved productivity or income per unit labor. Despite the vigorous
commercialization of the Ming and Qing, small-scale family farming near subsistence levels persisted down to the eve of the
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
twentieth century, however, this consensus was questioned by a few leading scholars such as
Jacque Gernet and Ping-ti Ho, who suggested that the Chinese lived quite well when
compared with their counterparts in the major countries of early modern Western Europe or
Togukawa Japan.12 Since the people who were living in the Yangzi Delta enjoyed the highest
standards of living in China, there would be no doubt that they did better compared with their
counterparts in most other parts of the world.13 The two views conflict so sharply that one
can’t know what the economy of the delta was really, in spite that the huge numbers of works
on early modern economic history of the Yangzi Delta have been published.
This situation reflects how serious the crisis is which Chinese economic history has been
suffering from in the past decades.14 One thing is clear: we must face up to the challenges
caused with the problems and have to seek for new approaches if we want to have Chinese
economic history emerge from the low ebb at which the discipline is at now.
II. New approach: the GDP study of pre-modern economy
Why are the general views of the early modern economic performance of the Yangzi
Delta so diverse and, in many cases, so polarized? Some may attribute it to the recent “data
explosion,” because many new explanations based on the use of the new materials are
subversive to the conventional ones. But this “data explosion” should not be the first
important cause.
China is one of the few countries in the world where the performance of a pre-modern
economic sector can be studied over an extended length of time because of China's great
historical tradition. The records are so rich that it is not difficult for historians to find some
evidence to support their points, no matter how novel or even bizarre the points are. Moreover,
though new materials come more and more, but for some areas such as the Yangzi Delta of
Revolution. … Subsistence farming persisted with no significant improvement in labor productivity,” “agricultural output
expanded enough to keep pace with dramatic population growth, but chiefly by intensification and involution. Productivity
and income per labor day either stagnated, as in intensification, or shrank, as in involution” (Huang 1990: 5, 12). I have
questioned this theory (Li 1996).
12
Jacque Gernet (1999: 483) argued that “The Chinese peasant of the Yongzheng reign (1723-35) and the first half of
the Qianlong reign (1736-95) was, in general, much better and much happier than his equivalent in the France of Louis XV.
He was usually better educated.” Similarly Ping-ti Ho (1989: 194) also suggested that there was a tendency of improvement
of standards of living in China in the eighteenth century. The income of the Chinese peasant was not lower than that of their
counterparts in France and surely higher than those in Prussia and Japan in the same period.
13
My own detailed research on food consumption (Li 2007) also demonstrates that in the Yangzi Delta, the living
standards were pretty high in the early nineteenth centuries which reached the late twentieth-century international level.
14
The crisis is not unique to Chinese economic history. Rather, it is a reflection of the “paradigmatic crisis” in Chinese
history (Huang 1991). But the “paradigmatic crisis,” it seems to me, is a “methodological crisis” in some sense.
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
the early modern times, the newly discovered materials are actually not very many; we still
have to build our research on the materials most of which have been known or used for long
time. Therefore, what should be responsible to the situation is not the sources, but the
methods which we use in our research.
There are many ways to study economic history and each way has its own particular
usability with its irreplaceable importance. Different methods are used in the study of early
modern economic history of the Yangzi Delta in the previous scholarship, but serious
problems which exist in the methodologies lead to misunderstandings and misconceptions
that finally to the confusion in the perception of early modern economic history of the Yangzi
Delta mentioned above (Li 2000A and 2001).
One of the problems is that the overwhelming majority of the scholars focus only on
some particular aspects of the economy. With these aspects, some two-dimensional pictures of
the economy as a whole have been pieced together and, based on these pictures, general
conclusions are drawn up.15 But how these aspects were connected with each other and
integrated into a single entity is little concerned about. As a result, we don’t really know what
the economy looks like as a whole. An economy, just as any actual object, is
three-dimensional in a physical sense, consisting of different parts which are well-organized
and structured according to certain proportions and proper relations among the parts. In spite
of the huge efforts made, therefore, such a three-dimensional picture of the early modern
Yangzi Delta has not been produced so far. The major reason is that the methods used in
previous studies were inadequate. Accordingly, we have a pressing need for new methods.
To work on the disadvantages and shortcomings, it is necessary to introduce new methods.
One of the most needed methods is basic quantitative measurement, which, very unfortunately,
is seldom accepted by the majority of historians in China. Only with the help of these tools,
can we know what the amounts, sizes and scales of different parts of an economy really are.
Based on the knowledge, it will be possible to know what the relationships among all the
parts of the economy are and how they are linked each other.
Without these standards,
criteria and indices, the picture of an economy pieced up will be questionable in terms of
objectivity and reliability as it is often seen in the previous studies. Moreover, only using
quantitative method, can we establish a suitable and universal set of standards, criteria and
indices to measure the economy and to compare with other economies.
15
This is often seen in the textbooks and large-volume works of Chinese economic history. In the books, the economy
is categorized into sectors (mainly agriculture, manufactures and commerce), institutions, systems, population, resources, etc,
and each issue is given one chapter or section. Then the book is concluded with some quite general statements, such as
“economic revolutions” of the middle imperial times and “economic stagnation” of the late imperial times. In this sense,
therefore, the Chinese economic history has operated in self-contained compartments.
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
GDP is one of the major objects of quantitative research. As an indicator reflecting the
gross value of economic activities, GDP provides a more complete picture of the economy
than any other indices that describe a certain branch of the economy. Also, given that GDP
measures the added value created by all branches of the economy, there is less double
counting compared to indices that measure gross value. Besides, GDP does not use
accounting methods such as cost, profit, and so on, which means there is less ‘flexibility’ in
calculation. Comparatively speaking, GDP is a more objective indicator.16 For this reason,
GDP is adopted by all countries and is the most widely used economic indicator.
One of the main advantages of the GDP study is that it has built up a complete set of
standards, criteria and indices to measure the performance of an economy of a certain area
within a certain period of time. These indices are interconnected and form an integrated whole,
presenting the economic situation of different sectors and the relationships between them.
These standards, criteria and indices are comparatively objective and neutral, and can be
applied to different regions and periods, which means that the circumstances of different
economies can be compared using the same yardstick. Therefore, studying the GDP of a
particular region in a particular period not only allows us to get a “three-dimensional” picture
of the economic performance in that time and space, but it also allows more comprehensive
and objective comparisons across different regions in the same period of time or the same
region at different times. The conclusions reached by these comparisons are obviously more
complete and objective than previous comparisons based mainly on economic systems and
individual economic sectors. It is this “universal” nature of the GDP study that makes it very
helpful to create a more integrated and complete picture of some pre-modern economies such
as that of the early modern Yangzi Delta.
The study of GDP of pre-modern China is not new, which can be traced to half century
ago when Chung-li Chang made an estimate, though very simple and rough, of the GDP of
China of the late nineteenth century.17 Recently, some scholars such as Liu Ti ((Liu 2009),
Guan Hanhui and Daokui Li (Guan & Li 2010) made their estimates of the GDP of late
imperial China. But their works suffer greatly from their own problems.18
16
There are some problems with using GDP as an indicator of the economic situation, and there is growing criticism of
its use in recent years. Despite its inadequacies, GDP is still the best compared with other indices that calculate the total
economy.
17
Chang 1962. A little later, Dwight Perkins made an analysis of China’s agricultural output in the six centuries since
1368 (Perkins 1968). This work comes quite close to GDP studies, but, unfortunately, only focuses a sector of the economy-agriculture.
18
The major sources in the two works are the official figures of population, cultivated land, taxes and so on recorded by
the imperial state of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Many scholars have warned that these figures are not reliable and full of
biases and mistakes in many cases. Moreover, the two works cover a centuries-long time temporally and the whole country
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
Besides their own particular problems, these studies flaw methodologically. More
specifically, none of them has tried to apply the System of National Accounts (SNA) in their
studies, but the SNA is crucial in reconstructing GDPs. They didn’t do because the SNA is
usually used only in the study of a modern economy, not a pre-modern one.
Theoretically, the SNA can be used in the study of past economies. However, obvious
problems will be encountered if we use the SNA in historical research. The main problems are:
(1) the SNA emphasizes market sectors; it only calculates transactions that are made using
currencies and ignores the ‘traditional’ non-market sectors; (2) the SNA emphasizes the
integration levels of national economies; in its calculations of national incomes it only takes
into account national economies that are integrated; (3) national incomes are not good
indications of wellbeing; (4) there are insufficient statistical data from the nineteenth century
and before to construct national accounts (Smits, Holings & van Zanden 2000: 4–10). Due to
these problems, it is only very recently that the SNA is used in pre-twentieth century
economic history.
Angus Maddison, one of the pioneers in the use of the SNA methods in pre-modern GDP
studies, was also the first person who calculated China’s GDP of different periods over the
last 2,000 years in a context of global comparison.19 However, due to various limiting
circumstances, his pioneering work contains unavoidably certain problems.20 In the study of
GDP of early modern Europe using the SNA methods, great advances have been achieved.
The methods have been improved in the study, in particular by Jan Luiten van Zanden and his
research team who have conducted a groundbreaking and in-depth study of the GDP of the
Netherlands in the early modern era (van Zanden 2002; Smits, Holings & Zanden 2000). They
successfully came out with the concept of the Historical System of National Accounts
(HSNA), laying the foundations for applying the SNA in pre-twentieth century economic
research. Their research has provided a good help to scholars in who are trying to study early
modern GDPs of other parts of the world. My study of GDP (Li 2010) is inspired greatly by
spatially. But as Dwight Perkins suggested, China is a large and diverse country, a period of centuries is long, and the sources
used are themselves great in number and variable in quality (Perkins 1968: 10). Therefore, the better method, it seems to me,
is to carve out a narrow segment of China’s economy in terms of area and time as the object of our GDP study in this stage.
Only based on the results of the studies of major areas of China, can a valid and meaningful study of the national GDP be
possible.
19
The results are in Maddison1998/2007.
20
Given that Maddion’s research relies entirely on Western literature on China’s economic history and his GDP
calculations are based on the assumption of a constant per capita consumption in a long period of one millennium from the
Song to the mid Qing (970-1820 AD), some of his results are problematic. Some scholars have totally rejected Maddison’s
conclusions, but, in my opinion, his studies have opened up a whole new area of research and his contribution should not be
denied.
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
their works.
III. The Study of the GDP of the Huating-Lou Area of 1820s
My study of the GDP of the Huating-Lou Area of 1820s aims to provide a relatively
complete and concise description of the economy of the Yangzi Delta in the early nineteenth
century from a comparative perspective. My intention is to experiment with comparative
methodology through a selected focus on the Huating-Lou area of the period of 1823-29 first.
In the future, the same approach will be applied to the study of a larger region and for a longer
period if the experiment is successful.
1. The area and period
The area of Huating-Lou area is located in the eastern part of the Yangzi Delta.
Geographically, it roughly corresponds to modern Songjiang County in Shanghai Municipality.
Administratively, this area was divided into the two counties of Huating and Lou under the
jurisdiction of Songjiang Prefecture after 1725. The land area of the Huating-Lou area, about
600 square kilometers, had not changed much during the two centuries between 1725 and
1949.Three administrative units, one prefectural (Songjiang Prefecture) and two
sub-prefectural (Huating and Lou Counties), shared the same city as their capital
administration seat.
The population of the area was reported as 563,052 in 1816. Since there are no statistics
available for the 1823-29 population, I use the 1816 figure as the proxy. Accordingly, the
density of the population of the area was above 900 people per square kilometer, which made
this area rank among the most populous areas in China of the day. As the heart of Songjiang
Prefecture, the area had a very important place in the Chinese economy because it had been
the center of the Chinese textile industry for centuries.
The period under study, 1823 -1829, was the beginning of a great climatic change that
raged over eastern China for half a century. The chief landmarks of the change are the floods
of 1823 and 1829 (Li 2007). The period was also the beginning of the century-long decline of
the economy in most parts of China. Before then, China had enjoyed prolonged economic
prosperity, but after then, in stark contrast, its economy performed extremely poorly. The
turning point is around 1820, which is seen as the beginning of the Great Depression (Wu
Chengming 2001: 241). In short, 1823 through 1829 were the first years of the century-long
climatic and economic deterioration in this selected area of the Yangzi Delta, and in China at
large.
2. Methods
To achieve a more complete and comparable picture of the economy of the Huating-Lou
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
area in the 1820s with the Netherlands case in mind, the GDP approach is very helpful. The
approach has some advantages over other approaches. First, though the GDP analysis is only
one method to measure the size of an economy, it surely provides us with a more complete
picture of the economy. Second, because the methods of GDP studies are quite elaborate and
standardized, they can provide a coherent macroeconomic framework covering the whole
economy. Third, since GDP methods are “universal” in some sense, they can be used widely
and consistently, and there can be confidence that the same thing is being measured in each
area and period.
This study is the first attempt to apply the methods of GDP studies to Chinese economic
history prior to the twentieth century. The major methods used here are roughly what are used
in measuring GDP today, which include the three major approaches: production, expenditure,
and income. These approaches are all applied in this study, but the production approach is the
major one.
3. Sources
A good reason that the area of Huating-Lou and the period of 1823 -29 were chosen for
this study is that good data are available regarding this time and place, which allow us to
conduct a GDP study in the pre-modern Chinese context. Being one of the most economically
and culturally accomplished areas of China, Huating-Lou has abundant local literature of the
past,21 which contains valuable information on the local economy dating to the beginning of
the nineteenth century and beyond.
An important feature of this study is that it makes use of a wide range of materials from
many different kinds of sources. I have relied principally on three types of materials: local
histories or gazetteers, agricultural handbooks, and modern field investigations.
(1) Gazetteers
The Hua-Lou area and the Songjiang Prefecture, the upper administrative unit the area
belonged to, had a long tradition of producing gazetteers. Compared to those compiled in
most other locales in China, the gazetteers produced in Songjiang Prefecture are superior in
both quantity and quality. Among them, seven are most closely connected to this study.22
21
As one of the economically and culturally richest areas of China, this area has boasted its abundant local literatures
which contain valuable information on the local economy. For example, only in the Huating-Lou area in the delta which area
under my study, there are a total of 242 different gazetteers produced in the original Songjiang Prefecture before 1949: one
city gazetteer, 14 prefecture gazetteers, two department gazetteers, 85 county gazetteers, five garrison gazetteers, two
sub-prefecture gazetteers, and 133 village, township, and office/station gazetteers. If one includes writings on local topics like
specialized gazetteers, collections of literary writings, private records, and so on, the total number would be much larger. The
Shanghai fangzhi ziliao kaolu, compiled by the Shanghai Normal University Library, collected over 840 writings on local
data produced before 1949. For more details, see Xu Hongxin: Shanghai jiu fangzhi shuping.
22
We have consulted seven local gazetteers of the area in question: Jiaqing Songjiang fu zhi 嘉慶松江府志 (1818),
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Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
These gazetteers contain abundant information on the local economy during the late
eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century. In addition, information on the Huating-Lou
area is also kept in gazetteers of the neighboring areas.
(2) Agricultural handbooks
One of the important characteristics of traditional society of the Yangzi Delta was that its
scholars were deeply involved in local affairs. For this reason, they left behind many records
relating to the local economy in their private writings. As early as in the late ninth century, the
Songjiang scholar Lu Guimeng wrote Leisi Jing (Book of tillage implements), the first
important writing on the curve-beam plow in China’s agricultural history. In the pre-modern
times, the interest in local economic activities grew more and more strongly. Some of them
recorded their observations of practices and performances of local economy in details in their
writings, which are very useful to our study. Of these writings, the most important are
“agricultural handbooks,” which deal directly with agriculture—not only farming practices,
but also other aspects of the rural economy.
The most valuable source of the materials crucial to this study is an agricultural
handbook titled Pumao nongzi (A report on agriculture in the Huangpu River and Mao Lake
area) dated 1834, which carries rich and firsthand information on the rural economy of the
Huating-Lou area from 1823 through 1834, with a considerable amount of quantitative data.
The book was written by Jiang Gao, a local scholar who had a special interest in agriculture.
The book is packed with information on the rural economy at the time, and the reports given
are detailed, full, and accurate. What is even more commendable is that the author conducted
field surveys and interviews with farmers in the course of writing this book.
(3) Modern field investigations
In the twentieth century, several modern field investigations were conducted in this area
and neighboring areas, both by Chinese and by foreigners. The major results of the Chinese
investigations that relate to this study are available in the 1991 edition of the Songjiang xian
zhi and other twentieth-century gazetteers of the neighboring areas. Among the investigations
carried out by foreigners, the surveys made by the Japanese South Manchurian Railway
Company from 1937 to 1941 provide the most precise and detailed body of information
available on the society and the economy of the Huating-Lou area in the first half of the
twentieth century.
4. Data issues
Though they contain rich information of economic history, these materials cannot be used
Guangxu Songjiang fu xuzhi 光緒松江府續志 (1884), Qianlong Huating xian zhi 乾隆華亭縣志 (1791), Guangxu
Huating xian zhi 光緒華亭縣志 (1879), Qianlong Luo xian zhi 乾隆婁縣志 (1788), Guangxu Lou xian xu zhi 光緒婁縣
續志 (1879), and Songjiang xian zhi 松江縣志 (1991).
11
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
in the GDP study if two problems are not solved.
First, GDP is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a region in
a given year. In a pre-industrial economy, however, many activities are nonmarket, but they
are still considered part of national income. Therefore, a value must be calculated even when
the good or service has no actual market price.
Second, though the Yangzi Delta has rich local literatures of various sources which are
better both in quality and quantity than all other parts of the country, the data from these
sources are far from ideal for the purposes of the GDP study. No constant and reliable
economic statistics are available for the area and period under study. There are many key gaps
in the materials, both quantitative and qualitative, and much of the information can also be
questionable. Moreover, much of the information which contains in these data is not
particularly reliable.
The first problem is actually not very serious. Though the economy of the Yangzi Delta
in the period under the study was still a pre-industrial one, it cannot be ignored that by the
early nineteenth century, a comparatively developed market had been the hub of the economic
activities in the area. Almost everything, including major productive factors could be (or had
to be, in many cases) acquired from the market. For this reason, many crucial items of goods
and services had their market prices which were recorded in local literatures such as Pumao
nongzi.
The second problem is a really serious one. To solve it, I took the following strategy:
First, I have combed the useful information as much as possible out of a wide range of
materials from different kinds of sources, in which the first-hand records were kept. Each and
every item of information was collected with careful consideration of the use to which it is to
be applied. Since the useful data are fragmentary and sporadic in primary sources and there
are gaps within the data, I have to take some measures to “invent” estimates by means of
assumption, inference and verification to fill the gaps and make the data complete.
The next step is to test the consistency of the data, either original or “invented.” The data
are evaluated not just on the basis of their internal consistency, but also in relation to those
which come before and after, to eliminate errors. In other words, judge the quality and validity
of the information on whether they are consistent with those from the materials of the earlier
and later periods or from the materials of the neighboring areas, with historical development
in the intervening periods and areas. It is understood from the beginning that the methods
through which the data were generated, the associated complexities, and the primary factors
all contribute to their uncertainties and potential misinterpretations.
Once collected, validated and verified, the data were categorized as series according to
the issues of the study such as prices, prize, wages, inputs, outputs, incomes, taxes,
12
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
government expenditures, etc, and in such a way that they can be readily accessible. Even
then, it is still needed to re-check the relationship within the certain series, as François Furet
put: “Documents and data exist no longer for themselves but in relation to the series which in
each case precedes or follows: it is their comparative value which becomes objective instead
of their relation to some elusive ‘real’ substance” (Furet 1971).
IV. The Major Findings
Some findings are reached in my study, which, if they prove true, may shed important
light on our knowledge of the Chinese economy before the mid-nineteenth century.
Using the production approach, I have worked out the values added in major sectors of
the Huating-Lou economy in the years 1823–29. From table 1, we can see that the GDP was
around 13 million taels of silver per year.
Table 1. Value Added, in the Huating-Lou Area, 1823–29
Value Added
Percentage
(1,000 silver taels)
Primary Sector
agriculture
4,002
30
fisheries
166
1
total primary
4,168
31
546
4
textile
1,270
9
“manufacturing”**
2,666
20
4,482
33
1,727
13
service
277
2
finance
486
4
external trade
907
7
water transportation
251
2
education
358
3
government
843
6
4,849
36
Secondary Sector
“ordinary”*
total secondary
Tertiary Sector
commerce
total tertiary
13
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
GDP
13,500
100
Source: Li 2010: 247, table 12-1.
Note: 1 tael (liang 兩) equals approximately 37.3 grams.
* The “ordinary” sectors include tailoring, hardware making, carpentry, plastering, and
so on.
** The “manufacturing” sectors include rice husking, wine brewing, oil pressing,
construction, salt making, boat building, brick and tile kilning, and so on.
The results I arrived at with the approaches of income and expenditure are in tables 2 and
3. Since the maximum difference of the three results is within 4 percent, we can conclude that
the GDP of the Huating-Lou area per year from 1823 to 1829 was around 13,500 taels of
silver. Because the population of the area was around 560,000, the GDP per capita was about
24 taels of silver.
Table 2. GDP (Income Approach) of the Huating-Lou Area, 1823–29
Income
Percentage
(1,000 silver taels)
Wage
8,271
61
Rent
1,468
11
366
3
2,670
20
759
6
13,534
100
Interest
Profit
Depreciation
GDP
Source: Li 2010: 251, table 12-4.
Table 3. GDP (Expenditure Approach) of the Huating-Lou Area, 1823–29
Expenditure
Percentage
(1,000 silver taels)
Private consumption
12,330
90
Government consumption
875
6
Fixed capital formation
759
6
Net export
-229
-2
13,744
100
GDP
Source: Li 2010: 250, table 12-3.
14
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
I have also worked out estimates for employment. Its distribution by sector in the
Huating-Lou area from 1823 to 1829 is in Table 4. The sectors are divided as primary,
secondary, and tertiary following common practice in economics. Within the primary sector,
there are two forms of employment, i.e., agriculture and fisheries; within the secondary sector:
ordinary, textile, and manufacturing; whereas in the tertiary sector there are commerce,
service, banking, external trade, water transportation, education, and government.
Table 4. The Structure of Employment in the Huating-Lou Area, 1823–29
Employment
Percentage
(1,000 “full-time” adult workers)
Primary Sector
agriculture
68,000
26
fisheries
3,100
1
total primary
71,100
27
“ordinary”
13,300
5
textile
113,000
43
“manufacturing”
22,200
8
148,500
56
commerce
18,400
7
service
6,600
3
banking
5,000
2
external trade
1,200
2
4,300
2
education
4,000
2
government
3,800
1
total tertiary
43,300
16
Total
262,900
100
Secondary Sector
total secondary
Tertiary Sector
water
transportation
Source: Li 2010: 219, table 9-7.
The volumes of the internal and external trade, the major exports, and the balance of
payment in external trade are summarized in tables 5, 6, and 7. The volume of external trade
accounts for 27 percent of GDP.
15
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
Table 5. Trade in the Huating-Lou Area, 1823–29
Volume
Percentage
(1,000 silver taels)
Urban-rural
5,020
45
External
3,670
33
Within rural areas and
2,490
within urban areas
Total
11,180
22
100
Source: Li 2010: 425, table app. 10-7.
Table 6. Major Imports and Exports in the Huating-Lou Area, 1823–29
Export volume
Import volume
(1,000 silver taels)
(1,000 silver taels)
42
0
1,432
0
Soybean
0
936
Raw cotton (ginned)
0
625
Salt
63
0
Total
1,537
1,561
Rice (husked)
Cotton cloth (blank)
Source: Li 2010: 423, table app. 10-6.
Table 7. Balance of Payment, in the Huating-Lou Area, 1823–29
Volume
(1,000 silver taels)
Import
2,110
Export
1,560
Total
3,670
Balance
-550
Source: Li 2010: 424.
From these tables, we can observe the following situations.
First, agriculture accounted for only 30 percent of the economy of the Huating-Lou area
from 1823 through 1829, both in terms of GDP and of labor force, while the shares of
industry and services were considerably higher. This is sharply contrary to the perceived view
16
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
that agriculture constituted the bulk of the Chinese pre-modern economy.
Second, land rent accounted only for one-eighth of national income in this area during
the period under study. This calls into question the long-held view that this factor had been the
most important component of national income, without exception, in pre-modern China.
Third, the volume of external trade accounts for 29 percent of the GDP. This result is
much higher than previously thought by scholars.
In addition, the urbanization of this area was also surprisingly high, reaching a level of
40 percent for the period.
All these results challenge the conventional wisdom that the economy of this area was
still “agricultural” or “traditional” before the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, we should
note that this period was not a “normal” one in climatic and economic terms, and the GDP
estimated is most likely to have been lower then than it had been in the periods prior to this
particular period. As such, the added values of rice and cotton cloth that appear in the tables,
the two top staple goods produced in this area, should be more on the conservative side and
may well be adjusted higher. In any event, the real GDP in this area should have been
considerably higher in the first decade of the nineteenth century or in the last decades of the
eighteenth century as compared to that in the years of 1823-29.
V. The Yangzi Delta: an early modern economy in East Asia in a global perspective
Almost everybody of us agrees that a comparative approach is crucial to economic
history. It is, however, difficult to make meaningful comparisons because of the complex
issues of comparability and incomparability between economies. To make the comparisons
reasonable, a set of standards and indicators that can be equally applicable to both economies
under comparison is indispensable. Otherwise, we may fall into the trap of some kind of
“-centrism”—for instance, Euro-centrism, Sino-centrism, and so on—all of which are equally
detrimental. In light of this, it is unfortunate that in most of the previous studies comparing
the economic histories of China and the West, common standards and indicators were not
carefully built into their analytical framework. As a result, many were flawed with subjective
judgments and arbitrary comparison.
Moreover, most China scholars have been taking the English pattern of early modern
economic growth as the standard or even only model as they observe the case of China. Yet, it
is apparent that the early modern economic growth of the Yangzi Delta may in fact have more
similarities with that of the Netherlands than with that of England. The two areas of the
Yangzi Delta and the Netherlands also shared some other common features, in terms of
location, population density, topography, and so on. Therefore, they are certainly better
17
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
objects of comparison in the study of early modern economic history.
In the GDP study of the early modern Netherlands, Jan-Pieter Smiths, Edwin Holings,
and Jan van Zanden have provided us with a clear picture of the Dutch GDP in the 1810s. The
major results are summarized in Table 8.
Table 8. Value Added by Economic Branch in the Netherlands, 1807
Value Added
Percentage
(millions of guilders)
Primary Sector
agriculture
119.3
24.3
1.4
0.3
120.7
24.6
mining
3.1
0.6
paper
1.0
0.2
foodstuffs
41.9
8.6
textiles
22.0
4.5
clothing
30.9
6.3
leather
10.0
2.0
chemicals
3.9
0.8
metal and engineering
4.3
0.9
shipbuilding
0.3
0.1
utilities
0.1
0.0
construction
16.9
3.5
other industries
8.2
1.7
142.7
29.1
foreign trade
57.0
11.6
domestic trade
25.1
5.1
maritime shipping
0.8
0.2
international river
2.4
0.5
inland navigation
30.8
6.3
other transportation
13.7
2.8
communication
0.9
0.2
fisheries
total primary
Secondary Sector
total secondary
Tertiary Sector
shipping
18
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
banking
2.8
0.6
insurance
1.2
0.2
government
32.0
6.5
domestic servants
17.6
3.6
education
1.9
0.4
remaining services
8.0
1.6
catering
12.9
2.6
housing
19.7
4.0
total tertiary
226.9
46.3
GDP
490.3
100
Source: Smiths, Holings, and van Zanden 2000: table 4.5.
If we compare the economies of the Huating-Lou area in the 1820s and of the
Netherlands in the 1810s, many significant similarities and differences can be found between
them, as shown in tables 9 through 12.
Table 9. Comparison of the Structure of GDP (%)
Huating-Lou
The Netherlands
1823–29
1807
Primary sector
31
24.6
Secondary sector
33
29.1
Tertiary sector
36
46.3
Total
100
100
Source: Li 2010: 270, table 13-3.
Table 10. Comparison of the Structure of Employment (%)
Huating-Lou
The Netherlands
1823–29
1807
Primary sector
27
42.7
Secondary sector
56
26.0
Tertiary sector
16
30.5
Total
100
100
Source: Li 2010: 271, table 13-4.
Table 11: Comparison of Urbanization (%)
19
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
Huating-Lou
The Netherlands
1823–29
1815
Rural
60
65
Urban
39
35
city
27
17.5
township
13
17.5
100
100
Total
Source: Li 2010: 271, table 13-5.
Table 12. Comparison of National Income (%)
Huating-Lou
The Netherlands
1823–29
1807
Wage
38.6
61
Capital income
33.1
14
(interest and rent)
Profit
16.2
20
Depreciation
6.3
6
Indirect taxes
6.8
-
Total
100
100
Source: Li 2010: 274, table 13-8.
It is easy to see that the two economies in the early nineteenth century were quite similar
to each other in the following aspects.
First, agriculture accounted only for less than half of both GDP and labor force. In this
sense, neither of the two economies can be regarded as a “traditional economy,” which is
defined as one dominated by agriculture.
Second, the urban population accounted for more than one-third of the whole population.
By any pre-modern standard, the two societies were quite urbanized.
Notwithstanding these similarities, important differences can also be seen in the
comparison. The most important one is that the share of industry (the secondary sector) was
higher in the Huating-Lou area than in the Netherlands (33 percent vs. 29 percent), whereas
the share of services (tertiary sector) was much lower in Huating-Lou than in the Netherlands
(36 percent vs. 46 percent). These differences reflect the realities of the two economies: the
Huating-Lou area and its neighboring counties were the center of the flourishing cotton textile
industry of China, which produced 60 percent of the cotton cloth in China’s domestic
20
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
long-distance trade and foreign trade, whereas the Netherlands was the largest center of
entrepôt trade of the European Continent by 1800, and trade took up a large part of the Dutch
economy.
A recent comparative study made by Jan Luiten van Zanden and myself (Li & van
Zanden 2012) also indicates that in terms of the GDP per capita (PPP), the Yangzi Delta
roughly matched Western Europe as a whole in the early nineteenth century, though lower
than the Netherlands.23 It proves that the levels of economic development between the Yangzi
Delta and Western Europe were considerably close each other. This is the basis from which
the “Great Divergence” took place.
Based on the comparisons, a question can be asked: Was the pre-mid-nineteenth century
economy of the Yangzi Delta still “traditional”, or just the opposite, it had been some kind of
“modern” by the time?
There has not been a generally accepted definition of “modern economy.” Here, I take a
definition from the point of view of macroeconomic structure that may be the simplest: A
“modern economy” is an economy in which industry and services supersede agriculture and
become dominant, in contrast to the pre-modern economy, in which agriculture constitutes the
major component.
De Vries and van der Woude, as is shown in the title of their coauthored book The First
Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815
(1997), argue that the Dutch economy had become a “modern economy” by 1815. If the
economy of the Netherlands at the beginning of the nineteenth century can be seen as “the
first modern economy” in the world, we can say that such a “modern economy” also existed
in the Yangzi Delta in general and the Huating-Lou area in particular.
Although this modern economy is definitely different from the modern economy that is
commonly perceived, it is evident that some kind of “modernity” existed in the two types of
“modern” economies—those of the Netherlands and Yangzi Delta. The simultaneous
coexistence of two modern economies at both ends of Eurasia reveals that economic
“modernity” is not uniquely West European. Moreover, the economic modernity shared by the
Netherlands and the Yangzi Delta is significant for their later modern economic growth.
Though lagging behind England, the levels of GDP per man-hour in the Netherlands remained
among the highest in the world during most of the nineteenth century (Maddison 1991, 1995),
23
Though the Netherlands failed to produce their own industrial revolutions, it ranked among the top few countries
which had highest GDP per capita after it lost its leading position in economic growth after the mid-eighteenth century when
the Industrial Revolution took place in England. According to an estimate, even the early twentieth century, in terms of GDP
per capita, the Netherlands ranked fifth worldwide in 1900, only after New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Belgium.
(http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_per_cap_in_ 190-economy-gdp-per-capita-1900).
21
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
whereas the levels of GDP per capita in the delta also remained the highest in China and were
among the highest in East Asia during most of the nineteenth century. This affirms that
economic modernity not only existed in the two areas, but played a very important role in the
actual long-term process of economic modernization in both economies.
This modernity explains partly why the Yangzi Delta’s success in modern economic
growth. Though suffering from long-time economic depression and social unrest, tangled civil
wars and wars, the delta still became the second industrialized area before the mid-twentieth
century, just after Japan. In the story of China’s catch-up with the Western countries though
its recent economic miracle, the delta is the protagonist. The delta had been much behind
Western Europe in the level of economic development before 1979 when the economic
reform began in China. In the following three decades, in particular since 1992, however, the
delta’ economy has been growing dramatically. In terms of GDP per capita (PPP), in 1978 the
GDP per capita of the delta was something like US$ 1,200, less than 1/8 of that of France
(US$ 9,424), 1/5 of that of the UK (US$ 5,727), and was only half of that of Portugal
(US$2,349), the poorest country in Western Europe. In 2009, however, the GDP per capita of
the delta rose to US$ 11,600 in official exchange rate, growing almost tenfold compared with
the 1978 figure. Since the Chinese currency is thought to be undervalued considerably, it is
estimated that the 2009 GDP per capita of the delta should reach US$ 21,190 (in the 2009 US
dollar) using the PPP measurement, which was 60% of that of the UK (US$ 35,200) or 65%
of that of France (US$ 32,800), equaled to that of Portugal (US$ 21,800) and much higher
than that of most of the ex-communist countries such as Hungary (US$ 18,600), Poland
(US$ 17,900) and Russia (US$ 15,100). The narrowing of the gap between the Yangzi Delta
and the major West European countries means that the delta is successful in its rapid catch-up
with Western Europe. In this sense, the catch-up can be seen a “Great Convergence” of the
two ends of Eurasia in the level of economic development (Li forthcoming). The
contemporary “Great Convergence” is just a result of the catch-up.
If we know the economic performance of the Yangzi Delta in past centuries, it would be
not difficult to understand why the Yangzi Delta performs so well in China’s recent catch-up
with Western Europe.
Finally, I’d like to conclude this paper with the bellow words.
Since the GDP study is new to Chinese economic historians, it is natural that it is treated
with some skepticism. But the approach is really worth trying, because only by the process of
application can the approach be improved. As a “venture” to many scholars in some sense, the
new approach surely involves some risks but promises good rewards, since the methods (in
particular the SNA) are already comparatively mature, while huge amounts of historical
22
Li: A GDP study of the early modern Yangzi Delta The area and period
materials provide the hidden riches to be exploited. It will be worth to try even if one fails,
because anything new has to be tried by somebody. In this sense, an example is furnished
by my study of the GDP of Songjiang of 1820s, which provides, for the first time, a more
complete picture of the economy of an area of China before the modern West arrived in the
mid-nineteenth century, and, a more objective comparison between economies of one area of
China and one area of Europe. Though the conclusions and statements of the study, as in any
works on economic history, are the first approximation to the reality only, it represents a new
step to the efforts of seeking for a new and better understanding of the Chinese economic
history. The initial reaction from the academic circle to the study is pretty encouraging,24
which can be seen an evidence that the mainstream of Chinese economic historiography is
open to new approaches. In sum, we are living in a new era, in which it is inevitable for
economic history to meet new challenges. Only be open to new ideas, new approaches and
new methods, can we better understand and deal with the challenges and turn challenges into
opportunities.
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