Year: 2000
Type: article
Abstract: made since the turn of this century to explain China's premodern success and its downfall after the Opium 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 industrialised. IThe findings of the 'Sinological approach' can be highlighted under five headings.4 First, China seems to have enjoyed superiority in premodern Eurasia in science and technology, 5 agricultural productivities (labour, land and total factor), 6 and military power.7 Various studies have indicated that the Chinese probably reached a premodern ceiling for development in all these areas.8 For example, in terms of the number of inventions, the Chinese almost certainly held the world record on the eve of the European Renaissance with a long list including metallurgy, gunpowder, the compass, silk, porcelain, paper-making and paper currency, block printing, mechanical clocks, and examinations to recruit civil servants, to name but a few.Second, by premodern standards China achieved a high degree of commercialisation and urbanisation.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, capitalist elements were evident in China long before Christ.9 Moreover, the construction and maintenance of nation-wide roads, the waterway arteries (known as the Grand Canals), the investment in large-scale watercontrol schemes, the circulation of minted currencies, the manipulation of grain prices, and the use of standardised weights and measures lowered transaction costs throughout the economy.10 Furthermore, a remarkable degree of social mobility as well as internal migration provided citizens with some incentives to study and accumulate wealth.11 The Water Control in China, A Selected Bibliography).However, since few such works have been translated into other languages, their influence has remained minimum beyond the Japanese border.4 Mokyr catalogued the Chinese technological superiority into as many as ten categories in his The Lever of Riches, pp.209-18.
Source: The Economic History Review
Author: Kent G. Deng
Institution: London School of Economics and Political Science
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2014546568