Economic Change in China, c.1800–1950

Abstract

This 1999 book provides a concise introduction to the economic history of one of the major world powers. China is probably the only major economy for which it is still not certain whether modern economic growth at the aggregate level had taken hold by the middle of the twentieth century. This introductory analysis of the process of economic change in China from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth looks at the nature of the traditional economy, covers the pressure it came under from both internal and external sources during the nineteenth century and assesses the evolution of modern features in the twentieth. With maps, tables and bibliography to guide the student, this concise study will provide an invaluable introduction to crucial aspects of Chinese history.

Contesting the Indigenous Development of 'Chinese Double-Entry Bookkeeping' and its Significance in China's Economic Institutions and Business Organization Before c.1850

“…Deng, 2000). Accounting researchers here have developed an argument that, while perhaps not achieving all the features of DEB, Chinese businesses and their bookkeepers/accountants over the centuries developed an indigenous form of 'Chinese double-entry bookkeeping' (which we here label 'CDEB') that was at least adequate for the development of the increasingly lively commercial sector in China, whereby the overwhelmingly agricultural economy brought a significant amount of its output (including home produced textiles) to market, and trade increasingly spread across regions as well as internationally (Richardson, 1999;cf. Xu and Wu, 2000).…”

“…Richardson, 1999;Ma, 2004 (Chiapello and Ding, 2005) and in particular, now that China has joined the global standard setters, 10 for the project for internationalisation of accounting and 9 In a separate paper (Anon***, 2012) we shall report our own investigations into what is known about the development of the Chinese railways from around the end of the 19 th century and the possible interrelationships between the Western and Chinese histories of the emergence of industrialized 'big business' (and the role of Japan- Kudo & Okano, 2011 In order to manage this wide range of historical material, we limit our explorations in this paper by selecting our historical dividing line around the middle of the 19 th century. In China the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, following the first Opium War, was the first of the 'Unequal Treaties' that created the Treaty Port system that gave trading and other privileges to the Western powers and has generally been seen (especially in conventional Chinese presentations of history- Richardson, 1999: 40-41) as the watershed that 'opened up' China to Western influences (cf.…”

“…For the period up to 1850 there is evidence now increasingly recognised by economic historians (e.g. Richardson, 1999;Yuan & Ma, 2010;Deng, 2011;Brandt et al 2011) that the Chinese economy had an active merchanting and banking sector, with links to international trade, and that the bookkeeping and accounting systems that were developed were sufficient, if not to promote, at least not to inhibit the growth of that activity.…”

“…While economic historians now recognise considerable activity in bringing agricultural surpluses and by-products (such as cloth) to market and that in the 18 th century Chinese prosperity still matched or exceeded that in Europe (e.g. Richardson, 1999), these factors may well have played an important role with regard to the potential for industrialisation (which we consider further in Anon***, 2012). 90 It is not clear to us why the conclusion from the calculation described at Ji, 2003: 76-7 indicates that hiring a long-term labourer is loss-making, given that the revenue from his working of the mulberry trees (for silk production) has not been included.…”

China's domestic trade during the Treaty-Port Era

“…39.5 Recent work stresses that domestic trade frictions are critical for our models to fit the data; for example, Ramondo, Rodriguez-Clare, and Saborio (2016) calculate that without accounting for domestic trade frictions Denmark's per-capita income relative to the U.S. is predicted to be 34%, far off what is in the data (94%), while with domestic trade frictions this rises to 81%.6Morse (1926) andFairbank (1978) provide detailed historical accounts of China's treaty port era.7 Dernberger (1975) summarizes the earlier literature. See alsoRawski (1989),Richardson (1999).…”