The Economic History Of China With Special Reference To Agriculture

Excerpt from The Economic History of China: With Special Reference to Agriculture But in this eagerness for the new it was soon found that not all modern improvements could be applied to the exist ing conditions. Thus many labor-saving devices lose their value in a country where land is dear and labor cheap. Just as it was discovered that past remedies cannot cure modern economic ailments, so modern improvements are worse than useless if the conditions are dissimilar. Innovations are im provements provided they are adapted to the conditions on which they are to be grafted but not otherwise. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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For centuries the Yangzi delta has acted as the locomotive of China's economic growth. This book examines the surprising phenomenon of a long period of economic growth from 1620 to 1850 in the traditional agriculture of this extremely densely populated area, when no new land was available and no major technological breakthroughs occurred. Intensification of farming and rationalizations of resources saw an optimum model of peasant family economy become the norm. The contrast with western patterns of development improves our understanding of China's economic performance, past and present.

Covering the time span from the Shang to the Qing Periods (1520BC - 1911AD), Gang Deng examines important factors in the decline of the Chinese economy from medieval sophistication to modern underdevelopment. These factors include: * resource endowments * socio-economic structure * property rights * state and bureaucracy * ideology and values * geo-political environment * internal rebellions * external invasions and conquests The Premodern Chinese Economy is a comprehensive analysis of China's economic history and provides essential background to the study of this country's modern struggle for growth and development. Deng's emphasis on comparative analysis offers new insights into the concept of underdevelopment and theories of transitional economics. This will become a major reference work in the fields of Chinese studies, economic history and development studies.

Explores the relationship between the Chinese peasantry and the state-led economic system established by the Party after 1949.