The Social Science Library » Presidential Address: Questions about China’s Early Modern Economic History that I Wish I Could Answer

Presidential Address: Questions about China’s Early Modern Economic History that I Wish I Could Answer

Author(s)	Feuerwerker, Albert
Abstract	In his presidential address, Albert Feuerwerker discusses the question of why the Chinese economy developed differently than the Western European, North American, and Japanese economies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That issue has defined the field of Chinese economic history for more than a century, and has been the subject of several articles and statements in the JAS during 1991 and 1992 (Rawski 50.1:84-111; Myers 50.3:604-28; Huang 50.3:629-33; Wong 51.3:600-11). Feuerwerker begins from a premise established only within the span of his career, the agreement that “the Chinese economy and society in the late-Ming and early-Qing dynasties were remarkably dynamic,” replacing an earlier assumption that the Chinese economy was stagnant and backward. Once this view of early modern Chinese economy became accepted, historians began asking why such dynamism did not produce industrialization in China as it did in Western Europe. Feuerwerker agrees that part of the answer lies in the fact that the Chinese case is different because of “specifically Chinese cultural features.” Thus, he agrees these differences meant the Chinese economy could not change in exactly the ways that produced industrialization in Western Europe. However, his main point draws distinctions among three forms of economic growth: extensive growth characterized by constant returns to additional inputs, modern growth, a la Adam Smith, involving increased per capita output, but characterized by major cyclical fluctuations and real barriers to sustaining such increases over time, and intensive growth, a la Simon Kuznets, which produces sharp structural changes that produce breakthroughs based on the application of new technology to produce greater per capita output and incomes. He believes specialists studying Chinese economic history have not paid sufficient attention to these distinctions. If they do, he believes, it is possible both to better understand and to more clearly interpret Chinese economic history.
IssueNo	4
Pages	757-769
Article	Access to Article
Source	Journal of Asian Studies
VolumeNo	51
PubDate	November1992
ISBN_ISSN	0021-9118
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Presidential Address: Questions about China’s Early Modern Economic History that I Wish I Could Answer

Economic Development, Growth, and Aggregate Productivity