The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
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GROWTH AND CHANGE IN THE ECONOMY 21
provide capital necessary for modern industry. It tended to smother
merchants and gentry whom it took into partnership, and failed to create
financial and other conditions favourable to economic growth.
35
Similar
inadequacies appeared in the 'bureaucratic capitalism' practised under
the Nanking government in the 1920s and 1930s and plagued even
disinterested efforts at reform. Attempts to improve silkworm strains and
silk-production methods, for instance, were hampered because the
government had neither the means to enforce its policies nor the
confidence of the local populace.
In sum, the technological and distributive factors seem to have
reinforced one another so as to keep economic change within moderate
limits,
unable to break through the existing equilibria. Change was
occurring, but in the absence of a major revamping of the rural sector
—
of
an 'agricultural revolution' Chinese style —it appears unlikely that
continuing commercialization, further concentration of capital in the
Lower Yangtze, or growth of the considerable, if technically illegal, trade
with South-East Asia would have soon led to a radical reorganization of
the economy. As it was, the major impetus came from abroad.
External
factors•:
foreign trade and imperialism
Virtually all historians assume that Western imperialism had an effect on
Chinese economic growth; but they differ over the weight and timing of
its effect and whether it had a negative or positive influence. One line of
analysis suggests that foreign activity played a crucial role in fostering
sustained industrial development in the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Foreign industry in the treaty ports provided capital equipment
and stimulated Chinese enterprise. Loans provided capital to modernize
transportation and communications and establish heavy industry.
Foreigners were the source of new technical knowledge. In short, an
exogenous shock was needed to overcome the inertia of the Chinese
economy and concentrate necessary resources.
36
Chinese Marxist-Leninist and other historians, on the contrary, have
argued that from the time of the Opium War imperialism inhibited
internal forces favouring growth and capitalism: imports destroyed
Chinese handicrafts, thus impoverishing peasants and restricting the
" See W. K. K. Chan, CHOC 11.460-2; Wang Hsi, 'Lun wan-Ch'ing ti kuan-tu shang-pan' (On
the system of official supervision and merchant management during the late Ch'ing), LJ-sbib
bsueb
(Historical study), i (1979) 95-124. A much more positive assessment of the Ch'ing state's
economic role appears in Ramon Myers, Tbe
Chinese
economy:
past and present.
56
For this view see Robert Dernberger, "The role of the foreigner in China's economic
development, 1840-1949', in Perkins, ed.
China's modern
economy,
19-48.
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22 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
domestic market. Chinese merchants were drawn into peripheral and
dependent relations with foreign firms; unequal competition hampered
growth of Chinese industry. Foreign loans and investments drained profits
abroad and led to administrative interference in government finance.
Although China was never ruled by Western foreigners, except in the
treaty ports, Chinese governments were discouraged from promoting
modern industry by fear of foreign seizure by military power. Most
obviously, foreign control of Chinese tariffs prevented their protecting
Chinese industry by excluding foreign competition.
37
A major variant of
this approach argues that expansive capitalist states in search of markets
and resources forced weaker unindustrialized countries into relationships
of dependency, in order to secure the export of their resources for use
by industries of the capitalist states. This perpetuated the economic
underdevelopment of the weaker states, increased inequality both between
social classes and between regions of the world, and to some degree
impoverished peasants in the underdeveloped countries.
38
All these theories, particularly the last, seem to underestimate the
previous level of indigenous commercial development in China. They do
not explain how external factors could be so decisive when the foreign
trade was so small in comparison with the total Chinese economy.
Moveover, even in the twentieth century, the national market was still
imperfectly integrated and many rural economies still produced mainly
for consumption within a limited geographical area, although linked to
markets elsewhere. The common-sense conclusion is that internal and
external factors interacted and their relative importance varied with time,
place, and circumstance. Foreign interests both inhibited and encouraged
Chinese industry, sometimes, as in the case of tobacco, encouraging some
aspects while retarding others. The largely foreign-financed railroad
construction in late Ch 'ing and Republican China did benefit the Chinese
economy despite the context of imperialism within which these railways
were built.
39
In areas where agricultural production remained locally
37
Hu
Sheng, Imperialism
and
Chinese politics, ifyo-rpij
is
one
of
many examples
of
this range
of
views.
38
For general theory
of
underdevelopment see
C
K.
Wilber, ed. Tie political
economy
oj development
and underdevelopment.
A
generalized theory emerges from Wallerstein's concept
of a
capitalist
dominated world economic system (Immanuel Wallerstein,
The
modern world-system: capitalist
agriculture
and
the
origins of the
European world-economy
in
the sixteenth
century
and
subsequent studies).
Brief suggestions
on how
this theory might apply
to
China appear
in
Angus McDonald,
Jr.
'Wallerstein's world economy:
how
seriously should
we
take it?'
JAS
38.3
(May 1979)
535~4°-
There
is
substantial evidence
for
world impact
on
sectors
of the
Chinese economy since
the
sixteenth century
(e.g.
William Atwell, 'Notes
on
silver, foreign trade,
and the
late Ming
economy', CSW'l
3.8 (Dec. 1977)
1-33),
but
thus
far few
detailed studies.
3
« Sherman Cochran, Big
business
in China:
Sino-foreign
rivalry in
the
cigarette industry, iSpo-rpjo, zoi-io.
Ralph William Hueneman, The
dragon
and
the iron horse:
tie
economics
of
railroads
in
China
systematically examines
the
question
of
the economic consequences
of
the railways.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
GROWTH AND CHANGE IN THE ECONOMY
59O km
300 miles
u
MONGOLIA
•r.^
•\ FRENCH
•7 IND0-
/ CHINA
S I A M
MAP
3. Railways in 1949
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
24 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
consumed, foreign trade had little impact. However, it is not necessary
to postulate general economic dependency to recognize that growing
involvement in world trade could have important repercussions. The
stimulus to commerce in the Han River valley caused by export trade from
the 1870s to the 1910s or the brief boom in sugar-cane production in
Haifeng county, Kwangtung, because of a temporary world shortage from
the late 1880s to mid-igoos,
40
showed that effects were not limited to major
cities.
As industrialization proceeded and foreign trade increased, world
economic conditions had a growing effect on the economy in important
parts of China. The ambivalence of this impact of trade and imperialism
can be seen in the relatively well-studied cotton textile and raw silk
industries.
The decline of domestic cotton-spinning in the nineteenth century has
been cited repeatedly to illustrate the adverse impact of imperialism on
nascent Chinese capitalism and peasant livelihood. However, blanket
allegations that textile imports and subsequently foreign factories in China
destroyed rural handicrafts do not hold up. Detailed studies show that
although household spinning largely disappeared it was replaced by
handicraft weaving using foreign yarn. Moreover, yarn for the warp of
looms was still produced by peasant spinners after imports supplied the
weft; in fact hand spinning declined at different times in different localities,
allowing a rather long period for peasant households to adjust.
41
Hand
weaving continued to compete successfully with factories established in
China during the twentieth century because peasant families could still
profit from using their surplus labour even when prices had declined.
Moreover, hand weaving spread to new areas
—
for instance, central
Chekiang at the end of the
Ch
'ing, and parts of north-western and western
China during the Republic - indicating a spread of domestic demand and
penetration of manufactured yarns. On balance weaving was probably
more profitable than spinning, so in the long run the changeover may well
have raised the living standards of many peasants although it probably
lowered the household incomes of even more.
This aggregate, long-term picture obscures local instances of short-run
decline and dislocation. Textile imports initially hurt the highly developed
spinning and weaving handicraft industries of the urbanized Canton delta.
In the 1830s Chinese handwoven exports (Nankeens) declined and a
market grew up for imported foreign yarns. Both weavers and spinners
suffered, and in 1831 a sudden increase in foreign yarn imports triggered
40
Liu
Ts'ui-jung, Trade on
the
Han River and
its
impact on economic development, itoo-ifii; Marks,
'Peasant society', 205—26.
41
Kang Chao, The development
of
cotton
textile production
in
China, 174—86; Bruce Reynolds, 'Weft:
the technological sanctuary
of
Chinese handspun yarn', CSWT
3.2 (Dec.
1974)
4-13.
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GROWTH AND CHANGE IN THE ECONOMY 25
a boycott led by spinners. Eventually the textile workers shifted from
spinning to weaving, but the unemployment fostered hostility to
foreigners and the social disruption contributed to the Taiping Rebellion.
42
Handicraft spinning in Haifeng county, further north along the Canton
coast, persisted until the end of the Ch'ing. After it died out between 1890
and 1910, weaving continued under a putting-out system. But modern
mills in Haifeng after 1918 replaced household weaving. Local textile
production overall probably expanded, but the conversion of peasant
family producers into factory wage labourers had unsettling socio-political
consequences.
43
Even where domestic weaving flourished most strongly
in the twentieth century, it was not a stable occupation. Weaving in North
China tended to concentrate in centres that competed with one another
and went through phases of boom and retrenchment from the 1910s to
the 1930s. Fluctuation was caused more by this local competition and by
domestic market conditions than by direct foreign factors until the world
depression of
the
1950s. Japanese occupation of Manchuria later restricted
markets and hastened the decline of the North China centres.
44
Expansion
of the textile industry thus led to different kinds of economic fluctuations
resulting from growth, competition, and international market movements.
Such changes might disrupt village communal patterns and make
handicraft production a less predictable source of income for peasant
families who had to supplement their income from farming.
45
The history of silk production in the Lower Yangtze during the last
seventy years of the Ch'ing shows a more unambiguously expansive
impact of foreign trade.
46
In the late 1840s raw silk exports shifted from
Canton to Shanghai where they expanded rapidly in the
18
5
os
during the
Taiping Rebellion. Cutting off of domestic markets as well as declining
production of the imperial silk factories probably made silk more available
for export. In the early 1860s the rebellion devastated Lower Yangtze
silk-producing areas, causing a sharp drop of exports in 1863-4 and rather
slow recovery during the rest of the decade. For the rest of the century
41
Kang Chao, Textile production, 82, 87-8; Ming-kou Chan, 'Labor and empire: the Chinese labor
movement in the Canton Delta, i895-i9Z7'(Stanfbrd University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1975), 11-12,
367.
43
Marks, 'Peasant society', 231—41. See below, ch.
6
(Bianco).
44
Kang Chao, Textile production, 188-9, 191—101.
45
Linda Grove, 'Creating
a
northern soviet', Modem China,
1.3
(July 197J) 259; Myers, The Chinese
economy, sees market fluctuations
due to
external causes
as
leading
to
unemployment, violence
and economic crisis.
46
The
major English-language work
on the
silk trade
is Li,
China's silk trade.
See
also
Eng,
'Imperialism
and the
Chinese economy'
and E-tu Zen
Sun, 'Sericulture
and
silk production
in Ch'ing China',
in
Willmott, ed., 79—108.
On the
relative expansiveness
of
silk production,
see David Faure,
'
The rural economy
of
Kiangsu province, 1870-1911', Journal
of
the Institute
of Chinese Studies, Chinese University
of
Hong Kong, 9.2 (1978) 380-426.
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z6 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
the foreign economic impact on the Kiangnan economy reflected this
conjunction of Taiping destruction with strong foreign demand for silk.
By about 1870 mulberry trees had been replanted and production
recovered. But old silk-weaving centres were not fully reconstructed
because production was so strongly oriented to foreign trade. This trade
caused silk production to increase more rapidly than that of other
agricultural products, and mainly accounted for the area's rapid recovery
from the Taiping Rebellion and prosperity during the rest of the dynasty.
It restructured the raw silk industry, brought new areas into silk
production, and helped market town centres of silk collection recover
more rapidly than the large depopulated cities. Though efforts were made
to improve handicraft reeling so as to meet foreign demands for
uniformity, the major technical change came with steam filatures, mainly
in Shanghai. These became significant in the late 1890s, and thereafter
outstripped hand-reeled production. By 1911 filatures had secured peasant
specialization in cocoon production and a new set of brokers to move
cocoons quickly from farms to factories.
The silk trade helped the rise of new vigorous merchant-gentry families
and commercial organizations. How much peasant producers benefited
has not been determined. The record of silk in the Republican period was
to be much more ambiguous, but in the late nineteenth century it seems
that this foreign trade caused expansion of silk production, encouraged
modern industry, and had important socio-political ramifications within
elite society. The trade would have been still more profitable if Chinese
had been able to control export prices, and it would have survived better
in the long run if the government had made a concerted effort to improve
production methods, but for the time being it was the key to the prosperity
of Kiangnan.
Continuity after 1911
In the Republican era the substance of China's economic problems
remained essentially that of the late empire. First, a highly intensive,
traditional agricultural sector was barely able in 'normal' times to feed
an immense population. It was therefore usually incapable of providing
farm products for possible consumption by a large urban work-force, or
as raw materials for developing industry, or as exports to finance the
importation of critically needed capital and technology. Neither Yuan
Shih-k'ai nor the Peking mandarins who succeeded him, neither Sun
Yat-sen nor Chiang Kai-shek's Nanking and Chungking regimes,
certainly not the Japanese aggressors (except in Manchuria to a degree),
not even Mao Tse-tung in Kiangsi or Yenan - no one significantly affected
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GROWTH AND CHANGE IN THE ECONOMY 27
and improved the performance of China's agriculture in the first half of
the twentieth century.
Second, from the beginning of
the
third decade of the century the times
were rarely 'normal'. Civil wars and Japanese aggression and then civil
war again filled most of the next thirty years. The physical and especially
the human destruction inflicted upon China beggars any description. Yet
people survived, however scantily, and the economy before the very last
years of this grievous turmoil was not shattered. Indeed it showed a
remarkable resiliency during the infrequent periods of relative peace. This
we take as a sure sign of its low level of ' modern' development, of the
overwhelming persistence of traditional technology and localized
organization, not susceptible of being destroyed by invaders as a more
developed economy might have been.
Third, in much the same manner the modern sector of China's economy
was by far the less important in fact. Though China was much buffeted
by the world
—
the treaty powers and others
—
China's economy in the
first half of the twentieth century was still only very incompletely linked
to the world economy. The dualistic model of distinct treaty-port and
hinterland sectors may be too crude to describe the actual complexity of
Shanghai's economic role, or Canton's or Wuhan's. However, excessive
attention to bullion flows, to Maritime Customs statistical series, to the
terms of trade, or to foreign loans and investments can only be misleading.
There was simply no effective programme for the essential technical and
organizational (redistributive) changes in agriculture, without which no
genuine modern economic growth could ensue. Enlarged international
trade had fostered commercialized agriculture in some places during the
twentieth century. In parts of North China this process had in turn
enhanced economic and social differentiation in the villages, leading in
some circumstances to the ' semiproletarianization' of the poorer
peasants.
47
But this was neither a token that capitalist agriculture was
emerging in modern China nor is it much evidence of foreign economic
iniquities.
A fourth observation concerns the sometimes neglected power of
compound growth. The tiny modern industry initiated in the late
nineteenth century became a genuine and growing modern industrial
sector. The estimated rate of growth of these modern industrial enterprises
in the first five decades of the twentieth century was probably of the order
of 7 or 8 per cent per annum.
48
This annual rate is approximately what
47
Philip C.
C.
Huang,
The
peasant
economy
and social
change
in North China
is a
major study
of
changes
in the dominant small-peasant economy.
48
John
K.
Chang, Industrial development in pre-Commmist China:
a
quantitative analysis,
70-ioj.
And
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28 INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
the People's Republic of China has achieved since 1949. Of course the
base from which this development began was infinitesimal at the start and
real annual increments to productive capacity were similarly tiny. But over
the decades, as growth was compounded, the structure of China's
economy began to change, at first slowly and then more rapidly, until
in the 1970s nearly 50 per cent of China's gross domestic product was
attributable to industry (factories and handicrafts), mining, utilities, and
transportation - not all ' modern' to be sure, but clearly differentiated
from agriculture, whose share had declined from perhaps two-thirds at
the beginning of the century to one-third in 1971.
Nevertheless, the Kuomintang
's
Nanking government and its predeces-
sors in Peking contributed little to this surprisingly vigorous, if still
sectorally and geographically limited, modern economic development.
Pre-modern growth - the increase of both total population and total
output but without sustained per capita increments - such as occurred in
the eighteenth century might not require a substantial state role; indeed
it probably benefited from its absence. But for a late effort to achieve
modern economic growth, larger political inputs are likely to be needed.
The Kuomintang government was not politically strong enough, or
sufficiently adaptable intellectually, to harness and develop the potential
of the private Chinese economy while at the same time ensuring an
acceptable minimum of personal and regional equality.
49
As a result, the small pre-1949 modern industrial sector, in the eighteen
province of China within the Great Wall and in Manchuria, provided the
PRC with managers, technicians, and skilled workers - the cadre that
could train the vastly expanded numbers who would staff the many new
factories that went into production in the 1950s. It was of course largely
unintended, but even if the foreign presence in China before 1949 had
sometimes inhibited independent development, its most efficacious legacy
appears to have been the initial transfer of technology that made possible
China's early industrialization.
Thus the Republic was more than a holding period in which the
economy everywhere remained stagnant while the political system disinte-
grated. On the contrary, aggregate growth in the modern urban sector
see Albert Feuerwerker,
'
Lun erh-shih shih-chi ch 'u-nien Chung-kuo she-hui wei-chi'
(On the
social crisis
in
early twentieth-century China),
in
Ts'ai Shang-ssu,
ed.
LJOI
Cb'ing-mo
Min-cb'u
Chung-kuo sbi-bui
(Chinese society
in the
late Ch'ing
and
early Republic), 129-33.
49
Susan Mann Jones, 'Misunderstanding
the
Chinese economy' skilfully reviews some
of
these
issues with references
to the
literature.
For a
revisionist Soviet view
of the
Kuomintang's
economic policies, which describes
a
combination
of
economic accomplishment
and
political
failure,
see A. V.
Meliksetov,
Sottial'no-ehmomicbesJkaia politika Gomin'dana
v
Kitae.
1)27—1949
(Kuomintang social-economic policy in China, 1927-1949). The relations of the Nationalist regime
to
the
Shanghai merchant community
are
examined
in
Joseph Fewsmith, Party, state, and
local
elite:
in
Republican
China.
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CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE 29
prepared the way for further advances after 1949. At the same time,
however, most rural areas were not achieving the same growth
as
the cities.
Imbalances, instabilities, local disasters, warfare and at times inflation all
dragged down levels of production, inhibited commerce and discouraged
rural investment. Such troubles, though most shattering in the 1930s and
1940s, were present in varying degrees in different places throughout the
late Ch'ing and Republican
eras.
The social consequences were unsettling.
CHANGES IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND BEHAVIOUR
As a baseline from which to judge modern trends we posit first China's
high degree of socio-cultural homogeneity. The Han Chinese in different
regions and at different class levels had a common sense of identity and
historical continuity. Values were widely shared. Until recent times the
elite sought to maintain a rural base close to nature. In the villages a little
tradition did not set them sharply apart from a great tradition of the city
elite.
Instead the two strata shared a common folklore and cosmology,
including respect for ancestors, learning, property, and legitimized
authority.
Footbinding evidenced the cultural homogeneity under elite leadership.
The practice began at the T'ang court. It was backed by philosophers
of
the
Sung and pervaded the peasantry during the Ming and
Ch
'ing.
The
crippling of women's feet, that had begun as an upper-class male sexual
fetish and continued as an ostentatious display of urban affluence, spread
to the villages and seriously impaired the working capacity of half the
farming people. To ape their betters by such uneconomic mutilation of
females showed a high degree of peasant subservience to elite norms.
Similarly, village pantheons that integrated family stove gods, agricultural
spirits, and city deities into hierarchies reminiscent of the imperial
bureaucracy suggested a common acceptance of the authority structure
that the elite dominated.
Certain features of this homogeneous culture were slow to change - such
as respect for superiors and elders, sexual inequality, preservation of the
paternal line and equal inheritance among brothers. Local modifications
did not destroy such general practices even though the philosophical or
ideological expressions concerning them might change.
50
Although
50
Arthur
Wolf,'
Gods, ghosts and ancestors', in Arthur
Wolf,
ed. Keligim and ritual
in Chinese
society,
13
3—4j.
Stevan Harrell,
Ploughshare
village,
culture
and context in Taiwan, 9-15 discusses interaction
between general cultural principles, variations in customary behaviour expressing such principles,
and the socio-economic contexts (including such factors as class, geography, and technology)
in which such behaviour occurs. See also, Maurice Freedman, 'On the sociological study of
Chinese religion', in Arthur
Wolf,
ed. Religion, 19-42.
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3<D
INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Confucianism was bitterly attacked in the twentieth century, its modes
of behaviour and underlying assumptions still persisted.
Horizontal and vertical
social
structures
The horizontal class structure
of
late imperial China
was
theoretically
divided
by
the Classics into the four occupational classes: scholar-gentry,
peasants, artisans,
and
merchants.
In
reality
it
more closely approached
a flexible two-tier structure:
a
small, educated, wealthy elite stratum
or
ruling class (about 5
per
cent
of
the population)
and the
vast majority,
who mainly
did
manual labour either
on the
land
or in the
cities. This
two-tier division left room
for
upward
and
downward mobility
and for
borderline positions bridging elite
and
non-elite status: such
as
poor
teachers
and
other underemployed lower-degree holders,
or
wealthy
peasants,
or
shop keepers. Dividing lines were flexible
and
there
was
considerable variation in criteria determining elite status. Military prowess
or leadership of local organizations including illegal groups might be more
important than education
in
determining elite status
in
some areas.
At the bottom were two strata below the respectable non-elite categories.
One was
a
permanently disadvantaged substratum
of
personal slaves and
mean people
who
were excluded from most respectable activities.
The
second consisted
of
drifters, beggars, bandits, smugglers,
and
others
operating outside the organizing structures
of
society. These were mainly
(but
not
entirely) drawn from
the
very poor,
but
like those
on the
borderline
of
elite status their social position was somewhat flexible,
for
if they
had not
severed kinship
or
local ties they might move back into
the lower levels
of
respectability. There
is no
good measurement
of
the
size
of
this diverse stratum,
but we
believe
it was
growing during
the
nineteenth
and
twentieth centuries, enlarged
by
disorders
and
natural
disasters. Moreover,
it had a
preponderance
of
males over females,
increased
by
waves
of
female infanticide that occurred during rebellions
or natural disasters.
This horizontal class structure, with
its
extreme differences
of
wealth,
was overlapped
by
vertical organizing principles based
on
kinship
and
locality. Especially
in
Central
and
South China, extended family lineages
were
a
major form
of
social organization. They enhanced the security and
continuity
of
elite families
and
provided services
and
opportunities
for
poorer lineage members. One's position in society might depend as much
upon what lineage one belonged to as on one's economic and occupational
status.
Between rich and poor, lineage ties were often stronger than class
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