Man and land in Chinese history

Zhao, Gang

This interpretation of Chinese economic history emerges from this analysis of two millennia of economic development in traditional China. Rejecting dynastic, positivist, and Marxian views, the author argues that since 200 BC China was a market economy consisting of countless small production units - either freeholders or tenants. This market economy was characterized by mobility of labor, private ownership of land and other assets, work specialization, widespread exchange of goods, and a ubiquitous price system. The freeholders and tenants were subject to one dominant constraint, limited land for cultivation. The author shows how they had to adjust their economic choices and decisions to respond to an increasing man-land ratio as population pressure gradually increased through the centuries. He sees the twelfth century as the crucial turning point. Overpopulation led to far-reaching...

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