After the first system rigorously determined the economic aggregates of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Li Daokui team reached these amazing conclusions!

In the past 13 years, the Tsinghua School of Economics and Management and the Peking University School of Economics' Chinese Economic History Research Team have used the production system to measure the total GDP, economic structure, growth pattern and public of the Northern Song Dynasty, Ming and Qing Dynasties based on historical and civil records. On the basis of financial issues, the University of Oxford collaborated with Oxford University scholars to draw a different view from the Chinese economic history "California School" and the British economist Madison, that is, China’s living standards in the Northern Song Dynasty are world-leading, but In 1300 (the four years of the Yuan Dynasty), it was already behind Italy. Before 1400 (the second year of the Ming Dynasty), it was surpassed by the United Kingdom. Before 1750 (the 15th year of the Qing Emperor Qianlong), although some parts of China and the richest areas of Europe were The standard of living is not far apart, but China as a whole has lagged behind Western Europe because the population growth rate exceeds the rate of accumulation of capital and land, resulting in a continuous decline in labor productivity.

This finding shows that the economic development of ancient China was more precocious than the previous ones, and the time period behind the West was earlier than the world's cognition. My personal explanation is: China's early realization of ideological unity and political system stability has enabled China, as a super-stable society, to quickly reach the potential level of economic growth, forming a large but not strong, stable but relatively fragile empire. form. This self-consistent and stable civilization system has generated the power of self-innovation and self-change under the impact of Western powers, and promoted modern China to become self-reliant and gradually open, and ultimately brought great achievements in the 40 years of reform and opening up.

Source: New Fortune Magazine

Author: David Lee

Original title: "The Northern Song Dynasty leads the world, the Qing Dynasty is behind the Western Europe - What does the study of China's ancient economic development tell us? 》

01

Years of interest, 13 years of team research, sketching large images of Chinese economics

In 2004, I just returned to work at the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University. At that time, I had a very basic idea, that is, the economic research after returning to China should focus on the Chinese topic and the Chinese perspective, rather than simply continuing the research topics and methods of foreign counterparts. In the past ten years, I was very interested in the big economic image in Chinese history. Before returning to China, I had more contacts with colleagues in the economic history of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and I also studied them carefully. The research results of the economic history of the Ming Dynasty.

Before the Spring Festival the following year, a young student from Wuhan was only married to Tsinghua University. After applying for a postdoc, we met in the corridor. His name is Guan Hanhui, a doctor of economics from Zhejiang University and a bachelor's degree in history from Wuhan University. He said that he wants to study the endogenous growth theory, which is the topic led by American scholar Paul Romer (currently the chief economist of the World Bank). After listening to it, I immediately suggested that you might as well come to me to systematically study the history of China's economy and find out exactly how the economic development of our ancestors was, rather than the so-called endogenous growth, a hot topic in the West. I joked that if you do that, you will be an "academic grandson" who grows endogenously, because you can't even catch up with Professor Luo Mo's Chinese high school (then taught at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology).

Guan Hanhui accepted my suggestion and went to Tsinghua as a postdoc. However, in the following half of the year, the idea was still unreasonable. He doubted whether there was any interest in studying the economic history of China. I repeat the truth: No one can tell the big picture of China's economic history today. Although many of our predecessors and colleagues have done outstanding research, most of them are for individual regions or individual topics, such as the fluctuation of rice prices in Jiangnan, Jiangnan. Canal repairs, etc., have a special understanding. Only by understanding your complete past can a nation better understand its own day. Understanding the basic work of the past is to understand the overall situation of the economic development of this nation in the past and to make international comparisons.

Thoughts are passed, and enthusiasm is enough. For the next two years, Hanhui was sweating and sweating in the cold, and struggled in the library and archives. The children went to school and his wife was sick, not disturbing the initial heart. The hard work pays off, the time series of the economic aggregate and economic structure of the Ming Dynasty are calculated, and the adjustment of the price level is calculated. The public finances and accumulation are calculated. A surprising discovery is presented, and it can be described as fruitful.

Before Dr. Han Hui came out of the station, I happened to be on a business trip to attend the American Economics Annual Meeting. I met with the Dean of the Peking University School of Economics who went to the United States to recruit talents. I pushed the importance of China's economic history research and Han Hui's work. The Peking University School of Economics is worthy of a rich history and insight, and soon Han Hui joined the lecturer position. I don't want the University of North University's personnel department to be suspicious. He said that Han Hui once worked in a state-owned enterprise. His academic career has not been continuous. He is now promoted to Peking University teacher. It is rare in recent years and it is inconvenient to open special cases. The subtext is "Dr. Tu" carefully introduced! To this end, I took Han Hui to visit the economic history master Wu Chengming, Mr. Wu, carefully explained the research situation, Wu Laoxin is eager to recommend, plus other economic history predecessors such as Professor Li Bozhong and Professor Xiao Guoliang strongly recommend this. Unlock the leadership concerns of Peking University. Today, Han Hui is the young backbone of the Peking University School of Economics. International cooperation is frequent, indicating that the most earth is the most oceanic. With the introduction of Hanhui, the Peking University Classical Academy is absolutely "no loss." Now Wu Lao has driven the west, and the old man's grace is always remembered.

02

Several conclusions about economic history of ancient China

After years of hard work, the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University has trained and formed a research team for China's economic history. In addition to Dr. Han Hui, members also include Dr. Fu Lin (currently taught at the Central University of Finance and Economics) and Shi Jinjian. (currently working for the China Securities Regulatory Commission Research Center), Jin Xingyu (currently taught at the Central University of Finance and Economics). We systematically measured the total GDP, economic structure, growth pattern, and public finance of the Northern Song Dynasty, Ming and Qing Dynasties. It should be said that these studies have played a more important role in understanding ourselves and conducting historical comparisons between China and foreign countries. Recently, we conducted a collaborative study with Professor Stephen Broadberry of Oxford University to compare the level of economic development between China and foreign countries in history. Our research has drawn the following basic conclusions.

First, the level of economic development in ancient China was very backward according to current standards. For example, we found that according to the 1990 dollar, the per capita GDP of the Ming Dynasty was about 920 US dollars, and the Qing Dynasty was about 760 US dollars, lower than the level after the reform and opening up. Note that the absolute value of the above dollar denomination depends on the ratio of ancient to modern currency. In an article we published earlier, the above income level is lower by multiplying the physical output by the current world price. As a corollary, we can better understand the economic value of ancient life, which is far lower than that of modern people. The economic cost of life sacrifice in war is much lower than today.

Second, from the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty (AD 980) to the Ming Dynasty, China's per capita GDP fluctuated at a higher level, and the Qing Dynasty showed a downward trend. Our analysis shows that the reason for the decline in per capita GDP is mainly because the population growth rate exceeds the rate of accumulation of capital and land. In the nearly 900 years, the per capita arable land area has continued to decline, and this decline has not been compensated by the increase in grain yield per mu. In other words, the amount of land per capita, the number of labor tools, including livestock, is declining, which leads to a continuous decline in labor productivity.

Third, through international comparison, we found that the living standard of China in the Song Dynasty was the world's leading, but it was already behind Italy before 1300 (the four years of the Yuan Dynasty), and was surpassed by the United Kingdom before and after 1400 (the second year of the Ming Dynasty); 1750 Before the Qing Emperor Qianlong's fifteen years, although China's living areas were not far from the most affluent areas of Europe, China as a whole has lagged behind Western Europe. Therefore, the big divergence between the East and the West has begun before the Industrial Revolution. . This finding is closely related to the above findings that the per capita GDP is gradually decreasing. That is to say, the continuous decline in China's per capita labor productivity is an important negative factor for economic development and national progress.

03

Objectively assessing the development of the ancient economy is to understand the present and look to the future.

The above findings are the result of long-term efforts of our research team over the past decade. Recently, our research has also been supported by major projects of the National Social Science Fund, and the papers have been published in academic journals at home and abroad. These findings have attracted some attention in the Chinese economics community, but their importance has not yet been fully realized. The British "Economist" and "Japan Economic News" magazine reported this, which was feedback to the domestic media, and inevitably caused some discussion. To this end, it is necessary to make some explanations.

First, this project is a long-term, systematic and painstaking research work. We use production methods to measure the total, per capita, and structure of China's ancient GDP. The basis of the measurements is the records of the official and folk of the relevant dynasties. For example, for the Ming Dynasty, we used the historical records such as Mingshilu, Wanli Accounting, and local history to calculate the population, food, and handicrafts (including ceramics, paper, pig iron, copper, etc.). recording. The data of the Song Dynasty comes from the "Song Hui to be drafted", "Song Shi Food and Food", "Continued Zi Zhi Tong Jian Chang", "Documents General Examination" and so on. In fact, China's historical data in this regard is far more than other countries in the same period. Thanks to the completeness of Chinese historical data, our research is far ahead of the rigor of methodology or data compared to international counterparts.

Accordingly, we disagree with the view of the “California School” of China’s economic history. They believe that China’s Qing Dynasty’s economic development level is the world’s leading. Our data is more comprehensive than the California School. Similarly, we have overturned several conclusions of the British economist Angus Maddison on the study of Chinese economic history.

Madison’s research has been widely watched. He believes that China’s per capita GDP rose from $450 to $600 in the Song Dynasty (note that his ancient and modern price conversion ratios are different from ours) and have remained at this level since then. A speculation is not the same as our research conclusions. Madison originally planned to participate in the 2nd Asian Historical Economics Annual Meeting that we organized in May 2010, but it unfortunately died at the beginning of the year, and regretted that it was not possible to participate in the meeting. Prior to this, we had several communications with Madison and repeatedly asked him what was the basis for calculating China's economic aggregate. Finally, he told us by e-mail that he completely assumed the per capita GDP level of the Chinese dynasties through his own estimation, and then multiplied by the population to get the economic aggregate. In contrast, we use rigorous calculations and tests using specific data. Although there are still many places that need to be improved and improved, it should be said that it is a big step ahead of Madison's estimation.

Second, how to explain our research findings? Some people say that our findings prove that China’s history is not so strong; others even say that the Chinese nation’s dream of revival is actually an illusory dream, and it is not so brilliant in Chinese history. These statements all misinterpret our findings.

Our discovery is that China's per capita GDP is at the highest level in the world around 1000 AD. It only lags behind Italy from around 1300 AD and lags behind Britain in 1400. This is not the same as saying that China is not so historically. brilliant. On the contrary, this shows that the economic development in ancient China was more precocious than our previous cognition. The ancient society reached the highest level of per capita development earlier than our previous cognition. The Chinese economy began to lag behind the Western time and was earlier than the world. Cognition.

So, how to explain the discovery that the social and economic development in ancient China was earlier than the previous ones, and that the time period behind the West was earlier than our cognition? There must be a variety of different perspectives in the academic world, which is clearly beyond the scope of our academic research project. I personally tend to explain as follows: China's social and political system has entered a high level of super steady state very early. China is one of the few countries in the world that has long been ideologically unified, and this unity has been reached in the Western Han Dynasty. What followed was that the ancient Chinese political system was relatively mature. And because China is at the eastern end of Eurasia, it has not been encroached and attacked by too many outsiders. Therefore, China has developed a politically stable system with a unified political system with a core of Confucius and Mencius as its core and a relatively unified ideology.

This structure allowed China's economy to quickly reach the potential level of growth and enter a steady state. Due to the relative stability of Chinese society, the Confucius and Mencius in the mainstream ideology advocates many children and many blessings. Chinese medicine has more developed and precocious health and fertility technologies, which makes the population grow very fast. As a result, China soon formed a large but not strong, stable and relatively fragile empire. This is not to say that Chinese civilization lags behind the world, but shows that Chinese civilization is a relatively unique one in world civilization.

According to this, there is a corollary that if there is no direct exchanges and conflicts with the outside world, it is impossible for the British industrial revolution to take place. Because China's per capita GDP has fallen, but there is no shortage of labor, there is insufficient demand for technological innovation to save labor. Although the per capita GDP of individual areas in China such as Jiangnan is relatively high, it is unimaginable that under the system of the unification, the capitalist system appears in some areas, and the whole country is still in the state of feudal system. Frankly speaking, these views are different from those of the economic history circles and their predecessors such as Wu Chengming and Li Bozhong. We believe that it is the greatest respect for our predecessors to use different methods to carefully conduct basic research and draw different conclusions.

Looking to today, why can China develop rapidly? Because China's long-standing traditional culture has strong stability and vitality, this self-consistent and stable civilization system has generated the power of self-innovation and self-change under the impact of Western powers, prompting China's self-improvement and gradual progress in modern times. Openness has finally brought about tremendous achievements in China's past 40 years of reform and opening up.

Research history tells us the past and aims to look to the future. Studying the past allows us to understand our own development process, and it also makes us understand the importance of reform and opening up. This is the driving force for us to keep moving forward and persist in reform and opening up.