Great Divegence

ECON0605 Economics History of China Lok Wing Yan 2008027078Dr. Patrick Leung

Written Assignment

According to The Great Divergence presented by Kenneth Pomeranz, as well as the equilibrium trap from Mark Elvin, they aimed to explain the reasons why industrial revolution did not occur in China before 19th

Century. Pomeranz tried to seek equilibrium between situations China and Britain in order to analyze the reasons. However, according to the journals presented by Philips Huang, arguments over the reasons for China stagnation were aroused and questioned. It was pointed out that limitations, errors and problems are found from The Great Divergence. Followings would be discussions of those problems. In order to investigate why industrial revolution did not happen before 19th

Century, it is important to view this issue from both agriculture and population aspects. Pomeranz focused on the equilibrium between China and England so as to explain the reasons behind, however, it is found that there exist many differences in between. For agriculture aspect, Pomeranz dismissed the difference between England and China. For England, most of the farms were pasture and animal-feed which required greater usage of animal rather than human. While for China, most of the farms were crop-feed which meant greater labor intensification and the use of animal like donkey, for the replacement of human was kept to a minimum. Since 17th

Century, most of the farms in Yangzi Delta focused on growing human-consumed crops like wheat, wet rice rather than livestock. For those in low-lying areas like southern part of China, they mainly grew mulberries. Those human-consumed crops were less captive intensive and also it affected the diet of people living there, as well as their wearing and clothing habit. For this reason, they mainly used cotton as the raw material for clothing. This also helped pushing the development of cotton growing from 1350 to 1800. Those farmers who originally responsible for rice-cropping turned to cotton-growing which required about eighteen times of labor as compared to rice-cropping. Besides the kind of crops they grew, the fertilizers used by England and China were also different. For England, they tended to use green fertilizer rather than human manure and started the early adaption of chemical fertilizer. While for China, farmers continued the use of pig and human manure, urine as base fertilizer. Not until 18th Century, shipping between different regions in China became developed, farmers started to use (soy) bean cake as chase fertilizer. To conclude, England and the Yangzi Delta indeed showed different pattern of labor intensity, farm size, as well as agricultural land per capita. China had relatively larger size of farm land, as well as agricultural land per capita compared with England. In addition to agriculture part, the claim towards productivity by Pomeranz also showed some problems. In his research, he claimed that Yangzi Delta was no more under a population or resource squeeze in 1800 than Britain. [1] It is believed that in 1800, the labor productivity in Britain was higher than that of China. However, if land productivity was taken into consideration, China showed a higher rate than Britain. This mistaken by Pomeranz mainly due to the ignorance of familization of production. In 1800, there started the involution of cotton and silk production. Although those productions resulted in a lower return compared with farming, it attracted woman, elderly or even children which were normally not in the labor force of farming sector to take part in cotton and silk production. This started to bring up the development of family production. Since Pomeranz ignored the part of woman, elderly and children in cotton and silk production, his estimation on income and cotton cloth production was therefore unrealistic. On the consideration of resistance to labor-saving capitalization, Pomeranz ignored the restriction on economy of scale by family production. Pomeranz viewed the ³nascentcapitalism' by Levine as just normal involution. However, this turning point from large scale farming place to family based farm marked an important reason for why industrialization failed to happen. Not until 1950 to 1980, there existed chemical fertilizer and mechanical revolution for advanced farming technology. This improvement eventually squeezed out the large wage-labor-based farms since the ease of household farming was greatly increased. Instead, household-based farms became more and more popular. However, for household-based farms, it was hard to attain economics of scale since family was usually unable to afford expensive expenses for such machines or equipment. As a result, due to the elimination of the possibility of economics of scale, farms in China remained in crop production, as well as rural handicraft industry rather than animal-feed or pasture. For handicraft industry, there was a technological improved spinning wheel in 18th Century which can greatly increase the efficiency of spinning.(That moment, China was still household-based production.) Due to its high price, it remained uneconomical for Chinese household to adapt. However, for England and Dutch, this improvement of technology marked a crucial revolutionary stage in handicraft industry which led them faster pace to industrial revolution. Pomeranz overlooked this restriction and therefore error was shown in the calculation of spinner output. Pomeranz adapted the grab-bag approach in the calculation of peasant income. However, since it was inconsistent and the price he took in account was indeed the retail price charged by merchant rather than the real income received by peasant, it finally came to the wrong conclusion. There was also significant difference between the family home industry in Yangzi Delta and proto-industrialization in England. For England, due to its demographic pattern, there was higher rate of marriage there. Moreover, people there intended to marry in an earlier age such that farm production was inherited from one generation to the next in a faster stage. For China, there was no change in demographic behavior. Therefore, rural handicraft industry which mainly relied on woman and elderly were only sideline activity, not account for much production. Pomeranz also ignored the development of urbanization in England and China, especially in Yangzi Delta. In England, there was agriculture revolution in 17th-18th Century which helped increasing the supply of food through more advanced technology. Therefore, it could be able to support large off farm population with greater supply and town-based proto-industrialization was developed in this way. For the case of China, since no urban town growth can be developed due to the failure of agriculture revolution,