Talk:Economic history of China before 1912

Not Disambiguation Page
This page clearly is not a disambiguation page in it's current form, I applaud it's current form as not a disambiguation page even though it is without necessary sources.--Keer lls ton 04:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Complete revamp coming
see the title.Teeninvestor (talk) 21:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Where are the citations?
You have six citations so far, yet you have about 60 KB of prose text? Are you going to go through every single one of these sentences and place proper citations? It's good to add citations immediately after you write a sentence. Otherwise, over time, you may come back and completely forget the page number or even the source used for the statement.

Also, I'd like to contribute to the Han section, but I have to level with you, Teeninvestor, this article will simply become unacceptable in terms of size. You are literally going to have to eliminate all the subsections, and just create small summaries of each period (by dynastic title and then modern age). You cannot have sections that are this large. Please read WP:SIZE. If you ever want this article to become a featured one, you are going to have to master the arts of summarization, condensing material, and cherry-picking info from sources that you find the most relevant, because you simply cannot include everything. I hope you can change course as soon as possible.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 09:16, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

My plan for Economic history of China
Sorry I have been negligent in adding citations. My stocks were tanking and I was in distress for several days. My plan is to add citations after I finish the article. Anyways, my plan is this. First, I want to pack as much info as I can in. Then, you and others can help me pick the relevant points. The excess info will be transferred to articles such as Economic history of pre-Qin China, Economic history of Absolutist China, Economic history of post-Tang China, etc... Then what is left will be retained as the main article. Anyways, I am still a bit distressed/I hope you can help me a bit, sorry for incoveniencing you. As you can see I am writing overview sections for each dynasty and adding in details as I go. Once the article is finished the overview sections will be part of the article and the details will go in a seperate article. Teeninvestor (talk) 01:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * 沒問題; there's no need to apologize, Teeninvestor. Sorry to hear about your losses. I did not know about your plan to transfer info to later articles, such as Economy of Absolutist China, Post-Tang, etc, but I think it is a good idea. I will add info for the Han section, but it will come slowly, as I have work to do tonight and will be busy tomorrow until about 5:00 pm.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 03:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Chinese phrases needed
Teen, the article needs phrases inserted at the right places. For example, 井田, 佃農, 指南針, 活版印字術, 科舉, 大航海, 帝皇思想, 儒家, 法家, plus heaps of other words.

Like PoA mentioned, there is simply too much info to be crammed into one article, so you need to create other sub-article to carry these info. But the overall theme is good, I like the way you talk about things, though you need lots of citations to support. Arilang   talk  20:39, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Teen, I put my comments inside brackets, I hope you don't mind. Arilang   talk  21:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Missing sections
Teen, the comparison of GDP with others is also very important:
 * 1) Comparison of GDP between outsiders and Ming, Qing, ROC pre 1949, PRC pre Deng Xiaoping era. These comparison can show the true economic situation.
 * 2) I still think you need to cut down lots of politic reference, or try to be very brief. Like PoA mentioned, you just cannot put too much info into one article. Arilang   talk  06:02, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Note: See my plan to split it into three articles above.Teeninvestor (talk) 14:39, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

To do list
Add pictures Add citations Expand Ming, Qing, ROC, PRC sections.Teeninvestor (talk) 13:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

We need something like 300 more citations(only 254 so far).Teeninvestor (talk) 14:08, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I just left a short gallery of pics on your talk page for you to start with. Put them where you like. I'll snoop around Wikimedia Commons for more pictures later.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:57, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.Teeninvestor (talk) 20:03, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

K, I've added many citations and expanded the Ming, Qing, ROC sections. Next thing to do: 1. add pics. 2. Expand PRC section.Teeninvestor (talk) 21:43, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I just added a new source recently by Donald and Benewick (2005), adding a couple citations from it. I also added a lot of new pictures (as you've probably noticed).-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Length
Sorry, but this article is entirely too long; it takes a long time even to scroll through the TOC. If you can't find a way to shorten what's already there, then you should split it into separate articles (for example, Economic history of the Tang dynasty, etc.) and leave this as basically just a short outline with links. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 14:56, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Ya, see sections above. That was the plan.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:52, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Considering the scope of the article, I think this article should be kept at its current size(in fact, expansion to c.200 kb seems to be necessary).Teeninvestor (talk) 22:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that this article is far too long! Some important information is also missing, but before expanding any further, a lot of unnecessary text should be cut. The introduction to the section on the "Absolutist Era", for example, is *far* too long (more than 10,000 bytes). This would be too long even as a lead to an entire article, let alone a single section. 2000 bytes should be plenty, since lead paragraphs don't need to go over the economic performance of every dynasty in so much detail. Moreover, all these dynasties and periods are introduced all over again in their own sub-sections below! This looks redundant.


 * In all these lead paragraphs, focus on a few large economic trends (there's far too much on politics) and avoid mentioning Han Wudi, Cao Cao, Ran Min, etc. by name: these names (and all the historical events that go with them) are superfluous in the introduction to a single section in a survey article.


 * As a survey, this article should only mention the most important economic trends without giving too much detail. In many sub-sections, there seems to be too much historical contextualization and not enough economic info. One example: in the 817-bytes sub-section called State of the economy in North China after Ran Min's cull order, the only two words related to the economy are "agriculture revived."


 * Remove all the long citations. The longest one is a long comparative explanation about the superiority of Chinese plows over European ones (see end of the sub-section called Agricultural Boom). In addition to being off-topic, this citation is just too long for an article of this sort. One footnoted sentence on the quality of Chinese plows would be sufficient.


 * Anyway, you get the gist. If you cut most of the intro sections by 75%, cut the unnecessary political details, you'll be under 100 bytes in no time and have more space to add relevant details, especially on neglected periods like the Qing. Judging from this article, it would seem that the only standard of economic success is percentage of world GDP, and that the Qing were just backward-looking barbarian book-burners who killed all meaningful economic activities. This narrative is factually wrong and outdated by about 100 years, but I guess this issue is not about length, so I'll stop right here! Cheers, Madalibi (talk) 02:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Cut out intro, but it's still about 156 Kb, so I need to cut out another 20kb. Oh well.Teeninvestor (talk) 11:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Trimmed to 142kb. Needs to trim another 40kb-ish. urgh.Teeninvestor (talk) 12:26, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Teeninvestor. Whoa! Great job so far at reducing size. Keep at it! Another possible way of downsizing: I think you could reduce the Han Dynasty section by half. As it is now, the Han section is much longer than the Economics section of the Han Dynasty article and it has more sections than the Economy of the Han Dynasty wiki (which is now a featured article, by the way). Reducing the Han section will be a bit difficult because you need to summarize rather than just cut parts. Thank you, by the way, for writing this article. It's not perfect, but it's a very good start, and we now have a frame and some concrete information to work with. Keep up the good work! Madalibi (talk) 12:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow! I can't believe this is the same article. Its prose size has been reduced considerably. Great work, Teeninvestor! I hope you like all of the new pictures I added as well. Also, hi Madalibi! Haven't seen you around in a long time. Glad to see you are still poking your head in every once in a while. Since Economy of the Han Dynasty is now featured and Government of the Han Dynasty is nominated, I will probably make a Featured Topic out of Han Dynasty sooner or later (like I did for Song Dynasty).-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 13:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Considering the vast scope of the article
Maintain at 140kb-ish? Since the Ming Dynasty article is about 140kb(and this article has a much more broad scope) I think the article should be maintained at a size of about 140kb(it's also getting harder to cut stuff out). What do you think? The PRC section will be expanded in the future, so it s advisable to cut back to about 130-140kb. The final size will be around 140kb.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:18, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:SIZE does not state anything about guidelines for the overall size of the article. However, it does state that an article's prose size should not exceed 100 KB. The Ming Dynasty is nowhere near 141 KB prose size; the Ming Dynasty's prose size is at 83 KB, while it's overall article size is at 137 KB. This article's prose size is roughly 140 KB. See the gigantic difference? I hate to say this (since you've put so much work into this article), but you still have roughly 40 KB of text to cleave from this article before it scratches the bare minimum of acceptable size limits for any article at Wiki. In fact, WP:SIZE says that for any article with over 60 KB of prose, a split into several articles should be considered. Your best option is to split this article into several articles, and summarize them here at this article.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

What is the prose size defined as?Teeninvestor (talk) 19:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Prose is the main body of text; this excludes the lead or introduction, all pictures and picture captions, all reference headings, all citations, all references, all see also links and external links, templates, tables, encoded markups, and invisible categories.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:55, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

K, new idea: Split into two articles: Economic history of Premodern China(up to the end of the Qing) and Economic history of Modern China(1911-now). I think that should remove about 40kb of text.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

This article's prose text I think is about 120kb(excluding pictures, citations, lead, etc..). We've already taken out close to a third of the article(a lot of it was as Madalibi pointed out redundant anyways).Teeninvestor (talk) 19:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, you did a fine job cutting the article down to size thus far. As for your split into two articles, that sounds fine. Make sure to collaborate this effort with Economy of Taiwan and Economy of the People's Republic of China. Make sure to summarize the info that you cut out of this article.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 20:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

This article is now only about 116kb large. Cutting out the citations and pictures, I think we're in the limit of about 100kb. Ming Dynasty had non-prose of 53kb. If we even have non-prose of about half of that, the text in this article is 90kb, which is inside the limit.Teeninvestor (talk) 20:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

屯田
http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/8639651.html

当提及为什么魏可以统一天下的时候,有一个原因是不能忽略的,那就是曹操的经济改革,而其中很重要的一项就是屯田制的实行.这不仅使魏的粮食得到了积累, 社会生产力也大步的发展了,使魏的经济走在其他各国的前头.正是这种物质和经济的双重保障,为后来魏一统天下做出了不可磨灭的贡献.

Teen, 屯田 is a very important 制度, looks like it is missing. Arilang   talk  22:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe this is covered under "military agriculture"Teeninvestor (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Reversion
No article is perfect. I only put the work on this article after about two months of working on it in userspace. Right now I'm still working on it. Don't revert it just because it's not perfect yet. Geez.Teeninvestor (talk) 11:37, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

It's also way better than the other economic historie and the previous version, which had no citations.Teeninvestor (talk) 12:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Rename
I changed back the article's name because it is unencyclopedic to have "Economic history of China" to serve as a redirect to "Economic history of Premodern China", not to mention such title simply sounds awkward and we shouldn't borrow names directly from another source either (http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/deng.china). This article should cover economic periods from the Republic to the People's Republic, but the length needs to be trimmed because there are separate articles for them already.--Balthazarduju (talk) 20:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Teeninvestor, I highly suggest you not to split the article, but to move sizeable information into Economy of People's Republic of China article and Economy of Taiwan article, if there is a lot of information. But you seriously need to trim this article's size and summarize it so it isn't this "long", and it needn't be. Economy of Republic of China and People's Republic of China should also covered in this article as this article is supposed to be about an overview of the whole economic history of China.--Balthazarduju (talk) 20:48, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I didn't borrow names from another source. However, it is very difficult to continue trimming without cutting out half of the sections of all the other articles, and I've already created the article Economic history of Modern China, so the split is already done, I'm afraid.Teeninvestor (talk) 21:17, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Please be VERY careful
Teen, I think you've created a bigger mess than is necessary. You have to be very careful when you shift a lot of material to a new article and do redirects. For example, the new source I added today is still listed in the references of this article, even though it is not used here, but it is now lost (or you simply forgot to add it) in your new article, Economic history of Modern China, even though it is used there! The source is:


 * Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk and Robert Benewick. (2005). The State of China Atlas: Mapping the World's Fastest Growing Economy. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. ISBN 0520246276.

I think it would be better to have one large Economic history of China article that summarizes both Premodern China and Modern China, which could both have separate articles. In fact, that's what I thought your plan was all along.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Getting confused here
K. Here's the current system. Original article has been split into Economic history of China(pre-1911) and Economic history of Modern China. Economic history will redirect to the first article, but a notice at the top will show that for modern developments you go to Economic history of Modern China.

The reason I did this is that I will be getting several new sources that I will be expanding the ROC and PRC sections with. If such an expansion occurs, the article will become simply too large to handle. Therefore I decided to split it into 2 articles, 1 ancient and 1 modern.

Another way we can do this is to keep the ROC and PRC information in the article, and then I'll expand it there. But if that happens, the article will expand to 140kb-ish, and although right now It's probably only a bit bigger than the Ming in Prose size(before split), an expansion with the sources will bring it higher.

A third way is to leave the two articles as they currently are, and create a new Economic history of China article that summarizes both premodern and modern and redirects to them. Teeninvestor (talk) 21:29, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, as long as you clean things up a bit and make sure the sources listed in the ref sections are placed in the right articles, then I think your current model will be fine.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Size issues solved
I followed the instructions on WP:SIZE and it showed that this article's prose size did not exceed 91 kilobytes, as shown by this link Teeninvestor (talk) 21:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Well I think that this whole article(s) is a big mess. So now we have Economic history of China redirecting to Economic history of China (Pre-1911), and so if you want to read about economic history of China after 1911, there is a link somewhere else.  How convenient.  This article could've easily be summarized as to include the "entire" economic history of China without getting this long.  Just trim the sections! There are already very detailed articles about Economy of Han Dynasty, Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, so these periods doesn't even need a lot of coverage!  There are so many large, rambling, almost incoherent paragraphs on this article, it makes the article almost unreadable.--Balthazarduju (talk) 21:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I suggest make this article just a summary of economic history of China (and rename it back to Economic history of China), and that includes brief summary of economy of Republic of China and People's Republic of China. You can add your new, extensive information about modern economy to articles: Economy of the People's Republic of China, Economic history of the People's Republic of China, Economic History of the Republic of China.  These are the articles you need to add your information to, not create another article titled Economic history of Modern China, which, would results in so many links about the economy/economic history of China that it is getting kind of ridiculous.--Balthazarduju (talk) 21:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Well if we keep Economic history of Modern China here, something like 22 kb will have to be shaved off. Also, Economic history of the People's Republic of China is truly a coherent, rambling mess(it only goes up to 1987, and isn't even as detailed as the history section in Economy of the People's Republic of China, which is already too large for wikipedia standards.) Economic history of the Republic of China doesn't even freckin exist, and creating it would spark a massive conflict with Economic history of Taiwan and it would also be unambigious(i only have info going up to 1949).

Or if you really think so, I'll have to look over Economic history of the People's Republic of China and revamp it totally, but that article is just a mess and I want to take a break after working on Economic history of China(the former article) for two months! Geez. Teeninvestor (talk) 22:00, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Xia Dynasty?
I thought there was no direct archaeological evidence to suggest that the house of Xia even existed, and that what may be regarded as the Xia was only the Erlitou culture, which nonetheless did have bronze production and built palatial-like buildings. After all, China's first written script, the oracle bone script, didn't even exist until the middle of the Shang Dynasty. How is it confirmed that the Xia Dynasty was a real political entity without a contemporary written record to prove so?-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 22:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

All Chinese history books, as far as I am aware of, has a section on the Xia and I just put info from Xia on here.Teeninvestor (talk) 22:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, every Chinese history book after the Shiji, but one has to remember that Sima Qian was writing the history of the Xia more than a thousand years after it allegedly existed. There's no written record before that of Sima Qian's which describes the Xia at such length; one has to consider the historical authenticity of the entire dynasty. However, the Shang is in a safe ballpark; the Shang actually left written records behind on bone which hold the names of their kings (so we do know that they lived and existed). If the Xia existed at all, they certainly would have been unable to do likewise, since writing was not yet invented.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 22:11, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Even though there are some minimal evidence of Xia's actual existence, and it certainly is in traditional Chinese recorded history, it lacks concrete archeological evidence to support it. But honestly, the entire Feudal section (and the whole article) is rather poorly written, so that is the least of its problem for me. The article is honestly way too rambling, and I doubt many people would want to or can read the whole thing.--Balthazarduju (talk) 22:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Rambling? Hardly. The prose is not more than many other articles in WP:CHINA. But the feudal section does need to be expanded.Teeninvestor (talk) 22:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions for improving the article
Put them here.Teeninvestor (talk) 16:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I would put the following as a footnote, rather than up so high: 'The Financial Times noted that "China has been the world’s largest economy for 18 of the past 20 centuries",[5][6] while according to The Economist, "China was not only the largest economy for much of recorded history, but until the 15th century, it also had the highest income per capita — and was the world’s technological leader."' Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * like, an explanatory footnote?Teeninvestor (talk) 14:55, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It kind of plunges into it without laying a foundation. The introduction should be recrafted, with this being in a different part of the introduction. Tell us why its been the largest economy first and then in conclusion mention this. Ltwin (talk) 02:02, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I tried turning it into a footnote but it didn't work for some reason.Teeninvestor (talk) 02:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, it doesn't necessarily have to be a footnote, just no the first sentence. It is better if instead of just being told "China has had the largest economy for much of human history", that the reader is shown that it has had the largest economy. For that reason it probably shouldn't be the very first thing in the introduction.


 * The beginning of the first paragraph should began, if it can be phrased like this, with "The economic history of China before 1911..." or something along those lines. Also I've looke at a reference given - Li and Zheng (2001). I'm aware that this might be an acceptable style but for alot of readers, this makes it really hard to simply know where the information is coming from. Are these the authors of a book or the title of a book itself? Why should a reader have to search on google to find information when it could have just been given by the contributing editor instead? Ltwin (talk) 02:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The reference Li and Zheng(2001) is used to refer to the Li Bo, Zheng Yin, 5000 years source in the works section.Teeninvestor (talk) 19:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Emergence of cities一段中Er li to是否指“二里頭”，也許應該拼作"Er Li Tou"?中文參考資料是否用拼音轉寫好點，不然的話不易確定原始標題. --Icesea(talk) 07:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The article on the Mongols and Yuan Dynasty seem a bit rhetorical and centered around Han Chauvinism. Granted that the Mongols were ruthless in their initial invasions, it's rather ahistorical to ostracize them. Han armies during civil war caused just as much as devastation during their invasions yet somehow the Mongols get all the negative criticism associated with their conquests and the creation of the empire. Also in regards to the population drop during the Mongol era, I think this article along with most others due to conventional wisdom highly underestimate the plagues/epidemic factor. As most people should know, microbes kill far more than any type of violence. Historians like William McNeill in his groundbreaking book "Plagues and Peoples" not only mentions this but outright quotes the assertions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.4.46.67 (talk) 18:46, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm doing a copyedit now and I'm seeing a lot in this article that doesn't seem to be related to the economic history of China. A great deal of the article could be cut out and/or moved to other articles. In the pieces about Early China, there's some political and military stuff that doesn't need to be there.--McKorn (talk) 13:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks McKorn.Teeninvestor (talk) 18:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The article references the "European Agricultural Revolution." Could this be disambiguated (see link)?


 * All the footnotes should appear after commas (",") and periods ("."), as per Manual_of_style and Footnotes. Madalibi (talk) 03:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm trying to take care of that while doing a general copyedit. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 07:29, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Ebrey quote
I own Ebrey's Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1999), and I do not see the quote given in the first paragraph here for page 175 about China having the highest material living standards on Earth until the 18th century. Is this a simple clerical error? Perhaps the quote is on another page and Teen made a mistake, but from what I see, it is not on page 175. In fact, that page discusses ethnic groups and languages of the conquest dynasties chapter which focuses on Liao, Jin, and Yuan rule over northern China, not the history of China's economy into the 18th century.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 13:49, 12 September 2009 (UTC)


 * My version is a Chinese version of the Cambridge illustrated history of China, and the page number is 175, in the section about the Qing Dynasty. Changed the citation to reflect that.Teeninvestor (talk) 13:58, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My version is a Chinese version of the Cambridge illustrated history of China, and the page number is 175, in the section about the Qing Dynasty. Changed the citation to reflect that.Teeninvestor (talk) 13:58, 12 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Lots of careless editing, here. First, you can't have an exact quotation in English when you're translating it back from a Chinese version. Second, the name of a book's author doesn't change when the book appears in translation: the footnote should still attribute the statement to Ebrey, not her Chinese translators "Zhao et al." But the biggest problem is that Ebrey never said what the wiki quotes her as saying. The original passage is from p. 234 of the English-language edition, in the first paragraph of a section on "Maritime trade and relations with European nations":
 * "The balance of power slowly shifted in the eighteenth century without anyone in China taking much notice. Until 1700 China's material culture had been unrivalled; its standard of living was among the best in the world, and inventions flowed more commonly from east to west than vice versa. Yet by the nineteenth century, China found itself outmatched in material and technological resources by western nations."
 * This is completely different from "Until the 18th century, China enjoyed the highest material living standards on Earth." This sentence should be removed from the lead, or replaced by an accurate paraphrase of what Ebrey actually said. Madalibi (talk) 02:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The 18th century takes places in the 1700's. Just as the 20th century took place in the 1900's.   D r e a m Focus  11:30, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Maddison rates per capita income of Europe higher than China's since 1450, while this number for the Han and Roman economies (and most of the rest) was about equal. Given the recent positive reevaluation of Roman economy, demography and technology in general, however, the Roman economic power almost certainly overshadowed Han Chinese's by quite a margin. Raymond Goldsmith (1984): "An Estimate of the Size and Structure of the National Product of the Early Roman Empire", Review of Income and Wealth, vol. 30, no. 3, September, pp. 263-288 rates the Roman economy to be the largest in history until about 1000 AD. And this is on the basis of 55 million inhabitants (current estimations range from 60-70 to 100 million). So, reality check, what makes you so sure that the Chinese economy was the largest? Especially, considering that in the period between 1300 and 1840, you won't find five new important innovations in China? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Mr. Gun Powder Ma, Maddison believes India in the feudal era had a higher GDP than China or Rome (he thought that Han had a higher GDP than Rome, but India higher than Han); I wouldn't be too sure before trusting his figures. If you don't believe me, please check List of regions by past GDP(PPP).Teeninvestor (talk) 20:40, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Why quote The Economist,
Why quote The Economist with it´s poorly based information? Look at this and you'll see their statement is not based on facts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.226.72.14 (talk) 22:07, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Remove Financial Times
I'm going to remove the quotes to Financial Times and the Economist because they have no base for their facts and the information has no place in this article. It's no true statistical fact and the wiki needs to be credible.

The world bank writes:"For a large part of the last two millennia, China was the world's largest and most advanced economy. Then it missed the Industrial Revolution and stagnated. Only after opening to the outside world in 1979 was China's economic performance again impressive."

Thats a different thing, for a large part of the last two millennia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tosses (talk • contribs)


 * You need a cite for that. Your assertions against two major newsmagazines is not convincing. Shadowjams (talk) 08:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

It is already quoted in the article, with source reference http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED460052&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED460052 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tosses (talk • contribs) 12:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

So is it Ok to delete? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tosses (talk • contribs) 13:04, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Millennia means a thousand years. They were an economic super power for 18 of the last 20 centuries, and then when the industrial revolution came, the Western nations took the lead.  Only after they opened trade to the outside world, and became to modernize their industry, did they begin to prosper once again.   D r e a m Focus  11:26, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Who were "they"? For large periods of its history, China was no unified country and when it was it was often ruled by foreign dynasties and powers. But anyway, people should be aware that, as one economic historian had it, there are no quarterly adjusted economic numbers for the last two millennia. To act as if these numbers were facts is deeply unprofessional, and either naive or biased. Maddison says that figures before 1750 are guess work and the margin of error in calculating values such as GDP etc. in the late 19th was still 30%. So, in the light of this, what makes people here so cocksure that China was the leading economy for the last 2000 years? Do you have access to indicators which no-one else has? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:32, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You see, Gun Powder Ma, we have something called a "source" which tells us that China was the biggest economy for "much of the past two millenia", which we then use for our statements. If you do not understand this, then there goes the whole point of wikipedia. If you don't like our figures, you can get a "source" of your own.Teeninvestor (talk) 20:41, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary date
Why 1911? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.78.64.101 (talk) 02:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Very simple: this year marks not only the end of the Qing Dynasty, but also roughly two thousand years of Imperial rule by emperors with the creation of the modern Republic of China (and later the People's Republic). It is rational and totally acceptable to divide economy articles on these political grounds, because it marks the beginning of a new era in Chinese history. The profound changes in Chinese society brought by this new political order cannot be overstated.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 02:54, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Bombastic claims
Removed this PEACOCKish, bombastic claim from the lede. First, Teeninvestor inserts this, which then becomes this. It's pretty clear that there is an agenda here and an attempt to deceive the community through the well known "small steps" tactic. The whole sentence is moreover entirely unnecessary, and the lead flows much better without it. Any knee-jerk reverting by Teeninvestor will be reported this time. Athenean (talk) 01:32, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Like you know anything about what Pomeranz said, Athenean! read what they actually said; that China's GDP per capita was higher than Britain as recently as 1800. First of all, you were the one who messed up the claim about China's GDP per capita by putting "may" in the sentence when the authors expressed no doubt. For someone that admittedly knows nil about the estimates on this matter, your accusations of "an agenda" are so completely off base its not funny.Teeninvestor (talk) 02:12, 24 July 2010 (UTC)


 * If that is the case, then why did you previously insert that "China's GDP equaled and may have exceeded"? Which now suddenly becomes simply "exceeded".  Either you are falsifying the source the second time, or you had no idea what it said the first time.  So which is it?  But in any case, just because something can be sourced, doesn't mean it needs to go into the lead.  Pomeranz is just one of many scholars.  The lead is meant to present a summary of the article, not cherry-picked sources that highlight one user's POV.  Please familiarize yourself with WP:LEAD, and WP:UNDUE.  And while you're at it, you might want to look up "bombastic" in the dictionary. Athenean (talk) 05:40, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Athenean, either you or GPM inserted that, or I made a mistake.  The source is very clear on this; there is no question what Pomeranz and Bairoch thinks; in fact, they have given very precise figures about Chinese and British per capita income, 282 and 240 respectively. The figures are black and whiteTeeninvestor (talk) 02:31, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Teeinvestor, could you explain why you have partly or fully removed every single edit I've made to the article for the last two days? These are all scholarly works, monographs by international authorities such as Angus Maddison, David Landes, Donald Wagner and David Sim or articles published in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient:
 * 1
 * 2
 * 3
 * 4
 * I feel your possesive edit pattern amounts to a case of WP:Own. Please stop this and bring arguments to the fore why you remove this material all the time. Thanks Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:45, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * GPM, I've left Angus Maddison's assertions about Bairoch's per capita income, so I don't think this is a case for WP:OWN. I shortened some of what you wrote in the lead, because the lead is meant to summarize. If you wish so, you can add the detailed information to the relevant section in the Qing dynasty or Ming dynasty, but please do not add more than a summary in the leads of the major sections. The Roman iron figure is extremely dubious (See talk:Roman metallurgy); you even mentioned that it is extrapolated from one iron production center. If we extrapolate current world iron production from iron production per capita in a Chinese steel mill town we will get ridiculus figures, and this can show the problem with the Roman figure.Teeninvestor (talk) 02:31, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. The figure is extrapolated from Roman Britain; since the same method is also used for Song China where data for the whole of China is extrapolated only from a few surviving receipts of iron mills, I don't see any methodological differences which would warrant the deletion of the Roman material, if you want to keep the comparison. Your supposedly exact iron output figure is btw outdated (Wagner, p. 191):


 * "For the Han period I have suggested elsewhere that iron production might have been on the order of 0.1 kg per capita per year (Wagner 2001a: 73). Since, as Hartwell has shown, the uses of iron had broadened greatly between the Han and the Song one might well be justified in supposing an increase in production by an order of magnitude in the intervening thousand years. Therefore his suggestion, 114,000 metric tonnes, amounting to about 1.2 kg of iron per capita per year, is quite plausible, but there appears to be no direct quantitative evidence for it."


 * Roman per capita production was in the order of 1.5 kg, so higher. This view is taken is by three sources, all experts on ancient metallurgy and widely cited (Craddock 2008, p. 108; Sim, Ridge 2002, p. 23; Healy 1978, p. 196):
 * Sim, David; Ridge, Isabel (2002): Iron for the Eagles. The Iron Industry of Roman Britain, Tempus, Stroud, Gloucestershire, ISBN 0-7524-1900-5
 * Healy, John F. (1978): Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman World, Thames and Hudson, London, ISBN 0-500-40035-0
 * Craddock, Paul T. (2008): "Mining and Metallurgy", in: Oleson, John Peter (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-518731-1 Gun Powder Ma (talk) 09:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Reply

 * You are completely wrong about the Song figure; it is extrapolated from the government's annual iron tax, which was around five to ten percent. I mentioned this earlier. Using this figure and dividing it by the tax rate, historians extrapolated a figure of iron production (the true figure was probably higher, as many iron mills were unregistered). The figure mentioned repeatedly over and over again is 125,000 tons, not 114,000 tons, and this does not include many private, unregistered iron households. During the Han dynasty, iron production was not taxed (but it was temporarily monopolized and provided nearly the same amount of revenue as the 3% tax on agriculture, showing that it was probably also an important factor in the economy), so it is impossible to know what the iron production is, but it is definitely much higher than 0.1 kg per capita that you have suggested; reports in the Han shu show that thousands of laborers were working in many iron mills (there are reports that an entire building was made from cast iron), and Han Chinese had technology such as cast iron and the Blast furnance that Europe did not approximate for dozens of centuries (see Science and technology of the Han dynasty). Indeed, from Needham's work it is quite clear that Han and Song iron technology was far ahead of any contemporaries (although there are no concrete figures on Han iron production). All of your sources, being classicists, probably have very little knowledge on the Han (or Song) era iron industry, which would explain their grossly wrong estimates.Teeninvestor (talk) 17:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I am not complety wrong, but you are. My source for the quote above is: Wagner, Donald B.: "The Administration of the Iron Industry in Eleventh-Century China", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2001), pp. 175–197 (175f., 191)
 * This is the very same Donald Wagner who has written the iron technology volume of Needham's Science and Technology in Ancient China series, and the very same expert you have used and cited yourself multiple times in Wikipedia. In the article, Wagner critizes Hartwell's fifty year old number of 125,000 t you have used as untenable in its supposed preciseness. You wanna keep the GA status? Then please stop reverting recent scholarship to your very outdated stuff. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Examination of Wagner's source

 * It seems that Donald Wagner is arguing against Hartwell's method, not suggesting an alternative figure; see his statement here. Also, it seems I am correct; the figure is 114,000 metric tons, but the commonly cited figure is 125,000 english tons; they are both correct though. To quote Wagner:

Robert Hartwell’s research in the early 1960’s into the iron industry of Song China (960–1279) showed, using a variety of evidence, that the applications of iron expanded greatly in the early Song. He then calculated from tax data the annual iron production of China in the 11th century. This article argues that, while Hartwell’s qualitative conclusions hold, his specific calculation of annual production is flawed: no reliable calculation is possible based on presently available sources. I have read his paper. His argument has two ponts. First, he notes that no Song iron production figures are reliable because of irregular delieveries of iron to the state, so the tax receipts may not reflect reality (as a huge amount of iron production was untaxed and illegal); in additon, this does not account for Wang Anshi's tax increases. Second, he contests the tax rate used by Hartwell of one-tenth; however, on this point it is very confusing. Overall, it seems that Hartwell's figure is still the only one available (and indeed Wagner claims it is "quite plausible"). Interestingly enough, Wagner supports the thesis that Han iron technology was more advanced than Rome: "In his conclusion, Wagner offers an interesting reflection. The iron-production technology of the Roman world resulted in small-scale, localized industry, which was of no political or financial interest to the state. In China, a more advanced technology, which gave significant economies of scale, encouraged a powerful state to take a direct interest in iron production and thereby further increase its economic and political power" Considering how rapacious the Roman state was in its search for revenues, this seems to indicate that the iron industry was very unimportant. This would cast doubt on your Roman figure of 86,000 tons, as Wagner specifically stated Chinese iron technology as superior, yet he puts  Legal iron production of the Han state monopoly at just 5,000 tons (the true production must be higher, considering private illegal iron production and resistance to the monopoly). As the Romans had only access to bloomery smelting and no large-scale iron works, it is difficult to see how their production was higher than the Han, let alone the Song. Use of iron artifacts, especially iron agricultural tools, were especially prevalent during the Han, while Romans used wooden ploughs. And even Wagner's estimate may be incorrect; if we assume that Later Han iron production was equal to the Tang (a very plausible assumption given the Wu Hu invasions, the state of technology and the Tang's interventions), we would have a figure of 21,000 tons for Han iron production, a figure of 0.4 tons per capita (a plausible figure when taking into account illegal production). Teeninvestor (talk) 15:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Movable type printing
Contrary to what the text claims (without reference), its actual economic impact was insignificant:

"Despite Bi Sheng’s invention, significant typographic publications did not appear in China until the end of the fifteenth century, and the technique was used only sporadically after that."

Source: Edgren, J. S. (2007): "The Book beyond the West": China, in: Eliot, Simon; Rose, Jonathan (eds.): A Companion to the History of the Book, Blackwell Publishing, pp. 97−110 (105), ISBN 978-1-4051-2765-3

I have removed the bit.Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:57, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * From its inception in China (from the mid-11th century onwards), movable type printing always had to compete with its earlier-founded cousin, woodblock printing. And Edgren is right, movable type in China did not become very important until the Ming, since metallic movable type was not perfected until Hua Sui's bronze type of 1490 (although Wang Zhen had fiddled with metal tin movable type in the 14th century). Perhaps the gargantuan Chinese written character system was the inhibiting factor in movable type's development and acceptance.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * In the big scheme of things, movable type printing did never become important in the Far East. Note that even where it was most developed, in Korea, it remained a laborious hand printing process capable of making not more than 40 copies per day. By contrast, Renaissance printing presses could do 3,600 copies per working day (see Printing press), and there were thousands of them active throughout Europe.


 * So, Chinese movable type printing remained insignificant both in comparison to Chinese woodblock printing and, globally seen, to European movable type printing. Its economic impact was truly negligible which is why I have removed it from the context it was placed in. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Contentious Sentence, Consider Revising
"According to some scholars, China was for a large part of the last two millennia the world's largest[1] and among the wealthiest and most advanced economies."

There are a ton of things wrong with this sentence. The phrase "China was for a large part of the last two millennia the world's largest" does not make sense. Largest what? Also, the phrase "According to some scholars" is vague (not to mention cliche) in Wikipedia. According to the scholars who study China? According to most scholars? According to an arbitrary majority of scholars? There is no basis for quantifying the "according to..." argument unless a comprehensive list of academic dissent is referred (at least), in other words, people who disagree with the statement that China was the world's largest economy for a "large part" of the last two millennia. Or was it "most" of the last two millennia? Furthermore, "wealthiest" is vague, and although it clearly implies a per capita basis, it is easily confused with overall size (national wealth, GDP) in the beginning - in which case it would be clearly redundant.

I will propose that the sentence be the following:

"China was the largest economy in the world for much of the past two millennia [1], as well as one of the wealthiest per capita and most technologically advanced."

"A large part" has been replaced by "much" because the former is bad style, while the latter gives room for interpretation and has concise readability. I have deleted the "according to some scholars" muck for a very good reason. There is always dissent no matter what. Even on something as clear as "HIV causes AIDS" you will find some degree of political and even scientific dissent! My science forum has an engineer who disagrees with special relativity! China's economy was not necessarily greater than the Romans (that remains TBD), but certainly outlasted it by far. One concrete reference is enough to state the sentence without mentioning accordance. Facial (talk) 17:56, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with facial to the extent that the sentence needs to be changed. However, I would also like to point out that China was never the largest economy at any point of time in human history. I came across a book written by Angus Maddison called "The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective", in which he proves with evidence that India was the largest economy from the 1st through to the 18th century and throughout most of recorded history. There is absolutely no proof to suggest that China was the largest economy (or even one of the largest economies) in the world. I feel that the sentence should be changed to: "China had one one of the largest economies historically, even though its wealth remained average". Jackiepurr (talk) 06:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)


 * NOTE is a blocked sockpuppet. 70.24.244.20 (talk) 06:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)


 * India couldn't be the largest economy in this period, since it wasn't a single economy, unless we're using aggregate geographic regions instead of political states. "India" as such would then include all of South Asia. Usually when speaking about China, it's about the dominant Chinese state of the period... As for wealth being average, this can't be correct. The world contains more poor economies than rich ones, and poor ones cannot afford the civil engineering works China carried out, or the military hardware used to equip its armies, so it has to be above average in wealth. "China had one of the largest economies historically" is fine by me though. 70.24.244.20 (talk) 15:00, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It's no doubt that China was historically an important economic entity as a whole, for China held so large a population. However, it seems controversial whether the Chinese were ever among the wealthiest per capita. Maybe we shall leave this question if no direct and conclusive evidence is found.--Certiffon (talk) 14:23, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow
Can this article be more of a biased joke? Seriously. It's pages like this that make it perfectly understandable why college professors refuse to allow wikipedia as a legitimate source for their student's papers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.150.78 (talk) 07:03, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:ERA
This edit established the use of the page as / but, as a reminder, we don't actually list after every date, just the ones where confusion might arise. Similarly, it's omitted from centuries. — Llywelyn II   13:28, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Feudalism and Well-field system
As a reminder, if the section on feudal China says it's "dubious" China was ever feudal, the next three sections shouldn't repeatedly discuss the decline and fall of feudal China.

If the section on the well field system says "historians don't believe it ever existed", the next two sections shouldn't discuss its disappearance or replacement. — Llywelyn II   13:28, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

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