Talk:Economic history of China before 1912/GA2

GA Reassessment
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.''

On a closer look, I find the article being neither factually accurate nor neutral. My main concerns with the current version are WP:NEUTRALITY, WP:PEACOCK and WP:BALANCE. More specifically, the issues are:


 * The repeated attempts to draw unnecessary comparisons to Europe which do not shed light on Chinese developments, and seem to be merely made to aggrandize Chinese achievements. Particularly disturbing is here the overreliance on Robert K. G. Temple, an author hold to be WP:Fringe by a majority of users here and here.
 * Closely related to this is the frequent use of peacock language: "levels unmatched by other civilizations", "world leader", "levels far above their western counterparts" etc. These qualifications are out of place and very often factually wrong or do only represent a minority view. It is an open question how much of this is down to reliance on flawed references, but the problem seems to be at least partly also springing from a conscious effort, that is user bias.
 * The third major problem is the overrepresentation of minority views, several times even to the virtual exclusion of the actual mainstream view. Here too the general thrust is rather predictable in that it aims at inflating things (more advanced, faster, higher, further etc.)
 * Unstability: These problems have been noted in the recent past by other users; then (22-25 July), the issues were not 'resolved' by discussion on talk page, but rather continued reverting of article.

The following may be a bit tedious to many users, but the detailed discussion of selected bits is meant to illustrate that the article remains problematic even when giving it the benefit of the vast scope it aims to deal with. The list is by no means exhaustive, but should only serve to demonstrate the many problems.

False and unverified claims
This wide-reaching claim lacks a reference. In reality, Needham wrote on technology, not economic history.
 * Sinologist Joseph Needham has claimed that China's GDP per capita exceeded Europe from the fifth century BCE onwards by a substantial margin


 * In the sixth century BCE, among other innovations, the iron plow, row cultivation, and intensive hoeing were introduced. The introduction of oxen in cultivation also began during this period.[53] These techniques spread rapidly, but with the exception of the use of animals, they were limited to China until the European Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century.

Although I had pointed the main contributor to the existence of Roman iron plows (Propyläen Technikgeschichte, Vol. 1, p. 209, fig. 59) in the second failed FAC, he reintroduced this demonstrably false statement afterwards.

In reality, the cited source (Wagner 2001b, pp. 73) does not refer to any such "true figures", but rather concludes soberly that the figure of 5,000 tons "gives a feel for the general scale of Han iron production".
 * Historian Donald Wagner estimates that the production of the Han iron monopoly was roughly around 5,000 tons (assuming 100 tons per iron office), though the true figure was much higher due to illegal private production and growth after the privatization under Later Han.

Minority views in lead
This is only a minority opinion. According to WP:Lead the introduction should be reserved for the main view which is that European GDP per capita exceeded that of China since the onset of the modern age or even earlier. Cf. section World.
 * according to some scholars, as recently as the 18th century its per capita income exceeded that of Western Europe.

However, according to most scholars this development took place long before the Industrial Revolution (post 1750), namely during the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, and the Scientific Revolution. Cf. section World.
 * Europe's rapid development during the Industrial Revolution enabled it to surpass China—an event known as the great divergence

First, iron plows were also used by other civilizations such as the Romans. Second, this does not add up as Roman iron per capita consumption is estimated to have been more than ten times larger:
 * Widespread use of iron tools that had begun under the Warring States period allowed Chinese agricultural efficiency to increase to a level much higher than other civilizations who had to use wooden ploughs, and this was reinforced by new inventions during the Han period
 * Han China: 5,000 t or 0.1 kg per capita
 * Roman Empire: 82,500 t or 1.5 kg per head

Reliance on primary sources
WP:PRIMARY requires the editor to use secondary sources, particularly when it comes to doubtful asssertions such as the following ones.


 * The prosperous capital of Qi, Linzi had a population estimated at over 200,000 in 650 BCE, becoming one of the largest cities in the world.

This number seems to rely only on the 1st century BC historian Sima Qian, but not on a modern critical evaluation.

Again, ancient authors were notoriously careless with numbers, this has been noted by historians since David Hume. What we need is an independent confirmation by a modern scholar.
 * It was recorded that during his reign, the city of Nanjing had a population of up to 1.4 million, exceeding that of Han-era Luoyang.

The stress is on registered. The reason for this rising number must have been in an increasing efficiency of the restored imperial bureaucracy, not in a actual the population increase; pre-modern societies enjoyed population increases close to nil and China was no exception: Maddison gives an average growth rate of 0.00 to 0.11 for China between 1 and 1500 AD.
 * The registered population increased by fifty percent from 30 to 46 million in twenty years.

Both inventions were largely irrelevant for the economy, since they remained for centuries in a very rudimentary state: Cannon and handgun did not appear in China until around 1300, and printing took off no earlier: :
 * The Tang was a period of rapid economic growth and prosperity, bringing technological advances like gunpowder and woodblock printing.

"Despite the conspicuous advance of printing in the Song, collections of manuscripts were not suddenly eclipsed by printed books. For one thing, conservative scholars were skeptical of the textual quality of the impersonal printed products; for another, goodquality books were rather expensive. No matter the rapid growth of printing, many desirable titles were not in print and could only be obtained by making manuscript copies. By the end of the twelfth century, the imperial library in Hangzhou possessed several thousand titles, but it is estimated that only one-quarter were printed books."

Second, gunpowder should be anyway much more associated with the opposite, namely destruction, death and economic downslide.

Flawed and unnecessary comparisons, minority views
How so? Western agriculture had its own fair share of innovations unknown to the Chinese, such as mechanical presses for all kinds of grapes and seeds, the wheeled plow, the mechanical reaper, the true scythe etc. Its animal husbandry was undisputably more advanced than in China where agriculture was largely restricted to cultivation of land. Having a free market economy and a functioning law system which protected property, Roman agriculture was no less efficient and its unmatched all-weather road system and the long-distance crop sea trade network established an effective market for agricultural goods far greater than what the rudimentary Han road and sea network could provide its traders. I haven't found Temple to be even aware of these considerations in any way. And how does this comparison to the completely differently operating Mediterranean peasants world helps improve the understanding of Chinese agriculture?
 * These innovations in China's agriculture increased efficiency to levels far above their western counterparts.

First, Temple is no historian, but a fringe author, and certainly no classicist who could make a qualified judgement on Roman transporation. Second, Temple ultimately relies on a misinterpretation by Richard Lefebvre des Noëttes (died 1936) which has been totally refuted many times since. The current, favourable, consensus on the efficiency of the Roman land transport system is aptly summarized by Raepsaet, Georges: "Land Transport, Part 2. Riding, Harnesses, and Vehicles", in: Oleson, John Peter (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-518731-1, pp. 580–605 and ROMAN TRACTION SYSTEMS
 * By contrast, historian Robert Temple notes that contemporary Rome was unable even to transport grain from northern Italy to Rome and had to depend on ship-carried Egyptian grain, due to a lack of a good harness.

Vastly exaggerated and unproven claim and factually wrong. The Romans, for example, too knew steel, the iron plow, and the efficient horse harnesses. Their combination of papyri (low cost and mass produced) and parchment (high quality and extremely durable) supported a highly literate society for centuries, while Chinese literacy remained bound to the ineffectve silk and bamboo books for centuries to come:
 * Developments such as paper, cast iron, the seed drill, an efficient horse harness, steel and the Iron plow allowed China's wealth and economic efficiency to increase to levels unmatched by other civilizations.

"It was not until after the invention and development of paper in China during the late Han period that the book could begin to rise above these limitations, and it took a few more centuries before books of paper replaced those of bamboo and silk."

A strange statement. In what way did Chinese improved masts, sails, and rudders had a share in the Age of Disvovery? European vessels of the time relied on lateen sails, which originated during the early Roman empire in the Mediterranean Sea        and stern-mounted pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, both of which were indigenous European innovations unknown in Ancient China. Cf. on rudders:
 * Economic growth was strong under the new liberal policies and China developed a number of innovations, such as improved masts, sails, and rudders, which laid the basis for China's later overseas trade with India, the Middle east and East Africa druing the Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties, as well as the later European voyages of discovery.

"The only actual concept which can be claimed to have been transmitted from the Chinese is the idea of a stern-mounted rudder, and not its method of attachment nor the manner in which it was controlled. Since that idea of putting a rudder on the stern can be traced back to the models found in Egyptian tombs, the need to have the concept brought into the Middle East is questionable at best. There is no evidence to support the contention that the sternpost-mounted rudder came from China, and no need to call on exterior sources for its introduction into the Mediterranean."

Meaningless superlative based on wrong premises: In antiquity, there was still very few interaction between the world regions (not to mention between the Old and New world) and thus no world system in which one region could actually lead the others.
 * Agricultural and military advancements made China a technological world leader

Actually, cast iron has been known in Europe since late antiquity/early Middle Ages (around 500 AD).
 * Cast iron was invented in China during the 4th century BCE, but was not adopted by the West for 1,700 years.


 * Scholars agree that the most prosperous provinces of the Qing Empire, such as the Jiangnan region, had living standards that approximated pre-industrial revolution England


 * Living standards in 18th century China and pre-industrial revolution Europe are comparable. Per capita income in China was estimated by Paul Bairoch to have exceeded Western Europe until 1800.[130] Life expectancy in China and Japan for adult males were 39.6 and 41.1 respectively, compared with 34 for England, between 27.5 and 30 for France, and 24.7 for Prussia.[233]  Chinese laborers in the Yangtze delta, the richest region of China, consumed 4,600 calories per day on average (laborers in China overall consumed 2,637 calories on average) compared with 2,000-2,500 calories per day for England.[234]  Rural family incomes and productivity in 1800 for the richest province, the Yangtze, was estimated by economic historian Robert Allen to have been slightly below contemporary England, Holland and the earlier Ming, but higher than the rest of Europe.[235][236] There was modest per capita growth in both regions.[237]  The Chinese economy was not stagnant and continued to make improvements, and in many areas (especially agriculture) were ahead of Western Europe. Chinese manufacturing output in 1750 is estimated at 16 times that of Britain, and was not surpassed by British levels until 1860.[133][238][239] Chinese cities were also ahead in public health.

All this is actually a mere minority opinion, carefully cherry-picked by the editor and held by very few scholars. And even their works have been meanwhile critically reviewed and their conclusions dismissed by economic historians. Cf section World. The mainstream view remains that of Angus Maddison, William McNeill in his The Rise of the West and David Landes in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

Sinocentric misinterpretation of world history: If this is so, why did the rest of the world not under Qing rule also fell behind the West? The real reason for the great leap forward by the West lay in its dynamic, not in the lateral movement of the rest which followed the traditional path of agriculture.
 * These policies greatly hampered the Qing economy, and was a key reason why it fell behind the West in the 18th century.

Miscellaneous
"Huge" leaps foreward in productivity (which alway means productivity per capita) began only under industrial conditions, and before certainly not by mere commercialization. The population increase has more complex causes, such as an increased resilience against contagious diseases (cf. William McNeill: Plagues and Peoples).
 * Increasing commercialization caused huge advances in productivity during the Ming Dynasty, allowing a greater population

By whom? There is no consensus, neither among scholars nor ordinary people, which ages were 'more golden' than others. This depends very much on one's premises.
 * The Han Dynasty is remembered as the first of China's Golden Ages.

Dubious assertion: China is not noted for the invention of pre-modern steam engines, and even if somewhere such a prototype was actually developed, the talk of steam engines increasing industrial capacity along the lines of a Chinese industrial revolution is unhistorical and anachrononistic.
 * Innovations such as a new steam turbine helped improve industrial capability to above Song levels.

This appears exaggerrated. The foremost expert on Ancient Chinese metallurgy, Donald Wagner, estimates Han government iron production, that is in the centuries to follow, to be in the order of 0.1 kg per capita, a far cry from the figures for the contemporanous Roman Empire. So if iron tools were really "ubiquitous" then in China, one runs out of superlatives for the contemporary Roman Empire with an estimated iron per capita production more than 10 times higher (see above).
 * Although iron tools were manufactured during the Spring and Autumn Period, they became ubiquitous during the Warring States Era after large states began producing iron under government control.

Statements by PericlesofAthens
Hello Gun. The first thing I shall address: the iron plow. In China, the earliest discovered specimen of a cast iron blade for a plowshare is dated to roughly 500 BCE, the late Spring and Autumn Period of the Zhou Dynasty (Greenberger 2006: p. 11; Bray 1978: pp. 9, 19-21). Did iron plowshares exist anywhere else in 500 BCE? At this point the Roman Republic had recently thrown off the shackles of its monarchy and was confined to the Italian peninsula, not yet the megalith it was to become. Teen is obviously wrong when he argues that iron plows did not exist anywhere but China until the 18th century. However, surviving specimens of plowshares and artwork of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) prove that the Chinese had replaced most of the wooden components of the plow with durable cast iron, creating the first heavy moldboard iron plow (Wang 1982: 53-54; see also Greenberger and Bray). As far as I know, the Romans did not utilize the heavy moldboard design, which appeared in Europe at a much later date. Perhaps Teen did not understand this topic well enough to make the distinction between the heavy moldboard iron plow and all other iron plows (which other civilizations, such as the Romans, made use of).-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 20:16, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Pericles. Could you please give the full references? I am not sure what your point is. Do you argue for the Chinese being the first to use iron shares? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 02:18, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's briefly restate the situation. Teeninvestor claims (see above) that certain agricultural techniques were limited to China and that their exclusive use made Chinese agriculture in terms of productivity second to none.
 * This claim is open to two counter-arguments:
 * a) it is unclear why possession of these techniques is enough alone to establish a Chinese primacy. The fact that other cultures possessed their own unique set of agricultural techniques which increased their productivity in these field and which in turn was unknown to the Chinese peasant counteracts this claim (for example, the Romans possessed mechanical presses for all kinds of grapes and seeds, the wheeled plow, the mechanical reaper, the true scythe, all unknown to the Chinese)
 * b) it is not even true that the Chinese were long the only ones who used the following techniques
 * Iron plowshare: The earliest iron ploughshares date from around 1000 BC in the Ancient Near East. (White, K. D. (1984): Greek and Roman Technology, London: Thames and Hudson, p. 59). The plowshares of the Greek and Roman breaking plows were typically made of iron (White, p. 59). And there is this all-iron Roman votive plow from the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BC I earlier cited (Propyläen Technikgeschichte, Vol. 1, p. 209, fig. 59)
 * Mouldboard plow: The Romans also achieved the heavy mouldboard plough in the late 3rd and 4th century AD, when archaeological evidence appears, inter alia, in Roman Britain (Margaritis, Evi; Jones, Martin K.: "Greek and Roman Agriculture", in: Oleson, John Peter (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-518731-1, pp. 158–174 (166, 170))
 * So, both techniques on which Teeninvestors rests his claim were also known by other ancient cultures. There is thus little basis for his Chinese exceptionalism. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:48, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah! I was relying on Lynn White's Medieval Technology and Social Change, which is a bit dated (1962), for the earliest European heavy moldboard iron plow. If the 4th century AD dating for heavy moldboard iron plows in Roman Britain is correct, this does not predate the earliest in China (3rd-2nd century BC), but in the relative scheme of things is not far from the first! Plus, it was known in Medieval Europe, so pinpointing the 18th century is way off the mark. Thank you for finding a reference to an even earlier iron plowshare, i.e. for 1000 BC in the ancient Near East. This does not surprise me too much, considering that the Iron Age visited China several centuries after the eastern Mediterranean civilizations, i.e. Mycenaean, Hittite, Egyptian, etc. I'm curious: where exactly was this earliest known plowshare found? And which culture/civilization has this been associated with: Neo-Hittite, Middle-Assyrian, etc.?-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:16, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

The full refs you requested:


 * Bray, Francesca. "Swords into Plowshares: A Study of Agricultural Technology and Society in Early China," in Technology and Culture, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Jan., 1978): 1–31.
 * Wang, Zhongshu. (1982). Han Civilization. Translated by K.C. Chang and Collaborators. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300027230.
 * Greenberger, Robert. (2006). The Technology of Ancient China. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. ISBN 1404205586.

I just returned home (a few hours ago) after spending four days on the other end of the continental U.S., so I am in no mood (from jet lag) to comb through the rest of these issues at the moment. I will try to make an attempt later, if time is willing. Happy sailing.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:16, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the refs. I don't know the difference between a moldboard plow and a heavy moldboard plow, if there is any, but that's what my sources say: Margaritis, Evi; Jones, Martin K. 2008:

From the late third century A.D., we find archaeological evidence for the development of an implement that went on to become the principal tool of arable cultivation, first in Europe, and then accompanying the expansion of European influence around the world. The moldboard plow, with a heavy cutting blade at its front, followed by an asymmetrical share and sod-turning moldboard, and assisted by a variety of wheels, makes its appearance during the later stages of the Roman epoch...Three iron implements that recur on Romano-British sites of the late third and fourth centuries A.D. are the long harvesting scythe, the coulter, and the asymmetrical plowshare (Rees 1979). All three can be linked to the intensification of cereal production, and the latter two to the moldboard plow, designed to cut deep into the soil and invert the furrow.

White, K. D. (1984):

From the available evidence it would appear that the evolutionary progress of the front of the plough ran from no protection (suitable enough for the very loose and friable soils of Mesopotamia) through the detachable and replaceable share, first of wood, later of iron (earliest surviving examples date from c. 1000 BC in the Middle East) to variations in ploughshare design reported in the mid-first century AD by Pliny. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:47, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

GA Summary: Delist
The GA reassessment has been running now for ten days. Neither of my main concerns was addressed. The discussion with PericlesofAthens, the only user who participated in the discussion, centered on a relatively narrowly defined field, the type and material of plows during the Warring States and early imperial period. We found that, while Chinese agriculture was advanced in these respects, these technologies were by no means confined to Chinese agriculture. Thus the associated claim that Chinese agriculture was on "a level much higher than other civilizations" is not supported by the evidence provided, and appears clearly exaggerated.

Any future GA should in my view address the above issues in full and work to replace the unreliable Temple reference throughout the text. As a suggestion, a separate section on the development of economic thought would be worth of consideration. I delist the article. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 00:30, 21 August 2010 (UTC)