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Seven Centuries of Unreal Wages pp 71–94Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Tyranny of Numbers: Are There Acceptable Data for Nominal and Real Wages for Pre-modern China?

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Abstract

Estimates of the purchasing power of the pay for a Chinese unskilled labourer have repeatedly been used as a shorthand for gauging the degree of economic development. This chapter exposes the fragility of the data used to measure nominal and real wages in pre-modern China and shows ‘most of the evidence recently marshalled for the Great Divergence Debate comparing levels and trends in real wages between Qing China and Western Europe is not ‘fit for purpose.’ This has serious implications for the debate over the ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the ‘Great Divergence.’

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pomeranz, The Great Divergence; Brenner and Isett, ‘England’s Divergence from China’s Yangzi Delta’, pp. 609–62; Allen et al., ‘Living Standards in the Past’; Booth, A., ‘Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives’, pp. 289–93; Broadberry and Gupta, ‘The Early Modern Great Divergence’, pp. 2–31; Lucassen, Wages and Currency, Pomeranz, ‘Ten Years After: Responses and Reconsiderations’, pp. 20–5; Vries, Escaping Poverty, The Origins of Modern Economic Growth.

  2. 2.

    Ozmucur and Pamuk, ‘Real Wages and Standards of Living in the Ottoman Empire’, pp. 293–321; Allen, ‘Agricultural Productivity and Rural Incomes and the Yangtze Delta’, c. 1620 – c.1820’; pp. 525–50; Allen, Bassino, Ma, Moll-Murata and Van Zanden, ‘Wages, Prices and Living Standards in China 1738–1925′ in comparison with Europe, Japan and India’, pp. 8–38.

  3. 3.

    Scholliers, ‘Real Wages in 19th and 20th Century Europe’, Parthasarathi, ‘Wages and Competitiveness in the Eighteenth Century: Britain and South India’, pp. 79–109.

  4. 4.

    Scholliers and Schwartz (eds.), Experiencing Wages.

  5. 5.

    Munro, ‘Builders’ Wages in southern England and the Low Countries 1346–1500’; Van Zanden, ‘Wages and Standards of Living in Europe, 1500–1800’, pp. 175–98; Allen, ‘The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War’, pp. 411–47; Bassino and Ma, ‘Japanese Unskilled Wages’ in International Perspective 1741–1913’, pp. 229–48; Sivramkrishna, ‘Ascertaining Living Standard in Erstwhile Mysore, Southern India’, pp. 695–733; Baten, ‘Evaluation of Living Standards and Human Capital in China in the 18–20th century’, pp. 347–59; Allen, ‘The High Wage Economy and the Industrial Revolution: A Restatement’, pp. 1–22.

  6. 6.

    Numerous, for example, Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism; Toynbee, Half the World; Pryor, ‘The Asian Mode of Production as an Economic System’, pp. 420–42; Wong, China Transformed.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Wong, China Transformed.

  8. 8.

    Deng, China’s Political Economy in Modern Times, p. 25.

  9. 9.

    Ibid. pp. 26–8. The widely cited lijia system, or ‘Neighbourhood Watch’, was never directly run by the state in China’s long history.

  10. 10.

    Ibid. p. 16.

  11. 11.

    See, for example, Chang, The Income of the Chinese Gentry, p. 16; Liu, Wang, and Jin, Zhongguo Jindai Jingji Fazhanshi, p. 66.

  12. 12.

    Sato, ‘The Archetype of History in the Confucian Ecumene’, p. 226.

  13. 13.

    See, for example, Skinner, ‘Sichuan’s Population in the Nineteenth Century’, pp. 1–79.

  14. 14.

    See our recent articles: O’Brien, Patrick and Kent Deng, (1) ‘Can Debate on the Great Divergence Be Located within the Kuznetsian Paradigm for an Empirical Form of Global Economic History?’ pp. 63–78; (2) ‘Nutritional Standards of Living in England and the Yangtze Delta (Jiangnan), c.1644 – c.1840’, pp. 233–67; (3) ‘China’s GDP Per Capita from the Han Dynasty to Communist Times’, pp. 79–123; (4) ‘Establishing Statistical Foundations of a Chronology for the Great Divergence: A Survey and Critique of the Primary Sources for the Construction of Relative Wage Levels for Ming-Qing China’, pp. 1057–82; and (5) ‘Why Maddison Was Wrong’, pp. 21–41.

  15. 15.

    Chi, Key Economic Areas in Chinese History; Buck, Land Utilization in China; and Land Utilization in China: Statistics; Chen, Qingdai Quyu Shehui Jingji Yanjiu (Regional Socio-Economic Conditions during the Qing Period); Ji Chaoding, Zhongguo Lishishangde Jiben Jingjiqu Yu Shuili Shiyede Fazhan (Basic Economic Regions and the Development of Irrigation Systems in Chinese History).

  16. 16.

    For the lower Yangtze rice market, see Wang, ‘Secular Trends of Rice Prices in the Yangzi Delta, 1638–1935’, pp. 35–68; Shiue and Keller, ‘Market in China and Europe on the Eve of the Industrialisation’, pp. 1190–1216.

  17. 17.

    Buck, Land Utilization in China; Land Utilization in China: Statistics.

  18. 18.

    Sng, ‘Size and Dynastic Decline: The Principal-agent Problem in Late Imperial China, 1700–1850’, pp. 107–27.

  19. 19.

    Ch’üan, and Kraus, Mid-Ch’ing Rice Market and Trade: An Essay on Price History; Shiue and Keller, ‘Market in China and Europe on the Eve of the Industrialisation’, pp. 1190–1216; Brandt, Loren, Ma, and Rawsaki, ‘From Divergence to Convergence’, pp. 45–123.

  20. 20.

    See Bernhofen, Eberhardt, Li, ‘Assessing Market (Dis)Integration in Early Modern China and Europe’; and ‘Market Disintegration as a Pre-cursor to the Great Divergence’. These papers challenge the Shiue-Keller Hypothesis.

  21. 21.

    See also, Ma, Zhang Moll-Murata, ‘Wages on the Free Market: Various Industries, China-wide, between 1735 and 1820’, www.iisg.nl/hpw/data.phd#China.

  22. 22.

    Deng and O’Brien, ‘Establishing Statistical Foundations of a Chronology for the Great Divergence’, pp. 1057–82.

  23. 23.

    For English rural wages, see Clark, ‘The Long March of History’, pp. 97–136.

  24. 24.

    Deng, ‘China’s Political Economy in Modern Times’, pp. 114–15.

  25. 25.

    Ibid. p. 115.

  26. 26.

    Rozman, Urban Networks in Ch’ing China and Tokugawa Japan; Cao, Zhongguo Renkou Shi (A Demographic History of China), Vol. 5, pp. 828–9.

  27. 27.

    Tawney, Life and Labour in China, p. 34; Buck, Land Utilization in China, pp. 194–7; Chao, Man and Land in Chinese History: An Economic Analysis, Chap. 8.

  28. 28.

    Deng, The Premodern Chinese Economy, pp. 26–7.

  29. 29.

    Ibid. pp. 77–8.

  30. 30.

    For example see ‘Wages for Armament, Military Equipment, and Shipbuilding Workers, 1769 and 1816’, Qinding Gongbu Junqi Zeli 欽定工部軍器則例 (Imperially Endorsed Regulations and Precedents of Weapons and Military Equipment by the Ministry of Public Works), (1816), and Qinding Fujian Sheng Waihai Zhanchuan Zeli 欽定福建省外海戰船則例 (Imperially Endorsed Regulations and Precedents of War Vessels of Fujian Province), after Qianlong 33 (1768). Reprint in Taiwan Wenxian Congkan 臺灣文獻叢刊 (Historical Documents in Taiwan), vol. 125. See also, Chaoyong, Jing, Kiefner, Moll-Murata, Zhang and Ma, ‘Regulated Wages Paid by the State in Public Construction’ Data from Wuliao Jiazhi Zeli (Regulations and Precedents on the Prices of Materials) for 15 Chinese Provinces from 1769 to 1795’, www.iisg.nl/hpw/data.phd#China.

  31. 31.

    Reprint as Taiwan Wenxian Congkan 臺灣文獻叢刊 (Historical Documents in Taiwan), vol. 125 (Taipei: Taiwan Yinhang Press, 1961), Foreword, p. 27, Chap. 1, p. 60, Chap. 2, p. 92, Chap. 3, p. 122, Chap. 4, p. 151, Chap. 6, p. 212, Chap. 7, p. 243, Chap. 8, p. 273, Chap. 9, p. 393, Chap. 10, p. 333, Chap. 11, p. 363.

  32. 32.

    For a moving trend of commodity prices recorded by foreign traders during the Qing, see Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845, Appendix.

  33. 33.

    See Reprint, Taipei: Zhongwen Shuju Press, 1963, Chap. 952, pp. 16640–41.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    In 1654, an ordinary Banner soldier received allowance of 50 taels of silver (4.2 taels per month) plus 5 shi stipend rice (362.5 kg) each year, which allowed for a quite decent living; see Zhao, Tian, Cai, He, Shouquan, Wei and Zhang, Zhongguo Junshi Shi (A Military History of China) (Beijing: PLA Press, 1987), vol. 3, p. 459.

  36. 36.

    Peng, ‘Qingdai Qianqi Jiangnan Zhizaode Yanjiu’ (Government Textile Workshops in the Early Qing Period), pp. 97, 107.

  37. 37.

    See, for example, Chen, ‘Flexible Bimetallic Exchange Rates in China, 1650–1850’, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, 7 (1975), pp. 359–76; Vogel, ‘Chinese Central Monetary Policy 1644–1800’, Late Imperial China 8 (1987), pp. 9–43.

  38. 38.

    For market disintegration in China, see Bernhofen, Eberhardt, Li, and Morgan, ‘Assessing Market (Dis)Integration in Early Modern China and Europe’; and, ‘Market Disintegration as a Pre-cursor to the Great Divergence’. For the ‘real wage approach’, see Allen, Bassino, Ma, Moll-Murata and Van Zanden, ‘Wages, Prices and Living Standards in China 1738–1925 in comparison with Europe, Japan and India’, pp. 8–38; Broadberry and Gupta, ‘The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800’, pp. 2–31; Broadberry, ‘Accounting for the Great Divergence’.

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    Kent Deng & Patrick K. O’Brien

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Deng, K., O’Brien, P.K. (2018). The Tyranny of Numbers: Are There Acceptable Data for Nominal and Real Wages for Pre-modern China?. In: Hatcher, J., Stephenson, J. (eds) Seven Centuries of Unreal Wages. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96962-6_3

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