Quantitative Economic History of China – Serie

The Silver Treasury of the Ministry of Revenue was the most important central government store in the Qing dynasty. It held all capital funds submitted to Beijing by provinces and was responsible for the release of all central government expenditures. This book is mainly based on Qing archives pertaining to the Silver Treasury, notably the Yellow Register copies of the Treasury, now held by the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As it is the first monograph on the subject of the Silver Treasury to be published in English, as well as giving a brief introduction to the history of its successive management systems, it also presents comprehensive tables of monthly revenues/expenditures and yearend inventories for the period 1667 to 1899.

The history of customs duties reflects the development of the Qing fiscal system, especially in its transition from a rather traditional to a more modern economy. Mainly based on Qing archives, this book, the first research monograph on this subject in the English language, not only gives a brief introduction of each customs post’s transformation over time, but also provides the complete statistical data of each of these post over the Qing dynasty.Contributors are: Bas van Leeuwen, Bozhong Li, Maaten Duijvendak, Martin Uebele, Peter Foldvari, Yi Xu.

In this volume Guo Yongqin provides an overview of the most important taxes, land and labor tax, in Imperial Qing China (1644-1912). The previously unpublished fiscal sources presented in this volume give a tremendous amount of information about Qing society and economy, like the bureaucratic system, political institutions, economic inequality, and environmental conditions. The data is accompanied by a detailed introduction, offering a valuable resource for further research on how the standardized tax system performed and affected the Qing regime.

The Chinese work point system was a series of labor organization rules and regulations used for the calculation of the amount and quality of labor and for determining the form of labor organization. The history of the work point system is thus the history of China’s agricultural collectivization. In this book we analyse how these work points were allotted, how they provided, or impaired, labor incentives, and if they leave open the possibility for income mobility.

In Agricultural Development in Qing China: A Quantitative Study, 1661-1911 SHI Zhihong offers for the first time an overview of agricultural development in Qing China in the English language. Being by far the largest sector in one of the largest economies in the world, understanding its development is crucial not only for agricultural studies, but also to advance economic debates such as on the Great Divergence. Combining the recent quantitative paradigm with the more traditional scholarly approach, this book uses a great number of primary sources to arrive at new and revised estimates of crucial indicators such as land acreage, crop yield, pasture, and total output. Its main conclusion is that a serious economic and social problem occurred since the mid-Qing, where agriculture was increasingly less able to feed a growing population, which was a major factor contributing to the growing crisis in the rule of the dynasty.

In Education in China, ca. 1840–present Meimei Wang, Bas van Leeuwen and Jieli Li offer a description of the transformation of the Chinese education system from the traditional Confucian teaching system to a modern mode. In doing so, they touch on various debates about education such as the speed of the educational modernization around 1900, the role of female education, and the economic efficiency of education. This description is combined with relevant data stretching from the second half of 19th century to present collected mainly from statistical archives and contemporary investigations.

From 1368 to 1953, China's administrative divisions were mainly composed of counties, prefectures, and provinces. This book shows the population figures, density, and changes in the provincial population in China during this period and population figures of each major city and town and its proportion in terms of the provincial population during this period―the urbanization rate. Data in this book is drawn partly from historical sources and partly from statistical-model-based calculations. The book also includes provincial population maps in 1393, and their original statistical models, population databases, and metadata.The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project Reference Number: AoE/B-704/22-R).Check out the book launch of The Population History of China (1368–1953) here.

This book offers a unique dataset of the 1947 household register of theWudu County (Gansu Province) in China. It also includes preliminaryanalyses of occupation, education, marriage, and the distribution ofwealth in the villages of Wudu.These analyses, based on the available population register data, are notonly of importance as they have never been published before, but alsobecause they reveal various socio-economic features of villagers’ liveson the individual level. They thus enable readers of this book to askinnovative questions and address them, contributing to the literature onthe historical development of Chinese demography.This is Part 1 of a 3-volume set.

Population statistics are crucial for both policy and research purposes. They cover important social factors such as birth rates, labour force structure, growth, gender, and well-being. This book provides individual-level data on the Yugan county (Jiangxi Province, China) for 1947 and covers many of the above-mentioned socio-economic factors, including family size and structure, occupation, education, gender, age, and marriage.

This book offers a unique dataset of the 1947 household register of theWudu County (Gansu Province) in China. It also includes preliminaryanalyses of occupation, education, marriage, and the distribution ofwealth in the villages of Wudu.These analyses, based on the available population register data, are notonly of importance as they have never been published before, but alsobecause they reveal various socio-economic features of villagers’ liveson the individual level. They thus enable readers of this book to askinnovative questions and address them, contributing to the literature onthe historical development of Chinese demography.This is Part 2 of a 3-volume set.