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China's Modern Economic History inCommunist Chinese Historiography *By ALBERT FEUERWERKERI

IT will be evident to a reader of historical works produced in thePeople's Republic of China that this article, in the choice of subject-matter and in its treatment, is decidedly influenced by the currentdomestic and foreign political "line" of the Communist Party andGovernment. This is a relative matter, not absolute, but I would suggestthat the dominant " class viewpoint" of the first decade of the Pekingregime which produced an anonymous history of dynasties without" feudal " emperorsor bureaucrats,literatureminus the landlord-scholar-official literatus and nameless peasant rebellions as the central matter ofChina's history, was to a degree correlated with the process of theinternal consolidation of power which may more or less be saidto have been accomplished with the completion of the collectivisationof agriculture.' The more recent " historicist" trend, which while notrejectingentirely its predecessorconcentrateson what may be " positivelyinherited" from the "feudal" past, represents a quickening of Chinesenationalism fanned to a red-hot intensity, one cannot resist the temptationto conjecture, by the increasingly severe quarrel with the Soviet Union.Soviet Russian commentary on recent Chinese historiography, forexample, accuses the Chinese of the " introduction of dogmatic, anti-Marxist and openly nationalistic and racist views." The Chinese, fortheir now relatively favourable view of the thirteenth-centuryMongolconquests (which are seen as calamitous by the Russians and otherEuropeans), for their claim that Chinese "feudalism" is the classicalmodel of this historical phenomenon, and because they exaggerate therole of Confucian ideas and their influence on Western philosophy, areroundly condemned by the Russians for " bourgeois nationalism."2* I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of a Social Science Research Council AuxiliaryResearch Award in the preparation of this article. An earlier version of thisarticle was presented to a Conference on Chinese Communist Historiography, spon-sored by The China Quarterly, at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, September 6-12, 1964.1 See Albert Feuerwerker, " China's History in Marxian Dress," The American His-torical Review, January 1961, pp. 323-353.2 R. V. Vyatkin and S. L. Tikhvinsky, " Some Questions of Historical Science in theChinese People's Republic," Voprosy istorii, October 1963, pp. 3-20; translated inThe Current Digest of the Soviet Press, XVI, No. 4, February 19, 1964, pp. 3-10.And for some of the writing which inspired this attack see Ts'ao Ts'ao Lun-chi(Collected Discussions of Ts'ao Ts'ao) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1962); Liu Ta-nien,31

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYMovement from "class viewpoint" to "historicism" in ChineseCommunist historiography, however, as with the oscillation of a

pendulum, brings to bear forces tending to push the historian backto the other extreme of the ideological arc. The momentary pause of theweight of opinion at one extreme of amplitude represents an inherentlyunstable equilibrium. Too great an emphasis in the historicist phase onwhat is assertedlyChinese at the expense of what is assuredlyCommunistcarries the danger of abandoning one's forward defences in the greatinternational Marxist-Leninist polemic. Hence the continuing dialoguebetween the historicist and class viewpoints in recent Chinese Communisthistoriographicaldiscussions.8The study of modem economic history in China since 1949, likeother fields of historical research, has been conducted within the contextI have just outlined. By " modem," in what follows, I shall mean thelate-Ch'ing and Republican periods, that is the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. If one can suggest that the attitude of the historian mayvary between an active pole and a passive one, the treatment of modereconomic history in post-1949 China has been singularly passive. Givena context in which the past is to be treated " as we do our food, whichshould be chewed in the mouth, submittedto the working of the stomachand intestines, mixed with saliva, gastric juice and intestinal secretions,and then separated into essence to be absorbed and waste matter to bediscarded,"4 the historian has been occupied in feeding upon a tabled'hote menu preparedfor him by le cordon bleu Mao Tse-tung. Hencethe overwhelming passive tone of valuation, appraisement, assessmentin recent Chinese economic history. This is good-the utopian landsystem of the Taipings as set forth in the T'ien Ch'ao T'ien-mu Chih-tu(Land System of the Celestial Dynasty), for example. It was anti-feudaland presaged the Communist society of the future. That is somewhatoverdone-referring to the assertion that elements of a capitalist economywere already widely presentin the late-Ming. So to hold, by exaggeratingthe degree of China's progress along the trunk road to capitalism, mightraise doubts about the historical necessity of a democratic revolutionled by the Communist Party.Absent is an active, concerted, fresh attack on the problems ofChina's moder economic history which, while not abandoning judgment,

"Lun K'ang Hsi " (" On K'ang Hsi,") Li-shih Yen-chiu (Historical Research), No. 3,1961, pp. 5-21, where the Manchu emperor is described as " the great feudal rulerwho united China and defended her against European penetration "; Han Ju-lin," Lun Ch'eng-chi-ssu-han" (" On Genghis Khan "), ibid. No. 3, 1962, pp. 1-10; ChouLiang-hsiao, "Kuan-yi Ch'eng-chi-ssu-han" (" About Genghis Khan "), ibid. No. 4,1963, pp. 1-7.8 For brief reviews of these discussions, see Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), February25, 1964; Kuang-ming Jih-pao (Kuang-ming Daily), January 18, 1964.4 Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (English ed., London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd.,1954-56), III, p. 154. 32

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYis at least in the first instance devoted to analysis and understandingof the economy of a social system whose age and amplitude make it oneof the great challenges to modem social science research. To put itanother way, much of what bears the label " economic history" wouldwith great difficultybe accepted as that by practitionersoutside of China.This is not to say that the history of the economy must be consideredin a vacuum, but the characteristicintrusion, even dominance, of politicalmatters before what is specifically economic has been exhaustivelycomprehended-a paradoxical inversion for the Marxist in any case-robs economic history in China of any independent disciplinary value.The problem, it must be fairly stated, is not merely that Marxism-Maoism is a defective if sometimes useful tool. It is just as much thatin this area of learning China remains, as she was before 1949, woefullyunderdeveloped. The marriage of sophisticated economic theory withsound historical practice, which is a recent union in the West, too, hasnot yet been consummated in China. The continuities in materialsand method from the economic history of the 1920s and 1930s to thatof the 1950s and 1960s are too grossly apparent.

IIThis is the version of China's moder economic history which is currentin the textbooks used in the People's Republic of China. Some of thecontroversies and unresolved problems which lurk behind this outlinewill be discussed in Section III.On the eve of the Opium War, China's feudal society was alreadybeginning to disintegrate. The development of a commodity economy(shang-p'in ching-chi) within that feudal society bore within itselfelements of capitalism (tzu-pen-chu-i meng-ya). After the consolidationof the Ch'ing dynasty, agricultural production gradually recovered fromthe destruction of the late Ming and early Ch'ing. By the last years ofCh'ien-lung a process of concentration of land ownership was in fullswing and many independent farmers lost their land. The life of thetenant farmer was a miserable one, and the " contradictions" betweenthe peasantry and the landlords were sharp; as a consequence manylocal peasant uprisings occurred. At the same time, "relatively"large handicraft workshops (kung-ch'ang shou-kung-yeh) with "rela-tively" developed division of labour had appeared, and were"relatively " widespread in the large cities. Many of the peasants whohad lost their land drifted to the cities where they were transformedinto handicraft wage labourers. As a result of the increased circulationof commodities, the integration of the internal economy was welladvanced. In these circumstances, even without the influence of foreigncapitalism, China could have gradually developed into a capitalist33

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THE CHINA QUARTERLY

society. But precisely because of the intrusion of the West this wasnot to happen.From the sixteenth century, Portugal, Spain, Holland and Britainsuccessively developed trading relations with China. China was passivein this trade, which was carriedon largely because of the foreign demandfor Chinese commodities. In order to compensate for her unfavourablebalance in the China trade, England shamelessly imported opium intoChina. By the nineteenth century, American trade was second only toEngland, and the United States, too, brazenly brought opium into China.The large-scale importation of opium seriously harmed the health of theChinese people, while the outflow of silver to pay for opium severelydamaged the Chinese economy. China's prohibition of the opium trade,in the interest of the survival of the Chinese people, was completelyjustified. England's resort to force in the Opium War, in order bymilitary means to enlarge the scope of her economic incursions, wasa completely aggressive act.The unequal treaties between China and the Powers concludedafter the Opium War marked the beginning of China's transformationinto a semi-colony. Great changes occurred in the Chinese society andeconomy from the 1840s. The opium trade grew under special protection,while the health of the Chinese populace was poisoned and the outflowof silver grew to ever larger proportions. Even more important, fromthe five treaty ports capitalist commodities flowed unceasingly to theinterior and dealt a severe blow to China's natural economy. Alongwith the widening impact of imported foreign commodities, the centreof trade shifted from Canton to Shanghai with resultant major changesin transport and commerce in southern China. Hong Kong, which wasceded to the British, became the principal political, economic and

military base for British aggression. In order to pay the Opium Warindemnities, the impoverished Ch'ing Government increased the fiscalburden of the populace. The capitulation of the Ch'ing dynasty, whichsought only to preserve its rule, to the British was not accepted by thedefiant populace. From the Opium War, then, the anti-feudal and anti-foreign aggression struggles of the Chinese people began to coalesce.The Taiping Rebellion marked the peak of the mid-nineteenthcentury anti-feudal peasant revolution. It was also characterised byopposition to foreign aggression. The Taiping's Land System of theCelestial Dynasty (T'ien Ch'ao T'ien-mu Chih-tu)was the most advancedland programme in the entire history of peasant revolution in Chinauntil the appearance of the Communist Party, while Hung Jen-kan'sA New Work for Aid in Administration (Tze-cheng Hsin-pien) was thefirst explicit programmethat would have China enter upon the capitalistroad. In the Second Opium War, the British and French again forced

34

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYthe Ch'ing Government to capitulate. After that war the foreignaggressorsbegan to concert with Chinese feudal power, and together theysuppressedthe Taipings. With the destruction of the Taiping Rebellion,the semi-colonial, semi-feudal character of Chinese society was deepened.Following the Second Opium War, the British invaded south-westernChina through Burma while French aggression was carried out in Indo-China. Not only were these ancient dependencies removed from Chinesesuzerainty and transformed into colonies, but with Burma and Indo-China as bases the British and French invaded the south-western Chinamarket. Chunking was made a treaty port after the Chefoo Conventionand the influence of the British aggressors spread into the upper Yangtzeregion. On the one hand, the aggressors penetrated into the Chineseinterior in order to enlarge their market. At the same time, in the coastaland riverine treaty ports they began to establish moder industries. Atfirst these were limited to shipyards and the processing of raw materials,but from the 1880s, investment in manufacturing began to appear. Whilethese factories were technically illegal under the treaties, few in number,and often small in size, they gradually eroded the basis of China'sself-sufficienteconomy. Both urban handicraftindustryand the peasants'ancillary handicrafts were seriously hurt. These developments, however,also furtheredthe growth of China'scommodity economy, and stimulatedboth the founding of industrial enterprises by Ch'ing bureaucrats of the"foreign affairs group" (yang-wu p'ai) and the establishment of"national capitalist" (min-tsu tzu-pen) industry. But the developmentof the Chinese economy under the growing impact of foreign capitalistaggression was flagrantlyuneven.The arms industry established by the yang-wu bureaucrats wasassertedly undertakenfor two purposes: to resist foreign aggression, andto suppress any uprisings by the Chinese people. In truth, relying uponthe support of the foreign aggressors, the yang-wu group used the armsindustry primarily to stabilise feudal rule. The first purpose, therefore,was merely a cover, while the second was the joint aim of Chinesefeudal power and the foreign aggressors. The development of mechanisedindustry was severely constricted by the feudal system of the Ch'ingdynasty. Moreover, no independent development was possible becausefor both machinery and technology these enterprises depended uponforeign countries. Such mechanised industry as appeared was theproduct of Chinese society in the process of being transformed into asemi-colonial, semi-feudal condition, and the semi-colonial, semi-feudalcharacter of this industry was the principal obstacle to its development.The evolution from "official management" (kuan-pan) to "officialsupervision and merchant management" (kuan-tu shang-pan) in theorganisation of industrial enterprise in the late nineteenth century was35

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principally a change in the method of financing, which sought to putthe capitalisation of industry on a business basis and to draw capitalfrom non-government sources. The yang-wu bureaucrats, however,continued to dominate moder industry even though management wasnow increasingly in the hands of "compradore bureaucrats" (mai-pankuan-liao). "Contradictions" arose between the compradore element,which supplied much of the capital and sought to increase its influenceaccordingly, and the yang-wu bureaucrats. The modern transport andcommunications network which began to be established in this periodwas also dominated by the yang-wu and compradore bureaucrats.Kuan-pan and kuan-tu shang-pan light industry to some extent stimu-lated the establishment of private (min-tsu) manufacturing enterprises.The workers in the foreign and Chinese factories founded in the lasthalf of the nineteenth century were the first true industrial proletariatin China. At this early point one can already see a sharp differentiationbetween bureaucraticcompradore capitalism, arising out of the kuan-tushang-pan system, and national capitalism whose roots were in thehandicraft workshops and in investment by overseas Chinese and smallmerchants.China's defeat by Japan in 1894-95 and the resulting Treaty ofShimonoseki opened the way for foreign capitalism, now in its imperialistphase, to step up its political and economic aggression in China.Political spheres of influence were carved out by the powers, and anaggressive export of capital ensued in the form of politically motivatedloans, and direct investment in railroads, banking, mining and manu-facturing. Between 1895 and 1913 the capitalisation of foreign factoriesin China (now legal in the treaty ports) increased more than thirteenfold.The shock of the defeat and the failure of the yang-wu efforts at self-strengthening ed the Ch'ingGovernmentto remove some of the obstaclesand restrictions that had hindered non-official undertakings. Both inmanufacturingand in mining, national capitalist enterprises experiencedunprecedented, but still very limited, growth. The limited effectivedomestic demand characteristic of any underdeveloped economy was inChina curtailed even further by the effects of imperialism on the ruraleconomy and by the competition of foreign-manufacturedgoods. Theshortage of capital remained acute, and the government-which wasneither a bourgeois state nor an independentone-was unable to protectand support nascent Chinese industry.In the countryside, the semi-feudal, semi-colonial character of therural economy deepened. The rapid growth of foreign trade after 1895further undermined peasant ancillary handicraft industry. Chineseagriculture became increasingly commercialised and the peasant depen-dent upon the international market. Compradore capital, accumulated

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYin commerce or industry, penetrated rural China and in some areascapitalist farming, with hired labour, became important.

The 1898 Reform Movement, the Boxer Uprising, and the 1911Revolution were the political reflections of deepening economic distress.In 1898 a newly arisen bourgeois class tried and failed to remove thefeudal fetters to its furtherdevelopment. The abortive Boxer movementwas a great peasant revolution comparable to the Taipings and staunchlyanti-imperialist in character as well. Where these two failed, 1911 sawthe bourgeoisie (whose origin was the national capitalist enterpriseswhich had developed since 1895) lead the peasantry in a successfuleffort to overthrow the feudal Ch'ing regime. But if one obstacle toeconomic development was now removed, the ramparts of foreignimperialism were hardly touched at all by the 1911 Revolution.From 1915 to the early 1920s, as a result of the outbreak of war inEurope which for the moment reduced foreign pressure on China,Chinese privately-owned consumer goods manufacturing flourished.The expansion of the cotton textile industry and of flour milling wasespecially notable. Chinese modern banking, too, experienced a con-siderable growth. This " golden age," however, was only an interlude.Imperialismreturnedin full force after the war, and even during the warJapanese textile mills and other enterprises expanded rapidly in thetreaty ports, like the Chinese taking advantage of the temporary with-drawal of the European nations. Coupled with the resumption ofimperialist aggression was the outbreak of endemic civil war, the severalcontending semi-feudal warlord interests each backed by imperialistpowers. Imperialism and semi-feudal reaction, as before, obstructedandsuppressedthe development of the China economy.In agriculture, the war and immediate post-war period saw a furthergrowth of commercialisation and some increase in capitalist farming as aconsequence of the demand for raw materials by the new industries andin response to changing demands of the international market. Thepeasantry became increasingly dependent upon a monopsonistic marketand were subject, too, to a new spurtof land concentration and increasingrents as the contending warlords grabbed land and heartlessly exploitedtheir tenants. Rural handicraft industry, especially weaving, in someareas (e.g., Kayong in Hopei) came under the control of native com-mercial capital and in the wartime interlude enjoyed an expansionparallel to that of the treaty port textile mills. But it also was badlyhurt by the return of imperialist competition.In sum, "capitalist relations of production" were strengthened tosome extent during 1914-27, but China did not develop into anindependent capitalist country. It remained enmeshed in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal nexus which throttled the economy. The workers'

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYIf China's economy was " feudal " until the nineteenth century, whatwere the special characteristics of Chinese feudalism? The Chinese

Communist historians-and they are, of course, not alone in thisdifficulty-have had an irksome time with the concept of " feudalism."I need hardly point out that the institutions of medieval Europe and thoseof Imperial China (which the CCP calls " feudal ") were, in many majoraspects, radically different. The Chinese Communists, in adapting theMarxist paradigm of social revolution, have taken feudalism to mean asociety based on an agricultural economy and dominated by a land-owning class, and in this protean sense they, of course, find an equival-ence among all pre-industrial nations. (Marx, as will be indicatedbelow, in so far as he discussed feudalism, had in mind specificallyWestern Europe, and his own Teutonist version of the origins ofEuropean medieval society.) There still remained, however, the problemof describing the Chinese version of the assertedly universal social stage.The overwhelming tendencies during the first phase of post-1949historiography,under the dominance of the " class viewpoint " principle,were either to dismiss the "interlude" from the Ch'in unification(221 B.C.) to the mid-nineteenth century as characterised by "the pro-tracted stagnation of the feudal system which lasted for more than 2,000years, and during which thought, literature and art could not break freefrom the patterns and rules set by the various schools of thought, par-ticularly the Confucian school, of the Warring States era," or, alter-natively, to emphasise, following Mao-Tse-tung, the "class struggles ofthe peasants-the peasant uprisings and peasant wars-[which] aloneformed the real motive force of historical development in China's feudalsociety."8 In either case there was little analysis of the specificallyeconomic characteristics of Chinese " feudalism."

The Marxist classics have had relatively little to say about the feudalperiod; their emphasis has been on tracing the origins and developmentof a capitalism that successfully grew out of medieval society rather thanon analysing the antecedent feudal order. Who would not be reluctantto venture forth in uncharted waters? There was, however, in bothapproaches, an implication that Chinese feudal society was relativelybackward, or slower in developing than feudalism in the West. Thisacknowledgment of relative stagnation was, I believe, in some measurea reflection of the continued influence among Chinese historians ofMarx's speculation about an "Asiatic mode of production," even

translation, U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Technical Services, JointPublications Research Service, JPRS: 14,595, July 25, 1962, pp. 46-71.7 See Kuo Mo-jo, "Kuan-yii Hou-chin Po-ku Wen-t'i " (" On Emphasising the Presentand De-emphasising the Past "), Pei-ching Ta-hsueh Pao, Jen-wen K'o-hsueh (PekingUniversity Journal, Humanistic Sciences), No. 3, 1953, pp. 111-114.8 Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, III, p. 76.39

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though that explanation of China's history had been officiallydiscouraged.9Marx, one recent commentator asserts, clearly believed "that theinner principle of Western historical development has from the startbeen quite different from that of the East or of Graeco-Romanantiquity." The origin of this distinction was the threefold differentia-tion of the primitive communal (tribal) organisation of human societyinto " Oriental, Graeco-Roman and German-medieval forms of privateand common ownership." In this trichotomy, Asiatic society-character-ised by the absence of private ownership of land and by a centraliseddespotic state-was historically closest to man's primitive origins.

European feudalism developed from the German form of ownership(Marx is naturally a Teutonist on this question) and incorporated anelement of personal freedom from barbarian clan society. Because of" its relatively healthy starting-point it embodie[d] new potentialities ofgrowth and human development" and was, therefore, "progressive"as compared with Graeco-Roman and a fortiori Asiatic society.'0In almost completely disavowing their " feudal past," Chinese Com-munist historians seem at first to have accepted this inferior status forChina. The historian Hou Wai-lu, who is now Deputy Director of theSecond Office (Medieval History) of the Institute of Historical Research,in 1954 explicitly argued that the land system in feudal China was oneof "landlord ownership by the imperial family" or of "state owner-ship." 11 While a not inconsiderable amount of empirical work onspecific periods or aspects of the feudal land system were published inthe interveningyears, it appearsthat a full-scale (therehad been scatteredarticles on 1957 and 1958) theoretical confrontation of the issues raisedby Hou's quasi-Asiatic mode of production position began only in 1960.And, not accidentally, these theoretical discussions of the feudal landsystem coincided with the shift from an emphasis on the "class view-point " to " historicism" in Chinese Communisthistoriography,and withthe growing Sino-Soviet rift which fed Chinese nationalistic feelings.The "Asiatic mode of production" theory per se is now explicitlyout in China, as it is in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet case, the theory

9 See Karl A. Wittfogel, "The Marxist View of China," The China Quarterly, No. 11(July-September 1962), pp. 1-20, No. 12 (October-December 1962), pp. 154-169; andFeuerwerker, " China's History in Marxian Dress," pp. 339-340.10 George Lichtheim, " Marx and the 'Asiatic Mode of Production,' " St. Anthony'sPapers, Number 14 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), pp. 86-112.1 Hou Wai-lu, "Chung-kuo Feng-chien She-hui T'u ti So-yu Chih Hsing-shih tiWen-t'i" (" The Problem of the Form of Land Ownership in Chinese Feudal Society),in Chung-kuo Feng-chien She-hui T'u ti So-yuh Chih Hsing-shih Wen-t'i T'ao-lun Chi(Collected Papers on the Problem of the Form of Landownership in China's FeudalSociety), comp. by Department of History, Nankai University (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1962, 2 vols.), Vol. I, pp. 1-20. This symposium reprints 39 papers on this topicand includes a listing of more than 100 others originally published between October1949 and the end of 1960. 40

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYraised uncomfortable questions about the "European" character ofRussian society, the post-1917 programmes followed by Lenin, andespecially Stalinist policy. For China, however, the issue seems lessdoctrinal than emotional. On the one hand, the concept of an Asiaticmode of production might be misused, even to the extent of suggestingthat China's particular social structure, rather than feudal oppressionand imperialist exploitation, was the source of the miseries of the pastcentury. But more important,I believe, is the recognition of the implica-tion of the Asiatic theory that Chinese society, in being different, wasalso somehow inferior to the mainstream of social development in theWest.

While there is still no evident consensus-none has been imposed,and the academic discussions continue-on the question of the socio-economic structure of Chinese medieval society, with respect to theimplication of diversity being equivalent to inferiority the whole matterhas been turned on its head. It cannot be denied that " feudalism" inChina was different from that in the West, but so much the worse forWestern feudalism. China's pre-modern society was "feudal," not"Asiatic," even though it was feudalism of a distinctly Chinese type.But it is precisely Chinese feudalism which, because of its temporalpriority and its geographic and demographic scale, should be taken asthe locus classicus of this stage in the development of human society.Such statements as the following by the Hopei historian Wu T'ing-ch'iuhave found considerablesupport:China was the first countryin the world to enter a feudal society-some 800 or 900 years ahead of the countries of Europe,or 1,000-1,700years earlier if the Western Chou is regardedas feudal (at that timeancient Greece and Rome had not yet attained a class society). Thefeudal society in Chinaconstitutesan excellentclassicalmodel in world

history. In establishinga new systemof world history,we cannot con-tinueto treatfeudal societyin WesternEuropeas the model. Moreover,duringthe whole period of feudalism,such easterncountries as China,India and Arabia were far ahead of Europe in economy and culture.12Along with this nationalistic assertion of priority and pre-eminence,there has been some attempt to examine the particular dynamics ofChinese feudal society. For there still remained the unwelcome questionof why, if Chinese society were superior, it was the West that first madethe momentous transition to the " higher" societal form of capitalism.The special features of Chinese feudalism, it is typically argued, whichdistinguish it from feudalism in the West (and which to the Westernobserver with the patterns of medieval Europe in mind suggest that pre-modern Chinese society was not feudal at all) are these: (1) land in China

12 Kuang-ming Daily, April 10, 1961. 41

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYcould be freely bought and sold throughoutthe Imperial period; (2) therewas no one-to-one correspondence between economic class (chieh-chi)and social rank (teng-chi); (3) medieval China saw only a very incompletedevelopment of a manorial system.'3 From these special features, anumber of significantconsequences follow. Throughout Imperial Chinaindependentsmall peasants, cultivating their own land, continued to existin large numbers. Even in the allegedly dominant landlord-tenantsystem, the tenant unlike the European serf was not legally tied to theland and could at least aspire to become a self-cultivating peasant. Thefacts that the land tax of the independent farmer was generally lowerthan tenant rents and that rents themselves were principally collected inkind (ratherthan in labour service as in Europe; and Marx had said thatrent in kind was a more advanced form of exploitation than labour rent)are taken to mean that the degree of feudal exploitation in medievalChina was less than in medieval Europe. The " surplus" which couldin part be retained by the peasant is asserted to have provided theeconomic basis for the cultural floweringof China from the Han onward,while Europe was still in its " dark ages." Furthermore,because Chinadid not have a developed manorial economy of large, relatively autarchiceconomic units, from a very early point landlord income was used topurchase commodities (necessities in part, but primarily luxuries) in thetowns and cities. A money economy, therefore,allegedly grew up earlierand was more widespread in China than in the West.If Chinese feudalism was in these respects in advance of Europe,this is not to say that the social system was without its " contradictions,"contradictions which strangled it while, from the fifteenth century,Europe marched ahead to capitalism. The Chinese feudal economy, it isasserted, was subject to recurrentcrises arising primarily from the everpresent tendency towards concentration of landholding in the hands oflarge landlords. This concentration was at the expense of the indepen-dent farmers who were the most productive agricultural operators, andat its extreme point land concentration therefore brought on a sharpdrop in total agriculturaloutput. Economic crisis typically led to classstruggle-peasant uprisings (nung-min ch'i-i) which temporarilyreadjustedthe " relations of production" and encouraged the restorationof the " productive forces" which the crisis had undermined. In the13 See, for example, Hu Ju-lei, "Kuan-yii Chung-kuo Feng-chien She-hui Hsing-t'ai ti

I-hsieh T'e Tien" (" The Special Forms of Feudal Society in China "), HistoricalResearch, No. 1, 1962, pp. 1-23, which has its own peculiarities but reflects fairlywell the general trend of thought on this question at present. The following para-graphs are based largely on Hu's article. There is little indication in recent Chinesepublications of any acquaintance with the important work on the medieval Chineseeconomy of such Japanese scholars as Sud6 Yoshiyuki. See, for example, his ChugokuTochiseidoshi Kenkyu (A Study of the History of Land Systems in China) (Tokyo:Tokyo University Press, 1954). 42

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORY

period of " restoration,"and that of " development" which followed, theChinese farmer out-produced his European serf counterpart. Thisincrement in production was the material foundation for China's greatcultural achievements. But it was only temporary,for land concentrationand the consequent agricultural cycle persistently repeated themselves.Unlike the West, no new development of productive forces such as mightlead to a break-up of the cycle occurred.Paradoxically, this anatomy of Chinese feudalism continues, eventhe relatively advanced degree of commodity production and moneyeconomy in medieval China was tied to the agricultural cycle. Theprosperity of handicraft industry and commerce in the cities was directlythe result of the urban migration of independent farmers displaced byland concentration who now turned to the crafts and trade in orderto support themselves. Industry and commerce flourished preciselyin those periods when total agricultural production declined, and therestoration of agriculture after a successful peasant rising generally sawa concomitant decline of the urban economy. In brief, the commodityeconomy of feudal China was not a product of the growth of society'stotal production forces, as was the case in Europe, but rather of theirsuffocation by feudal relations of production.China had had large urban conglomeration long before the eleventhcenturywhen towns began to develop in Europe, but Chinese towns wereinextricably a part of the feudal nexus while those of Europe struggledto liberate themselves from the domination of the feudal lords. Theinhabitants of Chinese towns were primarily consumers-imperial andlocal officials, military units and, of course, the landlord-gentry classwhich expended its land rents on urban-producedcommodities. Thesetended to be luxury goods, often of high quality, but produced in smallquantities for the upper classes only. In the West, the new towns werefounded on commerce and handicrafts and increasingly sold their com-modities to the rural villages. The class struggle in late medievalEurope took the form of a conflict between the urban bourgeoisie whoseeconomic exploitation of the rural areas was on the rise, and the ruralfeudal lords whose political domination of the towns was beingchallenged. In China, on the other hand, where the towns were funda-mentally administrative, judicial and military centres, and the place ofresidence of the upper classes in general, the urban centres dominatedthe bulk of rural China politically and, through the landlord class whichresided in them, exploited it economically as well. The class strugglecould only take the form of peasant opposition to feudal officials andlandlords.The currentChinese Communist analysis of China's feudal economysummarised in the foregoing paragraphs raises as many questions as it43

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYanswers, and a detailed critique would take us far afield. For thepurpose of this article, I want merely to draw attention to the followingthree points. First, an attempt is made to explain the basis of China'sasserted superiority to Europe in the medieval period without, in anydegree, idealising China's feudal society. Secondly, an explanation ofthe "progressive" role of peasant rebellions is offered. And, thirdly,the whole matter of the development of "capitalist sprouts" (tzu-penchu-i meng-ya) in late-feudal China gets very short shrift indeed.At an earlier point, say in 1956 and 1957, the assertion that therewas a proto-capitalist development in late-Ming and Ch'ing China, thetopic to which I now return, would not have been so summarily dis-missed. It is of some interest that the controversy about this questionwas in part a consequence of Mao's re-editing of his writings for theofficial edition of his Selected Works which appeared between 1951and 1960. In the original (1939) version of The Chinese Revolutionand the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had emphasised the "stagna-tion" of Chinese feudal society. In the Selected Works, however, hemodified this position, and inserted two new sentences which read:"As China's feudal society developed its commodity economy and socarried within itself the embryo of capitalism (tzu-pen chu-i ti meng-ya),China would of herself have developed slowly into a capitalist societyeven if there had been no influence of foreign capitalism. The penetra-tion of foreign capitalism accelerated this development."14 Exegesisof Mao's new text flowed from many pens, especially from 1954 onward.In that year Professor Shang Ytieh of the Chinese People's Universityin Peking published a textbook which asserted that incipient capitalistelements were already existent in the Ming.l5 In the next year, 1955,extensive discussion in literary circles of the social background of the

novel Hung-lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) stimulated a spateof articles agreeing that capitalist burgeons were already to be foundprior to the Opium War, but differing quite sharply as to the date oftheir origin and the degree of their development and significance.l6For a time, during 1956 and 1957, it appeared that the view repre-sented by the historian Shang Ytieh had won the day.17 In brief, Shang14 Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, III, p. 77.15 Shang Yiieh, ed., Chung-kuo Li-shih Kang-yao (Outline History of China) (Peking:Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1954).16 The chief contributions to this discussion are reprinted in Chung-kuo Tzu-pen Chu-iMeng-ya Wen-t'i T'ao-lun Chi (Collected Papers on the Problem of the Incipiency ofCapitalism in China) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1957, 2 vols.); and Ming-Ch'ingShe-hui Ching-chi Hsing-t'ai ti Yen-chiu (Studies in the Society and Economy of theMing and Ch'ing Periods) (Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1957). Both collections'are edited by the Chinese History Seminar of the Chinese People's University inPeking.17 See Shang Yiieh, Chung-kuo Tzu-pen Chu-i Kuan-hsi Fa-sheng Chi Yen-pien ti Ch'u-puYen-chiu (PreliminaryStudies on the Origin and Development of Capitalist Relations44

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYand his supporters argued that the late Ming and Ch'ing economy wasalready proto-capitalist. The central arch of this contention was theassertion of the widespread existence of factory handicrafts (kung-ch'ang shou-kung-yeh) which are presumed to have fulfilled the Marxiancriteria for capitalist production. Their development, so the schemagoes, was preceded by a proliferation of internal and external trade.These market forces acted to bring about an increasing differentiationof handicraft, traditionally a peasant ancillary occupation, fromagriculture, as well as an unprecedented concentration of landholdingwhich forced many peasants into newly growing towns where theyfound employment in factory handicraft. The new "bourgeoisie" ofthe late Ming (whose ideological leaders, it is explained, were such menas Ku Yen-wu, Huang Tsung-hsi and Wang Fu-chih) would eventuallyhave seized political power in combination with their peasant allies (thisis the interpretationgiven to Li Tzu-ch'eng's rebellion which overthrewthe Ming) and then proceeded to prepare the rest of the prerequisitesfor the development of industrial capitalism, just as their English andFrench counterpartsare alleged to have done. But the Manchu invasionand devastation of the land in the first instance, and the imperialists'aggression and exploitation which followed in the nineteenth centuryprevented this happy fruition.Most of the theoretical arguments advanced in the 1950s in supportof the position that China's pre-modern economy was in fact evolvingin accordance with the Marxist normative stages of societal developmenthad already been tabled in the debates on the nature of Chinese societyof the 1920s and 1930s.18 It may well be that, given the underdevelopedstate of the study of Chinese economic history, we have underestimatedthe degree of commercialisation of the pre-modern Chinese economy.But the step from the posited existence of extensive commerce andadvanced forms of organisation in handicraft manufacture to the asser-tion that the Chinese economy was developing toward an "industrialrevolution" is an act of faith rather than a historical-scientific conclu-sion. Equally significant with the external criticism we might apply isthe fact that more recently the weight of authoritative opinion in Chinahas swung away from Shang Yiieh.l9

in China) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1956); and his preface to the collection Ming-Ch'ing She-hui Ching-chi Hsing-t'ai ti Yen-chiu.is See Benjamin I. Schwartz, " A Marxist Controversy on China," Far Eastern Quarterly,February 1954, pp. 143-153.19 See, e.g., Liu Ta-nien (associate editor of Historical Research, the leading mainlandhistorical journal), " Kuan-yii Shang Yiieh T'ung-chih wei Ming-Ch'ing She-hui Ching-chi Hsing-t'ai ti Yen-chiu I-shu so Hsieh ti Hsii-yen " (" A Critique of Shang Yiieh'sPreface to Studies in the Society and Economy of the Ming and Ch'ing Periods ">Historical Research, No. 1, 1958, pp. 1-16; a sweeping attack by the modern historiansat the People's University in Peking, " P'ing Shang Yiieh T'ung-chih Kuan-yii Ming-Ch'ing She-hui Ching-chi Chieh-kou ti Jo-kan Kuan-tien" ("A Critique of Shang45

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYThe remark by Mao just cited, beginning "As China's feudalsociety developed its commodity economy . .. " follows immediately

after a passage that reads, "Chinese feudal society lasted for about3,000 years. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century thatgreat internal changes took place in China as a result of the penetrationof foreign capitalism." Shang Yiieh's critics explicitly indicted him forcontradicting this last passage. Behind their charge was apparently thefear that too great an emphasis upon internal proto-capitalist develop-ments prior to the full impact of Western imperialism in the nineteenthcentury might divert attention from the villain's role assigned to foreigncapitalism in transforming China into a "semi-colonial, semi-feudal"status. This clearly would not fit in with the need, at this stage, of theChinese revolution, to project a large share of the blame for a centuryand more of humiliation and weakness onto the " imperialist aggressors."Thus Shang was accused of misinterpreting the nature of the OpiumWar, of failing to see that it marked the beginning of " the strugglebetween the Chinese people's anti-imperialist, anti-feudal line whichsought to transform China into an independent and prosperous nation,and the imperialist feudal line which sought to transform China into acolony." And this because of his false attribution of a connectionbetween the leadership of the people's struggles in 1839-42 and the"bourgeois urban movement" of the late Ming and early Ch'ing, withthe result that "the nature of this Chinese national anti-aggressivestruggle is changed into "bourgeois" anti-feudalism.20 Moreover,playing up the degree of China's economic development along theMarxist normative road to capitalism might raise doubts about thehistorical necessity of the revolution led by the Communist Party." If 300 years ago capitalism already held such a secure position," statedthe critics of Shang Yiieh, " then the anti-feudal land reform led by theCommunist Party could not have occurred. . . . And how could therehave been any necessity for the proletariat to seize the leadership of thedemocratic revolution?" 21

As the attacks by more orthodox historians increased in severity,Shang Yiieh adopted an ingenious stand. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao,when they began to write, he stated, expressed views that clearly werenot acceptable to the majority, but these new views were correct ones.

Yiieh's Views concerning the Social and Economic Structure of the Ming and Ch'ingDynasties "), ibid. No. 12, 1958, pp. 21-35; and Li Shu, "Chung-kuo ti Chin-taiShih yii ho Shih? " (" When was the Beginning of Modem History in China? "), ibid.No. 3, 1959, pp. 1-11.20 Liu Ta-nien, op cit., pp. 11-12.21 People's University historians, op. cit., pp. 22-23. Shang Yiieh, however, did not giveup the fight; see his rebuttal to Li Shu: " Yu-kuan Chung-kuoTzu-pen Chu-i Meng-yaWen-t'i Erh-san Shih" (" Some Matters concerning the Question of IncipientCapitalism in China "), Historical Research, No. 7, 1959, pp. 25-50.46

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYNo layman, of course, has the right to suggest new interpretations ina field where he is not a master, but the specialist in a particular fieldof knowledge-for example, an historian who has studied carefully aspecific historical question-may arrive at knowledge and insights thatin the beginning are possessed by him alone. While these views may notbe in agreement with the general opinion, the historian who has newideas about periodisation and the origins of capitalism in Chinashould express them even though they may differ from the " traditionaldoctrine."22

That was it. The assertion that the "traditional doctrine "-the"tradition " that Shang referred to was, as everyone knew, the " thoughtof Mao Tse-tung "-could be challenged was sufficient to call forth atorrent of political abuse. "In his writings on the Chinese Revolution,comrade Mao Tse-tung has made many penetrating analyses of Chinesehistory. These analyses are objective truths which have been provedin the practice of the Chinese Revolution. But Shang Yiieh hasslandered them and opposed them as merely 'an old and traditionalsystem of historical analysis,' and has set up his own system of privatescience which is unrelated to the facts and is anti-Marxist. . . . WhatShang Yieh calls his 'new system' is, however, only the remnantsand rotten pieces of the capitalist view of history which he has picked upin a garbage can." 23 In similar tones Shang was attacked as an arch"moder revisionist," who has attempted to revive the capitalist viewof history under the cover of "Let the hundred schools of thoughtcontend."

The political implications of the assault on Shang Yiieh are obviousfrom the label " moder revisionist": he-like Khrushchev-was guiltyof weakening the defences against imperialism by, at least implicitly,denying that "the contradiction between the Chinese nation andimperialism . .. was the most important" contradiction in modernChinese history. But what of the implications for the academic questionof the transition from feudalism to capitalism in China? My impressionis that the field has been left in considerable disarray, for the timebeing at least. While Chinese feudal society cannot any more bedescribed as stagnant, neither it appears is it politically possible toargue consistently that, if left alone, it would have developed naturallyto capitalism. One is left only with Mao's brief statement whichfollows the notorious sentence about the embryo of capitalism in feudalsociety: "The penetration of foreign capitalism accelerated this22 Wen-hui Pao (Shanghai), November 1, 1959; summarised in China News Analysis,No. 326, June 3, 1960, p. 7.23 People's Daily, June 13, 1960, p. 7; see also Historical Research, No. 4, 1960,pp. 1-22, and No. 5, 1960, pp. 1-48. 47

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYdevelopment." Here we are introducedto the paradoxicaland ambiguousrole of " imperialism" in China's modem economic history.

The academic position of Shang Yiieh's opponents is essentiallythis (although on the specific question of the "primitive accumulationof capital" in China the divergence of opinion is quite broad anddiscussions continue).24In contrast to Shang Yiieh, they hold that originof the Chinese bourgeoisie and proletariat is to be found not in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but only in the latter half of thenineteenth century. While, to be sure, there were some proto-capitalistforms in the later Ming and early Ch'ing, they were extremely weak.Shang Yieh's "handicraft workshop," in particular, was the rareexception rather than the rule; such large-scale handicraft productionas existed was of the Verlag type. It cannot be maintained that therewas either a bourgeois or proletarian "class" in the Marxist-Leninistsense in this early period. Indeed, Marx's "really revolutionary way"towards the development of capitalism, in which a section of the crafts-men themselves accumulate capital and become merchants andcapitalists, never occurred at all in China. There was no connection,such as Shang Yiieh implies, between the proto-capitalism of the earlyeighteenth century and China's modern industry. The process ofprimitive accumulation was fundamentally different in China and theWest. Where the antecedents of the European bourgeoisie were handi-craftsmen and tradesmen who occupied an antagonistic position towardsfeudal society, the Chinese bourgeoisie originated initially from themerchants, landowners and bureaucratswho were the controlling strataof feudal society. Under the stimulus of foreign capitalist penetrationof China's economy, one section of the ruling class began to invest inlarge-scale industrial production by machinery and was transformedinto the upper stratum of a bourgeois class. At a later point, a lowerstratum of national capitalists (min-tsu tzu-pen-chia), some of whomwere not originally part of the ruling class, also appeared. From itsvery beginnings the Chinese bourgeoisie was characterised by anambiguous relationship with both the forces of feudalism andimperialism. The proletariat, however, whose growth accompanied notonly the slow development of native capitalism but also the earlierand more extensive imperialist investment in Chinese industry, enjoyeda priority in both age and class coherence over the Chinese bourgeoisie.25

What the Chinese historians are asserting here is that not onlydid China become less than independent, a "semi-colony," as a con-sequence of foreign incursions in the nineteenth century, but also that24 For summaries of these discussions, see Ching-chi Yen-chiu (Economic Research),No. 3, 1962, pp. 52-61, and People's Daily, August 9, 1962.25 Kuang-ming Daily, June 23, 1960. 48

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYthis same foreign impact began the transformation of two millenniaof feudalism into something else-" semi-feudalism" embarked on theway to capitalism. To have impaired China's sovereignty was anabsolutely evil action; of this there are no doubts. But to have pushedthe feudal economy off dead centre, on to the universal path, this issomething else again. One can, I think, suggest that the vehemence withwhich Chinese Communists attack "imperialism" is in direct pro-portion to the positive importance which they themselves give toforeign aggression and exploitation as the moving force in moderChinese history. In Mao's words, " The history of imperialist aggressionupon China, of imperialist opposition to China's independence andto her development of capitalism, constitutes precisely the history ofmoder China." 26 On the one hand, imperialism is alleged to havestimulated a rupture of the feudal bonds in which the Chinese economywas entrapped; on the other, in league with the feudal forces itdeliberately obstructed the full development of the nascent Chinesecapitalism which it had fathered. Shang Yueh unambiguously rejected"the erroneous conclusion that the Chinese bourgeoisie is an outgrowthof foreign capitalist infiltration,"27but his opponents cannot allow anunsullied pedigree to the capitalist class. They are therefore forcedto abandon some part of the autonomy of Chinese history itself. Tothe abuse which the imperialists will have to bear for real wrongsinflicted, an extra measure of obloquy has to be added for this woundto national pride.What was the character of the Chinese " capitalism " which appearedin the late nineteenth century as a consequence of imperialist stimulationand which because of imperialist aggression was able to achieve only apartial development? We may approach the discussions on this questionby examining one of the rare explicit comparisons of the Chinese experi-ence with that of Japan that the Chinese Communist historians haveproduced.28 The problem is to what extent was the "foreign affairs"(yang-wu) movement in China similar to the Meiji Restoration, andthe consensus is that the similarities were only superficial. Both"movements " were stimulated by the direct pressure and influence ofWestern capital, both sought to establish moder factories, mines and26 " On New Democracy," Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, IV, p. 123.27 Shang Yiieh, Chung-kuo Tzu-pen-chu-i Kuan-hsi Fa-sheng chi Yen-pien ti Ch'u-puYen-chiu (Preliminary Investigations of the Origin and Development of CapitalistRelations in China) (Peking: San4lienShu-tien, 1956), p. 277.28 Huang I-feng and Chiang-To, " Chung-kuo Yang-wu Ytin-tung yii Jih-pen Mei-chihWei-hsin Tsai Ching-chi Fa-chan Shang ti Pi-chiao " (" A Comparison of EconomicDevelopment in China's Industrialisation Movement and in the Japanese MeijiRestoration "), Historical Research, No. 1, 1963, pp. 27-47; see also EconomicResearch, No. 4, 1963, pp. 62-71, for a report of discussions by the ShanghaiEconomic Society. 49

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYcommunications,and both drew upon Westerntechnology and technicians.But here the similaritiesend.

In Japan on the eve of the Meiji Restoration, the Chinese Communisteconomic historians hold, the development of a commodity economyand handicraft workshops had far surpassed China. And, furthermore,a moder bourgeoisie had already clearly emerged. On this basis,Meiji Japan underwent a fundamental change in its "political super-structure" as part and parcel of the industrialisation effort. The Meijileaders, in spite of their feudal background, had a clear bourgeois goal,and all of the measures they adopted were designed to promote therapid development of capitalism. In China, in contrast, the feudalpolitical superstructureremained intact, and the " wealth and power "(fu-ch'iang) which the yang-wu group sought was explicitly for thepurpose of preserving feudal rule. China's early industrialisation wasundertakenby such " feudalists " as Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang, TsoTsung-t'ang and Chang Chih-tung. But this yang-wu clique was onlya small part, representinglocal power groups serving their own materialand political interests, of the feudal ruling class. As a whole that classopposed even the yang-wu movement, and the Ch'ing central govern-ment, in contrast to Meiji Japan, not only gave no positive help, but wasalso a negative factor of considerable weight. The capitalist forces ofproduction introduced by the yang-wu clique were throttled by theunchanged feudal relations of production. Where in Japan many formerfeudal lords were transformed into capitalists as a consequence of thepolicies of the Meiji government, in China the feudal land economyremained dominant and was much more attractive and safe as an objectof investment than was moder industry. In the Chinese enterprisesthemselves, again in contrast to Japan, feudal management practiceswere carried over from the official yamen and seriously damaged theefficiency of the new industries.A second area of major divergence between Japan and China inthe late nineteenth century, it is also suggested, lay in the contrastbetween the sense of national unity and purpose, the growing modernnationalism of Japan and the progressive decay of the Ch'ing state.In spite of its anti-foreign slogans, the yang-wu clique, like the feudalCh'ing government as a whole, was dependent upon the imperialistsfor its very existence. Feudal-cum-imperialist collusion obstructedprivate capitalist development until the very end of the nineteenthcentury. Furthermore, the accelerating Chinese-Manchu "national"(i.e., racial) conflict undermined even what little unity the dynastyretained.

Finally, this comparison concludes, while both China and JapansufferedWesterncapitalist aggression, it was China which was the prime50

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORY

target of the imperialists. Japan, with some of the blow deflected byChina, was able to progress within the interstices left by the contradic-tions among the Western aggressors. The imperialist powers, in fact,deliberately utilised growing Japanese power against both China andRussia, with the consequence for China of a large-scale drain of capitalin the form of reparations to Japan.But the nineieenth-century industrialisation movement cannot besimply dismissed out of hand by the Communist historians. While,as we have seen, the bourgeoisie cannot be allowed a clean pedigree,it (a section of that class, to be exact) nevertheless has a " progressive"role to play in both the " Old Democratic" and to a lesser extent the"New Democratic" revolutions. In some degree a historicist orrelativistic approach, rather than one based entirely upon the class view-point, is required. The framework for this positive role is erected bymodifying somewhat the harshness with which the late-Ch'ing modemindustries are treated in the comparison with Meiji industrialisation.Some writers deny that the early yang-wu industries can correctly bedescribed as capitalistic-even if they employed wage labour, they didnot produce commodities for a market, only military supplies directlyfor the government.29 The majority position, however, is that in somemeasure, because of their techniques of production with modemmachinery, utilisation of wage labour and internal management, theywere capitalistic albeit it was " official capitalism of the Chinese style."While the motivation and objectives of the promoters were unquestion-ably reactionary, the techniques they borrowed from the West acceler-ated the development of moder forms of production in China andlaid the technical groundwork for the appearance of privately-ownedcapitalist industry (min-tsu tzu-pen chu-i).30 Moreover, the kuan-tushang-pan enterprises producing civilian goods for the market whichfollowed the early military industries were increasingly capitalistic incharacter; this was especially so in the case of light industry such ascotton textiles. Even if the monopolistic kuan-tu shang-pan system wassubjectively intended to restrain and control private capital, objectivelyit stimulated complementary enterprises in industry and mining, trainedmanagers, technicians and workers in the techniques of moder produc-tion, and to some extent helped overcome society's total opposition toinvestment in new forms of production. In China's situation in the lateCh'ing, the official and semi-official enterprises were necessary stages29 See, for example, Sun Yii-t'ang, comp., Chung-kuo Chin-tai Kung-yeh Shih Tzu-liao,Ti-i-chi, 1840-1895 nien (Source Materials on the History of Modern Industry inChina, First Collection, 1840-1895) (Peking: K'o-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she, 1957), Intro-duction, passim.o0See, for example, Mou An-shih, Yang-wu Yiin-tung (The " Foreign A0airs " Move-ment) (Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1956).51

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYwhich had to be traversed before private capitalist industry coulddevelop.

The important distinction for the Communist historian is betweenprivate capitalist industry and "bureaucratic capitalism." From thebureaucraticcapitalism of the late-Ch'ing to that of the 1930s and 1940sthere is a profound spiritual, if not material, connection. In both epochsthis was the great obstacle to China's economic development, alongwith its imperialist cohorts, the great enemy of the people. Privatecapitalism, however, provided the economic basis for the "bourgeoisreformers" of 1898, for the " bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and revolu-tionary democrats headed by Sun Yat-sen," and for those nationalcapitalists who opposed the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek and the"four big families " and made their peace with the " New Democratic "economy of the CCP. They are to be highly, but not uncritically,valued and incorporated into the great historical heritage of the Chinesepeople.31 But arising as it does out of the historical situation of nine-teenth-century China, even the progressive wing of the Chinesebourgeoisie could not escape a compromising attitude towardsthe imperialists and the feudal ruling class. Above all, it was under theillusion that aid could be expected from the imperialist powers in thetask of establishing a modem and industrialised China. "So long asimperialism exists, the bourgeoisie of any country cannot really lead thepeople to prosecute a victorious revolution. The proletariat is the onlyclass capable of leading the Chinese people to complete victory in theirstruggle for liberation."82IV

I have described in several instances, as for example in the quotationwhich closes the preceding section, the connection that holds betweenthe importunate demands of policy and politics and the study andwriting of modem economic history in China today. It may, I believe,also be suggested that in some measure policy has been reciprocallyinfluenced by the ideological positions expressed in currenthistoriography.In their efforts to "periodise" modem Chinese economic history,the mainland historians, while not in agreement on the sub-stages,unanimously begin by drawing the sharpest possible distinction betweensemi-colonial, semi-feudal China and New Democratic China on the wayto Socialism and eventually Communism.33 The semi-colonial, semi-3s On the "critical inheritance" of China's early bourgeois economic thought, seePeople's Daily, May 18, 1962.82 Ibid.33 See Jen I, " Kuan-yii Chung-kuo Chin-tai Ching-chi Shih Fen-ch'i Wen-t'i ti T'ao-lun"" On the Discussions concerning the Periodisation of Modern Chinese EconomicHistory "), Historical Research, No. 3, 1961, pp. 122-123.52

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYfeudal economy, they state, which was brought crashing to the groundin 1945-49 suffered under the double oppression and exploitation ofdomestic feudalists and foreign imperialists, who together blocked thedevelopment of the Chinese economy. China's stagnation was not theconsequence of any significant divergence of her society and economyfrom the universal evolutionary stages of Marxism. (We have seen thatthe "Asiatic mode of production" theory is untenable in CommunistChina today.) All that was requiredin order to accelerate the " normal"development from feudalism through capitalism to Socialism, etc.-indeed it would be possible even to jump leap-frog over the capitaliststage-was "liberation" from the feudal-imperialist yoke. To put thisin another way, what the Chinese economic historians suggest is that thetraditional economy had been undermined by foreign incursions, thatthe semi-modern economic forms which arose as a result of the foreignstimulus did not develop very far, indeed were crushed by the veryforces which fathered them. Once the Kuomintang excrescence wasremoved, the new Peking government faced a tabula rasa.The implications of this overview of China's economic history forpolicy, especially economic policy, since 1949 have, it seems to me, beenprofound. It is assumed first that there was nothing inherent in thebasic values or structure of the Chinese economy which would preventrapid economic growth once the onerous fetters on the people's strengthwere removed. A second assumption followed from the first: the revolu-tionary civil war of 1945-49 really did remove entirely the obstaclesto development. This outlook, I suggest, contributed importantly tothe sense of immense optimism and self-confidence with which theCommunist government approached its economic tasks after 1949. Wemay, with hindsight, now see that much of the optimism was misplaced,that revolutionary fervour unaided does not lead inevitably to economicgrowth. And judging from the aftermath of the "Great Leap," thereorientation of economic policy in what can only be described as a moreconservative and cautious direction, the Chinese leadership seems now tohave recognised this too. We may wonder what the reciprocal effects,if any, will be on China's moder economic history in Communist China.

APPENDIXIn connection with the foregoing examination of the Chinese Com-munist treatmentof China's modern economic history, it might be well todescribe briefly the range and quality of the publications on this subjectthat have appeared since 1949.34 The comments that follow may be34 For a more detailed survey see Albert Feuerwerkerand S. Cheng, Chinese CommunistStudies of Modern Chinese History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1961), pp. 168-207.

53

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYReliable and comprehensive statistical materials for any period ofChinese economic history have been, as is well known, grossly inade-

quate. The historians of Communist China have not significantlychanged this situation. No volume, perhaps, has been more used andcited by economic historians in China than Yen Chung-p'ing's Chung-kuo Chin-tai Ching-chi Shih T'ung-chi Tzu-liao Hsuan-chi (SelectedStatistical Materials on Modern Chinese Economic History) (Peking:K'o-hsueh Ch'u pan-she, 1955). This handbook contains 250 statisticaltables covering the period 1840-1948 (except for the foreign tradestatistics which go back to 1760) and the following topics: Anglo-Chinese trade prior to the Opium War (31 tables), treaty ports andconcessions (3 tables), foreign trade (31 tables), industry (47 tables),railroads (30 tables), shipping (23 tables) and agriculture (85 tables).Each section is prefaced with a discussion of the statistics that follow,the substance of which remains refreshingly intelligent (as one mightexpect from Yen, perhaps the best economic historian in China today)even while it is hopelessly tendentious. Close examination of the tablesshows that the statistics are flagrantly selective, that many are trivialin content, that the "index number problem" has not been facedsquarely by the compilers, that the data are often too fragmentary tosupport the sweeping introductory statement about the "semi-feudal,semi-colonial" character of the Chinese economy, and that, in general,statistics about many facets of the Chinese economy prior to 1949 thatare both adequate and reliable are still lacking. Statistical data supple-mentary to Yen's compilation are included in most of the collections ofsources to be described presently, and they suffer from similar short-comings. One gets the impression, however, that a good manyunpublished materials from central and local government and privatearchives are now being processed and, hopefully, may eventually bemade available.86Of a somewhat differentcharacter than Yen Chung-p'ing'shandbookis the reprinting in one volume of the major statistical series for theperiod 1913-52 compiled by the Nankai Institute of Economics (1913nien-1952 Nien Nan-k'ai Chih-shu Tzu-liao Hui-pien (Nankai IndexNumbers for 1913-1952) (Peking: T'ung-chi Ch'u-pan-she, 1958)), andthe publication from a wide variety of sources of data on Shanghai com-modity prices for 1921-57 (Shang-hai Chieh-fang Ch'ien-hou Wu-chiaTzu-liao Hui-pien, 1921-57 (Collected Materials on Commodity Pricesin Shanghai Before and After Liberation, 1921-57) (Shanghai: Jen-minCh'u-pan-she, 1958)). These are relativelycomprehensivestatistics rather86 See, for example, the notice in Economic Research, May 1958, pp. 89-90, of 39 majorprojects to collect and compile source materials on the moder economic historyof China.

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THE CHINA QUARTERLYthana tendentiouselection,apparentlyundoctored, ndas suchshouldbe extremelyuseful for more refinedanalysisthan the severaleditorshave provided.The collection and publicationof sourcematerials s probablythemost valuable service being performedby the mainland economichistorians. Certainly, n bulk, this has been their main contributionsince 1949. One is temptedto suggestthat this emphasisrepresentsaconfluenceof the "scissors and paste" tradition,a hoary veteraninChinesehistoriography,ndperhaps he safestway of digesting he pastin a society still in full revolutionaryransition. In general,althoughthereare exceptions, he amountof explicitcommentary ccompanyingthe many new source collections has been minimal. The editors'"argument"s commonlycarriedonlyby the selectionandarrangementof materialsand by outrageouslyhermeneuticheadingsand sub-head-ings. Valuablematerials,often not easily obtainableelsewhere,havebeenreprintedn thesevolumes,but I have the distinct mpression hatto date the proportionof newly printedarchivalmaterialsis rathersmall-an indication hat the Chinese historianshave not yet got veryfar with exploitingthe massof officialand privatedocuments hat pre-sumablybecameavailable after 1949. If the cruderMarxistanalysiswhichaccompanieshe documentscan be disregarded,t may be fairlystated that these source collections ay the foundations or writingtheeconomic history of modem China on a higher level of theoreticalsophisticationand with a morecomprehensiveontrolof the empiricaldata than was the case in the past.One very good exampleof the scissorsand paste technique,and ofitscontinuingusefulness,s thecompilationby theDepartment f Historyat Nankai University of Ch'ing Shih Lu Ching-chi Tzu-liao Chi-yao (ACompendium of Economic Materials in the Veritable Records of theCh'ingDynasty)(Peking: Chung-hua hu-chii,1959). From the 1,220volumes of the Ch'ingShih Lu (coveringthe period 1583-1911) theeditorshave extractedand arrangedopicallyand chronologicallywithpunctuation ddedandfull citations or eachitem)the passagesrelatingto the Chineseeconomy. It is usuallynecessary o referto the originalfor the contextin whichthe extractsoccur,but what one has in effectis a valuableindex to data on the economy in the otherwisenearlyuncontrollable ulk of the ShihLu.Threemajorcollectionsof sourcematerials n industryn nineteenth-and twentieth-centuryChina have appeared. Sun Yii-t'ang, comp.,Chung-kuo Chin-tai Kung-yeh Shih Tzu-liao, Ti-i Chi, 1840-1895 Nien(Source Materials on the History of Modern Industry in China, FirstCollection, 1840-1895) (Peking: K'o-hsueh ch'u-pan-she, 1957, 2 vols.)and Wang Ching-yii, comp., Chung-kuoChin-taiKung-yehShih Tzu-liao,

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Ti-erh Chi, 1895-1914 (Source Materials on the History of ModernIndustry in China, Second Collection, 1895-1914) (Peking: K'o-hsuehCh'u-pan-she, 1957, 2 vols.) together span the last centuryof the Manchudynasty and provide an impressive mass of materials from Chinese(including archives), Japanese and Western sources on foreign andChinese industrial enterprisein China. Each collection is preceded by alengthy essay which strings the assembled documents together on aMarxist-Maoist thread and provides a compact industrial history of theperiod. Of the four parts of Ch'en Chen et al., comps., Chung-kuoChin-tai Kung-yeh Shih Tzu-liao (Source Materials on the History ofModern Industry in China), I have seen only the second: Ti-kuo-chu-iTui Chung-kuo Kung-k'uang Shih-yeh ti Ch'in-lueh ho Lung-tuan(Imperialist Aggression Against and Monopolisation of China's Indus-tries and Mines) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1958). Part I is reportedlydevoted to industries founded by "national capitalists," Part III dealswith " bureaucratic capital" from the Ch'ing through the Kuomintang,and Part IV seems to be a general treatment of individual enterprises.87In Part II, the data are most extensive for the 1920s and 1930s. Thefour part collection as a whole then presumably continues rather thanmerely supplements the Sun Yii-t'ang and Wang Ching-yii volumes.A source collection similar to the above has been published onhandicraft industry: P'eng Tse-i, comp., Chung-kuo Chin-tai Shou-kung-yeh Shih Tzu-liao, 1840-1949 (SourceMaterials on the History of Handi-craft Industry in Modern China, 1840-1949:) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien,1957, 4 vols.). It unfortunatelycontains no introductory essay such as isfound in the collections on manufacturingin the nineteenth century.Agricultural history is representedby four large collections of sourcematerials, all of which lack introductory essays and all of which, likethe volumes on industry, scrupulously cite sources and include com-prehensive bibliographies: Li Wen-chih, comp., Chung-kuo Chin-taiNung-yeh Shih Tzu-liao, Ti-i Chi, 1840-1911 (SourceMaterialson China'sModern Agricultural History, First Collection, 1840-1911) (Peking:San-lien Shu-tien, 1957); two further collections compiled by ChangYu-i under the same general title and with the same publisher and dateand treating respectively the periods 1912-27 and 1927-37; and ShihChing-t'ang,comp., Chung-kuo Nung-yeh Ho-tso-hua Yun-tungShih-liao(Historical Materials on Agricultural Collectivisation in China) (Peking:San-lien Shu-tien, 1957, 2 vols.) which begins in the 1920s but concen-trates on the post-1937 period and is, of course, limited to materials onCommunist-controlled areas. The first part of Volume I of the last itemis of particular interest for its data on patterns of mutual aid in rural

87 See Kuang-ming Daily, September 12, 1962.57

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villages upon the foundation of which Communist collectivisationallegedly proceeded.Among the other collections of newly published source materials,attention should be drawn to the seven volumes that have appeared todate under the general title of Ti-kuo Chu-i yii Chung-kuo Hai-kuan(Imperialism and the Chinese Customs). Compiled by the researchdepartment of the Directorate General of Customs of the Ministry ofForeign Trade and published in Peking by K'o-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she,thesevolumes consist for the most part of Chinese translations of English-language documents from the otherwise inaccessible archives of theImperial Maritime Customs during the period of Sir Robert Hart'sincumbency as Inspector-General. Intended primarily to demonstratethe "imperialistic" behaviour of Hart and other foreigners employedby the I.M.C., this series is relevant to several significant problems inChina's modem economic history, foreign loans to the Manchu govern-ment, for example.Finally, a number of collections of source materials on individualbusiness enterprises have been published, and more are promised. Wemay stretch this category to include Shang-hai Ch'ien-chuang Shih-liao(Historical Materials on Money Shops in Shanghai) (Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1960), compiled by the Shanghaibranchof the People'sBank of China and covering the period 1840-1952. A large amount ofstatistical data on such matters as discounts and exchange rates isincluded, and the volume concludes with quite detailed information onthe organisation, assets and liabilities of several individual money shops.Note also, of this same genre, Nan-yang Hsiung-ti Yen-ts'ao Kung-szuShih-liao (Historical Materials on the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Co.)(Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1958), compiled jointly by the Shang-hai Economic Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences and theEconomic Research Institute of the Shanghai Academy of SocialSciences. The volume draws upon the archives and accounts of the

Nanyang Brothers Co., as well as private letters, interviews, memoirs,newspapers and the like, to provide a detailed documentation of theinternal history from 1905 to 1957 of the leading Chinese cigarette manu-facturer. Data of this kind relating to any Chinese enterprise havehitherto hardly been available. A similar volume of documents on theChee Hsin Cement Co., likewise a leader in its field, has also been pub-lished: Ch'i-hsin Yang-hui Kung-szu Shih-liao (Historical Materials onthe Chee Hsin Cement Co.) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1963), compiledjointly by the Nankai University Economic Research Institute and theDepartment of Economics of Nankai University.Monographic publications (apart from occasional articles in the lead-ing journals, Li-shih Yen-chiu (Historical Research) and Ching-chi Yen-

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYchiu (Economic Research), and the selected volumes mentioned below)have in general not attained the relatively high quality of the sourcecollections I have described. The lack of theoretical sophistication informulating problems and assembling materials to answer them whichcharacterised pre-1949 Chinese economic historiography has not beenovercome by rearranging matters in Marxist categories. Probably thetwo best works that have appeared-and coming closest to what wouldbe recognised as economic history outside of China-are the revisededition of Yen Chung-p'ing's Chung-kuo Mien Fang-chih Shih Kao(Draft History of Chinese Cotton Spinning and Weaving) (Peking:K'o-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she, 19'55;original edition, Chungking, 1942), andhis Ch'ing-tai Yun-nan T'ung Cheng K'ao (A Study of the YunnanCopper Administration in the Ch'ing Period) (Peking: Chung-hua Shu-chii, 1957).A significant part of the monographic work down to the end of1958 was related to the "capitalist burgeons" controversy discussedabove. I shall mention only Shang Yiieh's Chung-kuo Tzu-pen-chu-iKuan-hsi Fa-sheng Chi Yen-pien Ti Ch'u-pu Yen-chiu (PreliminaryInvestigations of the Origin and Development of Capitalist Relations inChina) (Peking: San-lien shu-tien, 1956). Other publications on thistopic are in general either derivative from his work or in sharpopposition to it.One has the impression that in their specialised publications theChinese economic historians often either have not used or have not hadaccess to the voluminous archival materials that surely must have becomeavailable to the CCP and Government after 1949. Chang Yii-lan'sChung-kuo Yin-hang-yehFa-chan Shih (A History of the Development ofBanking in China) (Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1957), for example,which surveys the period 1896-1937, is based largely on banking periodi-cals and other published sources and contains little new data. WuCh'eng-ming, Ti-kuo-chu-i tsai Chung-kuo ti T'ou-tzu (ImperialistInvestment in China) (Peking: Jen-minCh'u-pan-she, 1955) is an interest-ing rearrangementof the known statistics, but the citation of these datais largely rhetorical. It is the accompanying commentary that domin-ates-the figures can be and are used to show anything or nothing. Thesame comments apply to Hsien K'o, Chin Pai Nien Lai Ti-kuo-chu-i tsaiHua Yin-hang Fa-hsing Chih-pi Kai-k'uang (A General Account of theCurrency Issues of Imperialist Banks in China in the Past 100 Years)(Shanghai: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1958). Yang Tuan-liu, Ch'ing-taiHo-pi Chin-jung Shih-kao (Draft Monetary and Financial History of theCh'ing Period) (Peking: San-lien Shu-tien, 1962) is essentially a stringingtogether of quotations from Ch'ing documentary collections and Chineseand Western secondary sources, in the traditional style, accompanied59

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by a minimum of commentary and without any useful theoretical frame-work. While the coverage is comprehensive, the treatment of anyparticular topic is necessarily fragmentary.As the titles just described will indicate-and there are other volumesand quite a few articles on similar topics-a relatively large amount ofattention has been given to the subjects of money and banking, on whichChinese economic historians often concentrated before 1949, and, ofcourse, also to the matter of foreign loans and investments. In additionto the items I have mentioned, there has been some monographic workon nineteenth- and twentieth-century industry, including a number ofcompany histories. On the other hand, much less effort seems to havebeen devoted to the study of agricultural history, land tenure and landtaxation than to the question of incipient capitalism and the beginningsof modem industry. Perhaps because Chinese agriculture was sointimately a part of " feudal" society (which to the mainland historiansis coincident with Imperial China), while the Marxist-Maoist classicshave had little to say directly about the anatomy of feudalism, it isjudged somewhat perilous to venture into an area described only byambiguous guidelines. In contrast, in order to have a proletariat-andit is an article of faith that a proletariat is sine qua non before there canbe a Communist Party-there must first be modem capitalist industry.Hence the vigorous search to trace its roots. This, perhaps, accountsfor the unbalanced allocation of resources in the currentstudy of modemeconomic history.An analogue to the "campaigns" and "movements" which regu-larly punctuate other areas of life in China is the " academic discussion,"that is, certain topics or problems-usually with more or less directpolitical implications-are periodically set before the scholarly worldby its political panjandrums and an invitation issued for wholesalediscussion under the still current but much circumscribed slogan of"letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thoughtcontend." The discussions take the form of specially convened nationaland local conferences and the extensive publication in journals andnewspapers of articles and essays on the topic in question. Summarystatements, emanating from the cultural offices of the CCP, then appearfrom time to time in Hung-ch'i or Jen-min Jih-pao as guidance for thedirection which the discussions should take. The debate on the relation-ship between historicism and the class viewpoint, mentioned at thebeginning of this paper, is an example of this kind of academic dis-cussion. Other topics of interest to historians have included " emphasisethe present and de-emphasise the past" (hou-chin po-ku), the" inheritability and class character of morality," and the " evaluation ofhistorical personages." Of special relevance to modem economic history

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CHINA'S MODERN ECONOMIC HISTORYis the "capitalist burgeons " controversy, thirty-three contributions toWhich have been reprinted in a symposium entitled Chung-kuo Tzu-penChui-i Meng-ya Wen-t'i T'ao-lan Chi (Collected Papers on the ProblemofIncipient Capitalism in China) (Peking: San-lien shu-tien, 1957, 2 vols.).This kind of collection provides the opportunity to assess the range ofacademic opinion on a particular topic and, more important, also thelevel of theoretical competence as many of the contributions are couchedin theoretical terms.I am acquainted only with two post-1949 textbooks on China'smodern economic history. Wu Chieh, Chung-kuo Chin-tai Kuo-minChing-chi Shih (The Modern National Economic History of China)(Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1958), treats the nineteenthcenturyonly,Chung-kuo Chin-tai Kuo-min Ching-chi Shih Chiang-i (Lectures on theModern National Economic History of China) (Peking: Kao-tengChiao-yii Ch'u-pan-she, 1958), edited by Department of PoliticalEconomy, Hupei University, begins with the eve of the Opium Warand continues through 1949. These volumes are oriented to suchquestions as these: What were the stages in the transformationof Chinafrom a feudal society into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society?How was the semi-colonial, semi-feudal nature of the economy intensi-fied and eventually destroyed? What are the characteristics of each ofthe stages of economic development and change? What of the classstruggles that accompanied economic change? They are, however,reasonably well documented, draw to a limited extent on the newlyavailable materials referredto above, and are probably the most detailedconsecutive accounts of China's modem economic history nowavailable.