declined dramatically from 1850 to 1870, then increased slightly from 1870 to 1913, but did not recover to the level of 1840. Maddison estimated GDP per capita by the aggregation price of goods and services in different production sectors, which is the commonly used GDP calculation. Figure 1 displays the decline of the growth rate from 1840 to 1912 overall at around 8%, whereas Figure 2 indicates a relatively small decline of around 0.9%. The constructed historical GDP data support the idea in Maddison’s and Ma’s works that there was an economic recession in the late Qing dynasty, as represented in Figures 1 and Figure 2, but the two figures illustrate different growth rates. The first of these is one of the most important measurements, and one of the most difficult to measure. There are multiple ways to measure economic growth, including GDP growth, urbanization, and the real wage. This growing capacity is based on advancing technology and the institutional and ideological adjustments it demands (Simon 1973). Economic recession was also a part of the collapse of the great powers of China.Ī country’s economic growth can be defined as a long-term rise in the capacity to supply increasingly diverse economic goods to its population. At the same time, external invasions, internal rebellion, natural disasters, and reforms were changing the social and economic order (Ma 2016, p.3). In the late Qing dynasty, the continuous success of invasion wars from foreign countries destroyed the great images of China in their minds. The data used in this article were extracted from some of the main works listed above related to this period, and from other studies of population growth, urbanization, agricultural productivity, industrial development, and the real wage: Chinese Population History (Wu 2000), The Development and Underdevelopment of Agriculture in the Qing Dynasty (Shi 2015), Selected Statistics of China’s Modern Industrial History (Yan 2012), and Wages, Prices, and Living Standards in China, 1738–1925 (Allen 2011).Īs the last dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty lasted 270 years. As such, a better understanding of the economic development in the late Qing dynasty would help provide evidence for the debate and study of Chinese modern history. The majority of works found out thatthere was an economic recession in the late Qing dynasty, but the extent of that recession remains to be examined. Based on Maddison’s method, GDP estimation was reconstructed from 1840 to 1912 by estimating each production sector (Ma & De Jong 2013). There has been major debate regarding the Great Divergence in the comparative analysis of real wages between China and Western countries, especially before and after the Industrial Revolution (Allen 2011).

(1997) estimated the GDP growth rate from 1850 to 1949, but they do not mention the calculation methods and statistic sources. However, Chinese scholars have never stopped the revision and reconstruction of historical data from different periods, including the late Qing dynasty. Thus, there are few quantitative studies on this topic. The economic development in the late Qing dynasty is quite difficult to measure due to the lack of well-recorded statistics before 1912. In addition to GDP calculations, Pomeranz measured personal income and consumption in China before the Industrial Revolution as the estimator of economic growth in The Great Divergence (Pomeranz 2000). Maddison measured GDP from 960 to 2030 AD by aggregating estimated total output in all sectors in Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run (Maddison 1998). Rowski estimated the gross domestic growth rate from the 1910s to the 1940s by estimating of growth rate in each sector in Economic Growth in Prewar China (Rowski 1989). The quantitative measurement of economic growth in Chinese modern history started with Rowski, Maddison, and Pomeranz. Quantitative study in Chinese economic history was not popular in the modern historical research until the 1980s, influenced by Western scholars. This contribution provides some deconstructed estimates of Chinese economic development between 18. (Image: Wiki Commons)Īlthough historical estimations suggest there was a recession in the late Qing dynasty, there is much confusion and contradiction the depth and timing of the recession.

Last chinese dynasty