Suchergebnisse

This paper examines how the worship of ancient wisdom affects economic progress in historical China, where the learned class embraced classical wisdom for millennia but encountered the shock of Western industrial influence in the mid-nineteenth century. Using the number of sage temples to measure the strength of classical worship in 269 prefectures, I find that classical worship discouraged intellectuals from appreciating modern learning and thus inhibited industrialization between 1858 and 1927. By contrast, industrialization grew faster in regions less constrained by classicism. This finding implies the importance of cultural entrepreneurship, or the lack thereof, in shaping modern economic growth.
"The humor of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning."—David Hume (1754, p. 464).

From 1580, the Jesuits introduced European sciences to China―an autarkic civilization whose intelligentsia was dominated by Confucian literati. Drawing upon prefectural distributions of the Jesuits and Chinese scientific works, this paper demonstrates that the Jesuits stimulated Confucian literati to study science. On average, the literati's scientific works increased four times in prefectures with Jesuit scientists after 1580. But this effect shrank after the Jesuits were expelled by the emperor of China in 1723. Since China's scholar-official system remained unchanged, the literati's scientific research aimed to serve the needs of statecraft rather than translating into economic progress.

AbstractVolumes of historical archives in China have been digitised, from which various datasets have been constructed for scholarly inquiry. Furthermore, the excavation of thousands of archaeological sites provided detailed data about prehistoric development across China's landmass. As a result, there has been remarkable progress in quantitative studies on China's past. This article reviews recent work in five theme areas to provide a background for the papers included in this special issue. These themes include state formation, Confucianism, human capital, Christian missionaries, and long‐term persistence studies. The five papers in this issue fall into these themes and are introduced where appropriate.

By analysing data from a survey of 511 Chinese private enterprises, we find that their owners respond to government discrimination by developing political connections with government officials. A one‐standard‐deviation increase in the insecurity of property rights has the effect of increasing the number of 'friends' in the government by a substantial 22%. These 'friends' significantly help to mitigate by half the negative effect arising from the difficulties of obtaining land and excessive regulations on enterprise growth. This explains why an institutional environment of weak property rights has not stopped private enterprises in China from developing rapidly.

We examine the impact of rigorous trade suppression during 1550–1567 on the sharp rise of piracy in this period of Ming China. By analyzing a uniquely constructed historical data set, we find that the enforcement of a "sea (trade) ban" policy led to a rise in pirate attacks that was 1.3 times greater among the coastal prefectures more suitable for silk manufactures—our proxy for greater trade potential. Our study illuminates the conflicts in which China subsequently engaged with the Western powers, conflicts that eventually resulted in the forced abandonment of its long upheld autarkic principle.

AbstractOver the past millennium, China has relied on the Confucian clan to achieve interpersonal cooperation, focusing on kinship and neglecting the development of impersonal institutions needed for external finance. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the Confucian clan and financial markets are competing substitutes. Using the large cross-regional variation in the adoption of modern banks, we find that regions with historically stronger Confucian clans established significantly fewer modern banks in the four decades following the founding of China's first modern bank in 1897. Our evidence also shows that the clan continues to limit China's financial development today.

AbstractChina's civil examination system (keju), an incredibly long-lived institution, has a persistent impact on human capital outcomes today. Using the variation in the density of jinshi—the highest qualification—across 278 Chinese prefectures in the Ming-Qing period (c. 1368–1905) to proxy for this effect, we find that a doubling of jinshi per 10,000 population leads to an 8.5% increase in years of schooling in 2010. The persistent effect of keju can be attributed to a multitude of channels including cultural transmission, educational infrastructure, social capital and, to a lesser extent, political elites.