Some, Issues on Economic Organization during the Ming and Ch'ing Periods: A Review Article

-77SOMF , ISSUES ON ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION DURING THE MING AND CH'IÑG PERIODS: A REVIEW ARTICLE Pamon H. Myers University of Miami What patterns of change occurred in China after the fourteenth century which should become the foci for future research? If certain patterns of change have already been examined by scholars who have posed different problems to direct their inquiry and formulate their methodology, is there any basis for asserting that other patterns of change require 9pecial consideration? Two recent works of Japanese scholarship on Chinese economic history have suggested to this reviewer that a new perspective toward change between 1400 and 1900 is now necessary to consider.^- Such a perspective could encourage a different formulation of problems for future research. Certainly the most impressive change between 1400 and 1900 was the quantum growth of the Chinese economic system. Some would call it growth without development because population grew from between 60 to 80 million to around 400 million persons whereas the quality of material life expressed crudely in terms of per capita income probably barely rose.^ One marvel about this expansion was that the average farm size was smaller in 1900 than in 1400, and only about. 6 to 7 percent of the population resided in cities. 3 Although the urban sector grew in absolute terms, this same sector seems to have kept its same proportionate size in the economy during the period. A major reason why China by 1900 had become an agrarian state of colossal size was its market structure by which cities serviced the countryside and in turn were supported by the village economy. Numerous exchanges between Professor Thomas Metzger and myself have develeped the argument presented in this essay. I naturally assume responsibility for its contents. -78The hierarchy of central places that evolved after 1400 depended upon a standard marketing settlement which serviced a certain range of villages. For example, Gilbert Rozman found that for Shun-t'ien fu of Chihli during the nineteenth century the ratio of villages to a standard market town ranged between 29 and 100. The range of ratio of villages to a standard market town varied greatly depending upon population density. In fact, these towns were so important in the hierarchy of central places that in the late Ch'ing period roughly three-quarters of all central places consisted of these settlements. Merchants organized trade between the standard market towns and higher central places so that a great variety of goods for mass consumption circulated as early as the mid Ming period. Fuji! Hiroshi has described how the merchants of Ho-chien prefecture in northern Eopei during the 1530s and 1540s exchanged silk, foodgrains, salt, iron products, and lumber between the principal cities of Ho-chien and other cities in north and central China. Certain merchants within Ho-chien prefecture then visited these principal cities to buy these and other commodities and returned to their districts to sell them in the standard market towns where people congregated on fixed days to buy. While recent studies have greatly clarified the structure and operation of these standard marketing settlements, we know less about the merchant activities and economic organizations which enabled these settlements to thrive . What organizational factors or changes enabled this society with a small urban sector and a huge rural sector to grew and yet distribute large quantities of ordinary commodities in rural markets far from their seurces of production? A most important one can be found in the relationship between the state and the private sector. Fer example, at certain times the imperial state found it advantageous to introduce new policies, change laws, and establish new institutions to defend the state from outside enemies and secure peace and order at -79home . Some of these developments made available more resources to the private sector to establish enterprises undertaking production and exchange and provided more economic opportunities by allowing more scope for private entrepreneurs to pursue new economic rewards. These two processes were conducive to the growth of the food supply, the settlement of frontier areas, the expansion of handicraft production, much of which was located in the villages, and the growth of inter-regional trade through the market structure...