China's Past Was 'A Not-So-Golden Age'

choi

A Not-So-Golden Age. Economist, June 15, 2017.
http://www.economist.com/news/ch ... europe-longer-party

Note:
(a) "A new study by Stephen Broadberry of Oxford University, Hanhui Guan 管汉晖 [经济学院副教授; 2005 经济学博士 (浙大), 2001 历史学硕 (华中师大), 1991 历史学学士 (武汉大学分校) ] of Peking University and David Daokui Li of Tsinghua University in Beijing argues that China has indeed lagged behind Europe for centuries. It compares levels of GDP per person in China, England, Holland, Italy and Japan since around the year 1000. It finds the only period when China was richer than the others was during the 11th century. By that time China had invented gunpowder, the compass, movable type, paper money and the blast furnace."

Stephen Broadberry, Hanhui Guan and David Daokui Li, China, Europe and the Great Divergence: A Study in Historical National Accounting, 980-1850. Apr 17, 2017.
https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/m ... aprilbroadberry.pdf

, which it appears, is not published (in a journal) yet.

(b) "according to Mr Broadberry and his co-authors, Italy had caught up with China before 1300 * * * Chinese GDP per person fell relentlessly during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912)."
(i) This is derived from "Table 8 GDP per capita levels in Europe and Asia (1990 international dollars)" at page 48.
(ii)
(A) The last sentence in quotation (b) ignores 1,103 (at 1990 international dollars) in year 1700.   -- as well as 1,006 dollars (year 1020) and 1.032 dollars (1400).
(B) 清 康熙 (1654-1722; reign 1662-1722)
(C) 北宋 宋真宗 (968 – 1022; reign 997-1022; 宋太宗 子)
(D) 明 建文帝 (1377-1402; reign 1398-1402; preceded by grandfather 朱元璋 and succeeded by his uncle 明成祖 (年号永乐) )

(c) "These findings challenge a hitherto common belief that China and Europe had similar living standards for centuries until the West's industrial revolution began in the late 18th century * * * This view, promoted by Kenneth Pomeranz [1958- ] of the University of Chicago"
(d) "Doubts remain about the quality of the Chinese data. A recent study by Kent Deng and Patrick O’Brien of the London School of Economics argues they are too fragmentary."

Kent Deng
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Deng
(went to college and started his academic career in Australia [where he was born is not mentioned] )

(e) "Italy and the Holland were the richest parts of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. It might be better to compare them not with China as a whole but with its richest part, the Yangzi delta"
(i) Italy was then dominated by city-states: republics of Venice (697–1797), Florence, Genoa, Pisa etc.
(ii) Netherlands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands
(section 2.5: "Most of the Imperial and French fiefs in what is now the Netherlands and Belgium were united in a personal union by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy in 1433. * * * Before the Burgundian union, the Dutch identified themselves by the town they lived in or their local duchy or county. The Burgundian period is when the road to nationhood began")

(f) "the process [of 'great divergence'] had begun before the industrial revolution, which in turn implies that European wealth and Chinese poverty cannot be explained by industrialisation: they must reflect institutional differences."

Other than Industrial Revolution, the reasons I can think of includes international trades and colonization of Western European nations.