POPULATION GROWTH, AGRICULTURAL CHANGE AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN CHINA: 1890'S-1930'S

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century China has often been taken as the prototype Malthusian case. By most indications, the Chinese population had exceeded the limits set by the economy's resource endowment and the prevailing technology in agriculture. During this period, grain flows from Central and Eastern China, an historical grain surplus region, to the rest of China dropped off sharply and grain imports subsequently increased. Only through the positive checks that Malthus enumerated ... war, famine and disease was population checked.; To the contrary, this dissertation argues that the Malthusian model is actually inappropriate for analyzing large parts of China. Most of our attention is directed to Central and Eastern China, a region of approximately 160 million. Between the 1890's and the 1930's, population in the region increased between 40-45 million. Data that have been used previously are found to be often inaccurate, incomplete and ultimately misleading as to the trends in agriculture over this period. In turn, in the tradition of the new economic history, this dissertation relies heavily on price data that exists for the period.; In chapter I, in the context of a two good, two sector model, the effects of population growth on an economy similar to China's are analyzed. Predictions relating to the long-term behavior of such variables as the rural surplus, grain imports, factor-price ratios and real rural wages are obtained. In subsequent chapters, the behavior of each of these is examined in detail.; In chapters II and III, we find that although the grain flows out of the region declined, the intra-regional grain trade expanded. This was part of the growing commercialization and specialization in the region that had been promoted by the growth of modern industry, falling silver prices and export expansion and several other factors. Moreover, we discover that the region became highly integrated with the world grain markets, as did other parts of China. The increase in grain imports can be attributed in part to the expanding world surplus and falling grain prices during the 1920's and 1930's.; Finally, in chapters IV and V fragmentary price data for the period are analyzed and shown to corroborate our earlier findings. External factors are found to explain a substantial percentage of the variability in agricultural prices in the region. Moreover, the behavior of selective price relatives suggests that average productivity may have been rising over more than half of the period.