This paper tries to investigate the development of population and economic development in china in the last millennium. There have been roughly three phases of development in China’s history. The first phase starts at the beginning of the last millennium till 1820, we call this agrarian civilization. As agrarian economy, China had been performing better than Europe until the song dynasty in the eleventh century. After that China had been stagnating for about six centuries until 1820 in respect of economy, although its economy scale had been able to accommodate an ever increasing population. The time thereafter till 1949 for China was the darkest time in its history, combined with humiliation of foreign supremacy, civil war, and natural and human disasters. Until the founding of people’s Republic of China, there was no national population control policy. From 1949 to 1976 the new republic of China has done its best first to industrialize the country, thus agriculture and light industry were neglected and living standards of the common people have not bettered substantially, as well as worsened by political upheavals. From 1978 till now with it opening to the western world, china’s economy has been catching up quickly, although the gap to the developed countries is still very large.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review and Data
3. Agriculture-Economy and Population
4. Economy and population: 1820 to 1949 darkest time in China’s History
5. Economy and Population from 1949 to now
6. Statistic Test: Human Capital (Quality of Population ) and Economic Performance
7. Conclusion
Research Objectives and Themes
This paper investigates the long-term relationship between population growth and economic development in China throughout the last millennium, analyzing how different demographic and policy phases have influenced the nation's economic trajectory from an agrarian society to a modern industrial state.
- Historical evolution of the Chinese agrarian economy and its limitations.
- The impact of political upheavals, foreign intervention, and economic stagnation (1820–1949).
- Transformation of the Chinese economy under the socialist model and subsequent reforms since 1978.
- Statistical correlation between human capital (literacy) and economic performance.
- The challenges of high population density and the necessity of family planning policies.
Excerpt from the Book
3. Agriculture-Economy and Population
China has been an agriculture economy until middle of last century, so it is necessary first to study the general features of agrarian economy.
An agrarian economy is an economy based on peasant society plus city, trade and industry, writing, metallurgy, and social stratification, religious institutions, government administration, large empires.
Most important feature of agrarian societies is that they depend much more then other societies on specific environmental conditions: Nature of the soil, existence of suitable plants and animals, climate, transports facilities, geomorphology, etc. They are less able to substitute lacking conditions and to modify or even create a favourable environment than industrial societies can do (Siefeerle 2003). For example, the United States as a typical industrial society has not sufficient oil, but it could buy from Middle East with the money it sells from Holywood films.
The most important strategy of the agrarian production method is to control solar energy flows, essentially on the basis of biotechnology. The energy radiated by the sun is primarily absorbed and combined chemically by plants, secondarily converted by animals and finally changed into a form useful to humans. The agrarian system utilizes for this purpose above all living creatures that serve as nutrients, tools, building material, energy converters and transportation means. For this purpose humans try to gain control over their vital functions as much as possible: Humans clear woods, cultivate fields, sow and plant, irrigate and drain, burn down and grow, breed and destroy, reproduce and protect those organisms they benefit from and battle against pest, weeds, vermin and predators. So the basic strategy of agriculture is to destroy the original “natural” ecological systems, especially the vegetation, and to cultivate and monopolize for their own beneficiaries.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: Outlines the scope of the study, defining the three major phases of China's economic history over the last millennium.
2. Literature Review and Data: Discusses the challenges of gathering long-term economic data and introduces the primary sources used for analysis.
3. Agriculture-Economy and Population: Examines the structural characteristics of the Chinese agrarian system and its reliance on solar energy and intensive labor.
4. Economy and population: 1820 to 1949 darkest time in China’s History: Analyzes the period marked by foreign conflict, civil war, and economic decline that preceded the founding of the People's Republic.
5. Economy and Population from 1949 to now: Evaluates the shift from the Maoist planned economy to the market-oriented reform era starting in 1978.
6. Statistic Test: Human Capital (Quality of Population ) and Economic Performance: Presents a quantitative analysis correlating literacy rates with GDP performance across various nations.
7. Conclusion: Summarizes the transition from agrarian-based growth to the necessity of prioritizing human capital in a modern knowledge society.
Keywords
China, Agrarian Economy, Population Growth, GDP per Capita, Industrialization, Human Capital, Literacy Rate, Economic Reform, Family Planning, Agriculture, Market Forces, Foreign Direct Investment, Economic History, Sustainable Development, Resource Allocation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core subject of this research paper?
The paper examines the interaction between population dynamics and economic development in China throughout the last millennium, tracking the country's transformation from an agrarian society to a contemporary industrial power.
What are the primary thematic fields covered?
The study covers historical agrarian systems, the impact of 20th-century political movements on growth, the role of human capital in modern economic success, and the implications of population density for national policy.
What is the main objective of the analysis?
The objective is to understand how China’s economic scale and population growth have evolved and how specific historical and political factors have hindered or accelerated this development.
Which scientific methods are employed?
The paper uses historical analysis of development phases combined with a quantitative regression analysis of international data to test the correlation between literacy rates and economic performance.
What is the focus of the main body of the work?
The main body breaks down Chinese history into distinct eras—agrarian, the "darkest time" (1820–1949), and the modern period—while providing statistical assessments of agricultural productivity and industrial growth.
Which keywords best characterize the study?
Key terms include Agrarian Economy, Human Capital, GDP per Capita, Economic Reform, Industrialization, and Population Density.
How did agrarian practices limit China's economic progress?
The paper explains that agrarian systems are subject to the "law of diminishing marginal returns," meaning that while they could support larger populations through intensification, they eventually hit a "high level equilibrium trap" that prevented perpetual economic growth.
Why does the author argue that human capital is now more important than population size?
In the era of a knowledge-based society, the author concludes that economic performance is driven by the quality of the population (literacy and skills) rather than mere demographic quantity, which in China’s case, has often created an economic burden.
- Citar trabajo
- Diplom-Kaufmann Junzhai Ma (Autor), 2014, Economy and population of China in the last millennium, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/282514
