Wages, Labour Market, and Living standards in China, 1530-1840

 Explorations in Economic History 92 (2024): 101569.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498323000633)

• This article studies the long-term wage development in China between 1530 and 1840. In the long run, nominal wages moved in tandem with prices, but not as quickly as the increase in prices. Real wages experienced two substantial falls between the 1620s-1650s and the 1740s-1760s but remained fairly stable in the remainder of the periods examined. Rural-urban wage disparity suggests that the agricultural sector, rather than urban industries, continued to absorb surplus labour. A comparison of wages in Lower Yangzi China and England (London) suggests that the wage gap seems to open up after 1700.

"与人口赛跑：重视前现代中国与英国人口与生产力的长期趋势"

("Racing with population: Revisiting the long run population and productivity in early modern China and England")

Sijie Hu & Ziang Liu. Qing History Journal 清史研究

• Was the Industrial Revolution a turning point in the developmental trajectories of the Chinese and English economies? This article revisits the Great Divergence debate by analysing long-term trends in productivity, wages, and marriage and fertility patterns. We contend that a significant gap in productivity and the purchasing power of wages between Lower Yangzi China and England had already emerged by the early eighteenth century. Moreover, despite having similar marital fertility rates, the demographic patterns of the two regions exhibited marked differences before the eighteenth century. Therefore, we argue that the long-term trends in economic structure, alongside the measurement of its absolute levels, is essential for understanding the dynamics of the early modern economy. In contrast to the English economy, which underwent substantial changes leading up to the Industrial Revolution, the Chinese economy did not experience similar transformations.

Secular decline in modern China? Wage evidence from hydraulic constructions and rural casual work in Suzhou and Shanghai

(working paper)

• Scholars have long debated whether the Chinese economy has been in a secular decline since the nineteenth century. This article presents wage evidence from local hydraulic construction projects in Suzhou, Shanghai, and the northern part of the Lower Yangzi cores that challenges this thesis within the region. Throughout the nineteenth century, the conscription system used to mobilise labours irreversibly shifted towards market hiring. While the administrative system still functioned as a labour pool, the market dynamics determined worker wages. Although wages saw a mild decline from the 1820s to the 1860s, a substantial improvement followed. The most significant change took place in the early twentieth century when wage trends broke through the typical decline-rebound cycle and moved towards intensive growth. Moreover, the wage differentials between unskilled and semi-skilled labours, as well as between casual and stable employment, indicate a growing integration of the labour market across rural and urban sectors and industries in the Lower Yangzi Delta.

Farewell to the Old Society: Arable Land, Agricultural Taxation, and State Capacity in Northwestern Shanxi Province across Imperial, Republican and Communist China

(working paper, with Chunying Wang 王春英 and Shuji Cao 曹树基)

• This article investigates the Chinese state’s tax capacity in Northwestern Shanxi Province between 1391 and 1945 with a hitherto untouched aspect: the potential of arable land. For the late imperial era, we identified two patterns of land taxation based on the initial acreage of land registered for taxation in 1391. The first pattern includes areas with low land saturation in 1391, where nominal tax rates incrementally increased beyond 10 per cent over the centuries. The second pattern includes areas with relatively high land saturation in 1391, where tax rates remained at about 10 per cent despite subsequent adjustments. By the twentieth century, however, arable land had little potential to expand in the region. The old society and tax regime eventually dissolved when the Chinese Communist Party took control of this region with a new revenue system that effectively increased real tax rates twofold to tenfold after 1940.

Measuring Early Modern and Modern Chinese Economy: Data, Method, and Limit (Co-editor, book collection, under contract with Palgrave Macmillan)

• This co-edited collection investigates research data and methodology in Chinese economic history. It highlights recent advancements in taxation, population registries, land registries, rural household surveys, historical national accounting, labour and wages, demographic patterns, and urbanisation. This book collection is structured into eight chapters across two parts. Part I, "Production of Socioeconomic Data," investigates archival materials, data institutions, and the contextual interpretations of data in early modern and modern China from a historical perspective. Part II, "Use of Socioeconomic Data," focuses on the application of historical data in contemporary studies.

Performing Quantocracy: Fiscal Governance and the Politics of Numbers in China, 1400-1800 (book project)

• This project studies how did the Chinese imperial state manage governmental finance via numbers and calculative practices. It contributes to the ongoing debate on the rise of the fiscal state by offering a comparative perspective on early modern China. With an attention to the socioeconomic environment and the re-monetisation of the Chinese economy since the sixteenth century, this study explores the complexities and institutional prerequisites of fiscal centralisation. It demonstrates how fiscal budgeting and performance auditing can enhance state capacity under specific conditions.

The Chinese Genealogy Database Project 

(Team project, Centre for Quantitative History, University of Hong Kong)