G. William Skinner

Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part I

I set forth in this paper a partial description and preliminary analysis of rural marketing in China. This neglected topic has significance with ranges far beyond the disciplinary concerns of economics. It interests anthropologists in particular because marketing structures of the kind described here for China appear to be characteristic of the whole class of civilizations known as “peasant” or “traditional agrarian” societies. In complex societies of this important type, marketing structures inevitably shape local social organization and provide one of the crucial modes for integrating myriad peasant communities into the single social system which is the total society. The Chinese case would appear to be strategic for the comparative study of peasant marketing in traditional agrarian societies because the integrative task accomplished there was uniquely large; because the exceptional longevity and stability of Chinese society have allowed the marketing system in many regions to reach full maturity prior to the beginnings of modernization; and because available documentation of Chinese marketing over several centuries provides rich resources for the study of systemic development—of change within tradition.

Presidential Address : The Structure of Chinese History

The developmental trajectories of North China and the Southeast Coast during the middle and late imperial periods are surveyed to illustrate the recurrence of regional macrocycles of development and decline and to show that such cycles may be unsynchronized as between regions. These cases provide a basis for arguing that economic macrocycles are a systemic property—not of provinces or of the empire as a whole but of regional economies viewed as internally differentiated and interdependent systems of human interaction. An exploration of the relation between regional developmental cycles and the Chinese dynastic cycle concludes that the latter was mediated by the former. It is suggested that regional developmental cycles are cycles not only of economic prosperity and depression but also of population growth and decline, of social development and devolution, and of peace and disorder. Chinas historical structure, then, is seen as an internested hierarchy of local and regional histories whose scope in each case is grounded in the spatial patterning of human interaction, and whose critical temporal structures are successive cyclical episodes. The uses of such an historiographic model are briefly explored.

Mobility Strategies in Late Imperial China: A Regional Systems Analysis

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the export of specialized human talent as a maximization strategy pursued by territorially based social systems in late Imperial China and presents a regional systems analysis of mobility strategies. In a city, where the imbalance favored economic centrality, the ambitious bureaucrat had everything to gain in a city. Opportunities for extra official income were great, for he could tap the resources of an economic system more extensive than the unit he administered, and by the same token he could more readily chalk up a laudable record as a tax collector. Moreover, the challenge of a busier, larger yamen provided ample opportunity to prove himself to superiors. Other things being equal, the businessman, too, was favorably situated in such a city. By virtue of the citys high level in the economic hierarchy, he could reap the economic rewards of scale, agglomeration, and diversification. Interurban transactions were normally critical in traditional China.

Rural Marketing in China: Repression and Revival

Rural markets and peasant marketing did not fare well during the Maoist era, which extended from well before the consolidation of communist power in China to the triumphal return of Deng Xiaoping as the central political figure in 1977. Maoist radicals, who in broad perspective may be said to have held the political initiative throughout the era, can be fairly characterized as having an anti-market mentality. While this set of attitudes derives in part from Marxism, it is also rooted in the ideological preconceptions of late-imperial Confucian bureaucrats. The Maoist elite in the Peoples Republic and the traditional bureaucratic elite of the late empire were equally unhappy with market exchange, and both showed a preference for redistribution.

China's Fertility Transition through Regional Space: Using GIS and Census Data for a Spatial Analysis of Historical Demography

Key features of reproductive behavior in China vary systematically through space and time. In this article we present an analysis of fertility change in regional space, using a 1% household sample from China’s 1990 population census. Elsewhere, we use the same data to analyze reproductive strategizing, but here we pursue the big picture with a straightforward analysis that takes reported births as an uncomplicated indicator of fertility.The article has three objectives: first, to introduce a novel, multilevel spatial model of regional

Sichuan's Population in the Nineteenth Century: Lessons from Disaggregated Data

��� It is well known that, in form at least, official provincial population figures from 1741 to 1898 were aggregations of baojia population registers. Initial compilations were made at county-level yamens; county-level data were then cumulated to give prefectural-level totals, and these were summed in turn to yield the provincial figure. Province totals produced in this fashion have been long been available for certain years of the Qing period, but only rarely have we had access to the disaggregated data on which they were based. This paper analyzes disaggregated annual data for Chinas most populous province for nine years: 1822, 1828, 1829, 1845, 1847, 1848, 1850, 1852, and 1887. (I shall also make use of a countylevel data set published in the Jiaqing edition of the Sichuan provincial gazetteer.)1 The series of which these nine annual registers form a part is the major source of our knowledge about Sichuans early modern population history. The several nineteenth-century population figures for Sichuan that have become familiar to us are, in fact, cumulated totals of the data being analyzed here. For instance, the widely cited figure of 44.164 million for 1850 agrees with the total in the present data set, as does the official figure for 1887 (73.179 million).2 Moreover, the population data presented in local gazetteers, at both county and prefectural levels, appear in almost all cases to have been taken from the same annual series of cumulated baojia registers. Thus, the present data set provides an opportunity to evaluate * I gratefully acknowledge support from the Center for East Asian Studies and the Academic

Vegetable Supply and Marketing in Chinese Cities

Foodstuffs comprise the largest single category of urban supply in China, and food accounts for over half the expenditures of the average urban household. Grain and other starchy staples constitute the major component of urban food supply, followed by vegetables and meat. In terms of weight or volume, far more vegetables than meat are consumed by city dwellers, though in terms of value meat may have the edge. The focus here is on vegetables, in particular the ecology of production, the organization of procurement and the structure of the marketing system. The logistics of feeding urban populations is critical in any complex society, indicative inter alia of priorities and procedural preferences in the social system. To examine the organization of urban vegetable supply therefore offers clues to these social priorities as well as to prevailing levels of organizational sophistication.

Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia

Approximately 10 million overseas Chinese reside in Southeast Asia where they have economic power and political significance out of all proportion to their numbers. Southeast Asian governments are determined to loosen the Chinese grip on their national economies, to achieve an unequivocal clarinca tion of the citizenship status of resident Chinese, to end foreign political activity among and to proceed with educational and political integration of their citizens of Chinese descent. Prior to 1954, Communist China strove with equal determination to protect the special interests of overseas Chinese; to win their loyalty; and to profit materially, politically, and strategically from their patriotism. The growing importance of Southeast Asian goodwill to Chinas foreign policy, however, prompted a new line whereby overseas Chinese are encouraged to acquiesce to Southeast Asian nationalist aims without appealing to Peking for protection. In accord with the new policy, China appears willing to relinquish claims to the allegiance of several million persons of Chinese descent and even to forgo much of the over seas Chinese contribution to Chinas economy. Meanwhile several Southeast Asian governments have taken advantage of Pekings policy and Taipeis weakness to proceed with stringent, nationalistic solutions to their overseas Chinese problems.

What the Study of China Can Do for Social Science

In recent years the cry has gone up: Sinology is dead; long live Chinese studies! And in this apothegm, by contrast with its prototype, a fundamental change is implied. Whereas old-time Sinology was given shape by its tools, so that Sinological skills defined the field and became an end in themselves, Chinese studies is shaped by its subject matter and Sinological skills are but means to analytic ends. Whereas traditional Sinology fostered uncritical immersion in a single civilization, modern Chinese studies brings at least that degree of impartial detachment which the comparative method implies. Whereas Sinology focused on Chinas “great tradition” and strove to capture the very ethos of the literati whose works it studied, Chinese studies today attempts to encompass the entire society and cultural product of China, to study its regional “little traditions” along with the “great,” and to empathize for heuristic purposes with nonelite social groups as well as with the literati. Sinology, a discipline unto itself, is being replaced by Chinese studies, a multidisciplinary endeavor with specific research objectives. As Professor Wright has suggested, what is text for the Sinologist becomes, for the disciplinary student of China, evidence.

A study in miniature of Chinese population.

Szechwan the largest and most populous of the provinces in China proper constitutes in its greater part a natural geographic region usually called the Red Basin. Except along the important rivers its terrain varies from hilly to mountainous though the region is nonetheless intensively cultivated by means of elaborate terracing and irrigation devices. In the west of this basin the waters of the Min river pour out from the mountains on to the Chengtu Plain forming an alluvial fan some 70 miles from north to south. Due to a magnificent irrigation system devised over 2000 years ago this fertile valley is the most productive and prosperous agricultural area in China. It is also among the most densely populated regions of its size in the world averaging 2452 persons per square mile. The provincial capital Chengtu is located at the eastern edge of the plain; a few miles outside the citys east gate the hills begin. Sansheng hsiang the subject of this paper lies about six miles from Chengtu in the hills which rim the plain. A hsiang is an administrative sub-division of the hsien (county) and resembles the American township. In Szechwan it always contains at least one and usually only one market town. Sansheng hsiang is one of thirty-five townships in Huayang hsien a county embracing both hills and plains to the south and east of Chengtu. In 1947 the hsien had about 470000 people and the hsiang 15963. (excerpt)