[PEN-L:3909] Re: Asia's Model of Development

["Ricardo Duchesne" <RDUCHESN@xxxxxxxx>]

Last I wondered whether one could argue that Asia was facing a high level
equilibrium trap although it had a superior output-to-seed than Europe's?

Landes examination of China's high crop yield/labor intensive model
of development, brief as it is, may be useful here. He writes "anyone
who wants to understand world economic history must study China, the
most precocious and long the most successful developer of all. Here
is a country with some 7% of the earth's land area that supports some
21% of the world's population." (23)  China's agricultural regime
with its higher crop yield per was such that it demanded and promoted
higher population densities per area - "40 times that of Europe".
Thus from a trough of 65-80 million people around 1400, following the
great pandemic known in Europe as the Black Death, the number
increased to 100-150 million in 1650, 200-250 million in 1750, over
300 million by end of 18th century - because rice was a crop that yielded
"many more calories per area"; "the only cereal that will give good
yields on poor soil year after year so long as it gets enough water".

Then came the *intensive* agrarian growth of the Sung period (which
Landes places between the 8th and 13th century)...a growth which, if
no longer intensive, nonetheless appears to have continued,
since according to Elvin, there is data indicating that "since
1368  productivity per mou rose steeply from under 140
catties to about 224 catties in 1600".  But "increasing the productivity of
land was harder during the last few centuries of traditional China
[since 1600] than it had been for some time previously" (307).

So, China's agrarian high crop yield/high population model had been
extremely successful up until the 18th century by which time it was
becoming clear that the yields per acre were as high as they could be
using the old technologies: population was bound to outstrip
production and no further extensive growth was possible.

>From what I read so far, Landes's Wealth and Poverty of Nations
does not get into this stuff. But Landes does not think that
medieval-early modern China's  high crop yield agriculture was better
in every respect, as Europe benefited from its reliance on livestock and
dairy products. Moreover, if the caloric yield  of rice per acre was higher,
its protein content was about half as high as that of  wheat, rye, and oats.