HIAS-E-29

Unfolding the Turbulent Century:
A Reconstruction of China’s Economic Development,
1840-1912
Ye Ma and Herman de Jong
University of Groningen

May 2016

Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University
2-1, Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186-8601, Japan
tel:+81 42 580 8604
http://hias.ad.hit-u.ac.jp/
HIAS discussion papers can be downloaded without charge from:http://hdl.handle.net/10086/27202
https://ideas.repec.org/s/hit/hiasdp.html

All rights reserved.

Unfolding the Turbulent Century:
A Reconstruction of China’s Economic Development, 1840-1912

Ye Ma and Herman de Jong 1

Version May 2016

Abstract
This paper reconstructs China’s economic development between 1840 and 1912 with anestimation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It provides for the first time a time series ofGDP (per capita) for the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), based on sectoral output and value
added, in current as well as in constant prices. The present estimation of per capita GDP in thelate Qing period comes out higher than previous estimations, but it still suggests low averagelevels of Chinese living standards. The economy during the late Qing Empire wascharacterised by a large and growing agricultural sector and displayed only minor structuralchanges. Only in the beginning of the twentieth century did the economy start to show signsof growth.

Key words: China; GDP; 19th century; living standards

JEL classification codes: E01 N15 O11

1

Ye Ma, University of Groningen, y.ma@rug.nl; Herman de Jong, University of Groningen,h.j.de.jong@rug.nl.

1

Acknowledgement
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study,
Hitotsubashi University in writing this paper. We thank Professors Kyoji Fukao and Osamu
Saito for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. We are also grateful to Harry Wu,
Jan Luiten van Zanden and Bas van Leeuwen for their advice and suggestions about data
sources. In preparing the first draft, we received valuable comments from many colleagues,
including Pinghan Liang, Dayong Zhang, and the participants of the seminars at RIEM,
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, in May 2012, the AsianHistorical Economics Society Conference at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, 13-15
September 2012, the European Historical Economics Society Conference at the London
School of Economics, 6-7 September 2013, and of a seminar held at the Hitotsubashi Institutefor Advanced Study on March 14, 2016 in Tokyo . All errors are the responsibility of theauthors.

2

I Introduction
This paper reconstructs total economy movements and changes in living standards in China
during the late Qing Empire (1644-1911), i.e. between 1840 and 1912, and produces for the
first time an estimate of annual Gross Domestic Product (per capita). The period is a crucialpart of what has been coined by Brandt, Ma and Rawski as the “Turbulent Century”, thehundred years between 1840 and 1939 (Brandt et al., 2014, p. 80). The turbulence refers inparticular to the combination of wars, reforms, and natural disasters that the country faced
from the 1840s when a new social and economic order began to emerge. From the latenineteenth century onwards, China became more involved in international trade, began toopen up its economy, and started to import new technology from the rest of the world(Maddison, 2007). The historical literature on China commonly describes this era as a breakpoint in the country’s long-run economic development.
Recent studies on China’s modern economic performance have emphasised thatdevelopments in the late Qing period had a long-lasting impact on the national economy.
China’s post-1949 state-led industrial development can be traced to the early stage ofindustrialisation in the late nineteenth century (Wu, 2011). The country’s present tradeperformance can also be connected to its experience in the nineteenth century, and thus not
only to the 1978 reforms (Keller, Li, and Shiue, 2012). Indeed, Brandt et al. (2014, p. 47)
have wondered why potentially favourable changes in social and economic conditions did not
produce immediate improvements in the economy during the late Qing period, but only came
more than half a century later – with an evident “delay of growth”.
Although there are many detailed chronicles of the state of local economies, the picture of thetotal economy of China in the late Qing period remains rather elusive, which makes areconstruction of GDP useful. Estimations of real wages have been used as a measure for the
standard of living, but these are mainly representative for the city population. Knowing that
China had an economy with a large rural population and a large primary sector, GDP per
capita seems to be a measure with a more extensive coverage than just wages. New data
together with information from recent historical studies of economic activities in the Qing
period will be used to facilitate a new reconstruction of GDP. As in all historical GDP
estimations the present paper will necessarily involve simplification and approximation, but
we see it as an important step forward in the study of the Chinese economy in the Qing period.
The structure of the paper is as follows: section 2 will present a short overview of theliterature on China’s long-run economic development and the late Qing period in particular;
in section 3 we introduce our estimation procedures and the underlying assumptions; insection 4 the new historical reconstruction of GDP will be compared with the results of earlier
studies; section 5 provides a new interpretation of the economic stagnation in the late Qing
period; section 6 summarises the main findings. The appendix includes references to all thedata that have been used and a detailed exposition of all the steps that were taken in theestimation procedure. 2

II China’s growth in the literature
2

More details can be found in Ma, de Jong, and Chu (2014), Appendix B.

3

Until recently, the generally-held opinion in the literature is that the pre-1945 Chinese
economy experienced hardly any substantial improvements in income. Accordingly, thediscussion around the late Qing period has often ended with the conclusion that the Chinese
economy was trapped in long-term low income equilibrium. Recent studies have tried tochallenge this traditional picture, mainly by looking from twentieth-century perspectives, but
the jury is still out. Rawski (1989), for example, concluded that China experienced asubstantial increase in per capita production during the interwar period. This would imply alower level of per capita production in Qing China before WWI and we can therefore ask
whether the positive trend in the interwar period can be traced back to the Qing period.
Maddison’s estimation assumes that sectoral growth of industries and services in 1913-30 canbe traced back to the period 1890-1913; his estimation of per capita GDP still supports thefamiliar view of economic stagnation. Development patterns may have been more complex.
WANG (2005) studied the economic dynamics of China through the growth of industries andforeign trade only, and derived a U-shape path of the economy in the late Qing period.
Table 1 summarises previous Chinese GDP estimates of the nineteenth and the early twentiethcentury. Most of these figures are benchmark estimates for specific years or short periods.
Moreover, these GDP estimates are difficult to reconcile with each other because themonetary units are not always expressed in the same currency: some are based on local
currencies, while others use internationally-comparable monetary units. It is therefore
difficult to get a good idea of the changes in living standards in nineteenth-century China. For
the period that we want to investigate, Maddison’s work produces five estimates and the mostrecent study by Xu et al. (2015) contains three estimates. Accordingly, we can only generate avery rough picture of economic development in the late Qing period.
[Place Table 1 here]
Recent studies suggest that the Great Divergence between the Asian and the advanced
Western economies had already taken root many decades or even centuries before 1800. For
China, the late nineteenth century was a transitional period in between the relatively peaceful
early nineteenth century and the fast industrialisation of the 1920s and 1930s. Our new data
make it possible to compare Chinese living standards with those of western and other Asian
countries. The paper tries to find out whether the Great Divergence continued and evendeepened in the final part of the Qing Empire or whether China was able to catch-up with thefast growing economies in Europe and Asia.

III A new estimation of historical GDP
This section presents our estimation of Chinese GDP (per capita) for the period 1840-1912.
We will first briefly introduce the method and the general estimation procedure, and thendiscuss underlying assumptions and data sources. In general, it will apply the same methods
and procedures as have been recently used in historical GDP reconstructions for othercountries, in particular the large Asian economies of the nineteenth century, such as Japan(Bassino, Broadberry, Fukao, Gupta, and Takashima, 2015, Broadberry, Fukao, and Zammit,
2015), Indonesia (van der Eng, 1992), and India (Broadberry, Custodis, and Gupta, 2015,
Broadberry and Gupta, 2010). Similar methods have also been applied for other periods ofpre-modern China, such as the reconstruction of pre-1840 Chinese GDP by Broadberry, Guan,
4

and Li (2014), the estimation of 1914/18 Chinese NDP by Ma (2008), and Rawski’s
estimation of the average growth rate of the Chinese economy from the 1910s to the 1930s(Rawski, 1989).
The present reconstruction of the historical national accounts in late Qing China is based on aconsistent estimation of sectoral output and value added. Data quality and availability has
always been a central concern in historical GDP reconstructions of the early modern period orfor non-market economies. For this we need to apply theoretical insights, proxy indicators andassumptions that have been used in other historical studies. Even for widely-used GDP
estimations of advanced western economies, estimation procedures have necessarily involved
simplification and approximation, not only for the early modern periods but also for thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. Consequently, for the sectors for which we have only
limited data sources we have used methods that are comparable or even similar to those thathave been used for England before 1700 (Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton, and van
Leeuwen, 2012) and Holland before 1800 (van Zanden and van Leeuwen, 2012). Our sectoral
approach is set up as an open and transparent system that allows for the inclusion of
improvements whenever new data become available.

We included all economic activities and classified them into the three major sectors of theeconomy: agriculture, industry, and services. For each sector, we focused on important
products or on the major part of production, to guarantee representativeness. For the industrial
and services sector we were able to make use of four benchmark estimations of 1840, 1880s,
1920, and 1933, which represent total output in both sectors. The annual movements in
between the benchmark years were estimated by us. For agriculture we relied entirely on ourown new annual estimations, (see Appendix Table 1). Adding up the three major sectors gives
annual nominal levels of GDP. To adjust for price fluctuations in our estimation, weconstructed new price indexes for both sectoral and total GDP, corresponding to theframework we have used to estimate current-price GDP. To better position China’s premodern economy internationally, we also calculated a new benchmark GDP (per capita) for
1912 based on purchasing power parities (PPP).

Agricultural production
A precise estimation of the agricultural sector is essential to understand the size of the preindustrial economy of China. As a typical agrarian economy, the country concentrated oncrop production, such as grains and textile fibres, rather than livestock products (Maddison,
2007, p. 32). The reconstruction of this sector covers major agricultural outputs that were
central to agricultural production in late nineteenth-century China, such as food and cash
crops, in particular rice, wheat, raw cotton, raw silk, and tea. Other agricultural outputs
coming from forestry, livestock farming, and fisheries were assumed to move in proportion
with crop production. Textile products and tea do not merely represent cash crops but may
also reveal the possible impact of a larger exposure of China to international trade after the
mid-nineteenth century and the effect of the early industrialisation which started in cotton andsilk manufacturing. The export share of raw cotton, silk products and tea combined was morethan 50 per cent of the total export value in late nineteenth-century China (YAN, 1955). For
5most of the food and cash crops that were included, historical records on output and pricewere used to calculate gross output value (GOV). For example, to estimate total output of raw
cotton we combined domestic consumption and net export, and calculated GOV by
multiplying the average export and import price with the estimated volume of total output.
Net output value was derived through input/output (i/o) ratios, which we took from previous
studies on pre-modern agriculture. To adjust for price movements a general price index forthe agricultural sector was constructed, consisting of price series for rice, wheat, raw cotton,
raw silk, and tea.
The estimation of the volume of food crops deserves a more detailed treatment, since it wasmost relevant to living standards in China (Perkins, 1969, p. 396). Land input and land
productivity are the major factors affecting food production in our farm accounting model(see also Allen, 2009 for a similar estimation of agricultural productivity in England andChina before 1820). Studies on China’s agricultural history have provided us with ample
information on arable land and crops yields, originally based on official taxation records andlocal archives on crop production. Our new estimation makes use of these studies but
provides new extensions to estimate historical agricultural output.
The first survey of arable land was organised by the People’s Republic of China and recorded
a level of 1.6 billion mou in 1950. For the period 1850-1911, existing estimates range from
1.2 to 2.0 billion mou (see Ma, de Jong, and Chu, 2014, Table 4). 3 The most recent estimation
for the late Qing period gives a level of 1.4 billion mou (SHI, 2015). Using two levels basedon benchmark estimates for respectively 1840 and 1914, our estimation of arable land varies
around an average of 1.2 billion mou (SHI, 1989, ZHANG, 1991). Although a sudden
increase of cultivated land for crops in the central territory of the Qing Empire is not very
likely, our estimation does take into account the 1860s immigration wave from middle China
into Manchuria, which probably resulted in a slight increase of arable land in the late Qing
period as suggested by WU (1985, p.198).
The next step is to calculate total land productivity as the weighted average of unit yields ofthe different food crops. The weights are determined by the specific use of arable land forvarious crops per year. Since some crops were harvested twice a year, we also took account ofmultiple cropping. We assumed constant shares of land inputs for the eight food crops that we
included in our estimation and a fixed multiple cropping ratio of 1.32. 4 Unit yields for eachfood crop were constructed for the period 1840-1912 according to the yield levels of the
1930s and an index reflecting annual harvest fluctuations over the period 1840-1940. Thus,
our estimation of land productivity combines unit yields with constant weights, which reflects
mainly exogenous shocks to unit yields. Besides exogenous factors such as weather
conditions and social and political circumstances, technological progress could in principle
have a major influence on both land use and unit yields. According to the literature, however,levels of agricultural technology in late nineteenth-century China did not experiencesignificant changes and did not generate any improvements in agricultural productivity
comparable to the agricultural revolution between 1620 and 1820 as described by Bozhong Li

3

1 mou = 666.5 square metres= 0.1647 acres.
Multiple cropping ratio = Sown area in one year / Total cultivated area, from Maddison (2007), p.
114, Table A.10. Here we rely on two estimates mentioned in the literature, 1.24 and 1.4 (WU, 1985, p.
180, Maddison, 2007, p. 36, respectively). We applied the average level of 1.32 for all food crops andfor the country as a whole.

46(Allen, 2009). Therefore, in our estimation the real change of food crop output is driven only
by land input and exogenous fluctuations in unit yields.
The assumption of technological stagnation in the late Qing period in our estimation of output
is based on the widely-held opinion that pre-modern China’s agriculture was essentially static(Allen, 2009, pp. 529-30). The Cambridge History of China mentions that “...... thetechnology and organisation of Chinese agriculture differed little in 1911 from what it had
been in 1870 (Even into the 1930s it remained largely unchanged)” (Chapter 1, p. 2). A study
on pre-modern China’s agricultural technology concludes that the improvements in the late
Qing period were happening under traditional technology; new technical breakthroughs weremainly put into use after 1900 (GUO and CAO, 1989). Technological stagnation was also
visible in the tendency among farmers to insist on traditional methods (ZHANG, 1957, p.
578). Although nineteenth-century agricultural activities diversified through the adoption of
new food crops like maize and sweet potatoes, the spread of the newly imported foodalternatives was relatively modest in the last part of the nineteenth century (WU, 1985). We
therefore believe that in the late Qing period the rise in output from new food crops had only
limited impact on total food crop output, which mainly consisted of widely-cultivatedproducts like rice and wheat.
The new indicator that we use to estimate unit yields in Qing China is the so-called harvest
ratio. It is a score on the quality of summer or autumn harvests recorded in the semi-annual
official reports from provinces to the central government. In these reports a bumper harvest is
set at 100 per cent and a normal harvest at around 75. We interpret the score as a proxy for
general agricultural productivity in a specific harvest year relative to an ideal situation, whichallows for a consistent long-term comparison of agricultural production. 5 The Cambridge
History of China has used the harvest ratio to show that there was a downward trend of
agricultural production in the course of the nineteenth century (Chapter 1, pp. 6-7). Similar
downward trends in provincial levels have also been found in other studies (ZHANG, 1957,
pp. 755-70, ZHAO et al., 1995). This primary harvest record contains direct information on
year-to-year circumstances that is extremely valuable in revealing annual changes inagricultural output.
We have used the national average harvest ratio calculated by ZHANG (1996, pp. 415-9).
This study links the time series of the average harvest ratio with the long-term historicalclimate change in China for the period 1730-1978. It suggests that there was an essential
impact of weather circumstances on agricultural activities and harvests in pre-modern China.
From this series, we first constructed an annual harvest index for the late Qing period with theaverage of the 1930s set at 100. We then calculated unit yields for each food crop that isincluded in our estimation for the period 1840-1915. For example, the unit yield of rice issupposed to move along the autumn harvest ratio series, and that of wheat followed thesummer harvest ratio series. With this procedure we try to capture the aggregate change in
5

A careful reinterpretation might lead to the question of whether the reported harvest data actuallyreflects subjective observations on agricultural production which could be affected by the reporters’
limited memory of previous harvest conditions. As a test we assumed two alternative possibilities ofrecollection and checked how much the reported trends will be affected by these alternatives. The first
assumption is that the reporter can only remember the maximum level of harvests in the previous 10
years (or 20 years). The new trends are very similar to the original one. The second assumption is thatthe reporter can only remember the average level of harvests in the previous 10 years (or 20 years). The
new trends show a slightly more downward slope than the one of the reported trend in the earlynineteenth century. After the 1870s, the new trends are similar to the original one however.

7

unit yields and circumvent the problem of representativeness that may emerge whenestimations are based on one specific region only.
The result of our estimation is a general decline in unit yields and land productivity in the late
Qing period, which confirms the findings of early studies (YAN, 1955, p. 949, WU, 1985, p.
197, ZHAO et al., 1995, SHI and MA, 2010). More specifically, our result shows acontinuous decline of land productivity through the 1850s-60s and sharp drops around 1874
and 1898, which probably reflects not only negative climate changes but also other adverse
exogenous shocks, such as the Taiping Rebellion and the first Sino-Japanese war. Only after
1900 do we find an annual growth of agricultural production of 1.2 per cent, which is roughly
in line with Rawski’s estimation of 1.4-1.7 per cent for the period from the 1910s to the 1930s.
The relatively fast improvement in China’s agricultural sector as indicated by Rawski may
have had its roots in the last decade of the Qing Empire. Our new estimation of land
productivity based on the harvest ratio contributes to the on-going debate on the level ofagricultural productivity in the Qing period. The present estimation of land productivity gives
an average of 126 kg per mou for the period 1840-1915. This falls within the range of 120 and
150 kg per mou that was reported in previous studies (Perkins, 1969, WU, 1985, GUO, 1994,
1995). If we extend our calculation to the year 1920 the total level of gross agricultural
output in China reaches 142.8 billion kg, which is very close to XU and WU’s earlier
estimation of 141.7 billion kg (XU and WU, 2003).

Industrial production
There are only a few official sources available for a direct quantitative reconstruction of theindustrial sector of the late Qing period, in particular for the period before the 1860s. Previous
studies on pre-modern China’s traditional industries and early industrialisation allow us toobtain a general picture of the secondary sector in the late Qing period. The Cambridge
History of China points at an “undoubted disruption” of the domestic cotton industry in thelate Qing period due to increased openness to international trade (p. 26). In contrast to thecollapse of the cotton industry, there is also mention of the expansion in the production of silk
goods and tea in response to export demand. But many other domestic industries were
probably not affected by nineteenth-century globalisation. We assume these industries to havegrown in line with population development, such as rice milling in food-processing andtraditional handicrafts like the production of bamboo tools.
For the industrial production of the period 1890-1913 Maddison applied the same rates ofindustrial growth as were found for the period 1913-33 (Maddison, 2007, p.155). Ma
calculated sectoral value added for the period 1914-18 by projecting backward 1931-36
sectoral levels of value added on the basis of Rawski (1989)’s estimation of sectoral growth
rates (Ma, 2008, p. 367, Table 3). The present study improves on these estimations byproviding a new time series of industrial production for the period 1840-1920. Levels of gross
output value are derived through a backward projection of the time series from the level ofindustrial output in the benchmark estimation of 1920 in XU and WU (2003). To obtain value
added, the i/o ratios of handicraft industries in Ou’s 1933 estimation are used for the period
1840-1920 (Ou, 1947). Finally the current price series was deflated by a new general priceindex for the industrial sector, based on price indexes of raw cotton, raw silk, coal, and theestimated agricultural price index above.
8

The estimation of industrial growth comprises manufacturing, mining, and construction.
Figures on manufacturing come from three industries: cotton goods, silk goods, and foodprocessing. We have used coal production as a proxy for mining. According to previous
estimations, manufacturing and mining in the late Qing period together accounted for morethan 80 per cent of total valued added in industrial production. Textiles and food processing
took up more than 50 per cent of manufacturing output. Other industries in manufacturing andmining were assumed to grow in line with the four proxy industries or with population. The
construction sector in our estimation is assumed to grow in line with population. By
combining the movements of the four proxy industries and population growth, we can derive
the general growth pattern of the industrial sector in the late Qing period.
China’s industrialisation started in the late nineteenth century. Artisans’ workshop and othertraditional production coexisted with newly-established mechanised factories with machineryor new energy inputs. Chang (1962) tried to measure the size of mechanised industrial
production in his 1880s GDP estimation and concluded that the share of new production was
still negligible in the 1880s. XU and WU (2003) also distinguished between the traditional
and the new sector in their estimate for 1920. Using these two estimations as benchmarks,
Appendix Table 2 gives the calculation procedure of mechanised factory output for the period
between the 1880s and the 1920s. After subtracting the estimated GOV of mechanised
production from the estimated GOV of the entire industrial sector, we obtained the GOV oftraditional production.
For the estimation of new mechanised industrial production we have used a growthaccounting model under the assumption that in the late Qing period the growth of labour
productivity of the new industrial sector was dominated by capital deepening. For simplicity
we assumed the change of technological efficiency (TFP growth) to be zero. This does notmean that we assumed zero technological progress in our estimation; however, we assumed
that new technology was operated in the form of (imported) capital goods. After the 1860s
China’s economy experienced a rapid increase in imports of capital goods and energy inputs,
such as machinery, coal, and iron. And after the 1870s there was a fast increase in theconstruction of infrastructure and utilities, such as the railway and the telegraph. Using
different TFP growth rates other than zero, however, does not significantly alter ourestimations of the mechanised industrial sector (Appendix Table 2.b).
Applying a zero TFP growth rate and an estimated average capital income share of 47.8 percent in our growth accounting model we find a rapid and steady expansion of new
mechanised production in the early stage of China’s industrialisation. For the period 18851920 the GOV of mechanised production increased annually at 8.7 per cent. We can compare
our preferred combination of the capital income share and TFP growth with data of other
Asian countries in the same period. For instance, the capital income share in Meiji Japan wasaround 47 per cent and with the given growth rates of GDP and labour, the resulting TFP
growth in 1891-1920 was 1.08 per cent per annum (Broadberry, Fukao, and Zammit, 2015).
To reach a similar rate of TFP growth in Qing China, the corresponding capital income sharein the mechanised industrial sector would need to exceed the level of 60 per cent in the period
1885-1920, which indeed would tend to overestimate the capital income share in Qing China.
In the final decade of the Qing Empire, annual growth of mechanised industry production had
already reached 9 per cent. Previous estimations resulted in annual growth rates of 10-12.6
per cent for the period 1912-25 (Chang, 1969, Kubo, 2005). We can thus conclude that the9start of mechanised industrial production in early twentieth century China can still be traced
back to the late Qing period.
Fast growth of mechanised production did not lead to immediate reinforcement of other partsof the industrial sector. Although the share of mechanised production in total industry
increased from 6.1 per cent in the 1880s to 21.5 per cent in 1920, traditional production was
still dominant in the late nineteenth century (Chang, 1962, XU and WU, 2003). Ourestimation shows that traditional industrial production in Qing China decreased through theentire late nineteenth century, which is consistent with the historiography of pre-modern
China’s handicrafts (PENG, 1957). Only after 1900 did total industrial production start toexpand, accompanied by an improving performance of traditional industry (See Appendix
Figure 1.6). Rawski (1989) concludes in his study on China’s pre-1945 growth that themutual reinforcement of traditional and new economic sectors contributed to economic
growth between the 1910s and the 1930s. Again our estimation reveals that this mutual
reinforcement within the industrial sector can be traced back to around 1900.

The service sector
The reconstruction of the service sector includes four sub-sectors: public administration,
finance and housing, commercial activities, and other professional services. We have usedpublic spending as the central indicator for public administration, and brought in a new data
source to estimate the current value of public spending in the late Qing period. The
calculations that were made are based on data published by SHI (2009). This study has datafrom the Qing archives containing records of revenues, expenditures and inventories of theSilver Treasury. 6 We combined the spending recorded by the Silver Treasury with its relative
share in total public spending. SHI argues that the share was 13 per cent before 1894 andaround 15 per cent after that year, which is much lower than the share of 30 per cent in theearly Qing period (Shi, 2009, p. 102). This may signal a declining influence of the central
Qing state on political affairs. For missing data in the period 1840-1912, we referred toprevious estimations for public spending of the Qing Empire in SHI and XU (2008). Total
public spending in the late Qing period (so including provincial spending) was rather low.
The per capita level was 0.27 taels on average, and the average share in GDP was only 1.7 percent. In 1933 the per capita level had increased to 1.1 taels, a mere 2.7 per cent of GDP.
For other sub-sectors within services there is only limited primary information and wetherefore had to rely on the assumptions and benchmark estimations of previous studies. We
assumed that commercial activities, e.g. commerce, transportation, and communication,
developed in line with agricultural and industrial production. For the late Qing period, thecommercial ratio was set at 12 per cent for agricultural products and 60 per cent for industrial
products, according to previous estimations such as XU and WU (2003), Broadberry et al.
(2014), and Xu et al. (2015). 7 These new estimations of the agricultural and industrial sector
enable us to derive levels of value added in commercial activities. For the sub-sectors of
6

The main archives used in this book are the Yellow Registers (“Huangce 哴޼”), specifically theregisters for aggregate revenues and expenditures (“Dajin Ce བྷ䘋޼” and “Dachu Ce བྷࠪ޼”).
7
The estimation of the commercial ratio of the late Qing period includes two steps: the difference
between the producer price and the market price, and the share of marketed product in total output.
Details can be found in Xu et al. (2015).

10

finance, housing, and other professional services we assumed a development that was in linewith population growth. The years in between the four benchmark levels of 1840, the 1880s,
1920, and 1933 were thus filled by population growth in log-linear trends (details of the fourbenchmark estimations are presented in Appendix Table 1). To deflate the new levels of value
added in current prices we constructed a general price index for the service sector on the basisof the new agricultural and industrial price indexes, and a price index of gold.

Real GDP and GDP per capita
Adding the three sectors together we are able to derive an annual series of nominal and real
GDP (per capita) for the late Qing period. Our GDP deflator is an aggregation of the priceindexes of the three sectors that we mentioned before. To calculate real GDP per capita wehave used Maddison’s population data. Population growth derived from this data series is
consistent with other studies on pre-modern China.
To facilitate an international comparison of living standards, our work also includes an
independent and new benchmark estimate of GDP (per capita) for 1912 expressed in current
purchasing power parities (See Appendix Table 3). Here follows a short explanation of theprocedure. The PPP convertor between China (for the year 1912) and the US (for the year
1909) was calculated indirectly from a PPP between China (1912) and the UK (1907). For the
agricultural sector three products were included: rice, wheat, and maize. Price data for theseproducts allowed us to calculate market price ratios between China and the UK. The
estimated agricultural PPP between China and the UK is 9.10 yuan/£, which is actually quite
close to the market exchange rate in 1912, i.e. 9.99 yuan/£. For the industrial sector amanufacturing PPP was used from Ma, De Jong, and Xu (2016). This comparison covers
more than 30 manufactured products resulting in a China/UK PPP of 6.61 yuan/£. We
assumed that the service PPP equals the average of the agricultural and industrial PPP. The
PPP for the whole economy is 8.09 yuan/£. Combining this estimate with the US/UK PPP
estimate from Woltjer (2013) of 6.1 $/£, we can now indirectly calculate a new PPP between
China and the US of 1.33 yuan/$ (8.09/6.1=1.33). Applying the new China/US PPP to our
GDP (per capita) estimate of China for 1912, we obtain a level of 545 dollars, which isslightly lower than Maddison’s 1913 estimate of 552 GK dollars. Using this new level abackward projection can be made of Chinese GDP (per capita) both in local currency (incurrent and constant prices) and in international dollars for the period 1840-1912 in prices ofca. 1910.

IV Plausibility of the new results
The present reconstruction of historical GDP of the late Qing period has resulted in new
estimations for both levels and trends of living standards. Appendix Table 4 presents thedetails. The level of GDP per capita in current prices is 14.6 taels for 1840 and 34.5 taels for
1912. The level in international dollars is 550 for 1840 and 545 for 1912. Taking an average
across the entire late Qing period, we arrive at a level of 575 int. dollars and of 36.42 taels in1912 prices. The real growth of GDP per capita is on average 0.02 per cent annually for theperiod 1840-1912, with a peak in the 1880s. Real GDP per capita increased annually at 0.29
per cent before the peak and decreased annually at 0.43 per cent after the peak. The economy
11

of late Qing China consisted mainly of agricultural activities, accounting for at least 60 per
cent of the total economy.
Figure 1 compares our results with other estimations for the late Qing period and shows thatthe present estimates of GDP per capita are generally higher. 8 The only exception is
Maddison’s estimate for 1850, which suggests a higher level of living standards in the early
Qing period before the Taiping Rebellion. Our estimates are actually very close to the mostrecent estimation in Xu et al. (2015). One reason for the higher estimates of per capita GDP isthat the population figures that we use are slightly lower than those used by Xu et al. (2015).
We can also compare our 1912 benchmark estimate of GDP per capita with other estimates
for the 1910s. It is possible to combine the new 1930s China/US PPP in Fukao, Ma, and Yuan
(2007) with 1914/18 GDP per capita in 1930 prices estimated by Ma (2008). The resulting
level of GDP per capita for 1914/18 is 552 int. dollars, which is in fact very close to our 1912
estimate of 545 int. dollars independently derived from our new China/US PPP for the 1910s.
[Place Figure 1 here]
To test the reliability of the new estimates of per capita GDP, two cross checks were made.
One concerns food crop output which formed the most important part of the family budget inlate Qing China. According to our estimation, the potential daily energy consumption fromfood crops could reach a level of 2,600 kcal for the late Qing period, with a range between
2,377 and 2,791 kcal, taking account of an energy loss of ca. 20 per cent. 9 This level is higher
than the overall minimum energy requirement of 1,680 kcal/day estimated by the FAO (2008).
However, the daily energy intake recommended by the FAO is around 3,100 kcal for males
aged 20-25 years, with a mean body weight of 68 kg and a moderately active lifestyle. For thefemale population under similar conditions, the recommended daily energy intake is around2,410 kcal (FAO, 2001). Therefore, the production of food staples in late Qing China could
barely support a healthy and well-nourished population, if this were the major energy sourceof food supply. From this we can conclude that a large portion of the Chinese population wason a subsistence level during the late Qing period.
Secondly, we can compare our results with alternative measures of living standards, such as
average consumption budgets and wages. Here we refer to the average household budget in
the Qing Dynasty as an indicator for consumption. The estimated per capita consumption in afive-person family in the late Qing Empire is 12.7 taels in the relatively wealthy Jiang-Zhe
8

Our GDP estimates are also higher in terms of silver taels and in current prices. Table 1 shows threeother estimates of per capita GDP in current prices and in taels. Our 1840 estimate of 14.60 taels is
about 50 per cent higher than LIU’s estimate of 10.8 taels (LIU, 2009, p. 153). Chang (1962) arrived at
a level of 7.4 taels for the 1880s, whereas our estimation is 11.78 taels. The lower figure of Chang
results mainly from his low estimate of the area under cultivation. Another recent GDP per capita
estimate for 1840 is 12.95 taels in Broadberry et al. (2014), which is 11-12 per cent lower than ourestimate of 14.60 taels for the same year. The difference stems mainly from the applied assumptions of
the input/output ratio for grain crops. They assume a ratio of 18 per cent, which in our view isabnormally high (Broadberry et al., 2014, p. 38). We base our calculation on a ratio of about 10 per
cent, which is more in line with existing studies. If we use their input/output ratio of 18 instead of 10
per cent, the new 1840 estimate would decrease to 13.56 taels. This difference in the assumed i/o ratio
explains half of the difference between our estimate and that of Broadberry et al.
9
Increasing the energy loss to 40 per cent will lead to an estimated average of potential daily energy
consumption of 1,950 kcal. According to Buck’s survey data, the range of daily energy consumption in
the 1930s was 1,823-4,434 kcal (Buck, 1930, 1937).

12

region (63.31 taels divided by 5). 10 Our estimation of per capita GDP from the output side is
generally higher than this estimated consumption level, except for the 1850s and for particular
years in the 1870s-1880s when major disasters happened. As recorded previously, the annual
salary of a farm labourer in 1888 was 13 taels in the Shandong province (ZHANG, 1957, P.
692). Our estimated per capita GDP of 1888 is 12.78 taels, which is close to this annual salary.
As a proxy for a daily wage, we calculated GDP per capita/day and derived an average of
0.042 taels in current prices. This derived average daily wage is close to the baseline wage forthe early Qing period calculated by Allen et al. (2011, Figure 1, p. 16). Again, this signals low
living standards in Qing China during the turbulent late nineteenth century.
These new estimations result in a different growth path of the economy compared with
Maddison’s data for the late Qing period (see Figure 1). Maddison’s estimation of per capita
real GDP considers the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) as an important breakpoint in long-term
Chinese economic development. The estimation is based on several data points andpresumably indicates a stagnation of living standards for the entire Qing period with a sharp
decline in 1850-70 that reflects the adverse impact of the Taiping Rebellion. Our estimation
provides a time series with more fluctuations: a period of relative stability in the 1840s-50s, afirst round of increasing levels in the 1860s-80s, a decrease from the 1880s, and a second
phase of rising levels around 1900. Table 2 shows annual growth rates of per capita GDP for
these four periods respectively, which in general confirms the stagnation of living standards
for the late Qing period.
Surprisingly, we find in the new data no decline in GDP per capita during the Taiping
Rebellion, which deserves an explanation. According to our estimation, the Qing economy
lost 6 per cent in real terms. But in the same period the total loss of population was more than
8 per cent, which by simple arithmetic leads to an increase in per capita real GDP of around
2.5 per cent. Thus, the huge decline in population explains the seemingly unusual increase in
per capita GDP before 1870. In contrast, the decrease in GDP per capita in the 1880s-90s was
driven by an increasing population and a rather constant level of total GDP. Only in the 1870s
and 1900s did the growth of the total economy surpass population increases, leading to asustained growth in the economy. Figure 2 presents the population trends in our estimationand compares total GDP with per capita GDP. It is tempting to suggest that Malthusian forceswere still responsible for the stagnation of living standards in late Qing China. Cha (2014)
also emphasises the role of population growth in nineteenth-century China by stating that thepressure on economic development “comes from nowhere but population growth”; Heestimated a generally downward trend of living standards for the Qing period. According to
Figure 2, the sudden liberation from the Malthusian trap in the 1860s-70s did not endure; thepopulation recovery in the 1880s-90s led to an immediate decline of per capita GDP.
[Place Figure 2 here]
According to our GDP reconstruction, the most serious economic decline of the late Qing
period happened in the 1850s-60s, when both the economy and society were threatened by
10

FANG (1996) estimated an average consumption basket in the Qing Dynasty for a farmer familywith five members living in the Jiang-Zhe region. It covers food, clothing, rent, and fuel. He concluded
that in the early Qing Empire the level of annual household consumption was 32.6 taels and in the late
Qing Empire 58.31 taels. Following ZHANG (2005), we have added per capita educational expenses tothis estimation at an amount of 1 tael per person or 5 taels per family.

13

wars and natural disasters, such as the Taiping Rebellion in the south (1851-64) and the Nien
Rebellion in the north (1852-68). We also find that in these two decades significant setbacks
were actually happening in the industrial- and service sectors, more than in the agricultural
sector (see Appendix Figure 1. 5.). A recovery in the 1870s-80s shows a total increase of real
GDP by 6 per cent. At the beginning of the 1890s the Qing economy had recovered andreturned back to its level of before the Taiping Rebellion. One could ascribe the better
performance in the 1870s-80s to the politically-inspired “self-strengthening” movement(1860-94) which intended to incorporate new technologies from more advanced western
economies. However, this is doubtful since economic growth as we have seen was to slow
down again in the 1880s-90s. The growth path of real GDP in our estimation fits well into thegeneral situation of the late Qing Empire that we know from the historiography. 11 Verydifferent from Maddison’s interpretation, our work views the late nineteenth century
generally as a period of recovery in the long-term economic development of pre-modern
China, which to some extent supports the idea of a “resilience” of the economy in the face of
the adverse economic and social conditions of the turbulent century as described in Brandt etal. (2014).
The decline of the total economy in the 1895-99 period deserves special attention. Thisdecrease can be attributed to the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-95), to the bad climaticconditions in the 1890s, and perhaps also to worsening trade conditions. Since the 1860s
domestic cotton cloth production in Qing China had been negatively affected by large imports;
the downward trend became significant in particular in the 1890s (XU and WU, 2003).
Similarly, the export of tea reached a peak in the 1880s and started to decline thereafter. We
also find a decline in the export of silk goods in the 1890s. The sudden drop in exports may
have led to a decline in domestic production. After being involved in globalisation for overhalf a century, the Qing economy had become more and more vulnerable to shocks frominternational markets, in particular in the industrial and the service sectors.
Earlier in this section we compared the levels of GDP/capita with other measures of living
standards. We can do the same again with the trends and compare them with trends in wages.
Although wages declined sharply in the 1850s, Allen, Bassino, Ma, Moll-Murata, and van
Zanden (2011) find that real wages in Beijing (north China) had risen back to their former
level of the early Qing period by around 1870 and continued to increase until 1900.
Demographic indicators in Baten, Ma, Morgan, and Wang (2010) reveal a decline in living
standards in South China from 1850 and a recovery from 1900. In contrast with these trendsof partial indicators for specific regions in China, ours is a national aggregate and accordingly
the economic fluctuations that we find are relatively mild.
In the previous section we have linked agricultural and industrial production of the 1900s
with corresponding developments in the interwar period; we can do this also for total GDP
per capita. Ma (2008) derived an increase in real NDP per capita by 0.53 per cent per annum
for the period from the 1910s to the 1930s. We find almost the same growth rate for the final
years of the Qing Empire, with an estimated annual per capita real GDP growth of 0.51 percent for the 1900s.

11

However, our work fails to capture some historical events, such as the four-year drought in north
China from 1876 to 1879.

14

Finally, we can put the economic performance of the late Qing period in an international
perspective. Table 2 compares annual growth rates of real GDP per capita in Qing China withboth advanced western and newly-industrialising Asian economies. The comparison shows
clearly the divergence of growth paths between Qing China and Western Europe since the
mid-nineteenth century. From the second half of the nineteenth century, Asian economies
such as Japan and Indonesia had entered a fast-growth trajectory and were able to catch up
with western economies. But Qing China showed no growth acceleration; in the late Qing
period annual growth of the economy was much lower than that in contemporary Asian
countries. The growth of the Qing economy was still comparable with that of India in 186080; however, in the 1900s per capita real GDP of Qing China increased by 5.1 per cent incontrast with a growth of 15.6 per cent in India. We can also make international comparisonsat sectoral levels. In the period 1850-74, land productivity of food crops in Qing China
declined annually by 0.42 per cent, while in pre-Meiji Japan land productivity increased
annually by 0.27 per cent. Qing China’s industrial sector started to grow at an annual rate of
2.3 per cent in the 1900s, whereas the corresponding growth rate was 3.3 per cent in India and4 per cent in Meiji Japan. These data suggest that Qing China was losing out on other Asian
countries already in its early stage of industrialisation.
[Place Table 2 here]

V Economic stagnation in the late Qing Empire
The present estimation of per capita GDP confirms that the economy of the late Qing Empire
was stagnant at a low level of living standards. This work was not aimed at finding themechanisms behind the stagnation of the Qing economy and the Great Divergence with themore advanced Western economies. We mainly intended to provide a new quantitativeinterpretation of the commonly-accepted stagnation of the Chinese economy.
Qing China in the late nineteenth century was an agrarian economy. Figure 3 shows thataround two thirds of total GDP (in current prices) was produced in the agricultural sector. The
agricultural share in constant prices even reached 70 per cent in the late Qing period. One
might suspect that the agricultural share may have been overestimated in our calculations. We
have to admit that it is difficult to estimate precisely the agricultural share in a pre-modern
economy that was characterised by high agro-industrial or agro-service activities. In ourestimation we have placed tea and raw silk in the category of agricultural products, but they
can also been seen as processed products, and thus manufactured goods. But reclassifying thetwo products into the secondary sector will not reduce the agricultural share substantially.
Other estimations for Qing China also arrived at agricultural shares above 60 and even 70 per
cent (LIU, 2009, GUAN and LI, 2010). And in 1933, the share of agriculture still took up
more than 60 per cent of the total economy (Liu and Yeh, 1965). Compared to other Asian
economies, the agricultural sector in Qing China was not exceptionally large; the agriculturalshare was 67.5 per cent in 1881 India, 47.9 per cent in 1880 Indonesia, and around 60 per centin pre-Meiji Japan (Van Der Eng, 1992, Broadberry, Custodis, and Gupta, 2015, Bassino et al.,2015).
[Place Figure 3 here]15

Economic performance in pre-modern China thus largely depended on the growth dynamics
of the agricultural sector (Rawski, 1989). The stagnation of the Qing economy in the latenineteenth century can therefore mainly be attributed to difficulties in agriculturaldevelopment (See Appendix Figure 1.5). Our results reveal a broad stagnation of land
productivity and accordingly no significant improvements in agricultural output. Figure 4
illustrates that the estimated land productivity was roughly similar to the development of the
population/land ratio, which directly indicates a stagnation of per capita agricultural output
for the late Qing period. Note that we estimated land productivity for food crops
independently without referring to population and land data. One potential reason behind thepoor performance of the agricultural sector may have been that the traditional labourintensive agricultural production methods were hardly able to sustain a certain level of land
productivity after facing huge losses of labour caused by wars and natural disasters in the latenineteenth century. Our findings support the traditional view on economic performance in
pre-modern China: population expansion produced high agricultural productivity but a low
per capita income, as stated in Wong’s study on economic change in late imperial China
between 1500 and 1900 (Wong, 1997).
[Place Figure 4 here]
Figure 3 gives an indication of the frozen economic structure in late Qing China. Regardlessof all the efforts toward industrialisation, the economy was even showing a growing
agricultural sector. If we take Qing China’s urbanisation level as a proxy for non-agricultural
production, new data seem to support our finding of structural stagnation; a recent study
concludes that the urbanisation ratio remained at 7 per cent for the period 1850-95 andincreased to 13 per cent in 1918 (Xu, van Leeuwen, and van Zanden, 2015). There are only
minor shifts between the three sectors. With both the output value and the share of theindustrial sector declining, we even find a mild de-industrialisation in the 1860s-90s, which
generally confirms Williamson’s (2008) finding on pre-modern China. Even though this was
the period of China’s early industrialisation with the so-called self-strengthening movement(1860-94), the momentum of newly founded industries was overshadowed by the large sectorof traditional production in agriculture and handicrafts.
As discussed in the previous section, agricultural output in late Qing China could barely
support the population, which means that there was no room for any savings for reinvestmentin the agricultural sector and capital formation in other sectors. In the context of labourintensive agriculture, efforts to decrease the land/labour ratio are a rational way to increase
land productivity. But the relatively low agricultural productivity in the late Qing period
implied that there was hardly any potential release of labour to other sectors. In some cases
agricultural output may even have fallen below the subsistence level. Economic resources inthis specific agrarian economy with a large population and with relatively limited access tointernational markets were still flowing into agricultural activities. In such an economy it may
take a long time to move towards an economic structure favouring industrial production andmodern economic growth (Broadberry and Gupta, 2006).

VI Conclusions

16

Although recent studies have provided new interpretations of the economic performance oflate Qing China, the question of whether the economy of the “Turbulent Century” wasactually stagnant still seemed open to debate. Our new estimation provides a picture from theoutput side of the economy and presents for the first time annual data to uncover economic
trends and fluctuations. In this paper we have constructed a time series of historical GDP (percapita) in both nominal and real terms for the period 1840-1912.
Several new contributions distinguish the present reconstruction from previous estimations.
Our estimation focuses on agricultural production and applies the harvest ratio to indicate thechange of land productivity. We study the development of the industrial sector in the context
of the early industrialisation of pre-modern China by isolating the fast-growing new
mechanised industries from the declining traditional production. For services we included
new data on public expenditure. We solved the problem of inconsistency in previous
estimations by providing a current PPP estimation in 1912 and time series GDP estimation ininternational dollars.
Our work gives an estimation of per capita GDP in the late Qing period that is higher than inmost other studies, but still indicates a low level of average living standards. We conclude
that the economy was characterised by a large and growing agricultural sector with nosignificant structural changes. For most of the late Qing period, economic growth was
restrained; only in the beginning of the twentieth century did the economy start to show signsof growth. However, even this positive economic performance seems to be insignificant in thecontext of fast industrialisation among neighbouring Asian countries. A closer investigation
into the regional and sectoral characteristics of the economy in the late Qing period may
explain the missed opportunity to catch up, the impact of globalisation, and the widening
divergence with the West.

17

Figure 1 Estimations of per capita GDP in China, 1840-1940, in 1990 international dollars
700

Maddison data,
2014

600

Xu et al., 2015500

LIU T., 2009

400
300

Fukao et al.,
2007

200

this paper

10001840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940
Sources: See the text, collected by the authors.

18

Figure 2 The new estimation of Chinese GDP and GDP per capita, 1840-1912, in constant prices, 1912=1
1.5

1.5
GDP 1912=1
1.2
Per capita GDP

1.0
0.9
Population
0.6
0.5
0.3
0.0
0
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910
Sources: See the text, estimated by the authors.

19

Figure 3 Chinese GDP by sector, 1840-1912, in current prices and prices of 1912
100%

100%

90%

90%

80%

80%

70%

70%

60%

60%

50%

50%

40%

40%

30%

30%

20%

20%

10%

10%

0%
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910

0%1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910

Services
Indus_Mechanised
Indus_Traditional
Agriculture

Sources: See the text, estimated by the authors.

20Figure 4 Land productivity for food crops and the population/land ratio, 1840-1920, 1912=1
1.2

Populatioin/Land

1.1
1.0

Land productivity

0.9

10 per. Mov. Avg.
(Land productivity)

0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
Sources: See the text, estimated by the authors.

21

Table 1 Historical GDP per capita estimates for China, 1800-1936
Period1800-1920

1930s

1800

1840

1840

1880s

1850-1913

1850-1911

1914/18

1933

LIU,
1987

LIU, 2009

Broadberry
et al., 2014

Chang,
1962

Maddisondata, 2014

Xu et al.,
2015

Ma,
2008a

Ou,
1947

Benchmarks

6.7

10.8

12.95c

7.44b

52.4

46

59.8

57.4

60.5

Local
Currency

1700
tael

Tael,
current
pricesTael,current
pricesTael,current
prices

1930s
yuan

Yuan,
current
pricesYuan,current
prices

1930s
Yuan

1930s
Yuan

318

594

566

559

579

619

1990 int.
dollars d

1990 int.
dollars

1990 GK
dollars

1990 int.
dollars

1990 GK
dollars

1990 int.
dollars

Benchmarks or
AveragesInternationally-comparable
Currency

1933

1933

Liu and
MaddisonYeh, 1965 data, 2014

1931-6

1934-6Ma,
2008a

Fukao etal., 2007

Source: See references, collected by the authors. The new Maddison data is from Bolt and van Zanden (2014).
aHere, the value represents net domestic product (NDP).
Our estimate is 12.57 taels for the 1880s. The lower figure of Chang results mainly from his lower estimate of cultivated land area.
Our estimate is 13.65 taels for the 1840s.
d
The monetary unit “international dollars” is comparable with the “GK dollars” used by Maddison.
bc

22

Table 2 Annual growth of real GDP per capita for various countries and regions, 1840-1910 (%)
a. Economic growth in some regions, 1840-1910 (%)
12 W.
W.
30 W.
7 E.
Europe Offshoots Europe
Europe1840-1860
1.35
1.47
1.05
0.46
1860-1880
0.88
1.68
1880-1900
1.54
1.90
1.51
1.38
1900-1910
1.02
1.88
1.27
1.32
b. Economic growth in some countries, 1840-1910 (%)
Italy
Holland/England India
Netherlands/GB
1840-1860
-0.24
0.17
0.70
1860-1880
0.45
1.06
1.01
0.31
1880-1900
0.74
0.82
1.32
0.40
1900-1910
1.67
1.06
0.24
1.56

L. America

16 E. Asia

Qing China

0.44
0.69

0.11
0.36
-0.34
0.51

1.32
2.34

Indonesia(Java before 1880)
-0.28
0.99
0.63
1.06

Japan

Qing China

0.41
1.31
1.68
1.16

0.11
0.36
-0.34
0.51

Qing China(total GDP)
-0.33
0.24
0.07
1.07

Qing China(population)
-0.44
-0.13
0.42
0.58

Qing China(total GDP)
-0.33
0.24
0.07
1.07

Qing China(population)
-0.44
-0.13
0.42
0.58

Source: See references, calculated by the authors. Per capita GDP for other countries and regions is from Bolt and van Zanden (2014).

23

References
Allen, R.C., "Agricultural Productivity and Rural Incomes in England and the Yangtze Delta,
c. 1620-c. 1820," The Economic History Review, 62, 3, 525-550, 2009.
Allen, R.C., J. Bassino, D. Ma, C. Moll-Murata, and J.L.van. Zanden, "Wages, Prices, andLiving Standards in China, 1738-1925: in Comparison with Europe, Japan and India,"
The Economic History Review, 64, s1, 8-38, 2011.
Bassino, J., S. Broadberry, K. Fukao, B. Gupta, and M. Takashima, "Japan and the Great
Divergence, 725-1874," C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers, 2015.
Baten, J., D. Ma, S. Morgan, and Q. Wang, "Evolution of Living Standards and Human
Capital in China in the 18–20th Centuries: Evidences from Real Wages, Age-Heaping,and Anthropometrics," Explorations in Economic History, 47, 3, 347-359, 2010.
Bolt, J. and J.L. van Zanden, "The Maddison Project: Collaborative Research on Historical
National Accounts," The Economic History Review, 67, 3, 627-651, 2014.
Brandt, L., D. Ma, and T.G. Rawski, "From Divergence to Convergence: Reevaluating theHistory behind China's Economic Boom," Journal of Economic Literature, 52, 1, 45123, 2014.
Broadberry, S., H. Guan, and D.D. Li, "China, Europe and the Great Divergence: A Study inHistorical National Accounting," working paper, 2014.
Broadberry, S. and B. Gupta, "The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices andEconomic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500-1800," The Economic History
Review, 59, 1, 2-31, 2006.
Broadberry, S., B. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton, and B. van Leeuwen, "British Economic
Growth, 1270-1870: An Output-Based Approach," School of Economics, University ofKent, 2012.
Broadberry, S., J. Custodis, and B. Gupta, "India and the Great Divergence: An Anglo-IndianComparison of GDP Per Capita, 1600–1871," Explorations in Economic History, 55, 5875, 2015.
Broadberry, S., K. Fukao, and N. Zammit, "How Did Japan Catch-up on the West? A Sectoral
Analysis of Anglo-Japanese Productivity Differences, 1885-2000," Competitive
Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE), 2015.
Broadberry, S. and B. Gupta, "The Historical Roots of India’s Service-Led Development: A
Sectoral Analysis of Anglo-Indian Productivity Differences, 1870–2000," Explorationsin Economic History, 47, 3, 264-278, 2010.
Buck, J.L., Land Utilization in China: A Study Of 16,786 Farms in 168 Localities, and 38,256
Farm Families in Twenty-Two Provinces in China, 1929-1933, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1937.
------------, Chinese Farm Economy: A Study of 2,866 Farms in Seventeen Localities andSeven Provinces in China, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1930.
24

Cha, M.S., "Did Late Imperial China Go Backwards or Forwards or Stand Still?" Working
paper, paper presented at the 4th Asian Historical Economics Congress, 2014.
Chang, J.K., Industrial Development in Pre-Communist China: A Quantitative Analysis,
Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1969.
Chang, C., The Income of the Chinese Gentry: A Sequel to the Chinese Gentry, Studies on
Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society [Chinese Edition Published in 1991],
University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1962.
Fairbank, J.K. and K. Liu, The Cambridge History of China, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1980.
FANG, X., "Qingda Jiangnan Nongmingde Xiaofei [Study on the Farmers’ Consumption in
the Qing Dynasty in Southern China]," Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu, 3, 91-98, 1996.
FAO, "FAO Methodology for the Measurement of Food Deprivation: Updating the Minimum
Dietary Energy Requirements," FAO Statistics Division, Rome, 2008.
-----, "Human Energy Requirements: Report of a Joint FAO/WHO/UNU Expert
Consultation," FAO Food and Nutrition Technical Report Series, 2001.
Feinstein, C., Statistical Tables of National Income, Expenditure and Output of the UK, 1855–
1965, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976.
Fukao, K., D. Ma, and T. Yuan, "Real GDP in Pre-War East Asia: A 1934-36 Benchmark
Purchasing Power Parity Comparison with the US," Review of Income and Wealth, 53, 3,
503-537, 2007.
GUAN, H. and D.D. LI, "China’s GDP in the Ming Dynasty," China Economic Journal, 2,787-828, 2010.
GUO, W. and L. CAO, Zhongguo Jindai Nongye Kejishi [A History of Pre-modern Chinese
Agricultural Technology], Zhongguo Nongye Keji Press, Beijing, 1989.
GUO, S., "Qingdai Beifang Hanzuoqu De Liangshi Shengchan," Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu,
1, 22-44, 1995.
----------, "Qingqianqi Nanfang Daozuoqu De Liangshi Shengchan," Zhongguo Jingjishi
Yanjiu, 1, 1-30, 1994.
Jacks, D.S., K.H. O'Rourke, and J.G. Williamson, "Commodity Price Volatility and World
Market Integration since 1700," Review of Economics and Statistics, 93, 3, 800-813,
2011.
Keller, W., B. Li, and C.H. Shiue, "Shanghai's Trade, China's Growth: Continuity, Recovery,
and Change since the Opium War," NBER Working Paper No. 17754, 2012.
KONG, M. and Z. PENG, Nankai Jingji Zhishu Ziliao Huibian [Collection of Nankai
Economic Statistics], China Shehuikexue Press, Tianjing, 1988.
Kubo, T., "Industrial Development in Republican China, Newly Revised Index: 1912-1948,"
Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, 2005.
25

Lieu, D.K., China's Industries and Finance, Chinese Government Bureau of Economic
Information, Beking, Shanghai, 1927.
LIU, F. and Y. WANG, Jindai Zhongguo De Jingji Fazhan [Economic Development in China
between 1840 and 1949], Shandong Renmin Chubanshe, Shandong, 1997.
LIU, R., "Shiba Shiji Zhongguo Renjun Guomin Shouru Guji Jiqi Yu Yingguo De Bijiao[Study on National Income in 18th Century China]," Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu, 3, 105120, 1987.
Liu, T. and K.C. Yeh, The Economy of the Chinese Mainland: National Income andEconomic Development, 1933-1959, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J, 1965.
LIU, T., "An Estimation of China's GDP from 1600 to 1840," Economic Research Journal,
10, 144-155, 2009.
Ma, Y., H. de Jong, and T. Chu, "Living Standards in China between 1840 and 1912: A New
Estimation of Gross Domestic Product Per Capita," GGDC Research Memorandum Nr.
147, 2014.
Ma, Y., H. de Jong, and Y. Xu, "Measuring China’s Performance in the World Economy: A
Benchmark Comparison between China and the UK Ca. 1910," GGDC Research
Memorandum, 2016.
Ma, D., "Economic Growth in the Lower Yangzi Region of China in 1911-1937: A
Quantitative and Historical Analysis," Journal of Economic History, 68, 2, 355-392,
2008.
Maddison, A., Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run, OECD, Paris, 2007.
Ou, B., China's National Income, 1933, Institute of Social Sciences Academia Sinica
Monograph Series, Shanghai, 1947.
PENG, Z., Zhongguo Jindai Shougongyeshi Ziliao [Materials on Pre-modern Chinese
Handicrafts], Joint Publishing, Beijing, 1957.
Perkins, D.H., Agricultural Development in China, 1368-1968, University Press, Edinburgh,
1969.
Rawski, T.G., Economic Growth in Prewar China, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1989.
SHI, T. and G. MA, "Qingchao Qianzhongqi Liangshi Muchan Yanjiu Zongshi [Literature
Review on Yields of Food Crops until the Middle Qing Dynasty]," Lishi Yanjiu, 2, 2010.
SHI, Z., "Qingdai Nongye Shengchanzhibiao De Guji [An Estimation of Agriculture
Production in the Qing Dynasty]," Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu, 5, 2015.
SHI, Z. and Y. XU, Wanqing Caizheng: 1851–1894 [Public Finance in the Late Qing
Dynasty: 1851–1894], Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Press, Shanghai,
2008.

26

SHI, Z., Qingda Hubu Yinku Shouzhi He Kucun Tongji [Statistical Materials on the
Government Income and Expenditure, and Reserves in the State Treasury in the Qing
Empire], People's Press, Fujian, 2009.
--------, "Qingdai Qianqide Gengdi Mianji Jiliangshi Chanliang Guji [Studies on the
Cultivated Land in 1840]," Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu, 2, 47-62, 1989.
van der Eng, P., "The Real Domestic Product of Indonesia, 1880–1989," Explorations in
Economic History, 29, 3, 343-373, 1992.
van Zanden, J.L. and B. van Leeuwen, "Persistent But Not Consistent: The Growth of
National Income in Holland 1347–1807," Explorations in Economic History, 49, 2, 119130, 2012.
Wang, Y.C., "Secular Trends of Rice Prices in the Yangzi Delta, 1638–1935," in T.G. Rawski
and L.M. Li, ed., Chinese History in Economic Perspective, 35-68, Berkeley, 1992.
WANG, Y., "Zhongguo Jindai De Jingji Zengzhang He Zhongchangqi Bodong [Economic
Development in China between 1840 and 1949]," China Economic Quarterly, 4, 2, 461490, 2005.
Williamson, J.G., "Globalization and the Great Divergence: Terms of Trade Booms,
Volatility and the Poor Periphery, 1782–1913," European Review of Economic History,
12, 3, 355-391, 2008.
Woltjer, P.J., The Roaring Thirties: Productivity Growth and Technological Change in GreatBritain and the United States during the Early Twentieth Century, University ofGroningen, Groningen, 2013.
Wong, R.B., China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European, Cornell
University Press, Ithaca, United States, 1997.
Wu, H.X., "Rethinking China's Path of Industrialization," Working paper 2011-76, World
Institute for Development Economics Research, 2011.
WU, H., Zhongguo Lidai Liangshi Muchanliang Yanjiu [Study on Agricultural Production in
Chinese History], Beijing Nongye Chubanshe, Beijing, 1985.
XU, D. and C. WU, Zhongguo Zibenzhuyi Fazhanshi [History of Capitalist Development in
China, 1840-1920], Renmin Press, Beijing, 2003.
Xu, Y., Z. Shi, B. van Leeuwen, Y. Ni, Z. Zhang, and Y. Ma, "Chinese National Income, ca.
1661–1933," Working paper, University Library of Munich, Germany, 2015.
Xu, Y., B. van Leeuwen, and J.L. Van Zanden, "Urbanization in China, ca. 1100–1900,"
Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History, 2015.
YAN, Z., Zhongguo Jindai Jingjishi Tongji Ziliao Xuanji [Statistical Materials on the
Economic History of Modern China], Kexue Chubanshe, Beijing, 1955.
ZHANG, P., Zhongguo Lishi Qihou Bianhua [A History of Chinese Climate Change],
Shandong Science and Technology Press, Shandong, 1996.

27

ZHANG, Y., "Study on the Farmers’ Consumption of the Qing Dynasty in 1700s," Gujin
Nongye, 4, 80-90, 2005.
ZHANG, Y., "Jindai Zhongguo Renkou He Gengdi De Zaiguji [Studies on the CultivatedLand in the Period 1850-1915]," Zhongguo Jingjishi Yanjiu, 1, 20-23, 1991.
ZHANG, Y., Zhongguo Jindai Nongyeshi Ziliao Vol. 1 [Materials on Pre-Modern Chinese
Agriculture], Joint Publishing, Beijing, 1957.
ZHAO, G., Y. LIU, H. WU, J. ZHU, C. CHEN, and Q. CHEN, Qingdai Liangshi
Muchanliang Yanjiu [Yields of Food Crops in the Qing Dynasty], Nongye Press,
Beijing, 1995.

28

Appendix
Figure 1 Sectoral GDP of China, 1840-1920
1.1
2.0
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910

1.2
Agricultural
ouput index
1912=1
Food crops
CottonRaw silk
Tea

1.3

2.0
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
2.5

Manufacturing

1.5

2.0
1.5

0.5
0.0
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920

Raw silk, input

Food crops,
outputTea, domestic
consumption

1.4

2.0

1.0

Cotton, input

MiningIndustrial output
index 1920=1

Publicadministration
Commercial
activities

1.0

Professional
work

0.5

Finance andhousing

0.01840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910

Services index
1912=1

29

Continued Figure 1
1.5
2.0
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910

1.6
GDP 1912=1

Agriculture

Industry

Services

2.0
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910

Mechanised
production

Traditional
production

Industrial
output index
1912=1

Sources: See the text, estimated by the authors.

30

Table 1 General overview of estimation procedures in the present papera. Agriculture
Staple
crops

Other
crops

Direct estimation
VolumePricesIndirect approach
VolumeAggregatesPricesAgriculture

Food crops:
Rice, wheat, etc. a.

Cultivatedacreage, land
productivity (seethe main text)

Rice and wheat
pricesDomestic
consumption, net
exports b

Domestic
prices, export
and importpricesCash crops:
Raw cotton, raw silk,tea
Other c:Other
Forestry, livestock
agricultural farming, fisheryproduction
Total: agriculture% of GOV of food and cash crops(fixed)% of GOV of food crops (fixed)

GOV% of GOV
Input/output ratio: 10% (fixed)

Sectoral output
values per item:
weights

Sectoral pricelevels per item:
unit prices

Add up direct andindirectestimation
VA is 90% of
GOVAgricultural price
index

GOV
VA
Annual real VA

31

Direct estimation
Volumeb. Industry
Manufacturing

Textiles d:
Cotton e and silk
goods

Indirect approach
PricesVolumeAggregatesPricesIndustry

Inputs f: raw
cotton, raw silk
Domestic output(estimated above),
net exports

Export andimport prices of
raw cotton andraw silk
Based on the 1920 benchmark
estimation of GOV of cotton and silk
goods
Food processing:
Oil, liquor, flour,
tobacco, etc.

Other
manufactured
goods g:Total: Manufacturing

Inputs:Agricultural output

General pricelevel ofagriculture
Based on the 1920 benchmark
estimation of GV of food processing
Log-linear
Prices assumed tointerpolation
be equal to thebetween three
general pricebenchmark per
movements incapita estimates:
manufacturing
1840, 1885, 1920
Add up indirect estimation of GOV

GOVInput/output ratio: 60% (fixed)

VA

32

Continued Table 1.b. Industry
Sectoral output
values per item:
weights
MiningCoal

Output volume

Sectoral pricemovements per
item

Manufacturing
price index;
Annual real VA

Domestic
prices, export
and importprices
Input/output ratio: 67%-50%

Other:
Construction

Total: Industry% in VA of mining (fixed)
Log-linear
Prices assumed tointerpolation
be equal to thebetween three VA general price(per capita)
movements inbenchmarkmanufacturing
estimates: 1840,
1885, 1920
Input/output ratios:
Manufacturing :60%; Mining: 67%50%
Sectoral output
Sectoral pricevalue per item:
movements perweightsitem

Add up direct andindirectestimation of VA
Industrial price
index

VA
Annual real VA

33

Direct estimation
Volumec. Services
Publicadministration

Public spending

Indirect approach
PricesVolumeArchival records

Commercial
activities% of VA ofagriculture andindustry (fixed) h

Professional
work

Finance andhousingLog-linear
interpolation
between three VA(per capita)
benchmarkestimates: 1840,
1885, 1920
See “professional
work”

Total

VA
Sectoral VA per
item: weights

AggregatesPricesServices

Estimated withthe general pricelevel ofagriculture andindustry, and theprice of gold
Estimated withthe general pricelevel ofagriculture andindustrySee ‘Public
administration’

Estimated withthe price
movement ofgold

Sectoral pricemovements per
item

Add up indirect
estimation of VA
Service price
index

VA
Annual real VA

34

direct estimation

Indirect approach
PricesIndustry

Estimated real
growthEstimatedsectoral prices

Services

Estimated real
growthEstimatedsectoral prices

Agriculture

VolumePricesEstimated real
growthEstimatedsectoral priceAggregate

Volumed. GDP

GDP and GDP
per capita

Total

Nominal GDP
Weighted prices series based on theprice series of thethree major sectors
Population

GDP deflator

Real GDP

GDP per capita

35

e. Four benchmark estimations i1840, current prices
Value

GDP
Agriculture
Industry
Manufacturing
Cotton goods
Silk goods
Food processing
Tea
Other
MiningCoal
Construction
Services
Commercial
activities
Finance and housing
Other professional
services
Government

Billion
Tls.
4.485
2.734
0.565
0.409

1880s, current prices

Per
capita
Tls.

Share

Value

%

10.886100.00
60.96
12.60
9.12

0.098
1.186
0.659

0.238

2.19
26.44
14.69

Billion
Tls.
2.777
1.672
0.204
0.126
0.073
0.019
0.015
0.007
0.020
0.048
0.013
0.030
0.901
0.257

0.317
0.115

0.769
0.279

7.07
2.56

0.239
0.241

2.12

0.164

0.058

0.095

1.29

Per
capita
Tls.

Share

7.438

100.00
60.22
7.33
4.53
2.61
0.67
0.54
0.26

I/O
ratio

%

0.053

0.080

1.72
0.47
1.08
32.45
9.26

0.639
0.646

1920, 1930s prices, Chinese
Yuan
Value
Per
Share I/O
capitaratio
Billion Yuan %
Yuan

0.10
9.445

0.63
0.51
0.92

1.206
0.192
0.037
0.439
0.014
0.538
0.291
0.107

100

1933, current prices
Value
Billion
Yuan
28.86
18.76
3.36
2.68

Per
capita
Yuan

Share

57.72

100.00
65.00
11.64
9.29

%

0.85
0.72
0.92
1.139
0.21

0.73

0.47
6.74
4.34

0.94

1.63
23.35
15.04

8.59
8.69

1.24
0.34

2.48
0.68

4.30
1.18

5.90

0.82

2.84

36

Notes:aHere includes rice, wheat, millet, kaoliang, barley, maize, and sweet potatoes.
Here, net exports include raw cotton, cotton yarn, and cotton cloth.
According to previous estimations, here includes oil seeds, soy beans, fruit and vegetable.
dTextile products are important in estimating industrial output. For England’s industrial output before 1700, wool and woolen cloth was one of the representative products.
For the period 1700-1870, the cotton industry was the leading sector in the industrial sector of Great Britain. Cotton cloth was always an important industrial product ineighteenth- and nineteenth-century India.
e
For manufacturing, we use input value to infer gross output value. For instance, for the period 1840-1920 we use the annual volume and price index of raw cotton as theproxies of the volume and price index of cotton goods and thus the growth index of cotton industry in current prices, setting 1920 as the base year. Then, the GOV of thecotton goods in 1920 estimated by XU and WU (2003) can be used for backward projection. After deducting a 60 per cent of input value, we obtain a time series of value
added for the cotton industry for 1840-1920.
f
This input-based approach has been used e.g. to estimate pre-1700 textile output in England and also the industrial output in the Republic of China in the 1930s.
g
According to the 1920 benchmark estimation, here includes leather, timber products, chemicals, paper and publishing industry, etc.
h
The ratios are from the benchmark estimations for 1840 and the 1880s. Such short-cut assumptions are often used to estimating the service sector, such as commerce andtransport in England before 1700 and trade in Indonesia in the nineteenth century. Housing and domestic services are often assumed to grow in line with population.
i
The 1840 benchmark estimation for GDP is from LIU (2009). The 1880 benchmark estimation for GDP is from Chang (1962). The 1920 benchmark estimation for
agriculture and industry is from XU and WU (2003). The 1933 benchmark estimation for GDP is from Liu and Yeh (1965).
bc

37

Table 2 Estimation of new mechanised production in the industrial sector in China, 1885-1920
a.

Estimation procedure
Benchmarkestimations,
GOV, current
pricescapital,Estimated

Mill. Tls.

1000CNYlabour,Estimated

price index forindustrial goods

GOV, current
pricesGOV, constantpricesAver. real Growth per
annum (every five years)

1913=100

Mill. Tls.

1913prices

(%)

1885
26
2964
90140
77.7
26.09
33.58
1890
7855
182343
102.1
78.91
77.29
1895
14741
28027492120.23130.691900
34900
382981
112.2
260.52232.191905
65076
492068122.3
435.90356.421910
129102607029105.6
582.59551.701915
201318684524101.8
739.38726.31
1920
864
257929413040137.6
864.06627.95
Notes: Capital income share, estimated =0.4777.
Using the growth accounting model: g ௒,ଵ଼଼ହ,ଵଽଶ଴ െ ݃௅ = ߙ(݃௄ െ ݃௅ ) + ்݃ி௉ , ்݃ி௉ = 0.
Robust check for this assumption, TFP growth=0, is in Table 2.b.
Industrial price index: LIU, F. and WANG, Y., 1997, p. 203-206.
Capital and labour estimations: XU and WU, 2003. See details in Ma, de Jong, and Chu (2014), Appendix B.
Labour for the period 1912-20: from Lieu, 1927, p. 91.
Two benchmark estimations are from Chang (1962) and XU and WU (2003).

18.14
11.08
12.18
8.95
9.13
5.65
-2.87

38

b.

Robustness tests on TFP growth and capital income shares
capital income shares TFP growth, per annum Growth of mechanised production, GOV, per annum, 1900-10

this paper

%
47.77

%
0.00

%
9.04

Robust check

0
-3.94
9.01
10
-3.13
9.01
20
-2.31
9.02
30
-1.48
9.03
40
-0.65
9.03
45
-0.23
9.04
50
0.19
9.04
55
0.61
9.04
60
1.03
9.05
65
1.46
9.05
70
1.89
9.06
80
2.75
9.06
90
3.62
9.07
100
4.49
9.08
Notes: Using the growth accounting model: g ௒,ଵ଼଼ହ,ଵଽଶ଴ െ ݃௅ = ߙ(݃௄ െ ݃௅ ) + ்݃ி௉ .
Robust check for the relationship between TFP growth and assumed capital income shares:்݃ி௉ = (g ௒,ଵ଼଼ହ,ଵଽଶ଴ െ ݃௅ ) െ ߙ(݃௄ െ ݃௅ ).

39

Table 3 A benchmark GDP estimation of China for 1912

a. A China/US PPP for ca. 1910 (Chinese Yuan/ $)Agriculture
Rice
Wheat
Maize

Chinese Yuan
Prices/Ton a

UK £Prices/Ton b

101.85
71.40
46.49

10.10
8.14
6.88

Agriculture
Industry
Service
The economy as a whole:
China/UK PPP
China/US PPP
Sources: Constructed by the authors.

PPP
Yuan per £
9.10e
10.08
8.77
6.76

Chineseweights c

Britishweights d

0.89
0.10
0.01

0
0.80
0.20

9.10
6.61 f7.85 g

0.79
0.02
0.19

0.118
0.441
0.441

8.09
1.33h

a

The Chinese prices for wheat and maize are the wholesale prices in Tianjing in 1913, from the statistical material recollected by KONG and PENG (1988). The Chinese
price for rice is the market price in Yangzi Delta in 1912, from Wang (1992), Table 1.1.
b
The UK prices are from Jacks, O’Rourke, and Williamson (2011).
c
The Chinese weights within the agricultural sector are calculated by a combination of market prices in 1912-1913 and output quantities in 1915. The output data is fromthe Chinese census of 1915. The Chinese weights of the whole economy in 1912 are from the estimation in this paper.
d
The UK weights within the agricultural sector are assumed to be opposite of the Chinese weights in general. We also assume that in 1912 the UK output of rice wasnegligible. The UK weights of the whole economy are from Feinstein (1976), which are actually employment shares of the three sectors.
eFisher PPP is calculated here.
f
The industry PPP for 1912 is assumed to equal the manufacturing PPP from Ma, de Jong, and Xu (2015).
g
The service PPP for 1912 is assumed to be the average of the agriculture and manufacturing PPP.
h
Using US/UK PPP ($/£), 6.1, from Woltjer (2013), we calculate China/US PPP from China/UK PPP, 8.09/6.1=1.33.

40

b. A benchmark estimate of GDP per capita for China and the US in 1912 in 1990 international dollars
China
GDP per capita (Yuan) a
51.75
USGDP per capita ($)
359.6
Exchange rates in 1912
exchange rate (Yuan per $)2.06
PPP (Yuan per $) b
1.33
Comparative China/UKGDP per capita (%)
At the exchange rate
0.068
At PPP
0.109
GDP in 1990 international dollars
US c
5017
China
545
Maddison’s estimation for 1913
552
Sources: Constructed by the authors.
a

The per capita GDP in Chinese Yuan is calculated from the level in taels. In 1912, officially 1 tael=1.5 Chinese Yuan.
34.5 taels×1.5 Chinese Yuan/tael=51.75 Chinese Yuan.
b
PPP is from Table 3.a in this Appendix.
c
The estimate of per capita GDP for 1909 US is from Maddison’s estimation.

41

Table 4 Nominal and real GDP per capita in China, 1840-1912, in tael. Real GDP/cap in prices of 1912.
Per capita
GDP

1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857

Value added per capita

GDPdeflator

Per capita
GDP

Per capita
GDP

Agricultural
sectorIndustrial
sectorServicesectorcurrent
pricescurrent
pricescurrent
pricescurrent
prices1912=1

1912prices

int. Dollars

14.60
15.85
15.68
13.40
13.89
13.18
11.91
12.15
12.44
13.39
14.14
13.20
9.24
9.28
9.22
9.63
10.25
16.30

9.74
10.49
10.40
8.79
9.23
8.68
7.55
7.83
8.02
8.85
9.41
8.76
5.55
5.64
5.67
6.03
6.51
11.23

1.60
1.57
1.34
1.36
1.31
1.24
1.24
1.24
1.26
1.32
1.26
1.04
1.03
1.04
1.06
1.11
1.40
1.46

3.27
3.78
3.93
3.25
3.35
3.27
3.12
3.09
3.17
3.23
3.47
3.40
2.66
2.60
2.49
2.48
2.35
3.61

0.42
0.44
0.44
0.38
0.40
0.38
0.34
0.34
0.35
0.38
0.41
0.38
0.26
0.26
0.27
0.28
0.30
0.45

34.82
35.95
35.82
35.16
35.07
34.42
35.20
35.49
35.75
35.46
34.75
34.82
35.63
35.42
34.55
34.29
34.52
36.22

549.72567.70565.60555.20553.66543.41555.76560.34564.44559.84548.74549.71562.56559.26545.49541.46545.12571.88

42

1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883

17.09
14.71
11.56
18.54
25.34
24.31
25.09
18.87
20.28
16.14
14.26
14.81
15.58
14.38
13.60
12.54
11.83
11.53
11.65
12.93
15.67
13.05
11.47
10.50
12.44
13.03

11.89
9.99
7.36
12.72
17.93
16.88
17.45
12.74
13.74
10.68
9.20
9.74
10.39
9.45
8.90
8.20
7.77
7.35
7.45
8.49
10.63
8.68
7.38
6.60
8.13
8.55

1.34
1.21
1.68
2.08
2.23
2.25
1.81
1.95
1.56
1.49
1.38
1.44
1.39
1.29
1.13
0.99
1.00
0.96
1.01
1.12
0.97
0.89
0.86
0.94
0.97
0.96

3.85
3.50
2.52
3.74
5.18
5.18
5.83
4.18
4.98
3.97
3.68
3.62
3.81
3.64
3.56
3.35
3.05
3.22
3.19
3.32
4.06
3.47
3.23
2.97
3.34
3.52

0.47
0.41
0.32
0.52
0.71
0.67
0.70
0.52
0.56
0.44
0.39
0.40
0.42
0.38
0.36
0.34
0.32
0.31
0.32
0.34
0.41
0.34
0.30
0.28
0.32
0.34

36.24
35.45
35.62
35.86
35.89
36.15
36.07
36.03
36.06
36.87
36.90
37.33
37.54
37.64
37.42
36.43
36.48
37.75
36.94
37.48
38.31
37.94
38.27
38.07
39.32
38.33

572.20559.80562.39566.17566.64570.79569.45568.82569.39582.17582.69589.37592.69594.24590.86575.22576.05596.10583.28591.76604.88599.03604.25601.02620.84605.16

43

1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909

12.54
12.00
13.77
13.65
12.78
13.57
14.43
13.35
13.86
14.24
14.70
15.35
15.88
15.95
19.90
18.34
18.27
17.94
22.92
22.58
22.35
18.72
19.99
24.72
25.97
23.10

8.06
7.64
9.13
8.98
8.25
8.89
9.66
8.83
9.26
9.43
9.47
10.01
10.47
10.33
13.39
12.30
12.24
11.98
15.83
15.55
15.24
12.56
13.61
17.22
18.03
15.66

0.90
0.92
0.93
0.92
0.96
1.00
0.94
0.95
1.01
1.05
1.03
1.04
1.14
1.28
1.23
1.25
1.23
1.44
1.45
1.63
1.36
1.47
1.83
1.92
1.83
2.07

3.58
3.43
3.71
3.75
3.56
3.67
3.82
3.58
3.60
3.76
4.20
4.30
4.28
4.35
5.28
4.80
4.80
4.52
5.64
5.39
5.74
4.69
4.54
5.59
6.11
5.37

0.32
0.31
0.36
0.36
0.33
0.35
0.38
0.35
0.37
0.38
0.39
0.41
0.44
0.44
0.56
0.52
0.51
0.50
0.64
0.63
0.64
0.54
0.57
0.70
0.71
0.63

38.62
38.53
38.33
37.96
38.40
38.57
37.53
37.84
37.23
37.11
37.73
37.73
36.15
35.84
35.38
34.96
35.73
36.03
35.76
35.58
35.06
34.79
35.02
35.54
36.42
36.77

609.86608.30605.18599.41606.25609.06592.55597.52587.91585.89595.72595.71570.82565.93558.67551.94564.09568.95564.56561.85553.52549.39552.91561.08575.12580.55

44

1910
26.73
18.53
2.68
1911
37.06
26.67
2.43
1912
34.50
24.95
2.35
Aver.
16.14
10.81
1.34
Max
37.06
26.67
2.68
Min
9.22
5.55
0.86
Sources: See the text, estimated by the authors.

5.52
7.96
7.21
3.99
7.96
2.35

0.71
1.03
1.00
0.44
1.03
0.26

37.58
36.10
34.50
36.42
39.32
34.29

593.41569.95544.78575.01620.84541.4645