Topic 2 - Traditional Economy: Constraints, Potentials and Counterfactual Flashcards

1
Q

When was the Song Peak and what is the song Peak Thesis?

A

960-1279

The thesis is that Chinese civilisation peaked at this point and any stagnation/decline after this would only be natural

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2
Q

What forms of civilisation did China peak in during the Song Peak?

A

1) Technological inventions
2) Keju
3) Urbanisation
4) Education (printing and reading)

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3
Q

What is the Needham Question?

A

Why did the Chinese society in the eighth century A.D. favour sciences as compared with Western society, and that of the eighteenth century A.D. inhibit it?

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4
Q

What is the Needham puzzle?

A

Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Europe and not in China?

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5
Q

When was the birth of the centralised state in a China?

A

Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 B.C.)

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6
Q

What 3 forms of hierarchy were there in the centralised state?

A

1) Emporer
2) Bureaucrats/Gentry
3) Masses

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7
Q

How unified has China been over the past two millennia?

A

China has even unified for less than half the time

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8
Q

What did the political equilibrium of the centralised state allow for the creation of?

A

1) Fixed tax revenues so the government essentially became an absentee landlord

2) De facto property rights in land and labour:
- Small-scale independent farming households
- Rise of factor markets in labour and land

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9
Q

Name some factors/events that could affect the economic growth of China

A

1) Frequent warfare between nomadic tribes and the Han Chinese
2) Guanxi networks
3) The paradox of centralisation
4) Opium Wars
5) Spatial China
6) Lineage and guilds
7) Dynastic cycles
8) Malthusian trap
9) Size

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10
Q

What is the paradox of centralisation and what does it mean?

A

“The sky is high and the emperor is far away”. It was in reference to China’s centralised bureaucracy and local authority. It could be used to imply corruption.

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11
Q

When were the Opium Wars and how did they change China?

A

1839 - 1860

They started because of trade imbalances between Britain and China. They changed the divide in China from a north-south divide to more of an east-west divide. This was partly due to the creation of treaty ports.

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12
Q

What was the political structure in a China before the Qing Dynasty and absolutism?

A

A feudal system was in place during the Zhou dynasty

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13
Q

What were the advantages of centralised absolutism?

A

1) Suitable for multinational state condition
2) Suitable for direct governance by imperial rule and by orders from bureaucracy
3) Economies of scale of labour and land

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14
Q

When was the Ming era?

A

1368 - 1644

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15
Q

When was the Qing era?

A

1644 - 1911

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16
Q

What were the regional dynamics of China?

A

Divided into 9 macro-regions. The economic geography of China was largely determined by transport costs and hence China’s river systems were extremely important

17
Q

What were the developmental cycles and why were they significant?

A

They were the economic upturns and downturns within each of the 9 macroeconomic regions of China. Some examples include the Kaifeng cycle, the Northern cycle, and the Southeastern cycle. They were significant because none of them affected the other.

18
Q

What is the main idea of Confucianism?

A

1) A religion of sorts where the aim is generally to be a good person