Malthus Goes to China: The Effect of “Positive Checks” on Grain Market Development, 1736–1910

Yanfeng Gu and James Kai-sing Kung

The Journal of Economic History, 2021, vol. 81, issue 4, 1137-1172

Abstract: After peaking around the mid-eighteenth century, grain market integration in China declined by a colossal 80 percent amid a twofold increase in population and remained at low levels for well over a century. Markets only resumed their growth momentum after the largest peasant revolt—the Taiping Rebellion—wiped out roughly one-sixth of the Chinese population starting 1851. This U-shaped pattern of grain market integration distinguished China from Europe in their trajectories of market development. Using grain prices to divide China into grain-deficit and grainsurplus regions, we find that the negative relationship between population growth and market integration originated from the grain-surplus-cum-exporting regions.

Date: 2021
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