Institutional Change and Rural Industrialization - The Historical Role of the Contractor System in the Development of Handicrafts in Late Qing and Early Republican China

Author: Zhou Feizhou
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: This book aims to explore the relationship between institutional change and economic development by studying the development of rural handicrafts in China during the late Qing and early Republican period. The research findings indicate that although the late Qing and early Republican period was a time when China opened its ports to foreign trade, with a large influx of foreign goods and machine-made products, these imports inevitably caused some impact on traditional handicraft sectors. However, certain handicraft sectors, such as the cotton cloth industry, achieved significant development amid the dual pressure of foreign cloth and domestic machine-made cloth during this period. In North China and Jiangnan, several large and prosperous cotton weaving areas emerged, where almost every household engaged in weaving, and weaving income surpassed agricultural income, becoming the primary source for farmers to increase their revenue.
The late Qing and early Republican period was a time when China opened its ports to foreign trade, with a large influx of foreign goods and machine-made products, and foreign goods inevitably caused some impact on traditional handicraft sectors. However, the cotton cloth industry achieved significant development amid the dual pressure of foreign cloth and machine-made cloth. This book, employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, concludes that the system of merchant capital (bao mai zhi) is the most important factor determining whether a region's cotton cloth industry reaches prosperity.