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‘Trade, not war, has been China’s way to interact with other nations’
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“Take history as a mirror.” — Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty
Reconciling historical and contemporary aspects of China involves a complex interaction between cultural heritage and modern identity in China studies. The discipline has moved beyond classical texts and historical narratives to include modern perspectives and methods.
This shift also includes more international participation from Chinese scholars who can use the language and toolbox of Western social sciences to explain the similarity and unique features of China.
Professor Li Bozhong is one of the Chinese scholars who contributed to a more profound understanding of China’s historical legacies, their relevance today, and their future implications.
He is the chair professor of humanities at Peking University and has also taught at Harvard, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and some other distinguished universities in the United States and Japan.
Li has published four academic books in English and is known for his research on the Yangtze River Delta region, with Shanghai at its center.
The professor sat down with Shanghai Daily before the 2nd World Conference on China Studies to discuss, among others, trade, globalization and why the Yangtze Delta remains China’s economic powerhouse.
Q: The theme of this conference is “Historical and Contemporary China: A Global Perspective.” As an economic historian, how do you view the connection between history and the present?
This question has long been answered by many economic historians. My favorite answer comes from Nobel Prize winner Douglass North, who says “History matters. It matters not just because we can learn from the past, but because the present and the future are connected to the past by the continuity of a society’s institutions. Today’s and tomorrow’s choices are shaped by the past. And the past can only be made intelligible as a story of institutional evolution.” In other words, history is the bridge connecting the past and the future.
Where did we come from, and where are we going in the future? These two essential questions in human history are not divided. Therefore, it’s not wise to divide historical and contemporary China, which some scholars used to do. Increasingly more academics who study contemporary China have realized this and turned to China’s rich history to look for answers.
Q: Does this apply to your research into the Yangtze Delta, especially “An Early Modern Economy in China: The Yangzi Delta in the 1820s,” in which you constructed an estimate of GDP in the 1820s Yangtze Delta?
Yes, I spent 10 years studying 1820s Songjiang area (today’s Shanghai Municipality) and Yangtze Delta region, using the method of the Historical System of National Accounts (HSNA). Contrary to popular belief, my research reveals that agriculture did not dominate the region in the 1820s. Agriculture contributed only about 30 percent of the region’s GDP at that time. Industry took the biggest share, followed by services.
Such high level of economic and social development in the region requires a different talent pool and set of skills, and also cultivated an environment eager to study new technology and ready for transformation.
I also compared it with the analysis of Professor Jan Luiten van Zanden, a well-known Dutch historian, of economic performance of the Netherlands during the same period, to further understand the social economic development of the Yangtze River Delta region. The Netherlands had top GDP in Europe at the time. The level of GDP per capita and its economic structure in the Delta was very close to the Netherlands, the leading economy of Western Europe on the eve of industrialization.
This advanced economy is a main factor behind the region’s unique success, which is rooted in its long-run economic and social development, including the complex institutions that underpin economic progress.
Q: Your current research is related to the history of trade. How do you view the anti-globalization movement from a historical perspective?
I see this anti-globalization trend as a temporary countercurrent with its reasons. Globalization has surely helped expand global output and benefited more people in the world, but it has also inevitably changed the world’s pre-existing structure.
Some previously privileged countries like the US blame their domestic problems like unemployment to globalization, which led to dissatisfaction and social uncertainties.
For China, globalization has created great opportunities, to the point that China joining the WTO in 2001 was called the Second Age of Discovery.
So in the process of globalization, some nations benefited while some others consider themselves at losses. There is no historical precedency to solve such conflicts, because globalization is entirely new. I think it’s also irreversible.
In the history of China, trade, not war, has been its way to interact with other nations. That commercial peace was the cornerstone of peace in East Asia for hundreds of years.
According to the “List of Wars” in Britannica, over the 850-year period from 1000 to 1850 CE, there were more than 30 large-scale wars between countries (or among multiple nations). These conflicts occurred almost exclusively in Europe and West Asia, with none taking place between China and its neighboring countries.
Why was this the case? One reason lies in the fact that throughout history, China’s interactions with the outside world were primarily conducted through trade.
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