Discovering Chinese economic history from footnotes : the living tale of a private merchant archive (1800-1850)

This article recounts our unique encounter –through the last seven years of our research - with the Tong Taisheng (统泰升) merchant account books in the Ninjing county of Northern China in 1800-1850. By tracing the personal history of the original owner or donor, we address a large historiographical and epistemological issue behind the current Great Divergence debate on why Industrial Revolution occurred in England but not in China. Our article showcases how the development of political ideology and academic discipline in the modern era impacts our understanding of historical statistics and realities of the early modern era, a critical issue largely neglected in the current Great Divergence debate

Real GDP in Pre-War East Asia: A 1934-36 Benchmark Purchasing Power Parity Comparison with the U.S.

This article provides estimates of purchasing power parity (PPP) converters for expenditure side GDP of Japan/China and Japan/U.S through a detailed matching of prices for more than 50 types of goods and services in private consumption and about 20 items or sectors for investment and government expenditure. Based on our finding and linking with the earlier studies on the relative price levels of Taiwan and Korea, we derive the mid-1930s benchmark PPP adjusted per capita income of Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea at 31%, 10%, 23%, and 12% of the U.S. level respectively for the mid-1930s. These estimates corrected the consistent downward bias in East Asian income levels based on market exchange rate conversions. While confirming Angus Maddison's estimates for China and Taiwan based on the 1990 benchmark back-projection method, they do point to a 23% and 85% overestimate in his comparable figures for Japan and Korea respectively for the mid-1930s period. This article develops a preliminary theoretical and empirical framework to demonstrate the possible source of the biases in the back-projection method. We briefly discuss the implications of our findings on the initial conditions and long-term growth dynamics in East Asia and beyond.

International Comparison in Historical Perspective: Reconstructing the 1934-36 Benchmark Purchasing Power Parity for Japan, Korea and Taiwan

This article provides the first expenditure approach estimate of purchasing power parity (PPP) converters for 1934-36 Japan, Korea and Taiwan. We matched all together 70 to 80 types of goods and services for private consumption, government expenditure and investment using three levels of weights derived from actual expenditure surveys. We find that the 1934-6 average prices of Korea for private consumption, investment and government expenditure were about 0.86, 0.89 and 0.98 times that of Japan respectively; and for Taiwan 0.84, 0.87 and 0.95 respectively. This gives the 1934-6 Korea and Taiwan overall GDE average price levels of 0.87 and 0.86 respectively that of Japan. Our new benchmark estimate is an improvement over existing converters based either on exchange rates or the 1990 backward projection method, which was embedded with index number biases. It provides a vital link for a long-term overview of structural change, ethnic income distribution and the historical convergence or divergence for these three economies in the past century.

International Comparison in Historical Perspective: Reconstructing the 1934-36 Benchmark Purchasing Power Parity for Japan, Korea and Taiwan

This paper provides the first estimate of consumption purchasing power parity (PPP) converters for 1934-36 Japan, Korea and Taiwan by matching prices of more than 50 types of goods and services with consumption weights derived from household expenditure surveys. We find that the 1934-6 average consumer prices of Korea and Taiwan were about 0.86 and 0.84 times that of Japan respectively. Using our new benchmark estimate, we make a theoretical and empirical investigation on the possible sources of biases in existing estimates based on the exchange rate conversion and the 1990 backward projected method. Our estimate provides a vital link that allows us to conduct an overall review of structural change, ethnic income distribution and the historical trend of economic convergence or divergence for these three economies in the past century.

Discovering economic history in footnotes: the story of the Tong Taisheng merchant archive (1790-1850)

The Tong Taisheng (统泰升) merchant account books in Ningjin county of northern China in 1800-1850 constitute the most complete and integrated surviving archive of a family business for pre-modern China. They contain unusually detailed and high-quality statistics on exchange rates, commodity prices and other information. Utilized once in the 1950s, the archive has been left largely untouched until our recent, almost accidental rediscovery. This article introduces this unique set of archives and traces the personal history of the original owner and donor. Our story of an archive encapsulates the history of modern China and how the preservation and interpretation of evidence and records of Chinese economic statistics were profoundly impacted by the development of political ideology and in modern and contemporary China. We briefly discuss the historiographical and epistemological implication of our finding in the current Great Divergence debate

The compensational boundary method to calculate the projected contact area of nanoindentation in atomistic simulations

The atomistic simulation of nanoidentation has become a powerful method to probe the mechanical behaviour and properties of small volumes of materials. It is crucial to calculate the projected contact area (PCA) accurately in order to obtain a reliable value of nanoindentation hardness. In this work, atomistic simulations of nanoindentation were performed on the Cu(111) and Ag(111) surfaces, and a new compensational boundary method is proposed to calculate the PCA. Compared with other available methods, this method provides a clear physical implication, and works well independently of the contact depth and the deformation behaviour of the material. It is also concluded that the widely-used experimental Oliver–Pharr (O–P) method significantly underestimates the PCA in atomistic simulations, and does not work for shallow nanoindentation at the nanoscale

Molecular dynamics study of the interactions of incident N or Ti atoms with the TiN(001) surface

The interaction processes between incident N or Ti atoms and the TiN(001) surface are simulated by classical molecular dynamics based on the second nearest-neighbor modified embedded-atom method potentials. The simulations are carried out for substrate temperatures between 300–700 K and kinetic energies of the incident atoms within the range of 0.5–10 eV. When N atoms impact against the surface, adsorption, resputtering and reflection of particles are observed; several unique atomic mechanisms are identified to account for these interactions, in which the adsorption could occur due to the atomic exchange process while the resputtering and reflection may simultaneously occur. The impact position of incident N atoms on the surface plays an important role in determining the interaction modes. Their occurrence probabilities are dependent on the kinetic energy of incident N atoms but independent on the substrate temperature. When Ti atoms are the incident particles, adsorption is the predominant interaction mode between particles and the surface. This results in the much smaller initial sticking coefficient of N atoms on the TiN(001) surface compared with that of Ti atoms. Stoichiometric TiN is promoted by N/Ti flux ratios larger than one

The development of Chinese accountingand bookkeeping before 1850:insights from the Tŏng Tài Shēngbusiness account books (1798-1850)

Claims have repeatedly been made for the importance of double-entry bookkeeping (‘DEB’) for capitalism’s development in the West, so it is valuable to explore the book-keeping and accounting practices of economically successful organizations elsewhere. Our paper reports our exploration into the original account books contained in the archive of Tŏng Tài Shēng (‘TTS’), a substantial Chinese ‘grocery / merchant-banking’ business whose surviving books span a period from the late 18th century to the middle of the 19th century. The TTS archive is the most complete and integrated surviving merchant archive from before China’s forced opening to the West in the mid-19th century. Our findings about its accounting processes and records (of which we give illustrations) shed critical light on the nature of indigenous Chinese bookkeeping and business organization and on the larger questions about Chinese commercial culture and the path of its development, for comparison with those about the West. We find no evidence in the surviving account books of TTS to support previous arguments in the literature that at this period Chinese accounting practice for successful businesses (must have) had its own 'Chinese double entry bookkeeping' ('CDEB') comparable to Western DEB

Discovering economic history in footnotes: the story of Tŏng Tàishēng merchant archive (1790-1850) and the historiography of modern China

The Tong Taisheng (统泰升) merchant account books in the Ninjing county of Northern China in 1800-1850 is the most complete and integrated surviving archive of a family business. It contains unusually detailed and high-quality statistics on exchange rates, commodity prices and other information. Utilized once in the 1950s, the archive has been left largely untouched until our recent, almost accidental rediscovery. Tracing the personal history of the original owner and donor, we show that the nature of evidence and records of economic statistics of China’s early 19th century, - indeed - of the entire early modern era – have been profoundly impacted by the development of political ideology and consequently of academic discipline in modern and contemporary China. Our article discusses the important historiographical and epistemological issue in interpreting surviving historical statistics which have been largely neglected in the current Great Divergence debate