Land markets in late imperial and republican China

Abstract

China has had very active markets for both the sale and the rental of land since Song times (960–1279), if not longer. By the sixteenth century, most of the institutional arrangements that would characterize these markets until 1949 were in place. These institutions differed sharply from those of emerging land markets in early modern Western Europe: in particular, government played a lesser role in adjudicating disputes over land contracts, and customary arrangements included features that (a) gave some sellers of land claims on purchasers that could last for many years and (b) gave some tenants, especially in South and East China, very strong usufruct rights, which themselves became a form of tradable property. However, despite these and other differences from Western models, Chinese land markets were quite efficient, and provided the incentives needed for a very productive agriculture; secure tenants, for instance, responded to their strong position by behaving like owners and investing heavily in improving the land.

History as a laboratory to better understand the formation of institutions

“…7 A more optimistic picture of factor markets in early modern China is offered by Kenneth Pomeranz, who stresses the favourable institutional framework of these markets (Pomeranz, 2000: 69-82;Pomeranz, 2008). 7 A more optimistic picture of factor markets in early modern China is offered by Kenneth Pomeranz, who stresses the favourable institutional framework of these markets (Pomeranz, 2000: 69-82;Pomeranz, 2008).…”

“…This picture contrasts with the noted absence or weakness of factor markets outside Western Europe in the early modern period, as observed for areas like India and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Ottoman empire, but also for highly-developed societies like China and Japan 7 . A more optimistic picture of factor markets in early modern China is offered by Kenneth Pomeranz, who stresses the favourable institutional framework of these markets (Pomeranz, 2000: 69–82; Pomeranz, 2008). And indeed, in China, and perhaps even more in Japan, market exchange grew in importance in the early modern period (for Japan: Saito, 2009), but the pace of this development was much slower than in Western Europe.…”

Putting Modernity in its Place(s)

“…For instance, one might argue that the strong and relatively widely shared property rights of rural China after c. 1400 (as compared to any place in Europe, but especially to England's massively unequal distribution of property) were advantageous for a long time, because they encouraged both careful cultivation and high levels of investment in making the land more productive. They were not very well designed for enabling people to use land as abstract capital, borrowing against it for other ventures, but that mattered relatively little so long as few technologies were available that could dramatically change levels of productivity in other sectors (Pomeranz, 2008a(Pomeranz, , 2008b. Once such technologies did exist -and once Europeans also gained access to vast new land frontiers, making it less important to maximize per acre yields -a different property-rights regime, much closer to those in Western Europe, may have become advantageous.…”

Contratos agrarios y renta de la tierra en Toledo, 1521-1650

“…Sobre fórmulas de cesión y derechos de propiedad en la Suecia moderna, WÄSTFELT (2013). Sobre los mercados de la tierra en China en los periodos tardoimperial y republicano, POMERANZ (2008). Sobre el impacto de la tecnología agrícola en las formas de tenencia en la China preindustrial, YANG (2012).…”