Macro-Economic Cycles Related to Climate change in Dynastic China

Abstract

Investigations of the relationships between climate and human history often place more emphasis on the science of climate change than on understanding human socio-economic processes, and therefore suffer from superficial results and an unbalanced perspective. This is partly due to the lack of high-resolution data concerning long-term socio-economic processes. Here, we base our study of climate and society on a series of 2130-yr-long economic proxy data from China with decadal resolution. The economy was associated significantly with temperature and precipitation at the two predominant bands of 100 and 320 yr. The phase transition of economic states was influenced positively by long-term temperature change combined with triggering effects of short-term changes in precipitation. However, climatic impact on economy should not be recognized as simple causality but some driving-response relation coupled with meditation by human agency at multiple scales. A model of 'adaptive cycles' implies, in relative to the developing phases, climate-economy relationship during the declining phases was more easily moderated by slower processes like rigidity and faster processes like unrest. From a more-macro perspective, climatic driving for the macro-economic cycles was moderated by larger and slower processes like social memory, spatial shifting of key economic areas, and social-technical advance.

To what extent did changes in temperature affect China's socioeconomic development from the Western Han Dynasty to the Five Dynasties period?

“…A reconstructed 10‐year national economic‐level series for the period 220 bc to 1910 AD (Qin Dynasty to Qing Dynasty) is selected (Wei et al ., 2015b) (Fig. 2).…”

“…Studies on historical climate change based on this data source are distinctive and internationally recognized. With historical documents as the data source, several 10‐year series of proxy indices for socioeconomic development have been reconstructed and provide long‐term basic data for quantitatively analysing the social impact of climate change (Bai and Kung, 2011; Su et al ., 2014, 2016; Wei et al ., 2014, 2015a,b; Fang et al ., 2015; Yin et al ., 2015, 2016a,b). Hence, in this study, the temperature and social conditions in each decade are jointly analysed based on high‐resolution data, long‐term changes in temperature, and a series of socioeconomic proxy indices with the goal of determining how many periods from the Western Han Dynasty to the Five Dynasties of ancient China were mainly affected by changes in temperature and how many periods were controlled by socioeconomic factors.…”

Natural Disasters in the History of the Eastern Turk Empire

“…Changes in climate and their effect on human society is one of the most pressing problems for the world today and for science in particular (Fei et al 2004;Zhang et al 2007Zhang et al , 2010Büntgen et al 2011;Zhang et al 2011;Ludlow et al 2013;Hsiang et al 2013;Wei et al 2015). Global warming and human susceptibility to it cannot be taken lightly (Trenberth 2012).…”

Climate change and social vicissitudes in China over the past two millennia

“…Long-term climate change has significant direct effects on regional agricultural production (Galloway, 1986;Su et al, 2014;Yin et al, 2015), which in turn affects regional land carrying capacity. At an empire-wide scale, government-led regulation of food constituted the main aspect of economic life in ancient China (Wei et al, 2015). Consequently, the impacts of climate change could pass to the economic system through the impacts of climate change on the agricultural system (Fang et al, 2013).…”