英国《经济学人》杂志最新一期文章探讨了中国古代所谓黄金鼎盛时代的谜。
文章说，中国领导人习近平提出了"中国梦"的口号，习近平表示要重振大中华，让中国像古时那样再成为全世界最富有、最强大的国家，甩掉由于受到外国侵略以及经济灾难所造成的"几百年的耻辱"。
但是，现在由英国牛津大学以及北京大学和清华大学研究人员所进行的一项新研指出，其实古代的中国没有共产党人想象的那样强大，中国过去就落后欧洲几个世纪，并不完全是欧洲的工业革命才把中国甩在了后面。
这些学者研究和对比公元1000年期间中国与英国、荷兰、意大利以及日本的人均国内生产总值，结果发现中国唯一比这些国家富有的时期是在11世纪，那时中国已经发明了火药、指南针、纸币等。
但是，到了1300年，意大利已经赶上了中国，而到了1400年英国和荷兰也追上了中国。
大约在1800年日本也超过了中国，成为亚洲第一富国。中国的清朝是人均国内生产总值大倒退的时期。
文章说，这些研究可能打破了中国人一直以来认为的古时的中国与欧洲享受同样的生活标准直到欧洲18世纪末的工业革命才被西方超过。
因此，文章说西方的发展始于工业革命前，同时也暗示着欧洲的富有与中国的贫穷不能只用工业革命来解释，肯定有体制的不同。
文章特别提到，中国农民的命运在几百年来似乎改变的并不大。
A not-so-golden age
China has been poorer than Europe longer than the party
thinks
How will this affect Xi’s ”Chinese dream”?
The Economist, 2017-6-15
Xi Jinping, China’s president, likes to talk of his “Chinese
dream”. He says it involves “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. To
him this means that under the Communist Party, China will again be the world’s
richest, most powerful country as it was before the “hundred years of
humiliation”—the economic disasters and territorial grabs by foreigners during
the century after the first opium war of 1839-42. By extension the party’s
legitimacy will rest on this rejuvenation. But what if China was not the
world’s richest country before 1839? What if it has lagged behind Europe not
for 175 years but for 675? Would Mr Xi’s Chinese dream be so compelling?
A new study by Stephen Broadberry of Oxford University,
Hanhui Guan of Peking University and David Daokui Li of Tsinghua University in
Beijing argues that China has indeed lagged behind Europe for centuries. It
compares levels of GDP per person in China, England, Holland, Italy and Japan
since around the year 1000. It finds the only period when China was richer than
the others was during the 11th century. By that time China had invented
gunpowder, the compass, movable type, paper money and the blast furnace.
But according to Mr Broadberry and his co-authors, Italy had
caught up with China before 1300, and Holland and England by 1400. Around 1800
Japan overtook China as the richest Asian country. Chinese GDP per person fell
relentlessly during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). In 1620, it was roughly the
same as it had been in 980. By 1840, it had fallen by almost a third (see
chart).
These findings challenge a hitherto common belief that China
and Europe had similar living standards for centuries until the West’s
industrial revolution began in the late 18th century: a point often referred to
by historians as the “great divergence”. This view, promoted by Kenneth
Pomeranz of the University of Chicago, lends more support to the party’s
understanding.
Researchers used not to be able to work out GDP from 1,000
years ago. Angus Maddison, an economic historian, was among the first to try.
But the research by Mr Broadberry and his colleagues, which scales up local and
private records to generate national accounts, offers greater detail. The first
study of Britain’s historical GDP using this technique appeared in 2008. It was
followed quickly by other ones focusing on Holland, Italy and now on China.
Doubts remain about the quality of the Chinese data. A
recent study by Kent Deng and Patrick O’Brien of the London School of Economics
argues they are too fragmentary. It is hard enough comparing the living
standards of different countries today, let alone doing so in the distant past
with far less precise statistics. Mr Broadberry responds that China’s
historical sources are no worse than those available for medieval England. He
also notes that imperial China and early-modern Europe both used silver as a
unit of value, facilitating comparison.
But there remains a vital difference of scale. Italy and the
Holland were the richest parts of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. It
might be better to compare them not with China as a whole but with its richest
part, the Yangzi delta, around modern-day Shanghai. If you do that, England and
Holland were still richer than the Yangzi area in 1800 but the point at which
they overtook the delta turns out to be around 1700. This is not so different
from Mr Pomeranz’s view that the great divergence happened in the 18th century.
But it still means the process had begun before the industrial revolution,
which in turn implies that European wealth and Chinese poverty cannot be
explained by industrialisation: they must reflect institutional differences.
Mr Xi would do better to consider a different source of
legitimacy from history: poverty reduction. If Mr Broadberry and his co-authors
are right, Chinese peasants saw almost 1,000 years of decline and misery after
1000. But Mr Xi’s party has massively reduced rural poverty and hopes to
eradicate it by 2020. That is an achievable dream.
