Market Integration in Southwest of Qing China: A Quantitative Historical Investigation

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-289-7_17How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Market Integration; Rice Price; Relative Price Method; Southwest China; Qing Dynasty

Abstract

The relationship between the development of market system and economic growth has always been a concern of economists. While market integration among different regions is an important feature of market development, there is not only controversy about whether market integration existed in China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but also that the literature is mainly concentrated on the well-developed areas, little attention has been given to the border areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. Based on the rice price data of Yunnan, Guangxi and Guizhou in the Reign of Qianlong in Qing Dynasty, this paper quantitatively analyzes the degree of market segmentation in this region by exploiting the relative price method. The results show that the market integration degree is the highest in the political and economic center area where the provincial government is located, while the market integration degree is the worst in the remote area near the provincial border with congested traffic. Moreover, after the implementation of the prefecture-county system (directly governed by central government), the areas that governed by minority chiefs formerly with convenient transportation conditions, such as water way, experienced market development due to the opening of trade routes with other regions.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tianyu Huang
AU  - Xingyue Chen
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/09/28
TI  - Market Integration in Southwest of Qing China: A Quantitative Historical Investigation
BT  - Proceedings of the 2024 SSEME workshop on Social Sciences and Education (SSEME-SSE 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 139
EP  - 150
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-289-7_17
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-289-7_17
ID  - Huang2024
ER  -