The Rural Economy of Pre-Liberation China: Trade Expansion and Peasant Livelihood in Jiangsu and Guangdong, 1870 to 1937 (South-East Asian Historical Monographs)

This empirical study of the historical development of China's rural economy from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s looks at the factors of farm tenancy and management, the development of cash crops, the Chinese banking system, the growth of trade, and other issues such as labor, technology, geography, and political development to present a thought-provoking discussion of the "pessimistic" and "optimistic" approaches to the plight of Chinese peasants and farmers.