Pranab Bardhan talks to Debin Ma over at his substack:
Pranab Bardhan (PB): 1. First, please give our readers a general idea of your unifying framework for understanding East Asian (particularly Chinese and Japanese) history of development over the last two centuries, and also the contrasts in the pattern.
Debin Ma (DM): In my early work and in two recent papers with my co-authors (Jared Rubin and Weiwen Yin), we seek to provide a unified framework for interpreting the gradual yet decisive two centuries of profound transformation in East Asia—what may be termed the Sinic language-group countries or regions (defined by the shared use of ideogrammatic Chinese characters). We examine this transformation through the contrasting patterns of modernization in Meiji Japan—which made a decisive turn toward the West—and Qing China—which remained comparatively lethargic in the face of Western challenges—in the second half of the nineteenth century.
This unified framework highlights three key features. First, given that traditional East Asian economies were far behind the global technological frontier by the mid-nineteenth century, modern economic theory would predict that economic transformation could be achieved through the importation of advanced institutions and technologies from the post–Industrial Revolution West. Indeed, on the eve of Western imperial encroachment, all Sinic-language regions shared canonical Confucian texts and worldviews; upheld Confucian or Neo-Confucian doctrines of governance; practiced intensive small-scale (primarily rice-based) family farming characterized by abundant labor and scarce capital; and were often (rightly or wrongly) described as embodying a predominantly community-based or collectivist culture.
More here. Part II can be found here.
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