Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market and Environment Decline, 1690s‐1990s

Changes in the perspective of disaster

Disasters, which almost occurred at the beginning of human society, had given a mark of suffering profiling features, bring endless pain for human which triggers a collective hatred of the whole society. This resulted in not only the subconscious of human disasters awareness, but also sets the emotional tone of academic research. Nonetheless, in long perspective, the occurrence of disasters indeed exists some reasonable factors, and reflected the conflict between heaven, earth and human. Then the disaster is a malignant tumor in the social body, or is it a sustain essential in the progress of social development, all of these need to remove emotional from rational thinking. Professor Li's outstanding work can provoke some useful thoughts.

In Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market and Environment Decline, 1690s‐1990s, Lillian M. Li provides a understanding of relationship between disasters and economic development in a long‐term perspective. She starts the topic from descriptions of heaven, earth and human in North China, and the efforts of human being to control river, especially in Zhili‐Hebei region where the Hai River system had brought so many problems, and threaten the survival of human being in that place. She concludes that nature crises occurred in later years was the unconscious results of man's efforts to conquer and remake nature which made the rich land in north China vulnerable to nature disasters and suffered more survival crises. Professor Li also points out that river control became so important in Zhili‐Hebei region that once government neglects the river management, there would be disasters.

But the environmental history in north China (the relation between heaven, earth and human) discussed in the book is far from the process of environmental change itself, Professor Li regards nature as a variable for further study of regional disasters, food prices, market integration and other issues in Zhili‐Hebei areas, this point of view runs through the whole article.

And then she discusses the existence state to ordinary people in north China. She starts with population, agriculture and food, and she thinks the situation in North China is not quite a Malthusian tale. She proves during 1700‐1950, although the production and living situation in north China was full of risk and uncertainty, there is a thin line between life and death, famine was not the inevitable consequence of population pressure. Multiple cropping system do provide some protection to cope with seasonal food shortage, drought and flood. At the same time, American crops of high yield, state intervention in important areas, and external supply of grain all provide a lifeline for this area.

Then she analyses long‐term change and seasonal variation of two staple grain prices in Zhili‐Hebei region, and their relationship with disaster, grain harvest and storage, market development. As the window of economic progress, market can reflect virtually the entire content of the ancient social and economic activities. In an isolated market, supply and demand are two important elements that can decide the price of any kind of grain. Price is bound to change with the scarcity degree of the grain to some extent. When a disasters occurred as external shocks, food became so scarce that food price rose to an unprecedented height, grain storage in local area was very important in regulating the market price, and was an important standard to measure land productivity and food policy. When local market was lack of grain supply, grain transported from other markets could help to reduce grain price in local market, this topic involves the degree of market development.

Professor Li calculates the correlation coefficient which influence the market integration of the market food price fluctuation, then analyzed the administrative division factor, the market integration degree reduction between eighteenth and nineteenth century. From a point of environmental and geographical divisions, she studied different natural environment inter‐regional markets integration in North China.

Through the province and provincial comparative analysis of the grain as the core market integration situation, the author concludes that the Qing Dynasty already appears a nationwide food market integration phenomenon, but evidence of Zhili still shows province market integration does not reflect a significant same trend, and points out that there is a fundamental difference between trading ports and inland economic development in nineteenth century.

Professor Li in the writings points out that the Qing emperor and officials pay attention to use market forces to improve the circulation of goods, and also take decisive intervention if market naturally adjusting function fails, especially for domestic stake related food market. She attributes the convergence situation of food price in the eighteenth century to “false market integration” under government‐led regulation between supply and demand. This false market integration is formed by the government through Changping or food transportation and direct intervention. In addition, government unconscious policy behavior can likewise lead to factors changes in food price. However, these data can only reflect the changes of the price factor in different areas' markets, and if simply using the calculated data to illustrate the problem of market integration, is bound to ignore the non‐market factors that impact on price. Therefore, the “false market integration” concept put forward simply to make up for this defection.

It is based on macro control of China ancient long‐term economic fluctuation and precise quantitative research, in the research of the relationship between disasters and economic development in Zhili areas, Professor Li gets away from simple population or food (the Malthusian trap) thinking model, mixes the state, market, and environment together, and makes a multi‐faceted long time analysis. Combine the natural environment changes, agricultural resources changes, economic and social transformation, the court's efforts and the people will to survive complex faceted together. In addition, this research hedging provides more learning methods for the development of Chinese disasters history and economic history.

Famine policy is the main means for Chinese Governments on social and economic macro‐control, traditional disaster history all regards it as a core content of discourse. It examines the relationship between the interventionist state policies of the eighteenth century Qing emperors (“the golden age of famine relief”), the environmental and political crises of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (when China was called “the Land of Famine”), and the ambitions of the Mao era (which tragically led to the greatest famine in human history). Using the Zhili‐Hebei region as its focus, the book also reveals the unusual role played by the institutions and policies designed to ensure food security for the capital, Beijing.

Professor Li also describes measures by government relieving the famine since the Qing Dynasty. It is difficult to explain the effectiveness of government measures for simply evaluating famine relief situation in a single regional government, as in the case of the absence of reference, the movement of anything will become impossible to be considered, and the government's famine relief performance as well. Professor Li uses price changes in famines as a standard, and the West as a reference, analyzes the Qing government's famine performance, says Qianlong period Zhili's poor harvest causes food price rises about 20‐70 percent, the range of high limit is not a negligible data, but compared to Europe in the most serious famine which food price rises two to four times, even the 70 percent rise in rates appears to be negligible, and then she attributes sharp reduction of the government relief efforts at the end of Qianlong to the government's will increasingly weak, population pressure, environmental degradation and national financial difficulties, but in fact, the last stage of government finance excessive investment in disaster largely restricts the capacity of famine relief in Jiadao Dynasty, the government inadequate behavior is more a frustration, rather than just the elimination of will. This is can be seen some clues from the comparison of the outbreak frequency of flood and drought and famine.

It is worth pondering that the input to disasters by the government greatly reduces the impact of disasters, but the frequent occurrence of disasters in China, for the whole economic development, the consumption of the total wealth of society is enormous, means that “false market integration” is based on uncontrolled consumption of the total social wealth. If using a long period of environmental history research methods to analyze, the long‐term impact on the environment between government's famine relief activities and river‐controlling seems to be similar association, that is, the stability of the short period is on the cost of the damage of the length period.

Understanding the progress of long‐term economic fluctuation in disaster perspective, researching how the government and ordinary people acted before a disaster, is a good way to catch the economic and social development law. Famine is an important part of Chinese history. It is not only of people brought to millions of pain of cutting one's body, the ruling class will conquer the natural disaster will as its core ideology. However, result from the challenges of environment and society bigger. Why the three century activities of disaster relief but only for the brief success, long failure, as well as some other unintentional result, this book gives some thinking. Famine and relief about the fate of North China and even the whole China, until the end of twentieth Century remains the same.