Title:
From Physiocracy to a New Productive Rural China
From Physiocracy to a New Productive Rural China
Author(s)
Zhang, Boya
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Abstract
This paper examines the reception and impacts of Western ideas of the “agrarian” in China. In particular, it traces how the agrarian philosophy of the Physiocrats traveled across space and time and how this line of thinking influenced the Chinese urban-rural transformation at the turn of the twentieth century. The paper examines Adam Smith’s interpretation of the Physiocracy, and how the agrarian idea was embedded in the liberal school of political economy. By tracing the significant role of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Liang Qichao in cross-cultural borrowing, the paper reveals the Western “agrarian” roots within the concept of “local self-government.” As the paper suggests, it was this line of thought that influenced the state regeneration in early modern China. As a representative case, Zhang Jian’s village-ism and his agrarian practice in Nantong are presented as the epitome of the local self-government movement in the early twentieth century, which marked one of the first rural modernization efforts in China. By tracing the intellectual transmission of the idea of the “agrarian,” the paper aims to unpack the connotation of the “agrarian modern” as an alternative to the mainstream model of high-dense cities and depopulated countryside. This paper offers a perspective to situate the urban-rural transformation in early modern China in a global context without the conventional West-East divide.
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Date Issued
2023-03
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Text
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Proceedings