S. W. Cheung's analysis of rice prices in eighteenth-century China is an excellent and well-written study of the multiple factors that determined the price of rice – China's most important long-distance trade commodity – in the inter-linked markets that lay along the Yangzi River–Grand Canal transport route. His objective is to determine the extent to which the rice market was an “integrated” one. That is to say, one in which the price of rice was correlated, or moved in tandem, between the various markets, thus creating a “self-regulating” market.
Cheung locates his study in the context of scholarship that focuses on the significance of this long-distance trade in sparking capital accumulation and economic development, highlighting the work of Wu Chengming (1985), whose approach shifted the study of Chinese economic development away from the “sprouts of capitalism,” and also the work of G. William Skinner (1977), who drew attention to the regional character of Chinese market development and the key role of canal-riverine transport and central markets on the Yangzi–Grand Canal axis (pp. 2–5). He then provides excellent and concise reviews of the landmark studies of the Chinese rice trade, including Chuan Han-sheng and Richard Kraus's study (1975) of the hub of the Yangzi rice trade at Suzhou and its distribution routes via river and canal to southern Jiangsu and via the coast to Zhejiang and Fujian (p. 5). Special attention is drawn to Wang Yeh-chien's noteworthy contributions to the issues of rice prices and market integration and his application of the Pearson correlation coefficient methodology to examine price series data in prefectural cities in south and central China and to locales in North China to determine the flow of trade and degree of market integration (pp. 5–6). Finally, the author highlights works that emphasize the important role of government policies and initiatives that influenced rice prices, the rice trade, and the “sporadic” pattern of market integration, including investments in Grand Canal, grain transport, and granary infrastructure (pp. 6–7). These works, for example, suggest that government construction and maintenance of the Grand Canal reduced transport costs between north and central China and, therefore, stimulated private trade in commodities other than rice between the southern coastal city of Hangzhou and Beijing on the North China Plain, and led to the rise of prosperous commercial cities, such as Linqing, on the canal between Yangzhou and Beijing. But these works also assert that these very actions also allowed the Qing state to control and manipulate the Beijing grain market, making it unprofitable for private rice traders from the Yangzi region and preventing its integration with the Yangzi rice trade.
In the body of the work, Cheung re-examines these earlier works carefully and critically, drawing on a rich array of primary sources, including Qing rice price reports, secret memorials, imperial observations in the edicts, contemporary accounts of currency, price data, and fluctuations of both in discrete regional locales. He questions many of the assumptions and interpretive generalizations of earlier studies, filling in the gaps and looking below the surface to identify discrete factors that reveal a more realistic and complex picture of rice prices and market integration.
He first investigates the role of the Grand Canal in the north–south trade in rice and other commodities (Chapter 1). He points out that state funding of Grand Canal infrastructure, grain fleets, canal and transport labor, and, finally, the issuance of permits to transport troops to carry tax-free private goods on the grain fleets during each annual transport cycle (the rights to which they subsequently sold to private merchants, pp. 17–18), subsidized transport for private traders and enabled them to develop long-distance trade links between the Yangzi region and North China in goods other than rice.
At the same time, he argues that state investment in the capital granaries enabled the state to amass stores of tribute grain in them, and to use those stores to manipulate and control the rice market in Beijing and environs through the use of reduced-price sales during periods of dearth, the generous provision of rice gruel for the poor, and famine relief for the capital region (Chapter 2). Additionally, the “illegal” sale of “salary grain” by the military stationed in Beijing (which accounted for 92 per cent of the total yearly grain tribute delivered to the capital, pp. 31–36), also contributed to low rice prices and ample supplies in Beijing. With its abundance of tribute grain supplies, the state could also assist the provinces in the canal zone in the event of grain shortages and famine by allowing them to “retain” their tribute quotas for local use when faced with shortages or divert them to nearby areas of dearth. Because of these abundant government rice stores, the state “protected its finances from fluctuating prices as well as aiding provincial governments in times of need” (p. 51).
The author concludes that as a result of Qing investment in the Grand Canal and granary-system infrastructure and their manipulation of the Beijing rice market, the state distorted this market and that of the northern Grand Canal cities in Zhili, Shandong, and Henan, thereby precluding the participation of private rice traders from the South and preventing the integration of the rice market with the Yangzi valley.
Having challenged convincingly the view that Beijing and the northern Grand Canal cities were an integral part of the Yangzi rice market, the author turns his attention to the Lower Yangzi rice market centered in Suzhou and re-examines the evidence and methodologies used by scholars to determine (1) the degree of rice price inflation during the eighteenth century; (2) puzzling fluctuations in rice prices and the ratio of silver to copper cash in the last quarter of the century (Chapter 3); and (3) factors that influenced patterns of rice production and prices in the Yangzi valley, including supply and demand, demographic change, and production techniques (Chapter 4).
Cheung asserts that rice prices rose quite consistently in the Lower Yangzi region from 1700 to 1755, due to poor harvests rather than to population growth and_or the development of a commercial and craft-industrial economy that some have argued drew labor away from agriculture (pp. 80–97). Moreover, prices were sufficiently high in the two periods from 1724–1727 and 1732–1755 to spark the long-distance rice trade with the middle Yangzi region. He maintains, however, contrary to the views of many scholars, that this long-distance trade did not continue into the second half of the eighteenth century (pp. 97–114). Instead, in the third quarter of the century, rice prices in the Lower Yangzi region leveled off and the region was generally able to meet the food needs of its growing population because of abundant harvests that reflected improvements in agriculture. He also points out that when faced with shortages due to poor harvests, the population switched to alternative, lower-cost food crops and_or lower-grade rice. Only during the period of poor harvests from 1779 to 1785 did rice prices rise sufficiently to revive the long-distance trade with the Middle Yangzi (pp. 97–103).
Yet, although rice prices leveled off in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, puzzling price fluctuations occurred in the last quarter due to changes and instability in the monetary system: first, from 1750 to 1793, the silver supply increased due to inflows of silver bullion from the British_European tea trade; second, this silver source came to an abrupt halt during the early period of the Napoleonic Wars (1793–1797) when the sea lanes in maritime Asia were closed to British trade, and, finally, the debasement of copper cash within China led to a rise in prices quoted in copper cash from the 1770s to around 1800. The resulting monetary conditions resulted in price instability in a variety of different regional locales in the Lower Yangzi and coastal regions (pp. 53–74).
From this analysis, the author concludes that the Yangzi valley was a “segmented” market in which long-distance trade occurred only when the price differentials between the markets in different parts of the region were sufficiently high to offset transport costs, and this was rarely the case for the Lower Yangzi region. It was, in his words, a “prototype” integrated market in which the degree of integration changed yearly in response to market conditions and to fluctuations in the monetary supply (pp. 113–14).
Finally, in Chapter 5, the author returns to his earlier theme – that state policy and actions had a major impact on eighteenth-century rice prices and markets in the Yangzi–Grand Canal corridor. He points out that while the state grain transport and granary networks prevented the integration of the North China–Beijing rice markets with those in the Yangzi region, yet the Qing state's prohibitions on hoarding and on provincial retention of rice supplies during periods of famine and dearth served to enhance the private rice trade by restraining speculation and keeping rice-marketing communications open.
Overall, Cheung's book on rice prices is splendid. It is clearly and concisely argued. It is extremely successful in critiquing the major works in the field on the rice trade and integrating this discussion into his arguments in the body of the work, and he does so in a positive way, highlighting the contributions of earlier works, while developing evidence that clarifies and revises some of their conclusions. One of the most arresting features of Cheung's style of argumentation is the way he digs away at troubling issues that just don't seem quite correct to him., such as his discussion of Wang Yeh-chien's view that the integrated Yangzi rice market included the coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian. In this case, the author demonstrates that the periods of rice scarcity in these provinces could not have been alleviated by coastal rice shipments from Suzhou because the prevailing winds would not have allowed vessels from the lower Yangzi to sail south during the months when these two provinces tended to experience food grain shortages (pp. 87–92).
The work is of great value because it spreads a wide net over the various empire-wide and regional issues that bore on rice prices. His emphasis on the state's strategic approach to the rice trade in both the Yangzi and capital regions is useful because it helps explain the Qing government's willingness to invest huge amounts of capital and human resources in the management of the Grand Canal, grain transport, and the granary systems. Similarly, his careful exposition of discrete sectors of the Yangzi rice trade helps to modify and curb scholarly over-generalizations about this trade, and allows the reader to see the local dynamics at play in specific sectors of the rice market. For these reasons, the work will be of great interest to Qing scholars in general as well as those that focus on the Qing rice market and economy in particular. Because of its readability and concise analyses, it is bound to be a hit with undergraduates and graduate students alike!
