Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870-1937

Drawing on material previously available only in Chinese, this book provides an assessment of China’s recent reform of the foreign trade system and discusses the benefits of such reform in terms of higher growth for its economy. The result suggests that the benefits from foreign trade reforms have been reduced by the lack of responsiveness among China’s businesses to changes in domestic and foreign market conditions, and by the tendency for foreign trade to aggravate the inflation problem.