• DOI:10.1086/452150
• Corpus ID: 35637470

The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China

@article{Lin1995TheNP,
  title={The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China},
  author={Justin Yifu Lin},
  journal={Economic Development and Cultural Change},
  year={1995},
  volume={43},
  pages={269 - 292}
}

• J. Lin
• Published 1 January 1995
• Economics, History
• Economic Development and Cultural Change

One of the most intriguing issues for students of Chinese history and comparative economic history is, Why did the Industrial Revolution not occur in China in the fourteenth century? At that time, almost every element that economists and historians usually considered to be a major contributing factor to the Industrial Revolution in late eighteenth-century England also existed in China. Chinese civilization, like the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India, originated from agriculture. The first unified empire, Qin, was formed in 221 B.c. By 300 B.c., Chinese society had developed into a form that had many characteristics of a market economy, with most land privately owned, a high degree of social division of labor, fairly free movement of labor, and well-functioning factor and product markets.' This comparatively developed "market economy" probably created important attitudes toward profit and contributed to the swift diffusion of the best technology. In the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), the iron-tipped plow, moldboard, and seed drill were widely used in the northern part of China, where the main crops were millet and wheat. The most significant improvements in Chinese agriculture came with the population shift from the north to the rice-growing areas south of the Yangtze River that started at the beginning of the ninth century, and especially after the introduction of a new variety known as "Champa rice" from Indochina at the beginning of the eleventh century.2 This variety, characterized by better drought resistance and faster ripening, enabled farmers to extend the agricultural frontier from the lowlands, deltas, basins, and river valleys to the better-watered hill areas, and allowed production of two and even three crops a year.3