Li Bozhong (Zhang Jing)

Li Bozhong, an economic historian, chair professor of humanities at Peking University, and professor of the Department of History at Peking University, has written a new book in EnglishNew Perspectives on Chinese Economic HistoryRecently published by Tsinghua University Press, China Economic History is a collection of 26 essays on Chinese economic history in English. Professor Li Bozhong is one of the first batch of doctoral degree recipients in liberal arts after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and an internationally renowned economic historian, who has been engaged in the research of Chinese economic history for a long time. These articles have been published in different journals and occasions, the earliest was written in 1986 and the latest was published in 2021, covering the 35 years of Professor Li Bozhong's academic career. At the invitation of the Shanghai Review of Books, economic historian Zhou Lin recently interviewed Mr. Li Bozhong four times about the book, and Mr. Li shared his experience in academic research and writing in Chinese and English over the past 50 years.

New Perspectives on Chinese Economic HistoryPublished by Tsinghua University Press in October 2023

New Perspectives on Chinese HistoryHow did you choose the chapters in this book, and did you have any special considerations in terms of content?

Li Bozhong:The book is divided into two parts, and the articles collected in both sections are arranged chronologically, with no special distinction in content. But there is a thread in this book, which is my personal experience.

Among the scholars of my generation, my experience can be said to be more special in a way, and one aspect is that I have a relatively large number of overseas work experience. Teaching and research overseas requires the use of English, so I have been writing academic papers and lectures in English since 1986. Over the past 30 years, he has written dozens of articles, and now 26 of them have been collected and published as a book. The reason for this is that, on the one hand, some overseas scholars are interested in my research and hope to know more about my research, and on the other hand, it is to summarize my past work, and at the same time, to provide an example of how young scholars at home and abroad can grow up, as a reference for them to explore their academic life. Therefore, the two parts of this collection of essays are arranged according to the chronological order in which the articles were written. Regardless of the academic content, young scholars can see how I learned to write in English, from the relatively na？ve writing at the beginning, to the relatively mature expression later, it has been a long process.

One thing young scholars need to understand is that I didn't learn English on my own until I became an adult, starting with the alphabet. When I was in primary and secondary school, the only foreign language I could learn was Russian. During the Cultural Revolution, I was sent to the frontier countryside to "receive re-education from the poor and middle peasants" as an "intellectual youth", and only then did I begin to teach myself English. The study is carried out at night by returning to the lodgings after a day of working in the fields and by the oil lamps in the evening. Not only are there no teachers, but there are also no textbooks, let alone learning equipment such as audio tapes. By chance, I got a textbook published by the Soviet Union for Soviets to learn English, so I used this book to study on my own, of course, I took many detours, and I only learned "dumb English". Not only is this study time-consuming, but it also incurs risks (I talked about this in an article that is included in my humble book "Good History and Good Teachers: Ten Famous Historians in the Eyes of Students"). Because the English proficiency of young people in the country was very poor at that time, I actually took the first place in English when I was admitted to Xiamen University in 1978. When I arrived at Xiamen University, I began to study English formally, and scholars such as Professor Zheng Chaozong of the Department of Foreign Languages of Xiamen University served as teachers. Mr. Zheng is a well-known expert in English literature, and his course for this graduate student is to read the original readings of famous British literary works (such as Shakespeare, Charlotte Bront？, etc.), which is too difficult for our graduate students who have a poor foundation in English and little understanding of Western culture, so their interest in learning is not too high. At that time, there were not many Chinese history books to read in English, so no special attention was paid to English. In addition, since we majored in ancient Chinese history, I thought that Japanese was more useful for research, so I spent a lot of my energy learning Japanese and less energy on English.

It was not until 1986, at the recommendation of Mr. Wu Chengming, that I went to the United States to attend an academic conference (which was also my first time abroad), and I began to write academic articles in English. Due to the conditions at the time, I had only read a handful of original English books on China's economic history written by overseas scholars. In particular, Professor Dwight Perkins' Agricultural Development in China: 1368-1968 (Agricultural Development in China, 1368-1968, Edinburgh University Press, 1969), which had a significant impact on my knowledge and English. I read very carefully, looked up the dictionary for every new word, and tried my best to imitate his style and expression when writing. In terms of reference books, I only had one English-Chinese dictionary and one Chinese-English dictionary published in China at that time, which was of limited help to the English writing of economic history. I wanted to ask a senior scholar of economic history who is proficient in English to guide me in writing, but I couldn't find it. So I had to bite the bullet and write this article as best I could. This time the writing was so hard that I fell ill. After the article was written, I borrowed an English typewriter and learned to type from scratch. When I finally finished typing the article and returned the typewriter, the typewriter fell off the bicycle and broke, so I had to use a few months' salary to buy a new typewriter and return it to others. After this conference, Mr. Mong invited me to the University of California for a short visit, and then invited me to teach there for a semester in 1988. Since then, he has continued to teach and do research at prestigious universities and research centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. During these teaching and research, I worked hard to improve my English, and finally I was able to participate in many important conferences and events in the field of international economic history, and gave keynote speeches at some major international academic conferences. This process shows that as long as a person works hard, even if the starting point is low and the conditions are poor, he can still do something. Today's young scholars are much better than my generation of scholars in all aspects, and I believe that as long as they work hard, they will definitely be able to make much greater achievements than their predecessors.

When you wrote the first article in this book, in the '80s, why did you choose productivity research? This doesn't seem to be the direction that many scholars at that time would choose.

Li Bozhong:After 1949, there was almost no talk of productivity in Chinese academic circles. This is because for a period of time under the influence of the "ultra-left line" in politics, people understood that "revolution" was the transformation of production relations, so the academic circles also criticized the "theory of productive forces", and even those who studied the real economy did not dare to talk deeply about the problem of productive forces, so almost no one did research on productive forces in history. When I was younger, I didn't have access to overseas economic history research, so I didn't know what or how to conduct overseas economic history research. At that time, I could only read Marxist-Leninist works, but during the "Cultural Revolution", I read the three volumes of Capital and felt that Marx also attached great importance to the productive forces. In addition, I have also read the works of some Soviet economic historians translated in the 1950s, such as Mayman, Skazkin, Bolshnev, etc., and I feel that these scholars have studied Marxism more deeply than most domestic scholars, but they also talked about the issue of productivity, which is very different from the domestic research at that time. Domestic scholars have long talked about "production relations", and to put it mildly, there is nothing new to talk about, so I want to try something new.

In 1978, I was admitted to Xiamen University as a graduate student. At this time, it happened that the reform and opening up was just over, and you could find some academic works published overseas to read. The book I read most well is Professor Dwight Perkins's Agricultural Development in China: 1368-1968, which focuses on "economic growth." Of course, economic growth is closely related to factors such as technology, population, and rational allocation of resources, so I started to explore from this perspective, and the more I do it, the more interesting it becomes. Moreover, after the reform and opening up in China, the atmosphere has also changed, but there are still not too many scholars doing research in this area, so I would like to try new problems and new methods. My master's thesis was on productivity-related issues, which seems na？ve now, but I think it's nice to be able to start a new path.

Of course, the study of productive forces has its limitations, and we still need to study the economy as a system from the perspective of "economic growth." In the past, we divided "economic growth" into two categories: "productivity" and "production relations", but I think we should look at it more comprehensively. Classical economics and the subsequent development of economics still provide us with a relatively good research framework. So I gradually stopped emphasizing "productivity" and focused more on "economic growth".

In the 35 years that this book has been about a shift in your research topics, research methods, and writing style, can you talk about this process and what motivated you to do so?

Li Bozhong:It's a long process. I went to the United States for the first time in 1986 to attend a workshop organized by Prof. Rosky and Prof. Mingzhu Li. The purpose of this workshop was to have a dialogue between economists and economic historians, what can economists learn from economic historians, and what do economists need from economists? At that time, I was very poor at English, and I didn't understand much in meetings, so I took a very rudimentary tape recorder and recorded it and listened to it over and over again. After that, I went to the United States to teach and do research, and at first I came into contact with mostly sinologists, and then I came into contact with more and more scholars who studied European history. The more you touch, the wider your horizons, and the more your style changes. And as a scholar, if you write something that people can understand, not only the language, but also the whole way of thinking and expression, you must be able to enter the mainstream, so that you can discuss issues with everyone, join the debate, and put forward new ideas. If you just translate it into the same way in China, not many people will pay attention to it. Because if you want to read these works, if you are a sinist, they can just read your original text, and if you are not a sinist, it will be very difficult for people to understand what you are saying. So my transformation has been a long process, since 1986, maybe a few decades, and the style has been changing. For example, the book "China's Early Modern Economy: A Study of the GDP of Huating-Louxian in the 1820s" is completely different from the early period.

"China's Early Modern Economy: A Study of GDP in Huating-Louxian Region in 1820", by Li Bozhong, Zhonghua Book Company, May 2010

China's modern historiography is imported from abroad, and economic historiography is even more so. In the Chinese tradition, there is no economic historiography, only "food and goods". Like Europe used to have "political arithmetic", but that wasn't really economic historiography either. Economic historiography began to emerge in the days of Adam Smith. The study of economic history must have a set of theoretical systems, a periodical framework, rich historical materials, and a relatively deep understanding of history, so that the results can be regarded as real economic history, and thus can only be used to participate in broader discussions with the situation of China. If a Chinese scholar is not willing to take the time to understand the dynamics of the outside world and work behind closed doors, it is very bad for himself.

This oneNew Perspectives on Chinese Economic HistoryThe articles I received were mainly on Chinese economic history (especially the economic history of Jiangnan in the Ming and Qing dynasties), because it was the focus of my life's work. But as my knowledge grew, I realized more and more that in order to do economic history well, we must not only focus on our own limited research areas. British economic historian Eric Kerridge said: "Economic history is extracted from general history or general history, while agricultural history, industrial history, business history, etc., are extracted from economic history." This specialization has only one goal, and that is to concentrate on a specific aspect of the history of the whole in order to reveal the development of the whole. Others, such as political history, constitutional history, religious history, legal history, drug history, maritime history, military history, educational history, and so on, have the same goal. But now the barriers of various professions are high, ignoring each other, and economic history is also stained with this problem. First, economists' infiltration into economic historiography brings with it an unhistorical cast of mind. Second, the intrusion of statisticians has also made economic history a repercussion. Finally, economic history is also plagued by 'historical assumptions', which are contrary not only to facts but also to the most basic common sense. To get rid of these troubles, economic and social historians should unite and start a new synthesis. It is the greatest and noblest goal of historians that only an integrated history can enable us to travel through the present and see the world that has passed away that we are not familiar with, and more importantly, to use this knowledge of that lost world to contrast it with the world of today, so as to deepen our understanding of reality. "I think he said it very well and said it in common with many scholars today. Therefore, I have been expanding my research field to observe the economic changes in China's history from the aspects of social history, ecological and environmental history, physical geography, cultural history, political history, and global history. As a result, I also wrote a number of articles in English that guided me with this new vision, which were included in this book. I hope that young scholars will also understand the meaning of "holistic history" in Kriegi's above passage, and make it one of the goals of their own scholarship.

How did you develop your English writing, and what did you go through in the process?

Li Bozhong:My own experience is that practice makes perfect, and to write in a foreign language, you have to read and write a lot to write well. As mentioned earlier, the one I benefited most from learning English writing was Professor Dwight Perkins's Agricultural Development in China: 1368-1968, which was the earliest English book I read, and I liked that book very much, and later I had a good relationship with Professor Perkins, and my English version of China's Early Modern Economy: The Yangtze River Delta in the 1820s (An Early Moden Economy in China: The Yangzi Delta in the 1820sCambridge University Press, 2020). I read his book Agricultural Development in China: 1368-1968 so well that I wrote it in his style, and it was written in a very authentic way of economic history.

Li Bozhong's Early Modern Chinese Economy: The Yangtze River Delta in the 1820s (An Early Moden Economy in China: The Yangzi Delta in the 1820s，Cambridge University Press，2020）

I believe that to learn anything, you have to imitate it first, and then you can slowly build your own style. If a young scholar asks me for some experience in English writing, I suggest finding one or two professional English books that are not too heavy and well written, which I am familiar with and imitate. Of course, you don't need to imitate it completely, and you can gradually add your own style in the process. I read Professor Perkins's book so well that I could probably remember which page it appeared on a sentence in it. In this way, when you encounter the same meaning when writing, you can open it to see how Professor Perkins writes, and then adjust your expression. His father, Mr. Li Yun, was an economic historian, and he once wrote an article on reading, saying that reading must be prioritized, just like the ancient generals who fought in war had their own personal soldiers, which was the most powerful small army around them. The same is true for reading, you need to be familiar with a few books and use them as your "personal soldiers" (Li Yin: "Reading and Irrigating the Garden", included in the fifth volume of Li Yin's Collected Works, "Notes and Essays", Yunnan University Press, 2018).

Everyone's interests and research directions are different, so you need to discover one or two books like this on your own, books that you like and that are worth your great effort.

In forNew Perspectives on Chinese Economic HistoryIn the process of writing book reviews, I counted that there have been sixteen books written by yourself (not including those that have been translated) so far, which is really surprising to me. Because I often experience stuttering and self-questioning when writing, I would like to know how your writing speed and fluency are cultivated.

Li Bozhong:In fact, although I have written more than a dozen books, my writing has lasted for nearly half a century, and my first book was published in 1975 (Qianli and Yanzhi: "Fangla Uprising in the Northern Song Dynasty", Yunnan People's Publishing House). Half a century to write a dozen books, an average of four or five years to write one, this speed is not fast, right?

As the saying goes, it's hard to get started. My writing in the past half century was slow at first, but then it picked up a bit faster. First of all, writing has a lot to do with accumulation. If you have a main thread in mind, then every step of the work you do is an accumulation. This accumulates and changes at a certain time, just like water boils to 100 degrees Celsius. At that time, the new ideas that emerge in your mind will be relatively mature, because continuous research and thinking can provide support for your new ideas. Without this accumulation, even if you have a lot of good ideas and can't find support, it will be more difficult to express them in an academic way.

Secondly, as I just said, there must be a main line in mind. Since I started as a graduate student, my main concern has been the issue of modernization. I was the first to do research on the economic history of the Tang Dynasty, and most of my evaluations of the Tang Dynasty in the past were from the perspectives of "the glory of the Tang Empire" and "the division of feudal towns and the lack of livelihood of the people after the Anshi Rebellion". These are of course very important topics, but from the perspective of economic history, what does the legacy of the Tang Dynasty have to do with us today? This region is relatively less affected by war, its economy is relatively stable, and its unique endowments also make it a region that can develop on its own. I have not studied the history of Jiangnan in the Song Dynasty, but I have discussed the issue of the "turning point in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries", which can also be regarded as a continuation of the economic research on Jiangnan in the Tang Dynasty. All these provided a basis for my later research on the economic history of Jiangnan in the Ming and Qing dynasties, because any major historical change is the result of long-term development. I have been studying the economic history of Jiangnan in the Ming and Qing dynasties since I started my Ph.D., and I have been studying it to this day. Such a step-by-step accumulation revolves around the main line of "modernization".

The economic history before the middle of the Ming Dynasty can basically be regarded as the prehistory of "modernization", but by the late Ming Dynasty, the signs of "modernization" began to appear. In the past, the issue of "the germination of capitalism", which has been debated endlessly in academic circles, and the issues of "social transformation in the late Ming Dynasty" and "great changes in the late Ming Dynasty", which are often discussed now, are actually telling us that the late Ming Dynasty should be regarded as the starting point of China's modernization. Later, in the Qing Dynasty, it is generally believed that the Qing Dynasty suffered a great setback for China's economy, which is a fact. But on the other hand, the Qing Dynasty also created an unprecedented unified, long-term stable situation for China, and formed a national market system. Jiangnan has benefited the most from this market system because of various factors, so under the impetus of the "Smith Power", the market economy in Jiangnan has taken a step forward. So from my initial research on economic history to the English version of China's Early Modern Economy: The Yangtze River Delta in the 1820s, which was published in 2020, I actually went deeper in this direction step by step.

In addition, I have always had the feeling that it is not possible to study the issue of China's modernization, talk about China and talk about Jiangnan. You said that there was modernization in Jiangnan, but he said that it did not appear, and the key is that there must be a standard for "modernization." Otherwise, the public will say that the public is reasonable, and the mother-in-law will say that the mother-in-law is reasonable, and the discussion will not be able to continue. What is this criterion? It can only be some of the more important common laws that have been drawn from other regions. This common law is most typically seen in the process of British modernization. This is because, in the history of the world, Britain has been at the forefront of modernization. Therefore, the study of the British experience is of special significance for the history of modernization. In the first volume of Capital, Marx said: "Physicists examine natural processes in the places where they are most reliably and least disturbed, or, if possible, on conditions that guarantee them in their pure form." What I want to study in this book is the capitalist mode of production and the relations of production and exchange that correspond to it. Until now, the typical location for this type of production was the United Kingdom. Therefore, I mainly use the United Kingdom as an example in my theoretical elaboration. Because of this special status of the United Kingdom, it has become the focus of the study of world modernization. As the world's largest economic power that has existed for a long time, Britain can provide the best conditions for the study of British economic history, and Marx's most important work, Capital, was written in Britain. In the 20th century, the United States replaced Britain as the world's largest economic power and cultural center, bringing together many outstanding scholars from all over the world, so it made greater achievements in modernization research. English is one of the languages I use a lot, and after the reform and opening up, I read a lot of articles and books on British economic history, especially before and after the Industrial Revolution, which changed my vision. With the concept of "what is modernization" in mind, if we look back at Jiangnan, what is applicable to Jiangnan and what is not? In this way, we will be able to think more about the characteristics of Jiangnan's modernization.

Of course, comparing with the UK is only the first step, and the second step is to see the impact of changes in the world pattern on Jiangnan. Marx and Engels made a very good exposition on globalization in the "Communist Manifesto", so Liu Minghua and other Marxist researchers believe that the idea of globalization in the "Communist Manifesto" is very important and of great significance today. If you have a background in global history, you will not simply look at Britain or a certain other country, but expand the question to the following questions: What kind of changes took place in China's external environment from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and what kind of impact did it have?

However, in the process of trying to study China from the perspective of global history, I have always insisted that the main line of economic history is "modernization". We are still on this path today, and I think it is crucial for us to understand China's yesterday, today, and tomorrow, as Nobel laureate economist Douglass C. North said, "History is the bridge between the past and the future." "If we don't study history clearly, we won't be able to see much of today's situation clearly. Before reform and opening up, due to the deviation in our understanding of history, we had already suffered a great deal and taken many detours. Therefore, it has been the main purpose of my long-term academic research to take modernization as the main line and to study China's economic history in a larger spatial scope. With this main line, there will be no hammer in the east and a stick in the west, doing this and that all at once. One person's energy is limited, and the intelligence of all people will not vary much. But on a road, with half a century of strength, you can still do something.

atNew Perspectives on Chinese Economic HistoryIn this book, there are some articles that criticize existing research and question some consensus statements, such as "selection and collection", "turning point in the 13th and 14th centuries", "Silk Road", etc. In fact, academic criticism is a heavy thing, how do you do it?

Li Bozhong:It's a matter of personal character, I'm shallow in my own learning, so I have a lot of respect for the research of other scholars, but I'm also not superstitious about authority. As for the opinions of other scholars, I accept what I think is correct, and question and criticize what is incorrect. In addition, criticism among scholars should be, and can be, friendly and positive, as I said in my article "The 'He Weiya Incident' and the 'Abraham Case': On Academic Norms, Academic Discipline and Academic Criticism from the 'Population History Turmoil'" (published in China Reading News, October 7, 1998). I have tried to do this myself, just as I criticized the views of Mr. Spoishin, Mr. Mark Elvin, whom I have great respect and close ties to, and Mr. Liang Gengyao, whom I respect very much. After the article was published, I sent it to them to read it and asked them to criticize and correct it. They all responded positively after reading my article. I disagreed with Mr. Yi Maoke, who had previously thought that the development of technology in Chinese history had largely ceased in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and he later wrote me a long letter with his new views after thinking about my article. I felt that his new perspective was very good, and it also greatly improved my understanding of the problem of technological progress, so I quoted his letter several times in subsequent articles. Mr. Spoy thought that what I was talking about was right, and Mr. Liang Gengyao disagreed with my criticism, so I said that it would be better for you to write an article to argue with me, so that the reader could better understand his thinking. He actually wrote an article, which was mentioned in the first place, and I encouraged him to write it.

I think that academics are all about discussing and even arguing together in order to make progress. For example, Mr. Fu Yiling, Mr. Wu Chengming, and Mr. Si Bo Yixin are all senior scholars whom I admire very much, and I have always regarded them as my teachers. And as historians, they will not stick to their own opinions. In his later years, Mr. Fu changed his academic view, believing that China should not be a "feudal society" but a "traditional society" with a pluralistic structure, and in his later years, Mr. Wu also abandoned the idea of "the germ of capitalism" and believed that it should be the "bud of a market economy". I also wrote an article discussing the "germination of capitalism" and put forward different opinions on Mr. Wu's previous views on the germination of capitalism, but Mr. Wu did not feel unhappy because of this, on the contrary, he accepted what I said was reasonable and went further to actively discuss it. I think this kind of true demeanor is worth learning and emulating.

In your 50 years of research, is there anything you regret?

Li Bozhong:Of course, there are too many regrets, such as the ability to speak a foreign language. Due to the characteristics of the times, I started learning Russian in elementary school, stopped studying it for two years, and then studied it for another four years in secondary school, and I was able to read some original books, such as "How Steel is Made". But after more than 60 years, I didn't contact it anymore, and almost all of it was forgotten. Now I also read the work of some Russian economic historians I met at the International Society of Economic History, such as Boris Mironov (Бори？с Никола？евич Миро？нов). I can't read the original text now, but I happened to see the Chinese translation (B.N. Mironov, translated by Zhang Guangxiang et al., Life History in Imperial Russia: A Study of Historical Anthropology, 1700-1917, The Commercial Press, 2013), and I think it is very well written, not only completely different from the research style of the Soviet period, but also uses a wealth of documentary materials, does a good quantitative analysis, and talks about the life and economic development of the people during the Russian Empire. Writings like this will be of great help to us in getting to know Russia, our largest neighbor and which has had a great impact on our recent history. However, due to my linguistic limitations, I was no longer able to gain knowledge from his other writings.

When I was in graduate school, I studied Japanese a lot, and I took the first place in the class that year, and Japanese literature accounted for a lot of the literature cited in my master's thesis. I have also translated Japanese papers, such as "Farming Tools and Their Functions in the History of Chinese Agriculture" by Mr. Motonosuke Amano, a Japanese master of Chinese agricultural history (translated in Agricultural Archaeology, No. 1, 1990, pp. 239-259). But then the Japanese language also became rusty. The things that I used to read are barely readable, but the new things are no longer readable.

Japanese scholars have done very good work in the study of Japanese economic history, and the research of scholars such as Awami Rong and Osamu Saito is first-class. In the study of the history of modernization in China, Japan's experience in modernization is a very important comparator. At the same time, China and Japan are neighbors separated by a strip of water, and their economic and cultural ties are very close. Without an understanding of Japan's economic history, it is impossible to see more deeply the characteristics of China in the process of modernization. Japanese scholars have also done a very good job in studying the economic history of East Asia. For example, the study of trade between Japan, China, and Southeast Asia after the 16th century. One of the issues that struck me a lot was the issue of metal trade in the seas of East Asia. China is Japan's largest metal exporter, but China has far less information than Japan on this issue. In addition, Japanese merchants and samurai were also active in Southeast Asia, and they also worked closely with Chinese merchants, which is also necessary to study China's economic history from the perspective of global history. But now I can only go through these studies and get a general idea of how difficult it is to read these works seriously. So I think it's a big pity.

In addition, although I have carefully read some works on economics, political science, and sociology, I feel that I have not received systematic training, which is a pity for me.

Can you tell us about the work you've been working on lately?

Li Bozhong:Two recent book manuscripts are nearing completion. One is "What is Economic History", which talks about various modes and paradigms of economic history research, the relationship between economic history and social science, and so on. The manuscript is almost complete, and some citations and sources still need to be consulted. The other book is "China's Foreign Trade in the 16th and Mid-19th Centuries", which deals with the attitude of the Ming and Qing governments towards China's overseas trade and the reasons behind it, as well as some of the current academic debates. To do this research, you need to look not only at a lot of Chinese materials, but also at a lot of foreign materials. My starting point for writing this book is "modernization", which I think is the most important thing in China's recent history. During this period, many events took place, all of which played a role in the difficult twists and turns of China's "modernization" process. In addition to various external reasons, of course, there are also internal reasons. Therefore, a question that needs to be answered is: In the process of modernization, have the Chinese themselves done well?