Abstract
By focusing on the production and circulation of Yunnan copper in the eighteenth century, this article investigates the important facets of economic development in Late Imperial China. The growth of long-distance trade in China is tremendous from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, as some new research have proved. "Traditional" Chinese trade expansion do not necessarily lead to "modern" economic development; for example, some scholars diagnose its nature as extensive but not intensive growth. What does "traditional" Chinese trade expansion experience really mean? I will scrutinize two aspects of this experience: 1.) the relation of government and market, 2.) the changes in the understanding of "interest".
To supplement the acute scantiness of copper cash, Ming government tried to procure copper after the sixteenth century. This then became one of the critical policies in Late Imperial China. The Qing government continued and reinforced this copper procuring policy, by buying, importing, and/or mining, because the dearth of copper cash became a perennial economic and social problem. The copper of Yunnan, one of China's southwestern province, replaced the imported Japanese copper in the seventeen forties, counting for as much as 1,000 to 1,400 catties from 1740 to 1810 A.D. Outsider merchants, mostly Han and Chinese Muslim, explored many copper mines in Yunnan. In the wake of prompt accumulation of Yunnan copper, not only was the scale of Chinese national long-distance trade enlarged, but the government's economic role and understanding of "interest" also changed meaningfully.
Yunnan copper mines were primarily managed by private merchants and dug by free labor in Qing period. This firm-like nature did not change; some merchant owners even accepted loans from local and central government in the eighteenth century. With the input of large private and official capital, the mining organization in big copper mines was transformed, whether in the method of exploring mineral vein, arranging labor force in shifts, equipping sufficient drains and smelting copper ore more productively. To meet all these needs, considerable capital investment had made copper mining a high-risk but not high-profit enterprise. Official loan offered merchants a relatively low interest rate capital, and sustained many copper mines. Besides loaning merchants, local government did much to ensure the ordering of copper, such as providing entrepot as a wholesale marketplace, assisting contract making of limited transport means around the mining mountain, and protecting property rights during mining negotiations among merchants. Unintentionally those official governances reduced the transaction costs of copper exchange and made the copper market more efficient. The relation of government and market had changed obviously in the formation of the eighteenth century Yunnan copper long-distance trade.
The understandings of "interest" had also changed significantly, both in merchant mentality behind mining investment activity and in economic argumentation during mining policy debate. Some merchants invested almost all their money to the Yunnan copper industry, in danger of going bankrupt. The copper merchant mentality, recorded in the local description of the mid-nineteenth century, was composed of rational choice in cost-profit analysis, sentiments of great fulfillment, and excitement in overcoming huge uncertainty in risky mine exploration. Thus it has forged a particular self-interest understanding in merchant's investment activity.
When procuring copper in Yunnan and other provinces had acquired its importance in the eighteenth century Qing economic policy, some officials has proposed a new criteria for discerning the general "interest" from private "interest" during the mining policy debating. This new criteria of general "interest" constituted those officials' main economic policy argumentation. By legitimizing private mining manufacture policy with the new general "interest", not only did copper merchants get their official loans more easily, but also merchants and officials in copper mining management became more gratified. Besides the sense of gratification, merchants also amassed their fortunes, and the officials in charge gained promotions.
The growth of long-distance trade in the eighteenth China is an economic process with political and cognitive recombination. In political field, the Qing governances in Yunnan copper mines unintentionally reduced the transaction costs of copper exchange; in cognitive field, I mean that the understandings of "interest" changed both in merchant mentality and economic policy argumentation. With all these changes made the eighteenth century Yunnan copper market work more efficiently.
In locating the government's economic role in Late Imperial China, there are two opposite prevailing imaginations: one prefers "despotism" in all fields, including predatory state economic policy; the other favors "feudalism", emphasizing incompetent state economic performance. The Yunnan copper case asserts that both these pictures are painted with far too broad a brush, though in different colors.
Keywords
Yunnan copper, transaction cost, understandings of interest, economic development, Late Imperial China
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