Evidence receipt / uncertainty
Published · transcript-backedYasheng Huang: uncertainty
8 Mar 2023 Conversations with Tyler Yasheng Huang on the Development of the Chinese State
“I don’t know the number, but if you go to the economic historians’ work on Qing Dynasty [1644–1911] — their rough estimate is that China had a much smaller state in terms of the physical capacity as compared with Europe during that comparable period of time.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Yasheng Huang
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- uncertainty
- Recorded
- 8 Mar 2023
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…What would be a number, say? I don’t know the number, but if you go to the economic historians’ work on Qing Dynasty [1644–1911] — their rough estimate is that China had a much smaller state in terms of the physical capacity as compared with Europe during that comparable period of time. To some extent, we struggle with the same issue today. If you look at the tax revenue relative to GDP, even China today is not an excessively high ratio, but if you look at the ownership role of the state, it has a big state sector. It has a big influence over the private sector. I would argue that the Chinese state in the 19th century did not derive all its power from taxation. It had the power to appoint officials. It had the power to control the private sector, control the merchants. That kind of administrative power was quite substantial. Let’s say, when China needs to fight Britain in the Opium Wars, or come the 1920s — is that lack of fiscal capacity what’s holding back China?…
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