Yasheng Huang: evaluation

Transcript context

…If I think of China, economically speaking, in the 17th century, it still seems broadly on a par with Western Europe, and by the 19th century, that has changed. Is it that the civil service exam system in China became more negative, more dangerous? Or is it simply Europe raced ahead and China stayed put? I think there are debates about whether, in the 17th century, China was really on a par with Europe. There was a famous California school that made that point. Their argument was, it is not right to compare the whole of China with Europe. You need to compare the most developed part of China with Europe. If you do that, the level of economic development was comparable with each other. I think there’s some recent research that challenges that view, using better data, more fine-grained data that shows that per capita GDP by the 17th century in China was much lower than per capita GDP in Europe, even among the most developed regions of China. Our own data do not support the view that China in the 17th century was comparable to Europe. We don’t use economic data; we use inventions data. By the 17th century, China was already not very inventive as compared with the 6th century. The level of inventions declined dramatically in the 17th century, so I tend to lean toward the view that by the 17th century, China was already quite backward. If I think of the Chinese exam system today — not just for civil service, but more generally — it seems fairly meritocratic to me. I often meet smart Chinese graduate students. I ask, “Where are you from?” The answer is not, “I’m from a wealthy family in Shanghai.” They’re from some part of China I’ve never heard of. Am I wrong to think that it’s currently quite meritocratic?…

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