The economics of maize
Here, for your teaching pleasure, is a long quote on the value of corn (maize) in China. I often mention in class that New World crops were economically valuabl...
Category: Economics
Was Late Imperial China Early Modern?
Zou Jiajun posted on the Sinologists Facebook group asking how the term “Early Modern” got to be used in China studies. This is a an interesting question, since...
Canadian pot and the lessons of opium
Apparently Canada has legalized pot. The New Republic is speculating that they may find it hard to get an official distribution system to replace the old illega...
President Trump’s Historical Consciousness: Bowling Ball Edition
President Trump, at a recent event, recycled an old chestnut I haven’t heard in years He accused Japan of using gimmicks to deny U.S. auto companies acces...
Protests, national identity, and food
Via LGM I find this piece on anti KFC protests in China. KFC was once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, but they have changed their name to KFC, in part to make ...
Salt, China, and Wikipedia
Slate has a post up on the abolition of the Chinese salt monopoly, and they are amazed that something that has existed for 2,600 years is now being abolished. ...
Land of rice, without fish
There has been a some talk about China and fish of late, and while I generally don’t like me too posts, I think China’s relationship with fish is in...
A fun toy
The Economist has a fun toy where you can compare Chinese provinces to various foreign countries. Some of the comparisons don’t help much, given that som...
China, the Hobgoblin of Small Minds
I had a student ask me in class, recently, about whether China, among other countries, was planning to take advantage of our coming collapse to move into a posi...
Knitting with steel
NYT reports (via CDT) that China is offering to help California build a high-speed rail network. The Times’ take is that the worm has certainly turned if ...
Why can't an economist be more like a(n) historian?
Yuyu Chen, Ginger Zhe Jin and Yang Yue are all economists and they are doing interesting work on rural-urban migration in China. Given that China has better reg...
Nine Nations
With Obama in China lots of websites want to say something about China and What It All Means. For example, The Atlantic has a post by Patrick Chovanic that desc...
Modern Archaeology
Great Leap Forward era backyard iron furnaces have been unearthed [via] and there is discussion about whether to preserve them as historical evidence, even a cu...
Beer in China
Robert Bickers has a nice post up at China Beat on the early history of Qingdao beer. Its a good post and sheds a lot of light on the early history of what is n...