Economic Trends in the Republic of China, 1912–1949 (Volume 31) (Michigan Monographs In Chinese Studies)

The Chinese economy prior to 1949 may be described as consisting of a large agricultural (or rural) sector encompassing approximately 75 percent of the population and a much smaller nonagricultural (or urban) sector with its principal base in the semimodern treaty port cities. Rural China grew the agricultural products which constituted 65 percent of national output, but also engaged the handicrafts, petty trade, and old-fashioned transportation. To the urban sector was attached with ties of varying strength, an agricultural hinterland located mainly along rivers and railways leading to the ports. This hinterland may be differentiated from the bulk of rural China by the greater degree to which it sold to and bought from the coastal and riverine cities of the urban sector. A revised edition of no. 1 in the series.