If this is true of Shanghai as the first and rapidly rising port of commerce, the capacity of other port cities to absorb the agricultural population must be even more limited. Of course, we do not deny that the emergence and development of modern industry on the role of urbanization, but this impact is limited, the reason is that the lack of industrial development, so that the city pull appears to be weak. Before the Sino-Japanese War, in some big cities along the river and coast, one after another appeared by the foreign capital, the Qing government and the emerging national capital operated by two or three hundred different sizes of modern industry, but because of the limitations of the historical conditions, most of them in the capital, scale, technology are very limited. According to statistics the output value of modern new-style industries only accounted for about 10% of the total industrial and agricultural production, while the output value of agriculture and handicrafts accounted for 90% up and down. (32)
At this stage, the imbalance of urban development was very obvious. The lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Lingnan region, opened up the most commercial ports, set up the largest number of leases, commerce and industry, service industry is more prosperous, the proportion of the urban population increased faster. On the contrary, many inland cities which used to be commercial centers, transportation routes, and military strongholds either tended to decline or stagnate, such as Suzhou, Foshan, Xiangtan, Shaoyang, Huzhou, Hangzhou, and Weifang. (33) In addition, more than half a century before the Sino-Japanese War due to the impact of war, such as the two Opium Wars, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom until the Sino-French and Sino-Japanese wars, thousands of cities and towns in varying degrees have suffered from the ravages of war. The Jiangnan region was the most densely populated area in the country since the Ming and Qing dynasties, and also the area with the highest urbanization rate in China at that time, but it became the main battlefield for the Taiping and Qing armies and foreign armies to fight fiercely in the 1850s and 1860s, and in the continuous wars of 14 long years, the wars attacked and massacred the towns and cities, which were extremely destructive to the cities.
In this regard, when explaining why the rate of urbanization in late nineteenth-century China cannot be taken as representative of the modern model, one of the important reasons mentioned by Shih Kin-ya is that China's towns and cities system at that time had been drastically damaged by the wars:
On the one hand, from the 1780s to the 1840s, most of the regions of agrarian China, in general, were in a peaceful and prosperous period, and on the other hand, in the period of forty years from 1850-1890, six of the eight regions were violently devastated. The Taiping Rebellion, the Nien Rebellion, and the Hui Rebellion left vast areas in all but Lingnan and the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in abject condition, reducing China's population by millions and destroying hundreds of towns and cities. The urban system of the lower reaches of the Yangtze was destroyed; that of the north-west and of two of the five districts of the great middle reaches of the Yangtze was severely damaged; that of the Yunnan and Guizhou, the south-east coast and north China was partially destroyed, and in many of these districts only a very small portion had been restored by 1893. (34)
Initial Development Stage "The signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 can be viewed as a turning point in China's urban development, for its relevant provisions stimulated the rise of modern mechanical industries in the ports of commerce and ushered in an era of railroad laying. In this way, the 1890s saw a more productive transformation of transportation modernization in several regional urban systems in China." (35) This passage from Shijenya explains both why 1895 was used as the cut-off point for the second phase of urbanization and the rationale behind it, namely, the "rise of modern mechanical industries" and the "modernizing changes in transportation" caused by the laying of railroads. "
Matthews, the first of his generation of railroads, was the first to be built.
After the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Western capitalism's economic aggression against China shifted from commodity export to capital export, and foreign countries accelerated the pace of setting up industrial and mining enterprises in China under the cover of the treaty. According to Mr. Wang Jingyu statistics, from 1895 to 1913, foreign countries set up 136 workshops in China, more than half a century before the Sino-Japanese War, six times (23); during the same period, the capital of more than 100,000 yuan of foreign large-scale factories, the total investment amounted to 103,153,000 yuan, more than half a century before the Sino-Japanese War, nearly 13.5 times (7,031,000 yuan). (36)
With the development of urban and rural commodity economy, the bourgeoisie national consciousness of the burgeoning, the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China rose a boom in the establishment of industry, especially during the First World War, China's national industry has been rapid development, into the golden period in the history of the development of the. 1914 to 1918, China's national capital industry has gained significant development. 1913 to 1915, the registered Between 1913 and 1915, 124 factories were registered, with a total capital of 24,424,000 yuan, an average of 41.3 factories per year, and an average of 196,000 yuan per company. 1916 to 1918, 374 factories were registered, with a total capital of 74,633,000 yuan, an average of 124.6 factories per year, and an average of 199,000 yuan per company. Most of these newly registered factories were light industrial enterprises in the textile, flour, knitting, cigarette and oil-pressing industries. (37)The very development of industry meant the expansion of the ranks of the working class, and it is estimated that there were at least 2,300,000 or more factory workers (except handicrafts) in China before the War of Resistance Against Japan, and of these there were also more than 520,000 in the large-scale industrial sectors of railroads, shipping, mining, and so on. (38)
The development of urban industry greatly increased the attraction of cities to the rural population and the pull of urbanization. Since Chinese capitalist industry was mainly concentrated in some cities along the rivers and coasts of the ports of commerce, the population of these ports of commerce cities with a higher level of modernization grew faster. If we take the 1843 population as the basic index of 100, then by 1933, Shanghai's population index was 1520, Tianjin's 600, Nanjing's 560, Beijing's 150, and Changsha's 190. Shanghai's urban population had increased 15-fold, Tianjin's 6-fold, and Beijing's 1.5-fold in the past 90 years. (39)
From after the Sino-Japanese War to 1937, the pace of railroad construction in China accelerated. 364 kilometers of railroads were built in China *** in 1894, 9,618 kilometers in 1911, more than 13,000 kilometers in 1927, and more than 21,000 kilometers by 1937. (40) During this period, the region with the fastest railroad construction was the Northeast, at which time the Jing-Feng, Dong-Qing-South Manchuria Branch, Dao-Qing, An-Feng, Tien-Tu, Tao-Hai, Qi-Bei, and Jin-Cheng railroads were built, thus initiating the process of urbanization. in the 1830s, with the laying of railroad lines, some of the original out-of-the-way villages, centered on the railroad station, were developed into modern urban examples can be seen everywhere, Dalian, Yingkou, Hai-Cheng, Anshan, Liaoyang, Fengtian, Siping, Kaiyuan, Gongzhuling, Changchun, Andong, Fushun and other more than 20 cities are developed in this context. According to statistics, the combined population of the six northeastern cities of Shenyang, Changchun, Harbin, Dalian, Benxi, and Fushun reached more than 2.3 million in the early 1930s, an eleven-fold increase from 1895. (41) In the vast interior provinces, in addition to the further development of the original city, the number of cities emerging from the railroad is also not small. Such as Shijiazhuang, Hengyang along the Beijing-Han, Guangdong-Han Railway, Pukou, Bengbu on the Jinpu line, are due to the rise of the railroad. Shijiazhuang was just a village, the late Qing Dynasty, in the Beijing-Han, Zhengda Railway repair, industrial and commercial prosperity, become an important city in the north. Bengbu at the junction of the railroad and the Huaihe River, the original but only 500 families of the village port, after the opening of the Jinpu line, the business exhibition, the population agglomeration, in 1914 has increased to 100,000, in 1929 up to 200,000 people. (42)
The development of Chinese national capitalism and the rise of a large number of cities along the railroad line have, to varying degrees, contributed to the movement of rural populations to the cities. If, before the Sino-Japanese War, the driving force of urbanization in China was mainly commerce, then the main driving force of urbanization in this period was industry and new forms of transportation. As the pull of the city increased, the thrust of the countryside also increased, and a large number of peasants left their villages and entered the cities, which led to the initial development of modern cities in China.
Twisted development stage The outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan in 1937 changed the course of Chinese history, and had a great impact on the development of the city, during the war, half of China fell into the hands of the enemy, most of the cities, especially a number of important political centers and the emergence of the main industrial and commercial cities in modern times, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Jinan, Taiyuan, Changsha, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Xuzhou and other cities have been occupied by the Japanese army, the war and the Japanese army's brutal looting, the city has been seriously damaged, the population has been sharply reduced.
From a local point of view, in the east of the central city by the war under the circumstances of serious damage, the northeast and southwest of the two local areas of urbanization has been a great development. On the one hand, Japan wanted to colonize and plunder the Northeast, and on the other hand, in order to adapt to the needs of the total war against China, it used the Northeast as a base for war, and increased its investment in the Northeast. 550 million yuan of Japanese investment in the Northeast was invested in 1931, and then it increased year by year, and in 1944, it increased to 5.27 billion yuan. (43)
Due to the special reasons of the war, after the victory of the war, the Northeast became the heavy industrial base of China and its high level of urbanization.
The war caused a large-scale migration of population from eastern China to the west, which promoted the development of cities in the west. For example, in Chengdu, in the middle and late war, due to the entry of the population and capital from the east, the city's industry and commerce, culture and education have a greater development, the city's population in 1941 increased by 13.6% compared with 1939, and then increased by 6.4% in the beginning of 1942 compared with 1941, and then increased by 20.8% at the end of the year compared with the previous year. (44) The growth of cities in these two regions was far from enough to compensate for the damage and negative impact of the war on urban development in China as a whole.
After the victory of the Resistance, China for a time experienced a post-war revival, with greater economic and urban development, but this was soon followed by three years of national **** civil war, which was quite devastating to the economy. comparing production in 1949 with the highest annual output in history, agricultural production fell by about 25%, light industrial production by about 30%, and the loss of heavy industrial production was particularly severe, falling by about 70 percent decline. (45) Moreover, on the eve of the national liberation, the retreat of the national government troops from Taiwan also destroyed many important factories and mines, coupled with the decline in the number of people in many cities affected by the war, all of which limited the development of cities to stagnation.
Notes:
① Zhu Tiezhen: "Study of Urban Modernization", Beijing: Red Flag Publishing House, 2002, p. 224.
② Demographic inaccuracies are mainly due to omissions, misrepresentations and fabrications in the process of demographic statistics, and the statistical population is often lower than the actual population. For details, see He Bingdi, "Population and Related Issues since the Beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1953)," translated by Ge Jianxiong, Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, 2000, pp. 59-64. Jiang Tao, A History of Modern Chinese Population, Hangzhou: Zhejiang People's Publishing House, 1993, pp. 56-60. The total population of the country is covered later in the text, and in the absence of revisions, the larger number is generally taken.
③ The "Four Peoples" is a division based on social occupations, all of which are the so-called "household names" of traditional society. The Han Dynasty people to the four people's definition is: "learning to live in the position of said Shi, open up the soil and breeding grain said agriculture, make skill into a tool said work, through the wealth and sell goods said business." There were some differences in social status between them due to their origins and the occupations they engaged in. The division of the four people has been inherited until the end of the Qing Dynasty, almost throughout the traditional society, therefore, the traditional society can actually be called the four people society. But the Four Peoples is only a rough outline of the social and occupational composition of the population in the traditional era. Whether in the city or in the countryside, in fact, there are some other populations that cannot be covered by the four major social groups of the clergy, the farmers, the laborers, and the merchants.
④ Bao Shichen: "After Preface to the Upper Part of Saying Reserve", Zhong Qu Yi Spoon, Volume VII, Appendix IV, The Complete Works of Bao Shichen, Lower Volume, Li Xing punctuation and correction, Hefei: Huangshan Shusha, 1993, p. 222.
⑤ Bu Kai, ed: China Land Use, translated by Qiao Qiming, etc., Chengdu: Chengcheng Publishing House, 1941 edition, p. 501.
⑥ For more details, see Yang Zihui, edited by Yang Zihui, A Study of Population Statistics in China Throughout the Ages, Beijing: Reform Publishing House, 1996, p. 1200. Jiang Tao, Population and History - A Study of Traditional Chinese Population Structure, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1998, pp. 169-170.
⑦ Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Population Research Center, ed: China Population Yearbook-1985, Beijing: China Social Science Press, 1986, pp. 811-812.
⑧ Selected Works of Marx and Engels (Volume I), Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1996, p. 142.
⑨ Before 1982, China's urban population refers only to the non-agricultural population in the established cities and towns, and the agricultural population living in cities and towns with all the population living in the countryside are categorized as the rural population. 1982 China's urban population of the caliber of the statistics for a major adjustment, that is, the establishment of cities and towns under the jurisdiction of the total population, including the agricultural population is considered as the urban population. See Zhu Tiezhen, edited by Zhu Tiezhen, Handbook of Chinese Cities, Beijing: Economic Science Publishing House, 1987, p. 799.
⑩ Liu Shiji: A Study of Jiangnan Municipalities in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Beijing: China Social Science Press, 1987, p. 137.
(11) Shi Jianya: The Cities of the Late Chinese Empire, translated by Ye Guangting et al, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2002, p. 244.
(12) Ibid, pp. 339-355.
(13) American scholar Rozman's City Networks in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan (Princeton University, 1973) was published four years earlier than Schjenya's Cities of the Late Chinese Empire (Stanford University, 1977). The methodology used in that book was similar to that of Shi Jianya, though only the cities were estimated by dividing them into seven classes. Ge Jianxiong, edited by Cao Shuji, wrote A Population History of China - The Qing Period (Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2001), although Shi Jianya's urban population estimates are quite critical, but the method of constructing regional urban population hierarchies used in the book pays more attention to the administrative stratification of the political level, and Shi Jianya's favoring of economic and geographic stratification in the analysis of methodology there is no substantial difference between the two. There is no substantial difference in the analytical approach between the two. See pp. 724-781. See also Zhao Gang, Chapter 3 of Essays on the History of Urban Development in China, Beijing: Xinxing Publishing House, 2006.
(14) Shi Jianya: "Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-Century China", Studies in Urban History (First Series), Tianjin: Tianjin Education Press, 1989, p. 125.
(15) On this point many scholars have already pointed out, for details, see Hu Huanyong and Zhang Shanyu, China's Population Geography (中国人口地理)上册, Shanghai: East China Normal University Publishing House, 1984, p. 245; and Zhao Gang, Collected Essays on the History of China's Urban Development (中国城市发展史论集), p. 82.
(16) Shi Jianya: A Study of Cities in Late Feudal China - The Shi Jianya Model, translated by Wang Xu et al. Changchun: Jilin Educational Publishing House, 1991, p. 301.
(17) Jiang Tao, Population and History - A Study of Traditional Chinese Population Structure, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1998, p. 171. However, it seems far-fetched for Jiang Tao to take 10% as the average of the urbanization rate of the whole Chinese society from ancient times (pre-Qin Dynasty) to the present (modern times) under normal circumstances, because the illustration that the urbanization rate of the pre-Qin and Han Dynasty was about 10% given by him is not sufficient.
(18) In the 1920s and 1930s, some sociologists estimated the urbanization rate of modern China, but the figures were generally high, ranging from 34% to 28.1%, see Hu Huanyong and Zhang Shanyu, Population Geography of China, p. 267. From the upper limit of the urbanization rate we have sought, we can see that these estimates are in large error. In contemporary times, many scholars at home and abroad who have studied modern Chinese cities have estimated the urbanization rate of modern China, and the years of each estimate are intensively in the three years of 1820, 1843, and 1893, with 6.3% (Hsing-Lung's estimate) and 6.9% (Zhao-Gang's estimate) in 1820, 6.5% (Hsing-Lung's estimate) in 1840, and 5.1% (Shih Chien-Ya's estimate) in 1843, 6.0% (Scherzinger), 7.7% (Choong), and 7.9% (Hsing Lung) in 1893. In addition, Hsing-Lung also estimated the urbanization rates in 1920 and 1936 to be 10.6% and 11.4%, respectively. See the authors cited in the text for details.
(19) Zhao Gang, A Collection of Essays on the History of Urban Development in China, pp. 84-87. In Zhao Gang's view, from the Warring States period to the Southern Song Dynasty is a stage of development with a clear upward trend, from the Southern Song Dynasty to the middle of the Qing Dynasty is a downward stage, and from the middle of the Qing Dynasty to the present day is a rising stage.
(20) Xinglong: "also on the urbanization of modern China", in Yang Nianqun, Huang Xingtao, Mao Dan, eds: "New Historiography: A Picture of Multidisciplinary Dialogue" (below), Beijing: Renmin University of China Press, 2003, p. 541.
(21) For the urban population share in the Tang Dynasty see Hu Huanyong and Zhang Shanyu, China's Population Geography (中国人口地理)上册, p. 248. For the Song dynasty, see Chih-Man: The Economic History of the Song Dynasty, next volume, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1988, p. 933. For the Ming dynasty, see Cao Shuji: A History of Chinese Population - Qing Period, p. 774.
(22) Cao Shuji, Chinese Population History - Qing Period (Volume V), p. 829.
(23) Wang Xianqian: Donghua zhilu - Daoguang xiv, p. 20b.
(24) Zhao Gang: Essays on the History of Urban Development in China, p. 81.
(25) Jiang Tao, A History of Modern Chinese Population, p. 399.
(26) Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Population Research Center, ed: China Population Yearbook-1985, Beijing: China Social Science Press, 1986, p. 811.
(27) According to Shih Chien-ya, "by 1893, the restoration work in many areas was only partially completed". Shi Jianya, "The Study of Cities in Late Feudal China - Shi Jianya's Model", p. 73. Jiang Tao, in the book cited earlier, pp. 75 and 78, also mentions that the total population at this time was close to the level of the pre-war Daoguang period.
(28) He Yimin, Outline of Chinese Urban History, Chengdu: Sichuan University Press, 1994, p. 340.
(29) The three stages are the general model for dividing the development of modern Chinese cities, and as far as the material available to the author is concerned, there are at least three that are divided according to the three-stage model. He Yimin, Urban Development and Social Change in Modern China (1840-1949), Chapter 2, Section 1, Beijing: Science Press, 2004. He Yimin's division is as follows: the Opium War to the end of the Qing Dynasty before the New Deal Reform is the first stage, the end of the Qing Dynasty before the New Deal Reform (1901) to the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression is the second stage, and the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression to the founding of New China is the third stage. The three phases discussed in the preceding quotation of Hsing-Lung are divided as follows: the Opium War to the Sino-Japanese War is the first phase, the Sino-Japanese War to the 1920s is the second phase, and the 1920s to the founding of New China is the third phase. Hu Hu Huan-yong and Zhang Shan-yu, China's Population Geography, supra, pp. 257-261 are divided as follows: 1840-1895; 1895-1931; 1931-1949. The author tends to agree with the three-part division of Ning Yue Min, Zhang Wudong, and Qian Jinxi: A History of Urban Development in China, Chapter VII, Section I. The author also agrees with the three-part division of the first section of the second section of the third section of the third section of the third section. Hefei: Anhui Science and Technology Press, 1994.
(30) Hsing-Lung, Population Problems and Modern Society, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1992, pp. 36-37.
(31) Murphy, Shanghai: The Key to Modern China, compiled by the Institute of History, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1987, p. 24.
(32) Chen Zhen: Sources of Modern Chinese Industrial History (Fourth Series), Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, 1961, p. 1.
(33) Hu Huanyong and Zhang Shanyu, Population Geography of China (above), p. 258.
(34) Shi Jianya, Cities of the Late Chinese Empire, p. 262.
(35) Shi Jianya, A Study of Cities in Late Feudal China - The Shi Jianya Model, p. 64.
(36) Wang Jingyu, Sources of Modern Chinese Industrial History (Second Series) on, Beijing: Science Press, 1957, p. 1.
(37) Chen Zhen and Yao Luohu: Modern Chinese Industrial History Materials (First Series), Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, 1957, p. 14.
(38) Zhu Sihuang, edited by Zhu Sihuang, Economic History of the Republic of China, Shanghai: Banking Institute, Bank Weekly Press Printing House, 1947, pp. 369-370.
(39) (41) Hu Huanyong and Zhang Shanyu, Population Geography of China (above), p. 260.
(40) Yan Zhongping, et al: Selected Statistics of Modern Chinese Economic History, Beijing: Science Press, 1955, p. 190.
(42) Yu Yunhan and Ma Jiyun: Outline of the History of Urban Development in China, Tianjin: Tianjin People's Publishing House, 1996, p. 293.
(43) Wu Chengming, Imperialist Investments in Old China, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1955, p. 162.
(44) He Yimin, edited by He Yimin, Change and Development: A Study of the Modernization of the Chinese Inland City of Chengdu, Chengdu: Sichuan University Press, 2001, p. 586.
(45) China Association for the Promotion of International Trade, ed: Achievements of New China's Economic Construction in Three Years, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1953, p. 119.