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TERRA ECONOMICUS

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  • Zhang Peigang and his contribution to development economics in the mid-twentieth century

Zhang Peigang and his contribution to development economics in the mid-twentieth century


TERRA ECONOMICUS, , Vol. 18 (no. 2),

The article focuses on the concept of economic development elaborated in the first half of the 1940s by the Chinese scholar Zhang Peigang (Chang Pei-Kang) during his studies at Harvard University. The most important feature of his doctorate thesis “Agriculture and Industrialization: The adjustments that take place as an agricultural country is industrialized” was the combination of first-hand experience of researching Chinese rural economy of the 1930s and new Western economic theories. The work differed markedly from the economic publications on the practical aspects of industrialization published in China. It was a professional study of the general patterns of industrialization in agricultural countries. Zhang Peigang justified the need for comprehensive urban and rural industrialization in backward agricultural countries. His concept helped to overcome the one-sided interpretation of industrialization as the development of industry to the detriment of agriculture. Published in English in the USA, Zhang Peigang’s book was noticed by foreign academics. The article identifies and summarizes ten book reviews in English and Spanish published in scholarly periodicals in 1949–1951. These reviews were written by economists, experts in agriculture, sociologists, cultural scholars, historians. Many reviewers noted that Zhang Peigang gave too much prominence to the presentation of Western economic ideas and paid insufficient attention to the problems of industrialization in China. Zhang Peigang’s concept took into consideration the impact of China’s specific institutional structure upon the economic growth. In contemporary China the demand for the normative theory of “development economics with Chinese characteristics for the new era” can turn into powerful incentive to fuel interest in the contribution of the Chinese scholars of the last century in this discipline.
Citation: Borokh, O. N. (2020). Zhang Peigang and his contribution to development economics in the mid-twentieth century. Terra Economicus, 18(2), 95–116. DOI: 10.18522/2073-6606-2020-18-2-95-116


Keywords: development economics; Republican China; agrarian country; industrialization; institutional structure

JEL codes:

References:
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Publisher: Southern Federal University
Founder: Southern Federal University
ISSN: 2073-6606