Three Thousand Years of Unsustainable Growth: China's Environment from Archaic Times to the Present

Abstract

This chapter discusses the history of China from about 1000 bc to the present day from the point of view of the interaction of politics, economics, and the environment. The apparent long-term pre-modern annual rate of growth thus rose from about 0.07% during the first millennium ad to 0.1% during most of the second millennium, to about 0.5% in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and then to 0.65% during the early modern epoch. The broad characteristics of production and exchange during the three periods were as follows: In the first there was a significant component of hunting, fishing, fowling, gathering, and herding in the economy, varying regionally, with millet being the staple cereal, hemp the main clothing fibre, and small-scale drainage and flood-prevention the focus of hydraulic works. The subject-matter of environmental history is the interface where human beings have entered into a reciprocal relationship with the biogeochemical systems of the Earth.