Citation

Discussion Paper Details

Please find the details for DP15187 in an easy to copy and paste format below:

Full Details   |   Bibliographic Reference

Full Details

Title: States and Wars: China's Long March towards Unity and its Consequences, 221 BC - 1911 AD

Author(s): Shuo Chen and Debin Ma

Publication Date: August 2020

Keyword(s): Agrarian-nomadic warfare, China, Country Size, state formation and warfare

Programme Area(s): Economic History

Abstract: We examine the long-term pattern of state formation and the mythical historical Chinese unity under one single political regime based on the compilation of a large geocoded annual data series of political regimes and incidences of warfare between 221 BC and 1911 AD. By classifying our data sets into two types of regimes - agrarian and nomadic - and three types of warfare - agrarian/nomadic, agrarian/agrarian and internal rebellions - and applying an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, we find that nomadic-agrarian warfare and internal rebellion strengthens unification but agrarian/agrarian warfare entrenches fragmentation. Our research highlights the combination of China's precocious ideology of a single unified ruler, environmental circumscription on the easternmost end of Eurasia and persistent agrarian-nomadic warfare as the driving force behind China's eventual unity. We further discuss the long-run implications of Chinese unity on economic performance in a global context.

For full details and related downloads, please visit: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=15187

Bibliographic Reference

Chen, S and Ma, D. 2020. 'States and Wars: China's Long March towards Unity and its Consequences, 221 BC - 1911 AD'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=15187