Conclusion
The Imperial regime bequeathed to its successors a double heritage and a double handicap: on the one hand, an exceptionally strong population pressure on the area of cultivated land; and on the other, a radical break between interior China (rural bureaucratic, traditional) and coastal China (cosmopolitan, enterprising, open to innovation). The history of the twentieth century only accentuated these contradictions and worsened these handicaps. Rooted in its urban bases, the Guomindang regime of 1927–1949 did virually nothing to transfer technology to the countryside, so that the gap between the two Chinas - coastal and interior - widened, and the regime was condemned to be swept away by peasant revolution. As for the People's Republic, by postponing the adoption of a real birth-control program until 1973, it wiped out a large part of the benefits that a policy of modernization extended for the first time ever to the whole country would have brought, and made economic take-off even more difficult in 1981 than it was in 1949.
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bergère, MC. On the historical origins of Chinese underdevelopment. Theor Soc 13, 327–337 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00213229
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00213229