Saving the Young: A History of the Child Relief Movement in Modern China

Abstract: (1998). Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 89-90.

Abstract: Philip C. C. Huang. The author integrates three major traditions of peasant studies and uses vast quantities of new materials to present a convincing interpretation of the origins and nature of the agrarian crisis that gripped the North China Plain in the two centuries before the Revolution. Through a comparison of the histories of small family farms and larger scale managerial farms, the author documents and illustrates the long-term trends of agricultural commercialization, social differentiation, and mounting population pressure. He shows how those changes combined to produce, within the small peasant economy, a noncapitalizing managerial elite and a partially proletarianized peasantry, a pattern of change different from and more volatile than the development in Western Europe of a capitalizing elite and a proletarianizing peasantry. $37.50

Abstract: Agricultural Development in China explains how China's farm economy historically responded to the demands of a rising population. Dwight H. Perkins begins in the year A.D. 1368, the founding date of the Ming dynasty. More importantly, it marked the end of nearly two centuries of violent destruction and loss of life primarily connected with the rise and fall of the Mongols. The period beginning with the fourteenth century was also one in which there were no obvious or dramatic changes in farming techniques or in rural institutions. The rise in population and hence in the number of farmers made possible the rise in farm output through increased double cropping, extending irrigation systems, and much else. Issues explored in this book include the role of urbanization and long distance trade in allowing farmers in a few regions to specialize in crops most suitable to their particular region. Backing up this analysis of agricultural development is a careful examination of the quality of Chinese historical data. This classic volume, now available in a paperback edition, includes a new introduction assessing the continuing importance of this work to understanding the Chinese economy. It will be invaluable for a new generation of economists, historians, and Asian studies specialists and is part of Transaction's Asian Studies series.

Abstract: This account of the missing girls in Chinas high sex ratios verifies Hulls analysis and 1) assumes 105-106 boys per 100 girls as evidenced by 240 years of Swedish demographic data 2) verifies the sex ratio for reported second and higher parity births bases on the 2 per thousand fertility survey (SFPC2) in 1988 3) introduces adopted children data from SFPC2 which accounts for 50% of the missing girls and 4) calculates excess female infant deaths based on international demographic data for 130 boys per 100 girls as the expected ratio. The Swedish sex ratio data does not vary significantly between regions by parity or age of mother or by big differences due to race or socioeconomic circumstances and may only be indirectly influenced by these factors in utero as miscarriage or stillbirth. The Swedish data were found comparable to 12 Western industrialized countries 1974-84. It is expected that the larger the cohort the smaller the variation is sex ratios annually such that the Chinese data with 200 times larger cohorts should fall within the narrow range of 105-6 boys per 100 girls of all live births registered. Racial differences between Caucasians and Chinese are not expected because in the 1953 census the sex ratio among infant 500000 in 1987. Using the adoption figures in calculating the sex ratio a closer approximation is obtained. The sex ratio of 114 for infant deaths compared to the 130 average would indicate differential neglect of infant girls or 4 per 1000 excess female infant deaths per live girl births.