2.1: Who Survives: Life Under Pressure

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En provenance du cours de The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Understanding China, 1700-2000: A Data Analytic Approach, Part 2

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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Understanding China, 1700-2000: A Data Analytic Approach, Part 2

20 notes

The purpose of this course is to summarize new directions in Chinese history and social science produced by the creation and analysis of big historical datasets based on newly opened Chinese archival holdings, and to organize this knowledge in a framework that encourages learning about China in comparative perspective. Our course demonstrates how a new scholarship of discovery is redefining what is singular about modern China and modern Chinese history. Current understandings of human history and social theory are based largely on Western experience or on non-Western experience seen through a Western lens. This course offers alternative perspectives derived from Chinese experience over the last three centuries. We present specific case studies of this new scholarship of discovery divided into two stand-alone parts, which means that students can take any part without prior or subsequent attendance of the other part. Part 1 (https://www.coursera.org/learn/understanding-china-history-part-1) focuses on comparative inequality and opportunity and addresses two related questions ‘Who rises to the top?’ and ‘Who gets what?’. Part 2 (this course) turns to an arguably even more important question ‘Who are we?’ as seen through the framework of comparative population behavior - mortality, marriage, and reproduction – and their interaction with economic conditions and human values. We do so because mortality and reproduction are fundamental and universal, because they differ historically just as radically between China and the West as patterns of inequality and opportunity, and because these differences demonstrate the mutability of human behavior and values. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/dzUPRyJ4ETk

À partir de la leçon

Orientation and Module 1: Who Are We and Who Survives

Before you start with the content for Module 1, please review the Assignments and Grading page and introduce yourself to other learners who will be studying this course with you.

1.1 Who Are We? An Introduction4:29

1.2: Big Data and the Scholarship of Discovery10:00

1.3: Big Data, New Facts and Classic Social Theory7:16

1.4: New Data and Eurasian Comparisons6:47

2.1: Who Survives: Life Under Pressure8:17

2.2: Mortality: Geographic and Socioeconomic Comparisons5:49

2.3: Mortality and Who We Are4:33

Rencontrer les enseignants

James Z. Lee
Dean and Chair Professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences

[MUSIC]

Welcome to Understanding China, 1700 to 2000.

A data analytic approach.

Part two, section five, Who Survives: Life Under Pressure.

According to the earliest reliable population records for

the last 2,000 years, China with only perhaps one-tenth of

the world cultivated land had one-third of the world's population.

And therefore, Chinese population behavior exemplifies

one of the major examples of human response to population pressure.

One salient result of this pressure was the early prevalence of what

Malthus would have called vice.

In this case, the practice of infanticide, female infanticide.

And another consequence, presumably because of the prevalence of infanticide

was the equally early rise of different concepts of life and humanhood.

In the following chart, we have the two lines indicating world population,

the black squares where our best estimates of the population of China,

the empty triangles.

Contrasting with the histograms from the year 0 to the year

2000 indicating the proportion of world population, which is or was Chinese.

And as you can see, the Chinese population,

historically has always been somewhere between one-third plus or

minus say, a few percent of the world population.

In some periods rising to as high as almost 40% of the world currently

at at historical low, slightly over 20% of world population and

predicted to be climbing even further to about 18% of world population, which would

be almost half of China's historical proportions of world population.

Now given the high proportions and high density of China's

early populations as early as the second century BC,

we already find major texts, such as the Rites of Zhou,

a compendium of statements on early political institutions and policies.

Stating explicitly and I quote that people should be registered only

after they have grown their teeth, that is according to standard

explanation of seven to eight months for the first set of teeth or

5 and a half to 6 and a half years for the second set of teeth.

Or as summarized in an imperial edict of the early seventh century

in the Collection of Important Documents from the Tang Dynasty and

I quote, people begin at birth as young animals and become children,

literally small mouths, shall call at two and a half years of age.

As a result, perhaps because of this concept of

humanhood being largely post natal, infanticide was

prevalent in China as early as the first millennium BC.

One of the earliest well-known references to female infanticide Is a passage

from the Han Feizi, a third century BC political thinker who wrote and

I quote, parents' attitude to children is such that when they bear a son,

they congratulate each other.

But when they bear a daughter, they kill her,

because of their convenience and long-term interests.

This long-standing preference for sons dates back to Chinese

ancestor-worship produced an almost primordial prejudice against

daughters that dates back literally, to the second and third millenia BC.

Son preference was reinforced by a patrilineal and

patrilocal familial system supported by the imperial state such that

only sons could carry the family name, sacrifice to the family spirits.

Only sons at least from the first millennium AD onwards could inherit

the family patrimony and only sons, again, from the first millennium AD

onwards could sit for the imperial civil service examinations with its important

implications of equality of opportunity for families to rise in society.

A plethora of statements similar to Han Feizi document the practice of

infanticide, especially female infanticide throughout Chinese history.

However, because girls were not completely recorded in most Chinese historical data,

the magnitude of such behavior was unclear until the late 1980s when

the population records of the Qing Imperial Lineage were discovered to

have almost complete recording of daughters as of sons.

And therefore, with the entry of these data to create one of the first examples

of Big Historical Data, we could actually calculate for the first time explicitly

to what extent female infants died in greater proportions than males.

And these Jade Records document female death rates that indeed

were ten times higher for females, 72 per thousand, than for

males, 7.5 per thousand in the first day of life.

And a total female infanticide rate in the late 18th and

early 19th century for even say, the imperial nobility of around 10%.

This chart contrasts female infant mortality,

male infant mortality with female child mortality and male child mortality and

what you can see is that child mortality for both female and

males decline from about 400 to well-below 100 in the 18th century.

But at the same time, while male infant mortality remained relatively stable,

the sort of solid axis, which is essentially a flat line,

you can see that female infant mortality,

the empty squares increase from about 100 per thousand female

infants to as high as 350 per thousand in the late 18th century.

If we were to look at this more closely,

you can see that this rising female infant

mortality is largely driven by female perinatal

mortality that is to say, the solid black line and

female neonatal mortality that is to say, the dashed black line.

So that by the late 18th century,

as female infant mortality was increasing from over

100 to almost 350 over two-thirds of that

mortality occurred during the first week of life,

perinatally and almost 99% of it occurred during

the first month of life, so female neonates.

[MUSIC]

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