Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India
本文整理了18至20世纪中国北京、广州和苏州/上海的工资与价格历史数据，并与欧洲、日本和印度主要城市比较，发现18世纪亚洲建筑工人实际收入与欧洲落后地区相近，但远低于西北欧领先经济体；中国实际工资在18和19世纪初停滞，19世纪末20世纪初缓慢上升，200年间累积变化很小，20世纪初的收入差距源于中国长期停滞与日本、欧洲工业化。
This article develops data on the history of wages and prices in Beijing, Canton, and Suzhou/Shanghai in China from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, and compares them with leading cities in Europe, Japan, and India in terms of nominal wages, the cost of living, and the standard of living. In the eighteenth century, the real income of building workers in Asia was similar to that of workers in the backward parts of Europe but far behind that in the leading economies in north‐western Europe. Real wages stagnated in China in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and rose slowly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth, with little cumulative change for 200 years. The income disparities of the early twentieth century were due to long‐run stagnation in China combined with industrialization in Japan and Europe.