二〇世紀初期太原縣にみる地域經濟の原基

Abstract

What is a regional economy? What determine its boundaries between inside and outside? Through an analysis of households in a village in Taiyuan county, it was determined that the peasants of traditional China received two types of cash incomes: Income from the sale of products at periodic markets, and income from the sale of products to outside markets. The latter enabled peasants to diversify their income sources. However, the prices of commodities intended for outside markets, such as straw paper. moved independently from the prices of commodities sold at periodic markets, such as cereals, where spot dealing was common. This fact implies that there existed economic borders that reflected the different price movements contained therein. Jincizhen 晉祠鎭, one of four rural towns in Taiyuan county, functioned as a center of a payment community that covered periodic markets. Merchants in this town issued cash notes which circulated only within the immediate area. The payment community was enabled to respond to the fluctuations of currency demand through the supplying of credit by town merchants. The difference between markets, whether located within the payment communities or not, was responsible for the different price movements of commodities such as those mentioned above. From this it can be concluded that markets in traditional China did not form a hierarchy based simply on size, as central place theory suggests. Rather, they were, in fact, divided by autonomous payment communities. The Shanxi provincial government, under the military lord Yanxishan 閻錫山, attempted to force counties or villages to issue currency notes, thereby disbanding the payment communities that intervened between counties and villages, in order to cause governmental fiscal policies to have a direct effect. However, the result of these administrative interventions was to make the monetary flow in local markets more unstable. This failure of the provincial government policies resulted from neglecting the function of the payment communities, which autonomously maintained local liquidity.