The narratives in preceding chapters have concerned China's international relations to 1931 and the fortunes of the Nationalist government in power at Nanking and its Chinese Communist opponents down to 1937. Yet, as earlier volumes in this series have made plain, China's modern history can hardly be grasped through narrative alone; too many specific (though often little known) situations affected the course of events – institutional practices, economic and social conditions, the ideas and aspirations of leaders and followers. The next chapters therefore deal with the agrarian economy, peasant movements, local government, higher education and literary trends – contextual elements that influenced the dramatic events from 1937 to 1949. We begin with an appraisal of the livelihood of the common people on the land.

By the end of the ancien régime in 1912 Chinese agriculture supported a huge farming population, which worked hard and diligently but had to use ingenious methods to make a living from the inadequate amount of land available. Since aggregative statistics are lacking, this chapter presents a qualitative account in order to describe a situation quite unfamiliar to most people in Europe and the Americas.

While travelling to Nanking in January 1869 Ferdinand von Richthofen noted the following scene: