The Qing dynasty (1644–1912) was the most populated country on Earth for nearly two centuries and had a large and varied economy. The High Qing era saw a period of rapid demographic and economic growth, followed by a near century of stagnation brought about by the unequal treaties, rebellions, floods, and a fiscally conservative and decentralised government.

The period up to the High Qing era has been described by scholars as a second commercial revolution, even more transformative than the first, which occurred during the Song dynasty. By the end of the 18th century a "circulation economy" or "commodity economy" developed, in which commercialization penetrated local rural society to an unprecedented degree. During this period the European trend of imitating Chinese artistic traditions, known as chinoiserie, gained great popularity in Europe in the 18th century due to the rise in trade with China and the broader current of Orientalism.

Agriculture Due to the mid-century rebellions there is a distinct lack of data in the latter half of the Late Qing era. This has therefore led to a great reliance on estimates of production and a reduction to general trends over specific numbers. However, the population largely remained close to 400,000,000 throughout the 1800s and early 1900s with a significant decrease during the mid-century era due to rebellions, floods, famines and other issues.

The Qing dynasty controlled a large portion of Asia including areas beyond modern China, and so its agriculture was widely varied. General trends, however, can be identified, namely that Southern China (generally south of the Yangtze river) produced rice and North of the river produced wheat. Further provincial staples and agricultural patterns are also identifiable; generally Guangxi and Guangdong specialised in double-cropping of rice, with Zhejiang, Hunan and Jiangxi producing rice and tea. Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei in contrast produced both rice and wheat, with wheat being grown in the winter. Shandong, Henan and Zhili (Hebei) produced winter wheat and kaoliang. Shaanxi and Shanxi in addition to Eastern Gansu and South Ningxia produced winter wheat too alongside millet, Manchuria produced soybeans and kaoliang with Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou producing rice. Inner and Outer Mongolia was predominantly pasture land, while Xinjiang was reliant on oases for agriculture. Likewise, in Tibet agriculture was predominantly in valleys, with the remainder used for pasture.

The peasants often grew multiple different types of crops, and varied their activities. In less arable areas, the peasantry adapted by growing most of their own grain as annual crops while legumes were grown as semi-annual crops, while also producing handicraft goods or working as labourers wherever possible to supplement their income. As peace and prosperity continued throughout the 18th century the populace increasingly diversified in roles. In the more arable and productive areas in Northern China families grew multiple crops a year, generally one food and one industrial crop such as cotton and mulberry. In Southern China the productive lands often grew two food crops, one of which was retained for subsistence and the other sold. Alternatively, they followed the above North China regime of one food crop and one industrial crop. In the far south of China the custom was three crops: two of rice and one of wheat or beans.

Generally, the Qing Emperors discouraged the production of non-grain crops, believing them to be immoral and simultaneously causing food shortages. Though tobacco was not banned, the Yongzheng Emperor stated to the Grand Council that its cultivation was harmful, and even contemplated introducing agricultural supervisory bodies nation-wide to encourage 'correct' agriculture. Though this plan was never implemented, the Emperor did disparage the wasting of grain especially using it to feed livestock.

Agricultural productivity The Qing intelligentsia recognised the weakness of the Qing methods of agriculture compared the prosperous agriculture of Europe, which fed more people with less land and far fewer laborers than China. They argued in favour of mechanisation and modernised farming techniques. This desire for modernisation was repeated by officials such as Zhang Zhidong, who noted that China already had issues of food supply and that the nation was overpopulated. His solution was chemistry, in the form of fertiliser, which he theorised would allow China to support 300% its current population of 400,000,000 amounting to over 1,200,000,000, a figure lower than China's population today.

Population pressure

Throughout the Qing period there was an immense increase in population, which placed an extraordinary pressure on the land to both provide work and feed the people. In 1873-1893 alone the population rose by 8% while cultivated land rose by only 1%. Accordingly, land plots decreased in size; however there was not a corresponding fall in living standards or an increase in poverty simultaneously. The entire 1800s was a long period of stagnation for the agricultural sector; to continue feeding a growing population on the land, there was a shift to more calorie-dense and correspondingly labour-intensive crops rather than any technological, agricultural or institutional reform or improvement. The total food output of major food crops was in excess of 2,000,000,000 piculs or 120,957,964 tonnes an amount capable of providing food for the entire nation. The large labour surplus of China applied for successive centuries if not millennia allowed for a large yield per unit for rice it stood at 2.3 tons/hectare in the 1600s. In contrast, India had only achieved 1.36 tons/hectare by the 1960s, and China in the same period had only risen to 2.5 tons/hectare, a negligible increase per unit. These impressive units however disguise the fact that the vast majority of the 2.3 tons were the food for the farmers who grew it (who numbered far more than in other parts of the world), and little was left for the market. This limited excess of food combined with a high demand for labour due to intensive agricultural methods meant that industrialisation was hindered and slowed.

There were signs of demographic strain as the number of marriages and births declined in the early 19th century. Additionally, many of the inhabitants of the overcrowded regions migrated to other areas of China particularly the upper Yellow and Yangtze regions, which exacerbated tensions leading to the White Lotus Rebellion as well as soil depletion, land degradation and flooding. This flooding was a result of deforestation, as maize farming proved too intense and dense for the local soils to accommodate.

Agricultural trade Tea access to which was a key factor in the Opium wars ceased to be the dominant export crop of China in 1887 being overtaken by silk, as both raw and refined silk exports increased throughout the dynasty. China also increasingly exported raw cotton as its domestic yarn industry was outpriced by cheap yarn from the factories of Japan and India. This reduced demand for yarn and therefore demand for cotton in China, as well as increasing prices for raw cotton internationally, increasing its demand abroad. However, the largest growth in cultivation was that of opium. Though there is no national data that exists in regard to this growth of cultivation, it was recorded that opium imports fell in quantity throughout the Late Qing period. Sir Robert Hart of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service estimated total production to be 334,000 piculs which is over 2,000 tonnes. Edkins also notes that the customs service recorded 12,600 piculs passing Yichang in 1894 and 22,000 in 1897 a considerable increase in only 3 years and 400 piculs less opium is imported annually at the port of Zhenjiang acorrding to the commissioner of the city.

Domestically, the movement of foodstuffs was widespread. The coastal areas of Hubei, Shanxi and Zhili imported food from the rest of China and by the early 1800s the value of the domestic trade of foodstuffs was over 168,000,000 taels annually, an amount 3 times that of the grain tax.

Regionalism and Centralisation Despite the 1700s seeing a large tendency towards national market integration, with Jiangnan being the focal point of wealth by the 19th century the tendency swung back towards economic regionalisation. Rather than surplus labour being applied to already-farmed plots and thereby boosting vertical productivity, untilled land became cleared and settled especially in the frontier regions. Beyond Jiangnan, agricultural productivity did not increase. In Northern China cash crop production fell, as the growing population raised the demand for food. This return to subsistence agriculture reversed previous trends towards a market economy, and the urban population largely declined as the rural population thus boomed. The rate of urbanisation reached 5%, half that of the Southern Song dynasty.

Jiangnan's chief trade of cloth was soon displaced as Hubei began exchanging its cotton for food from Sichuan, leading to a Sichuanese cloth industry undermining Jiangnan. The decline of Jiangnan's ability to export goods also affected its ability in turn to purchase goods from other provinces.

Industry and trade The late Qing routinely ran a trade deficit only reversed by the remittances of overseas Chinese and spending of foreigners without which from the entire period 1865-1911 there would be a deficit with a trade deficit in 1905 amounted to almost the entirety of the value of Qing exports this outflow of capital was not conducive or indicative of a developing economy which traditionally rely on the export of goods. +Balance of payments of the Late Qing (taels)yearimportsexportsRemittancesForeign spending Balance186555,700,0054,100,0050,000,000 +48,400,000187567,800,00068,900,00050,000,000 +51,100,000188588,200,00065,000,00050,000,000 +26,800,0001895171,000,000143,300,00050,000,00030,000,000 +52,300,0001905447,100,000227,900,00050,000,00012,500,000 -156,700,0001911471,500,000377,300,00050,000,00012,500,000 -31,700,000

Banking

Foreign banks The modern system of banking a key driver in providing capital to modern economic ventures was entirely absent in China prior to 1850 with British banks such as HSBC (and its predecessors) and the Oriental Banking company maintaining a monopoly on modern Chinese banking until the Germans established the Deutsch-Asiatische bank in 1889 the other countries soon followed however the Chinese did not establish their own banks until 1898. The foreign banks however were much more varied in their roles than their role as banks would allow them to be in Europe, they acted as representatives of their governmental treasuries, took deposits of the Chinese maritime customs service and the salt tax used as securities for foreign loans, as well as issuing bank notes despite a lack of permission from the Qing government citing their extraterritorial right to do so being the only reliable banks for decades the foreign banks became extremely wealthy and powerful with over 35,000,000 taels worth of bank notes in circulation with high estimates placing circulation at 300,000,000.

Chinese banks During the Hundred days reform the Guangxu emperor approved the formation of a government sponsored private bank, this was the Commercial bank of China with 5,000,000 taels. In 1905 it was joined by the Hubu (later Da Qing) bank with 10,000,000 taels and in 1907 the Bank of Communications the number of banks thus proliferated with 59 by 1914 this growing banking industry though not useful to the Qing, they would prove instrumental to the subsequent warlords and the Nanjing government.

Daoguang Depression