ABSTRACT
Introduction No other scholar has exerted a greater influence on Economics than Adam Smith (1723-1790) who was a key figure in the now renowned eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment (see Rutherford, 2012) and who in time became an ‘icon’ of Western thinking in the field (see Schumpeter, 1954; Blaug, 1997; Haakonssen, 2006, for an overview). Whilst this observation may be true for most of the Western world for many years, this had not however been the case for China until the 1900s, well over a century after the original publication of his works. In China, Adam Smith (Yadang Simi) and his theories were not known to many intellectuals until Yan Fu’s (1854-1921) translations of Smith’s work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (1776), (to be abbreviated hereafter as The Wealth of Nations (WN)) into Chinese in 1902 – as the Origins of Wealth (Yuan fu) (see Liu, 2013: 38). In the first few decades of the twentieth century that ensued after this original translation, Smith’s works had attracted the attention of not many people there beyond the leading intellectuals of the time. In the 1920s and 1930s, with an increase in foreign-educated economists in China, Smith’s theory became known more widely and respected by many such thinkers there. Nevertheless, noted economists and governments soon saw the need for firm governmental intervention in order to start the nation on its path to late industrialization and somewhat turned away from Smith’s ‘laissez faire’ theory (see the chapters by Trescott earlier in this volume). Under Mao Zedong (1893-1976), Smith was for the most part rather neglected. In the post-‘Liberation’ period after 1949, many of Smith’s core-ideas, such as the ‘market’ as an ‘invisible hand’ (kan bu jian de shou), were rarely taught or mentioned due to their deviation from the official ideology. Arguably, it was after 1978 that mainland Chinese scholars and intellectuals started to more widely read and become more interested in Smith’s works. This demarche was propelled by the practical need of policy analysts to understand a theoretical justification of the market economy and the need of the Chinese scholars to know about the ‘fount’ of Western Economics. Even so it was only after 1992, when the Chinese Communist Party officially dismissed criticisms of the market economy and sanctioned the market economy – did Smith gain official
acceptance as a legitimate and mainstream theorist. Since the mid-1990s, however, Smith’s works have become better known in China. Whilst before 1997, most Chinese mainly knew about his work The Wealth of Nations (1776), since then they started to heed closely his earlier other masterpiece The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). It is fitting to claim that Smith has gained a status as the ‘founding father’ of Western Economics deriving from his extensive writings and correspondence (see Tribe and Mizuta, 2002) which has dominated the curricula of the now many Economics departments in universities in China. Nevertheless, many economists and officials in charge of economic affairs in the PRC still appreciated the need for governmental intervention in the economy for the sake of economic growth and a response to economic crises (see the chapter later in this volume on Keynes and China). In this chapter, I will survey the introduction and influence of the main works of Adam Smith in mainland China. The chapter starts with early translations and introduction of Smith’s works in China prior to 1902, the translations of Adam Smith’s main works (especially his two aforementioned works) in China during the years 1902-1937, and to the post-1978 period. It will then examine the impact of Smith’s works in China, first in the respective periods of 1902-1949, 1949-1976, and then later in the post-1978 period. The last section is then devoted to issues related to how Smith’s works were subsequently discussed in China. This contribution thus mainly focuses on the period of 1902-1937 and on the post-1978 period, respectively. It argues that during 1902-1949 Smith’s works became gradually more publicized. It also suggests that Smith’s works were to begin to attract increasing attention in China since 1978 and that from the late 1990s onwards, Smith has been accepted as the ‘founding-father’ economist in China. During the 1930s and during the 1990s, up to the present day, both Smith’s urge for minimal restrictions on the market, as well as others’ voices for a strong role for the State in economic growth, were widely and concurrently circulated in China.
