Nankai school: The experience of adapting economics to Chinese conditions in the 1920s–1930s

Abstract

Using the example of the activities of the Nankai Institute of Economics in the second quarter of the twentieth century, the article analyses the problem of adapting Western economic theories to the study of the Chinese economy. At the heart of the program of sinicization of economic research and education proposed by the Nankai school was the work of collecting and systematising reliable information on the Chinese economy. In the second half of the 1920s, Nankai University became a leader in China in conducting socio-economic surveys, compiling index numbers of prices, studying selected industries and rural regions. The founders of the Nankai school. He Lian and Fang Xianting were educated in economics in the United States; up until the late 1940s, the Nankai Institute of Economics was highly dependent on American grant support. This did not prevent them from setting the objectives of “knowing China” and “serving China” by combining foreign theories and methods with an understanding of the real economic situation based on reliable quantitative data. The task of “localization” of economics stimulated writing of pioneering university textbooks that explained general theoretical concepts through Chinese examples. Focus on solving China’s problems led the economists to abandon copying ready-made foreign prescriptions. During the two decades of activity in the Republican period the Nankai school made major achievements in collecting factual material on Chinese economy and adapting courses, its legacy has become an important starting point of the contemporary policy of sinicization of economics in the PRC.