Chinese debates on Adam Smith’s heritage in 1920s in the context of assimilation of Western economic thought

Abstract

The article analyzes special issues of the journals Xueyi (Wissen und Wissenschaft) and Dongfang Zazhi (The Eastern Miscellany) published in 1923 on occasion of the bicentennial of Adam Smith. An examination of these materials, which are not well known among scholars of the history of economic thought, helps fill a void in research on the understanding of Adam Smith in China in between the publication of the first (1902) and the second (1931) translations of The Wealth of Nations, and in particular to illuminate the assimilation of Western economics into China in the early 1920s. This article investigates the approaches of Chinese authors to comparing Smith’s teaching with Chinese tradition; special attention is paid to their views on mutual relations between the ideas of Smith and Marx. Representative interpretations of some facets of The Wealth of Nations (laissez-faire, theory of value, principles of taxation, theory of wages, methodology) are noted. The issues of Xueyi and Dongfang Zazhi on Adam Smith mirrored different perspectives of the assimilation of Western economic ideas. Chinese students in Japan were exposed to a significant influence of socialist thought that compelled them to treat Smith as a predecessor to Marx. Graduates of American universities approached Smith as the founder of contemporary Western economics. Their scholarly views served as the base for the formation of a professional economic community in China in the 1930–1940s. Comparing Chinese publications with V. M. Stein’s book about Smith (1923) provides an opportunity to illustrate similarities and differences in the development of economic thought in China and in Russia. Refs 44.