Revisiting “Involution” versus “Development” in China and in the West

Abstract Involution, or diminishing output per unit input, necessarily occurred sooner or later under the mounting population-to-land pressures of China from the Ming and Qing periods on. It could be countered for a time by enhanced inputs, as, for example, through the use of more or higher-quality fertilizer, or by pre-modern technological advances, such as the earlier switch from dry rice farming to wet rice farming, but would then resume under continued population pressure. Involution was a phenomenon rarely encountered in the pre-modern West, but was a major long-term historical tendency in pre-modern China. With long-term involution came ever greater difficulty for transitions to other ways of production. The opposite of “involution” was “revolution,” wrought by technological change, such as the early switch from dry to wet farming of rice in China, or the coming of modern inputs such as chemical fertilizer. In addition to “revolution,” “involution” can also be juxtaposed against modernizing “development.” Pre-modern Chinese agriculture was far more labor intensive per unit land than pre-modern Western agriculture. Its transition into modernization (e.g., chemical inputs) was accordingly also far more difficult than the West’s. While the history of Western agriculture can be comprehended mainly through the two categories of “pre-modern” and “modern,” Chinese agriculture requires, in addition to those two, the intermediate third category of “involution” for comprehension.