The Midterm is now scheduled for Monday, Oct. 21, and it will be an in-class, closed-book, essay exam.  You need to buy a large blue book.

The following are examples of questions I have asked from past exams.  They come from different semesters, so there may be some overlap.  These questions are only meant to be suggestive, and are not a contract; I do not guarantee, nor even intend, to just ask these questions.

1. Based on your reading of the Fairbank book, how advanced was China's economy during the Song Dynasty?  How did China compare with the rest of the world?  Give evidence and examples.  When did China's relative economic position, vis-a-vis the rest of the world, change? Given China's economic condition at this time, why didn't China develop into a more modern industrial economy before Liberation?
2. Characterize the important economic policies of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.  What effects did this have on the development of a market economy?
3. How advanced was China's economy by the late Ming and early Qing dynasties?  Discuss the state of trade, transport, industry, agriculture, and technology.
4. What happened to China's population during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and why?  How was Chinese agriculture able to feed so many people?  Why didn't the agricultural sector develop improved technology in response to this pressure?
5. To what extent was imperial China a class society?  Characterize these relations and how they changed over time.  How did they affect the economy?
6. Discuss foreign economic influence in China prior to 1949, particularly after the Opium Wars.  What role did foreign trade and investment play in helping or hindering China's economic development?  What other effects did the foreign presence have on China's development?
7. Why did China fail to develop into at least as powerful and dynamic an economy as the small states of Europe by the early 1800s?  Why did China, unlike Japan, fail to develop into a modern economy by the middle of the 20th Century?
8. What is the Needham Paradox?  To what extent can it be explained by imperial Chinese history, culture, and political institutions?
9. Discuss the evolution of China's agricultural policies under Mao.  Why did the PRC change strategies regarding rural production in the Fifties?  What are the primary economic and political issues in the debate between collectivization and family farms?  What were the strategies regarding the scale and degree of collectivization, and how did theses strategies change?
10. Why did the PRC change strategies regarding rural production in the Fifties?  What are the primary explanations supporting agricultural collectivization?  What about the People's Communes?  What costs and benefits would economic theories explain and predict?
11. Describe the major campaigns and strategies of the PRC for industrial development from Liberation through the death of Mao Zedong.  What effects did they have on the economy?
12. To what extent did China's industrial development during the FFYP depend on conditions prior to 1949?  What of this (both post and prior) was indigenous, and what was a result of foreign trade, investment, and intervention?
13. What are the economic problems which arose from the FFYP?  What were the different strategies for dealing with them?  What strategies were actually used?
14. What was the Great Leap Forward, and what was the result?  Why did it occur, and why did it have these particular results?  Finally, to what extent can the Cultural Revolution be seen as a continuation of the Great Leap?
15. Describe the major campaigns and strategies of the PRC for industrial development from Liberation through the death of Mao Zedong.  What effects did they have on the economy?