It seems common sense that a centuries-long period of economic growth could not take place in the traditional agriculture of an extremely densely populated area, when no new land was available and no major technological breakthroughs occurred. This book demonstrates, however, that this is just what happened in the Yangzi delta between 1620 and 1850.

On the basis of an intensive analysis of changes in key factors of production, intensification of farming, rationalization of resource use and 'externalization' of agricultural production, the author finds that an obvious increase occurred in both land and labour productivity and an optimum model of peasant family economy became the norm in this area during this period. Finally, the author concludes that the region has followed its own way of economic development, not such Western-style methods we might have expected it to follow.

Discovering how this was done will be of great help to a better understanding of the economic performance of China past and present, since for centuries the Yangzi delta has acted as the locomotive of China's economic growth.