Concepts of cost and profit in Chinese agricultural treatises: with special reference to Shengshi Nongshu and Pu Nongshu in the seventeenth century

Abstract

This article analyses the use of the concepts of cost and profit in Chinese agricultural treatises. Special attention is given to the agricultural works Shengshi Nongshu and Pu Nongshu in the seventeenth century. The analysis shows how Chinese people applied the concepts of cost and profit to agricultural production. This paper also analyses the reasons for the lack of further progress of Chinese accounting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It concludes that Chinese accounting reached its peak in the Ming and Qing dynasties under a feudal framework and that accounting development has been strongly associated and constrained by its social environment, including political and cultural constraints.