Resolving the Needham Puzzle: Let the Evidence Speak—An Explanation on the Origin of China's Tobacco Industry

Abstract

In 1954, the famous British historian Joseph Needham put forward a famous puzzle in the preface to his Science and Civilisation in China: before the 15th century, China's civilization was ahead of that of Western countries, both in terms of economics and technology; however, China suffered a disastrous decline in the subsequent era, while its Western counterparts underwent the Industrial Revolution and became the great powers of the world. Thus, Needham asked, why did the scientific revolution, which had taken place in the Western world since the 16th century, not originate in China? This paper has broken new ground both methodologically and substantively concerning the Needham Puzzle. By applying the data found in Chinese historical bibliographies of China as a proxy for the changes in the knowledge stock, this paper proposes the institutional change hypothesis and provides empirical evidence for the dynamic trend of China’s technological development, thereby providing a possible explanation for the Needham Puzzle. And the loss of human capital in science and technology constitutes a necessary condition for the origin of China's tobacco industry. Because the tobacco planting industry is a labour-intensive industry, rather than a technology-intensive industry.