409
more evidence and further substantiation are needed for Faure to argue otherwise.
Also related to cash-cropping is the question of subsistence which Faure addresses. It is well known that Guangdong was a rice-deficit province throughout the period under study, very much dependent on foreign and extra-provincial supplies even in normal years as the records of the Imperial Maritime Customs clearly show. The conventional view that population pressure and the displacement of food crops by industrial cash-crops necessitated grain imports is, however, regarded by Faure as a 'fallacy', (p. 56). He contends, 'Grain was imported, not because food was short, but because income from export crops had raised the standard of living... an income with which to purchase a preferred foodstuff....' (pp. 56, 58). It follows that the increase in grain consumption in Guangdong was, in all likelihood, not a sign of impoverishment, but of rising prosperity', (p. 58). This contention is, I think, questionable. One wonders why Faure, in tabulating ‘paddy yield estimates' and 'food sufficiency' in Guangdong (Tables A.3 and 3.4), chooses to rely on Guoli Zhongshan daxue nongke xueyuan's surveys and does not make good use of the more comprehensive county paddy acreage and production statistics collected in Chen Qihui's Guangdong tudi liyong yu liangshi zhanxiao as well as the county paddy consumption statistics contained in Guangdong jingji nianjian. Since these latter sources serve to shed light on the patterns of paddy production and consumption in practically all the counties of Guangdong, they ought to have been taken account of in order to achieve a better understanding of the reasons behind the continuous need to import rice. Faure does point out that 'the [county] average figures have been subject to manipulation'. (p. 217). But why are Zhongshan daxue's data, whose coverage is more restricted, considered to be more reliable? Faure does not explain. Indeed, the county statistics show that demand generally exceeded supply, and that rice shortage was fundamentally attributed to an adverse man-land ratio. They do not support Faure's contention that 'the areas that suffered from population pressure or land shortage were not the ones that could have afforded to import grain, while the ones that did were not as short of grain', (p. 56). Dependence on outside supply was accordingly a matter of sheer necessity and not simply "out of choice' (p. 56), as Faure claims.
Space does not allow me to comment in detail other aspects covered by Faure. I shall be brief. On certain issues, Faure's work certainly