Email: R.Cheng4@lse.ac.uk
CV
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, supervised by Joan Rosés.
My research lies at the intersection of historical GIS, digital humanity, economic history, economic geography, and development.
My work focuses on transportation networks in both historical and contemporary China and their relationship with urban development over the past 10,000 years, from the origins of civilization to the present day. I am particularly passionate about collecting and utilizing historical GIS data on transportation routes, cities, and archaeological sites, aiming to uncover long-term patterns that connect transport routes, cities, and the evolution of civilization.
Another field I am working on is the social elite network in 11th-century China and how their activities would impact the spatial variation of state capacity (ability for taxation) within the empire.
Recently, I have also been working on using AI to analyze the archaeologically excavated artifacts and their decorative patterns, with the aim of reconstructing the spatial and temporal aspects of human civilization's evolution.
According to economic geography literature, the location and size of cities are influenced by natural endowments and human endowments. This study examines the role of natural endowments and their interaction with human endowments in the pre-industrial era. By examining the location of cities in China over the past two millennia and linking natural endowments to historical transportation networks, my analysis reveals that natural endowments on routes generally had a positive and statistically significant influence on urban location. However, the magnitude of this effect was not constant over time but fluctuated across different dynastic cycles. This suggests that the value attributed to natural features shifted in response to changing institutional contexts. Mechanism tests indicate that governance strategies and taxation structures were key institutional factors influencing the varying impact of natural endowments. Specifically, dynasties that relied primarily on indirect taxes, as opposed to direct taxes, saw a significantly higher marginal effect of natural endowments to waterways—representing domestic market forces—on city locations. In dynasties where the national capital was closer to the population centroid, natural endowments to land routes—representing central government control— had a higher marginal effect compared to other eras. Additionally, the arrival of Arab and European traders spurred the development of the maritime Silk Road and international trade, leading to a long-term, stable shift of cities towards coastal port areas.
The Great Divergence has arguably been one of the most important debates in the field of economic history over the past two decades. This article contributes to this ongoing discussion from a novel perspective, specifically focusing on transportation conditions. Utilizing travel route books published since 16th century China, I reconstructed the national trade transport network of China during the Ming and Qing dynasties (14th to 19th centuries) and estimated transport costs and speeds in the Yangtze region during the late 17th and 18th centuries. These estimates were then compared with those of England for the same period. The findings reveal that, in the late 17th century, transport costs and speeds in the Yangtze region of China were comparable to those in England. However, a divergence emerged after 1700. This timing of divergence in transportation between the Yangtze region and England supports the strand of literature proposing that The Great Divergence began around 1700.
Teaching Assistance:
Transportation Network in Late Imperial China: I have georeferenced all courier stations in Ming China, which is the official transportation network covering 14th to 19th century. A more advanced version could be found at Pastway by Thorben Pelzer.