5. Economic Fluctuation and Climate Change over the Past 2000 Years in China

The semantic differential method was used to reconstruct the economic and fiscal sequences with a 10-year resolution from 220 BCE to 1910 CE in China based on 1091 macroeconomic items and 1101 fiscal items of direct and proffered evidence from Chinese economic and fiscal history books written by leading contemporary scholars. It is found that both macroeconomic and fiscal fluctuations during 220 BCE–1910 CE in China displayed cyclical changes following climate change. A warm and wet climate was beneficial to economic development, and a combined cold-dry climatic scenario would greatly increase the possibility of economic or fiscal crisis. There were several common periodicities and associations at those common periodicities among climate change, macro economy and fiscal balance.