Elvin's high level equilibrium trap suits Frank's argument much more than a straightforward Malthusian crisis. The logic of a Malthusian crisis says that continued population growth will eventually lead to decreasing agricultural returns, which will lead to a rise in the price of food, an increase in the cost of hiring labor, a fall in the rate of profit and in economic growth. According to Elvin's thesis, however, China's weakness was not lack of capital. Large concentrations were indeed available - which explains *in part* why Elvin calls it a "high-level equilibrium trap". It was that China had no incentive to invest in new technology because it had a plentiful supply of cheap labor. A subtle difference, however, can be detected between what Elvin says about this "trap" and Frank's own adaptation of it. Frank likes Elvin's thesis precisely because it says it was China's very own prosperity during the post-1400 "A" phase period which had led to a high population/low resource-land ratio. But while Frank would have liked to put all the emphasis on a happy growing population, he does say, indirectly, that China's growth had been extensive, citing Elvin that "a major cause of those shortages was of course the continuing growth of population under conditions of relative technological standstill [which] had all reached a point of sharply diminishing returns by the later 18th century" (302). He even says that "much of Asian production and export, certainly Chinese silk, was highly labor-intensive to produce under high-labor supply/low-labor cost conditions. In India also, the previous centuries of economic growth and expansion had generated analogous supply and demand relations" (303-4). So the Asian "A" prosperity was based on extensive growth. But Frank is still convinced that Asia's agriculture was more efficient/productive than Europe's. In fact, as we saw in a previous post, he thinks Asia's low wages were made possible by the availability of cheap food produced by an efficient agricultural system. And that Europe's high wages were a result of its inability to produce cheap food. He also agrees with Boserup's claim that before 1750 Europe had no increases in agricultural productivity but that it was population growth which created the incentive for technological change (311) Did China enjoy a higher per capita income combined with lower wages due to a more efficient agricultural sector? Not according to Elvin, who makes it quite clear that China was suffering from a lack of effective demand due to a low per capita income due to declining agricultural returns. (See his *The Pattern of the Chinese Past*, 1973, pp.285-316). Cheap labor as well as low consumer demand rendered investments in new technologies uneconomical.
