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The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to instances of production yardsticks set down in a seventeenth century compendium of Chinese agricultural and industrial methods. The instances cited from "T'ien-kung k'ai-wu" (The creations of nature and man) by Sung Ying-hsing show that the Chinese used calculations of actual and potential production for planning and to stimulate investment in technology.
Scorgie et al. (Fri,) studied this question.