Replication Package for "Lock-in or Reset? Qing Administrative Status, Contemporary Rank, and Urban Economic Divergence in China"

This replication package accompanies the manuscript “Lock-in or Reset? Qing Administrative Status, Contemporary Rank, and Urban Economic Divergence in China.” It contains the analysis datasets, variable documentation, data-source notes, Python replication scripts, data-construction scripts, and figures used in the study. The core analysis comprises 1,152 contemporary county-level observations matched to Qing-dynasty administrative records for 1820. The package also includes a county-year nighttime-light panel covering 1992–2020. The supplied scripts reproduce the main tables, placebo test, spatial Markov analysis, mediation analysis, and manuscript figures. Some source datasets require institutional subscriptions or separate licensing and are therefore not redistributed in raw form. Derived variables required to reproduce the reported analyses are included in the package. See README.md, codebook.md, and data_sources_and_notes.md for software requirements, variable definitions, source acknowledgements, and replication instructions.