Why the Sprouts of Capitalism Were Delayed in China

In China the sprouts of capitalist relations of production began in the late Ming, approximately two centuries later than in Western Europe. By the mid-Qing they had developed to a certain extent. But in agriculture they were so puny as to be hardly worth mentioning; moreover, they represented an extremely small proportion of handicrafts. After over three hundred years, on the eve of the Opium War, the sprouts still had not reached the stage of workshop handicraft (gongchang shougongye). They were far behind Western Europe.1 This section discusses why the sprouts of capitalism developed so belatedly in China. reasons for this are largely also the basic reasons why China's feudal society lasted so long, and are one basic source of modern China's economic backwardness. According to Marx, The economic structure of capitalistic society grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former. And the development of a commodity economy has a more or less dissolving influence everywhere

Archaeology · Capitalism · China · Political science · Politics · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Law · Political Economy and Marxism

• Rice Prices, Food Supply, and Market Structure in Eighteenth-Century South China

  Robert B Marks•Late imperial China•1991

  Add to list