John Stuart Mill on China's Stationary State

Bibliographic Data

ID4297753
AuthorsYue Xiao (0009-0002-4558-8904, John Stuart Mill on China’s Stationary State, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume53
Issue5
Pages833-856
Publication date2021-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182702-9395072
OpenAlexW3216198000
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

Current literature on John Stuart Mill's writings about Asia have focused mainly on his relationship with India because of Mill's thirty-five-year career in the East India Company. Scholars in both China and the West have not paid attention to Mill's views on China. This paper delves into Mill's notion of China's stationary state from two perspectives: (1) a stationary state of capital accumulation and (2) a stationary state of human improvement. In Principles, Mill explained his conception of a stationary state. He linked China's economic stagnation to the low desire for capital accumulation. In On Liberty and Considerations, Mill explored the reasons for China's stagnancy in human improvement. He discussed the negative impact of the "despotism of custom" on individual liberty and the defects of a bureaucratic government in nineteenth-century China. Mill thought that a stationary state of capital accumulation does not necessarily imply a stationary state of human improvement. However, he seemed to argue that in China these two types of stationary states have a mutual effect upon each other

Ancient history · Bureaucracy · Capital (architecture · China · Economic growth · Economic history · Economics · Government (linguistics · Human capital · Mill · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · European Political History Analysis · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence

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