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In his compelling lead article in the Spring 2006 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives [2], economic historian David Landes [3] wonders why the industrial revolution didn’t happen first in China. His answer is unequivocal: although it had lots of genius, China had neither the institutions nor the culture to transform this genius into widespread prosperity.
Almost every element usually regarded by historians as a major contributory cause to the Industrial Revolution in north-western Europe was also present in China [some 500 years before the wealth explosion that began in Europe in the 18th century].
So why, specifically, was there no industrial revolution in China?
Why indeed? Sinologists have put forward several partial explanations. Those that I find most persuasive are the following:
First, China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights. The Chinese state was always stepping in to interere with private enterprise — to take over certain activities, to prohibit and inhibit others, to manipulate prices, to exact bribes [p. 6].
And as Landes points out on page 7, the Ming dynasty’s attempt to prohibit all trade overseas certainly didn’t help matters.
Landes goes on to criticize severely the Chinese state’s — and people’s — ignorant belief that their culture was so superior to others that they had nothing much to learn from others.
Note that such a belief is truly ignorant and fatal — not just of and for the Chinese centuries ago, but of and for any people at any time and at any place.