The Great Divergence II: China

This chapter focuses on the other side of the Great Divergencethe Great Divergence, namely China. While many scholars provide various explanations to why China lagged behind the Westthe West in the premodern period, few of them offer a consistent answer that explains not only China’s backwardness in the premodern period but also China’s prosperity in ancient times. This chapter proposes the Imperial Mode to interpret the long-run trajectory of Chinese economic changes. In contrast to Western EuropeWestern Europe, China rarely embraced new economic elements in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Emperors refused to accommodate new economic trends, such as commercialisationcommercialisation and marketisationmarketisation. The peasant economypeasantry economy was encouraged. The bureaucratic system was domesticated so that state capacitystate capacity declined. The superstructuresuperstructure cannot adopt new institutions to react to the changing economic baseeconomic base. Unlike the empire-building efforts in the “first economic revolutionfirst economic revolution” in the Pre-Qin era, the Imperial Mode failed to overhaul itself in the “second economic revolutionsecond economic revolution” in the following period of the Tang-Song transitionTang-Song transition.