They also questioned government power over the economy and personal rights. New thinkers like Wang Yangming and Li Zhi challenged orthodox Confucianism and argued that the words of Confucius and Mencius were fallible and that wisdom was universal. The Ming regime was ideologically rigid but cities and new wealth allowed room for intellectual fervor and liberalization. Some contend that economic and social developments during the late Ming paralleled the development of Europe in the 18th and the 19th centuries and that China would have entered a modern age had there been no Manchu conquest and no Qing dynasty. Historian Robert Allen estimates that family incomes and labor productivity of the Ming-era Yangtze Delta Region, the richest province of China, was far higher than contemporary Europe and exceeded the later Qing dynasty. Wage labour became increasingly common, as large-scale private industry developed, displacing indentured labor and often buying out government workshops. Late Ming laissez-faire policies such as nonintervention in markets and low taxes further stimulated commercialisation, as market agriculture replaced subsistence farming. The Mongol conquest inflicted a large population loss and devastated the economy but the succeeding Ming dynasty brought a recovery in per capita incomes and economic output, surpassing Song dynasty heights. Some scholars have termed the phenomenon China's "medieval urban revolution". Others claim that the Song dynasty economic revolution brought proto-industrialization with large increases in per capita income as well as industrial and agricultural output. The economic historian Mark Elvin, drawing on the work of Japanese historians, argues that the Song dynasty (960–1279), experienced a revolution in agriculture, water transport, finance, urbanization, science and technology, but that China was then caught in a high level equilibrium trap.
In a review of the field in 2006, the Harvard economic historian David Landes began by stating that "as late as the end of the first millenium of our era, the civilizations of Asia were well ahead of Europe in wealth and knowledge," but five hundred years, that is, in the early years of the Ming dynasty, later "the tables had turned." Maddison believes that China's lead did not happen until the fall of the Roman Empire and that China lost its lead because Europe pulled ahead, not because of domestic conditions. The economic historian Angus Maddison calculates that in the tenth century China was the "world's leading economy in terms of per capita income," and that "between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries economic leadership passed from China to Western Europe." Carl Dahlman and Jean-Eric Aubert of the World Bank argue, based on Maddison's data, that China was the world's largest and most advanced economy for the most of the past two millennia and among the wealthiest and most advanced economies until the 18th century. Some see the Qing as the time when China fell behind, either because of stagnation or because Europe or the West pulled ahead. Theory supporters, some of whom may be motivated by anti-Qing sentiment, claim that advances in science and technology and economic development in the Song and Ming dynasties moved China toward a modern age, however, the restrictions placed on commerce and industry and the persecution of non-orthodox thought after the transition from Ming to Qing in the 17th century caused China to gradually stagnate and fall behind the West.ĭifferent dates are offered for the beginning or end of ascendency and whether it was in economic, technological, or political terms.
The theory seeks to explain why Europe could experience an industrial revolution, but China did not. The Qing conquest theory proposes that the actions and policies of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty held China back, and led to the Great Divergence in which China lost its early modern economic and industrial lead over the West.
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