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It is my understanding that China has a long history (hundreds of years at least) of the government keeping merchant power in check, lest it lead to unrest due
by avidphantasm 4y ago
It is my understanding that China has a long history (hundreds of years at least) of the government keeping merchant power in check, lest it lead to unrest due high levels of inequality. This is why China didn’t see Capitalist primative accumulation in the early modern period.
- scythe 4y agoChina had a brief nearly capitalist period with the Song Dynasty, building on growth during the Tang Dynasty, but the Song royal line, an Achilles heel of any monarchic empire, started to break down in the early 13th century, which contributed to the Mongol conquest. The next three dynasties were highly corrupt: the Yuan was overtly colonial, treating natives as an underclass; the Ming got off to a strong start but by the mid-1400s were consumed by palace intrigue and repressed the study of algebra (which was available via Islamic Central Asia) due to xenophobia; the Qing were an ethnostate again with some early Han defectors classified as "honorary Manchu", which may have inspired the "honorary Marleyan" motif in Attack on Titan. So it is a little more complex than that.