Three Mechanisms of Old China’s Passive Incorporation into the World Market and Contemporary Implications—A Study Based on Marx and Engels on China

Against the background of the economic globalization deepening and China’s advancing highlevel opening-up, based on the perspective of Marx and Engels on China, and guided by Marxist world market theory, this paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the historical circumstances and internal mechanisms through which old China (the late Qing China) was passively incorporated into the capitalist world market. It clarifies the connotation, generative logic, and internal contradictions of the world market, thereby constructing an analytical framework of incorporation modes comprising rule status, exchange structure, and risk transmission. It then focuses on explaining the three core mechanisms of old China’s passive incorporation—the mechanism of coerced opening-up, the mechanism of distorted exchange, and the mechanism of risk spillover—revealing their internal coupling logic and the systemic consequences they produced. Taking history as a mirror, the paper proposes that China’s contemporary high-level opening-up must proactively grasp the rules of opening-up, consolidate the independent status of opening-up and strategic initiative, construct a fair exchange structure to promote industrial chain upgrading and the balance of value gains, and enhance the resilience of risk governance to achieve the coordinated development of opening-up and security. Finally, it emphasizes that only by adhering to the independent status of opening-up and firmly grasping the initiative can a country realize its own development and global win-win outcomes in the process of integrating into the world market, thereby laying a solid foundation for socialist modernization.