Government as an Obstacle to Industrialization: The Case of Nineteenth-Century China

Few generalizations find wider acceptance among specialists onChina than that which holds that the Chinese Imperial Government was hostile to commerce and industry and that this hostility was a major element in the country's failure to achieve modern economic growth. There is, of course, an important element of truth in this generalization, but analysis of the issues involved has generally suffered from a failure to make clear just what it was that the Chinese government in the nineteenth century should have done to promote development.