Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500-1937

by Margherita Zanasi

Overview

In this major new study, Margherita Zanasi argues that basic notions of a free market economy emerged in China a century and half earlier than in Europe. In response to the commercial revolutions of the late 1500s, Chinese intellectuals and officials called for the end of state intervention in the market, recognizing its power to self-regulate. They also noted the elasticity of domestic demand and production, arguing in favour of ending long-standing rules against luxury consumption, an idea that emerged in Europe in the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. Zanasi challenges Eurocentric theories of economic modernization as well as the assumption that European Enlightenment thought was unique in its ability to produce innovative economic ideas. She instead establishes a direct connection between observations of local economic conditions and the formulation of new theories, revealing the unexpected flexibility of the Confucian tradition and its accommodation of seemingly unorthodox ideas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108718714
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2022
Pages:	253
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Margherita Zanasi is Associate Professor of Chinese History at Louisiana State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The political and intellectual framework: the Minsheng mandate and China's economy of scarcity; 2. Efficient markets and productive consumption (1500–1800); 3. Scarcity revisited: population growth, frugality, and self-strengthening (1800–1911); 4. Nation-building, strategic markets, and frugal modernity: the early decades of the Republic of China (1912–1930s); Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

'Economic Thought in Modern China is an ambitious exploration of the evolution of indigenous Chinese economic thought, rooted in a critical re-evaluation the foundations of imperial political economy and extending into the ideas that shaped Chinese attempts at economic improvement in the twentieth century. Zanasi mines a wide range of sources rarely used by economic historians, and reads them with an iconoclastic sensibility and a thorough grounding in the social and political contexts in which they were written.' Madeleine Zelin, Columbia University

'Bold and combative, this study of the history of Chinese political economy in general and ideas about luxury consumption in particular will be of interest to historians of economic thought who are curious about the intellectual pathways followed outside Europe and open to the possibility that it was for good reason that these pathways were often anything but parallel with their European counterparts.' Helen Dunstan, University of Sydney

'Zanasi demonstrates that China in the early modern period possessed pro-market ideas and the belief that luxury consumption promotes economic development. Furthermore, her timely book offers the best explanation yet for why China in the past one hundred years turned to state intervention in the market to encourage thriftiness.' Wu jen-shu, Academia Sinica, Taipei

‘This fascinating title is suitable for students interested in political economy and economic thought … Highly recommended.’ D. Li, Choice

From the Publisher