During the Manchu–led Qing dynasty, the economy was significantly developed and markets continued to expand especially in the High Qing era, and imperial China experienced a second commercial revolution in the economic history of China from the mid-16th century to the end of the 18th century. But akin to the other major non-European powers around the world at that time like the Islamic gunpowder empires and Tokugawa Japan, such economic development did not keep pace with the economies of European countries in the Industrial Revolution occurring by the early 19th century, which resulted in a dramatic change described by the 19th-century Qing official Li Hongzhang (who promoted the Self-Strengthening Movement) as "the biggest change in more than three thousand years" (三千年未有之大變局).
Critics of the Qing, some of whom may be motivated by Chinese nationalism and anti-Qing sentiment, argue that the specific actions and policies of the Qing dynasty held the nation-state of China back during its rule, when the Industrial Revolution which occurred in Europe by the 19th century led to a Great Divergence in which China lost its early modern economic and industrial lead over the West which it had previously held for more than a millennium. According to the critics, the advances in science and technology and economic development in the preceding Song and Ming dynasties moved China toward a modern age, but 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 and led to the century of humiliation.
Scholars outside China generally disagree with such an argument, and many scholars instead emphasize the positive effects of the Qing dynasty's order on the Chinese economy. At the same time, American scholar Kenneth Pomeranz rejects the assertion that "certain Asian societies were headed toward an industrial breakthrough until Manchu or British invaders crushed the 'sprouts of capitalism'", although he suggests that the Qing revitalization of the state may have impeded the growth of "fashion". In conclusion, he sees the Great Divergence as resulting primarily from what happened in the West, rather than what failed to happen in the Qing Empire. He adds that the difference in the West that facilitated the Industrial Revolution was not accumulated past "progress" or a more inventive mindset but rather a number of historically particular "contingencies", above all Europe's colonial exploitation of the New World through the use of slave labor from Africa.
Background
Different dates are offered for the beginning or end of ascendency and whether it was in economic, technological, or political terms. It has been argued that either the Ming or the Qing was the time when China fell behind, and either because of stagnation or because Europe or the West pulled ahead. The economic historian Angus Maddison calculates that in the 10th 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." He 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. Some argue that China was the world's largest and most advanced economy for most of the past two millennia and among the wealthiest and most advanced economies until the 18th century or the early 19th century, followed by India in terms of both population and GDP.Dahlman, Carl J; Aubert, Jean-Eric. China and the Knowledge Economy: Seizing the 21st Century. WBI Development Studies. World Bank Publications . Accessed January 30, 2008 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 millennium of our era, the civilizations of Asia were well ahead of Europe in wealth and knowledge," but by five hundred years later, that is, in the early years of the Ming dynasty, "the tables had turned."
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. 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. Some scholars have termed the phenomenon China's "medieval urban revolution".
The Mongol conquest inflicted a large population loss and devastated the economy but later the Ming dynasty brought a recovery in per capita incomes and economic output, surpassing Song dynasty heights. Late Ming laissez-faire policies such as nonintervention in markets and low taxes further stimulated commercialisation, as market agriculture replaced subsistence farming. Wage labour became increasingly common, as large-scale private industry developed, displacing indentured labor and often buying out government workshops. 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., figure 2 However, the Qing encouraged settlements over larger portions of the empire since these regions offered the best opportunities to improve one's livelihood by clearing and farming large tracts. According to the scholar Kenneth Pomeranz, the average standard of living in the Qing Empire during the High Qing era was likely higher than that in Western Europe, and desirable but nonessential commodities such as sugar were consumed in greater quantities by the average Qing subject than by the average European. This only changed in the 19th century. William T. Rowe also described the period up to the High Qing era as a second commercial revolution, which was even more transformative than the first that occurred during the Song dynasty.
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. The Ming regime was ideologically rigid but cities and new wealth allowed room for intellectual fervor and liberalization. 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. They also questioned government power over the economy and personal rights. Scholars of the Donglin school protested increases in government taxation during the Wanli Emperor, and restrictions on freedom of speech, advocating a program similar to classical liberalism. Ming dynasty scholars also investigated western science, such as Archimedes, although it is also pointed out that Chinese interest in the physical sciences and mathematics increased markedly in the 17th century, especially after the Ming-Qing transition. The Qing dynasty induced Jesuit experts to work as imperial minions in the government bureaucracy to augment their own projects of political and cultural control, using the latest mathematical, astronomical, military, and surveying techniques. Meanwhile, the European trend to imitate Chinese artistic traditions since the mid-to-late 17th century, known as chinoiserie gained great popularity in Europe in the 18th century (during the High Qing era) due to the rise in trade with (Qing) China and the broader current of Orientalism.
Issues In spite of the significant economic development during the Qing dynasty (especially during the High Qing era), critics hold that the specific policies of the Qing slowed China's economic and scientific advancement and allowed Western nations to surpass China, while most scholars outside China disagree with such argument. Specific Qing policies cited by critics include suppression of creative thought, literary persecution, discouragement of foreign trade, repressive domestic policies, rigid Neo-Confucianism emphasis on ideology rather than practical knowledge, disrespect for business and commerce, destructive fiscal and tax policy, as well as the devastation during the initial Ming-Qing transition. Though, such an argument appeared to focus primarily on the particular policies of the Qing, but not the developments of the contemporary European countries which gradually became colonial empires since the 16th century and also gained and extended lead over other previously dominant or comparable civilizations around the world such as the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India, and Safavid Iran, among others.
Devastation during the initial Ming-Qing transition The Ming-Qing transition was one of the most devastating wars in Chinese history, and critics assert that it has set back Chinese progress decades. Places such as Sichuan and Jiangnan, were greatly devastated and depopulated during the chaos in the period, when the incumbent Ming dynasty (and later the Southern Ming), the emerging Qing dynasty, and several other factions like the Shun dynasty and Xi dynasty founded by peasant revolt leaders fought against each another, which, along with innumerable natural disasters at that time such as those caused by the Little Ice Age and epidemics like the Great Plague during the last decade of the Ming dynasty, killed an estimated 25 million people in total. Beginning in the 1630s, the combination of flight, deaths due to warfare, famine, and disease, and the deliberate genocide practice by the revolt leader Zhang Xianzhong reduced Sichuan's population by as much as 75%, leaving the huge province with perhaps fewer than a million inhabitants, most clustered in peripheral areas. In the lower Yangtze region there was also very bloody warfare. General Shi Kefa of the Southern Ming had ordered that the Yangzhou city be defended to the death, but in May 1645 it fell to Qing forces. Then the Yangzhou massacre took place, in which some 800,000 people, including women and children, were massacred by the Manchus and unruly Chinese soldiers in Qing employ.Wang Shochu, Records of the Ten Day Massacre in Yangzhou. Available in Chinese at Wikisource: 揚州十日記. Some scholars estimate that the Chinese economy did not regain the level reached in the late Ming dynasty until the mid-Qing period.
It is also pointed out that the development of population often shows periodic fluctuations in China's long history, and the rise and fall of chaos in each dynasty (see dynastic cycle) was almost always accompanied by the increase or decrease of population; there would almost always be great social turmoil and great destruction whenever the old and new dynasties change. The destructive economic effects could be felt for decades, which appeared to be the case for the Ming-Qing transition. In the early 1690s, Tang Zhen (唐甄), a retired Chinese scholar and failed merchant wrote that "the four occupations are all impoverished" at the time. Due to warfare, famine, and disease the Chinese endured more than a half century of suffering since the 1630s before foreign trade and domestic commerce revived. However, by the century's end prosperity was slowing returning with the advent of favorable economic developments since the consolidation of the Qing Empire's governance. In 1713 the Kangxi Emperor announced his belief that the economic production of the empire had been fully restored to what it had been at the height of the Ming.