Why No Capitalism in China? Negative Questions in Historical, Comparative Research

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Very often, theories of Western capitalism like Weber’s Protestant Ethic theory have been used to identify the critical factors blocking economic development in China. But such negative questions as “Why no capitalism in China?” provide misleading answers on non-Western societies. What makes China China, cannot be learned from a theory about Europe. In this paper, the organization of late imperial Chinese commerce, based on huiguan merchant organizations, is analyzed not as a negative case, but as something to be explained in its own terms.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: