The Pattern of the Chinese Past(VIII)

In chapter 16 Elvin focuses on investigating China's major economic activities and concludes that in the last 3 century of pre-modern China some large private economic organizations began to prop up. There were market networks to handle large number of employees and such could be regarded as a sign of progress, and there were evidence to suggest that heightened tempo of economic activities in China had begun from late 1500. Yet China could not break through to modern economic growth.1 In chapter 17 Elvin proposes some answers to why industrial revolution had not begun in China despite the fact that there were great manufacturing centers in China, for example porcelain production in Ching-te-chan (景德鎮). Elvin suggests that: was it due to inadequate capital and restricted market? Was it due to political obstacles on economic growth?2 Or, was it due to the fact that enterprises were small-scale and short-lived? After exploring these three aspects, Elvin concludes that non of these conventional explanations can give convincing answers to why technical progress was absent in China when it was enjoying a period of prosperity and expansion.3 As a conclusion to the book, Elvin asserts that 'in late traditional China economic forces developed in such a way as to make profitable invention more and more difficult . . . with cheapening labour but increasingly expensive resources and capital, with farming and transport technologies so good that no simple improvement could be made, rational strategy for peasant and merchant alike tended to the direction not so much of labor-saving machinery as of economizing on resources and fixed capital. Huge but nearly static markets created no bottlenecks in the production system that might have prompted creativity. When temporary shortages arose, mercantile versatility, based on cheap transport, was a faster an surer remedy than the contrivance of machines. This situation may be described as a "high-level equilibrium trap'''.4 It was this 'high-level equilibrium trap', according to Elvin, that was responsible for China's technological stagnation.5

Notes:
1. Elvin, Mark. The Pattern of the Chinese Past. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973, page 284
2. page 289
3. page 297
4. page 314
5. page 298