Chapter 45 Early warning of "rotational inertia"

At this point in the explanation, we want to put forward a historic early warning of China's "rotational inertia". In the big family of human society, a country is like a planet in the universe, which has a revolution in sync with the world civilization and a rotation in line with its own conditions.Among all civilizations, due to geographical, cultural and even economic reasons, China may be one of the countries with the best rotation conditions and the strongest rotation ability. In the period of agricultural civilization, if a country wants to close itself off and refuse to go around, it must meet two important conditions; one is the vastness of the land and the abundance of food enough to feed all the people, and the other is that the population is large enough to meet the market supply and demand of industrial and commercial production.If these two premises hold, then technological progress is likely to strengthen—rather than weaken—the introversion and isolation of this country.Coincidentally, in the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century, all objective conditions were met, and the empire quickly turned around and became a "rotating small universe".

In the academic world, only a few scholars have observed this rule. Braudel, who has never been to the East, briefly mentioned in "The History of Civilization", "The large population has led to the fact that China does not need technological progress. Domestic demand can meet supply without having to pursue overseas markets."For people's livelihood in the state of agricultural civilization, there are only two main domestic demand products, one is food and the other is clothing.The introduction and promotion of rice and cotton solved technical problems in the two fields of "farming" and "weaving", respectively, and created the necessary conditions for closing the country.In "Historical Studies", Toynbee elaborated on the relationship between the unified system and technological progress in a more general sense. In his opinion: they often pay no attention to the possibility of technological progress or simply take a hostile attitude. Because they believe that any technological change threatens the economic and, consequently, the social and political stability that the founders of the unified state had so hard to establish."

Therefore, the "mainland isolationism" that was gradually pursued after the Song Dynasty finally found a realistic and stubborn foothold in the Ming Dynasty. The "cotton revolution" from the 14th to the 15th century was the last revolution of China's agricultural economy and a key factor in the prosperity of the small peasant economy. It pushed the ancient Chinese economy to a new peak and ended here.Since then, in a long period of 400 years, China has become a non-progressive and ultra-stable small-scale peasant society, an empire that "rotates" and has nothing to do with "world revolution".According to Angus Maddison's calculations, China's per capita GDP was 600 "international yuan" in 1301 (the fourth year of Dade in the Yuan Dynasty), and the growth stagnated thereafter until 1701 (the thirty-ninth year of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty). ) for 400 years with zero growth rate.The GDP per capita in Europe increased from 576 "international dollars" to 924 "international dollars".

From a static point of view, this is a state of social operation in which efficiency and management costs are simultaneously extremely low. Without the impact of the "industrial revolution" from outside, it may be the end of Chinese history.Since the "Wang Anshi Reform" in the Song Dynasty, the rulers of the empire have been unable to find a new way out for the reform of the economic system. Therefore, it has become inevitable to flatten and fragment the entire society by promoting the livelihood mode of "men farming and women weaving". choice.Once social organizations are “flattened,” they lose their cohesive power, and resistance to centralization becomes weak.

Such a strategy of governing the country seemed to be successful in the Ming and Qing dynasties.Huang Renyu argues: "For most of the history of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor ruled the world on the basis of no competition. ... Throughout the Ming Dynasty, no civil servants or military generals rose up against the state. In addition, ordinary people were extremely tolerant of mismanagement of the state …Due to these conditions, the dynasty survived with a minimum of military and economic power. It did not have to take administrative efficiency seriously. …The vitality of the dynasty was not based on its superiority, but because it had no other rival to replace it.”

Huang Renyu's so-called "alternative opponent" is only observed from the perspective of competition, but if viewed from the perspective of the system, there are two possibilities.First, the new "replacement" continued the Ming Empire's model, allowing society to slowly "rotate" in a static and ultra-stable state.The second is the emergence of a fundamental and new system that will completely overthrow and replace it.Both situations later occurred.The first substitution occurred in 1644, and the second in the distant 1911. It must be pointed out that the highly authoritarian centralized system has a natural desire for the seclusion of the country and the loosening of social organizations. If this political system is not fundamentally changed, any new technological progress may be alienated to improve the "rotation" means of ability.

In today's China, the objective conditions for the implementation of closed-door policy and social disintegration still exist. At the level of industrial economy, China is still at the juncture of the industrial revolution and the information revolution. The more it becomes the main force driving the national economy, especially after the global financial crisis in 2008, the dependence of China's industrial economy on foreign trade has dropped sharply.In the next 20 years, with the popularization of the invention of new energy technologies, China's dependence on international natural resources is likely to further decline, which means that the risk of China returning to the state of rotation is also increasing.In this sense, China's reforms are running an uncertain and dangerous race against the global technological revolution.