Chapter 47 'Ultra-stable structures' broken by guns

From the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the rulers of the country changed from Manchu to Han, and the common people kept braids, but the logic of governance was consistent. Politically, it became more and more autocratic and conservative, and economically, it became more and more exclusive to officials and businessmen. Dispersed and desertified, social progress completely loses momentum.Jin Guantao and Liu Qifeng invented two terms to describe China in this period - "ultra-stable structure" and "high-level stagnation". It is clear that after the 15th century, China's growth curve showed a long-wave horizontal stagnation state, while the West entered a stage of explosive growth.Therefore, they came to a very important conclusion: no matter for China or the West, there is an adaptability between the structure of science and technology and the structure of society.In other words, the system is greater than the technology. China's economic and technological backwardness is firstly reflected in the lack of progress in the political system and social system.

The Qing Empire lasted for 268 years, of which, from 1661 to 1799, 138 years, known as the "Kang and Qian Dynasty".There are three signs of prosperity: one is the rapid growth of the population, which increased from about 100 million to 300 million at the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China; Qianlong left 70 million taels; the third is that the hundred years of peace made the life of the people comfortable, the merchant class changed from frugal to extravagant, and the industry and commerce prospered.In the history of the country, if calculated by time, the "Kangqian prosperous age" is second only to the "Zhenguan-Kaiyuan prosperous age".

However, in the sense of social progress, the "Golden Age of Kangxi and Qianlong" is actually a periodical recovery under the unified centralized power system. Chinese society is still evolving flatly in an ultra-stable state. The economic system, political system, and science and technology No real breakthrough occurred.If we stand from the perspective of human development history, we will find that this so-called "prosperous age" is really a great irony.In the history of the West, the 17th century was an era of intellectual explosion. European thinkers carried out pioneering work in astronomy, physics, mathematics, sociology, philosophy and other fields, and collectively laid the cornerstone of the temple of modern science. .Someone counted the 369 most important scientific and technological achievements in the world, and 38% of them appeared during the period from the beginning of the European Religious Revolution (1553) to the beginning of the French Revolution (1789). The proportion is surprisingly large.Driven by the power of science and technology, European and American countries have successively surpassed China. From 1700 to 1820, the per capita GDP growth rate of the United States was 72%, and that of Europe was 14%. The average growth rate of the world 6%, while China's per capita GDP has been zero growth.Around the 1830s, China's economic aggregate was still the largest in the world, but the increase in economic aggregate was all due to the effect of population doubling.

Observing the history of China and the West during this period, we can draw two important conclusions: First, in the industrial revolution, there is no simple correspondence between a country’s wealth level and total wealth, and the timing, speed, and success of its industrialization. That is to say, the existing economic aggregate is by no means the only decision factor.In contrast, technological innovation constituted the core of the industrialization process, but China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties generally lacked incentive mechanisms to promote fundamental changes in production methods.

Second, the Industrial Revolution and Western-style capitalism "airborne" into East Asia in a very sudden way. Its social and economic systems are incompatible with the original "genes". As the recipient, China The psychological and institutional blows suffered by East Asian countries are huge and tragic, even devastating. This ultra-stable state was broken at the beginning of the 19th century, and the reason was still external and internal troubles. First, due to the illegal import of opium, the empire experienced a trade deficit for the first time in 1826-this fact can be regarded as a symbolic event that the Chinese economy was surpassed by the West, a large amount of silver was outflowed, and the decision-makers tried to curb foreign trade by banning smoking And the deterioration of currency conditions, fierce trade frictions with asymmetric information led to the Opium War in 1840.Regarding this war, Chinese and Western historical circles have different judgments. Most Chinese scholars regard this war as an outright war of aggression and the chief culprit that led to China's decline.Western scholars tend to regard the war as the result of China's decline, rather than the cause. It was this war that allowed China to "get rid" of its closed state.Karl Marx argued in an article for the New York Daily Tribune: "Before British force, the authority of the Qing Dynasty fell to pieces; the eternal superstition of the Celestial Empire was shattered; Barbarism and sealing have been violated, while openness has been achieved." After entering the contemporary era, even some scholars who are very sympathetic to China have proposed the "inevitability" of this war from the perspective of economic history.

The greater damage to governance comes from within.Beginning in 1800, the White Lotus Movement broke out in the northern region. The imperial court spent 100 million taels of silver to suppress this movement, and the national treasury was half empty.By 1851, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement and the Nian Army Uprising broke out on a larger scale in the south. The war lasted for 14 years, and the state budget spent about 700 million taels of silver for it, which was equivalent to the sum of ten years of fiscal revenue.During the war, the central army composed of the Manchurian Eight Banners and the Green Battalion was repeatedly defeated. The imperial court had to allow lower-level Han officials to organize local armed forces to resist. Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang and others took the opportunity to rise up.In order to raise military pay, these local warlords "set up bureaus to persuade donations" in various commercial towns to collect "lijin".The growth of the local armed forces and the emergence of the lijin system were actually the beginning of the strength of local self-government power, and the "feudal town phenomenon" that had not appeared for 900 years after Song Taizu revived.

Under internal and external difficulties, the rulers have come to the precipice of change. At this time, China, although the central finance is on the verge of bankruptcy, the stability of silver is challenged, and the west wind is gradually changing people's minds. The basic system has not been fatally challenged, and the impetus and space for reform within the system still exist.It is a pity that the later reformers made the unforgivable "worst choice" time and time again.