This book offers a unique guide to China's long economic history and to
the embryonic development of Chinese capitalism. It makes a classic work
of Chinese economic history from top Chinese scholars available, in
abridged form, for the first time in English. The immense historic sweep
runs from the Late Ming period through the early mid Qing to the time of
the Opium wars. In each period there are detailed surveys of sectors of
the economy, both industrial and agricultural, and of the technological
development and methods used, in addition to overviews of the nature of
economic change in China and the retarded development of capitalism
prior to the nineteenth century.