Ideology and the Contours of Economic Changes in Modern China during 1850-1950
Debin Ma
No 15835, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Abstract:
What explains economic changes or lack-thereof in modern China during 1850-1950? This paper highlights the critical role of ideology and ideological change induced as a response to Western impact following Qing China’s forced opening during the mid-19th century. I argue that Imperial Qing’s highly centralized and absolutist political regimes and traditional dominance in a China-centred world order have led to a closure of mind to new intellectual resources and initial failure to recognize impending crisis in the new world order. By laying out the quantitative profile of Chinese economic change during 1850-1950 and reviewing the main historiography, this paper builds a new analytical framework linking ideology with economic changes. It delineates three phases of economic changes in light of the specific timing of intellectual and ideological transformation during this period and embed our narrative with two specific cases of commercial and financial developments.
Keywords: Ideology; Institutions; Western impact and chinese response; Qing china; Meiji china (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15835 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15835
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15835
orders@cepr.org
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (repec@cepr.org).