The Imperial Mode of China

Utilising Marxian, Weberian, and institutionalist approaches, this book proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding the nature of Chinese economic history: the ‘imperial mode’ of China. The book aims to innovatively apply a cohesive historical materialist framework to the economic evolution of China, while at the same time offering micro-analysis of China’s institutions throughout its history.

Taking a long-run perspective, from ancient China up until the present, the book aims to show how Chinese economic history can be viewed as a dynamic evolutionary process consisting of various stages. The first part of the book lays out the imperial mode as a mode of production based on China’s agricultural economy, with a structure consisting of a central authority, the bureaucratic system, and the peasantry. The second part then chronologically examines the different dynasties through this analytical lens and suggests ways in which China’s resistance to institutional changes in the early modern period has had long-lasting consequences for its economic development. The book goes on to show how the imperial mode is able to facilitate the agricultural economy, but did not foster the modern commercial and industrial economy. It integrates modern China into the long wave of economic history, showing how this imperial mode still exerts influence on China’s current path of development, as well as introducing a new way of understanding communist China from a historical perspective.

This book will have interdisciplinary appeal for researchers and students of economic history, economic development, the history of China, economic sociology, and social history more broadly.