James Petras: China's Rise, Fall, and Re-Emergence!

The study of world power has been blighted by Euro-centric historians who have distorted and ignored the dominant role China played in the world economy between 1100 and 1800. John Hobson's brilliant historical survey of the world economy during this period provides an abundance of empirical data making the case for China's economic and technological superiority over Western civilization for the better part of a millennium prior to its conquest and decline in the 19th century. China's re-emergence as a world economic power raises important questions about what we can learn from its previous rise and fall and about the external and internal threats confronting this emerging economic superpower for the immediate future. First, we will outline the main contours of historical China's rise to global economic superiority over the West before the 19th century, following closely John Hobson's account in The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Since the majority of western economic historians (liberal, conservative, and Marxist) have presented historical China as a stagnant, backward, parochial society, an "oriental despotism", some detailed correctives will be necessary. It is especially important to emphasize how China, the world technological power between 1100 and 1800, made the West's emergence possible. It was only by borrowing and assimilating Chinese innovations that the West was able to make the transition to modern capitalist and imperial economies.