china's uniqueness lay in retaining an empire and a culture for an immense span of time. The remarkable longevity of the system was symbolised by the presence in Taiwan at least as late as 1970 of the representative of the seventy-seventh generation of the K'ung family, holder of a ducal title conferred on an ancestor by the Sung dynasty emperor Jen Tsung in the fifth century B.C. This is said, credibly enough, to be an unbeatable record for genuine aristocracy anywhere in the world (Stover 1974:229).

Yet an emphasis on the unchanging aspects of the system may unduly stress its monolithic elements. By the fourteenth century A.D. China had indeed achieved such a burst of technological and economic progress as to render suspect the frequently expressed belief that industrialisation was an improbable historical process (cf. Graham 1973; Cipolla 1967:101–2). The developments included a water-powered hemp-spinning machine as advanced as anything in Europe until about 1700.