It is instructive to compare European families with families in China. Obviously, many of the same caveats apply. When it comes to its structure and the actual living conditions, there is every bit as much variation between Chinese families as there are between European. And yet in China too there was an idea of the family. In fact, the idea of the family was stronger and more explicitly spelled out here than in Europe. In China the family was the primary source of material, emotional and social support, but it was also a political and even a religious institution. The primacy of the family was manifested in legal practices which turned families rather than individuals into property owners, and which held families legally responsible for the actions of their members. In the eyes of the law as well as its members, it was the family and not the individual that constituted the basic building block of social life.

However, the Chinese family can also be understood as a protective arrangement. Capitalism developed early in China - far earlier, in fact, than in Europe – already by the fifth century BCE there were large and well-functioning markets in a long range of consumer goods. As early as in the Han dynasty – 206 BCE to 221 CE – China produced as much cast iron as Europe would in 1750 CE, and during the Song dynasty – 960 to 1279 – manufacturing really took off.