This collection of essays likely stems from two separate conferences held in Germany, with the editors aiming to create a grand comparison between European and Chinese economic thought. This ambitious goal mirrors the work of R. Bin Wong and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal that culminated in Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe. Given Wong’s participation in one of the conferences and the fact that his essay opens the volume, it’s reasonable to assume that he played a role in shaping the book’s conceptual framework.
Unfortunately, the conceptual framework does not fully succeed. However, this shortcoming is not due to any inherent flaw in the framework. Indeed, I strongly support the structure Wong and Rosenthal laid out in Before and Beyond Divergence. The problem lies in the case studies, which address a wide range of unrelated topics in a fragmented manner. As a result, they need more coherence and to engage with the ambitious comparative framework intended for the volume.
Many case studies in this collection have little connection to “thought,” “theories,” or “images.” For example, Wong’s essay explores how the Chinese state has historically prioritized people’s livelihoods in governance, a focus today in the People’s Republic of China’s poverty alleviation programs and efforts to expand the urban middle class. Elisabeth Kaske’s piece examines the market for purchasing degrees and official positions in nineteenth-century China, and her piece contains minimal economic theory. Iwo Amelung’s study focuses on the financial aspects of significant engineering projects, particularly the management of the Yellow River.
Each piece has merit and reflects substantial work, though many are relatively brief. Still, I argue that most case studies in the volume concentrate on economic practices rather than economic thought. For instance, Denggao Long and Xiang Chi’s article analyzes the institutions governing land transactions in premodern China, offering a typology of these transactions. Qiugen Liu’s study looks at interest rates set by credit-providing institutions, which, although not fully developed into modern banks, played a crucial role in early forms of capitalism. This is an exceptional historical case of lending practices rather than economic theory. Yaguang Zhang, Yue Bi, and Zyler Wang document unusual forms of currency found in Chinese historical records. These fascinating studies align more closely with Richard von Glahn’s The Economic History of China than with the history of economic thought or theories.
On the European side, the essays lean more toward the intellectual history of economics in early modern Europe. André Lapidus and Irina Chaplygina, who describe themselves as economic theorists, focus on the origins of interest through the lens of usury prohibition. Monika Poettinger explores economic perspectives in Catholic countries, implying that these differ from those in Protestant regions. Bertram Schefold, however, directly engages with economic thought, examining how new mathematical tools, like calculus, played a role in the development of usury cases. His work emphasizes the integration of economic knowledge and mathematics. Volker Caspari explores the intellectual history of scholastic debates about whether charging interest in lender-borrower relationships was morally acceptable, a question that evolved into an economic issue. All four essays in this section revolve around usury debates in early modern Catholic countries, forming a coherent and focused cluster, but they do not provide comparative insights or connections to the Chinese cases.
The next group of essays spans a broad timeline, from medieval views on poverty to the modern European welfare state. Cosimo Perrotta discusses how labor and poverty (or frugality) were viewed as virtues before the emergence of mercantilism in Spain. Lilia Costabile investigates the circulation of paper money in Naples, positioning the city as a key link between China, Sweden, and England. Hans-Michael Trautwein examines the contemporary transformation of European welfare states. While these case studies are intriguing, they remain studies of economic history rather than economic theory. Like the previous cluster of European essays, this group also lacks a comparative perspective with China. Although Costabile’s work highlights global interconnectedness, it does not engage with the comparative framework developed by Wong and Rosenthal.
In Part III, we finally see direct comparisons between Chinese and European economic ideas, as well as their intersections. Terry Peach contrasts the economic ideas of Plato and Xunzi, adopting a history-of-ideas approach that largely excludes political and historical context. Qunyi Liu explores how the ancient text Yantie lun (Discourse on salt and iron), written two millennia ago, became the focal point of intense political debate in the People’s Republic of China, a topic I find fascinating in its own right. Richard van den Berg examines the potential Chinese influence on François Quesnay’s economic thought, focusing on the Jesuit translations of Chinese texts introduced into eighteenth-century Europe, predating Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s engagement with Chinese philosophy.
The second group of essays in Part III is perhaps the most exciting. Olga Borokh analyzes how four economists trained in the US assessed changing attitudes toward consumption in early twentieth-century China. She finds that desire and consumption were both constrained by a Neo-Confucian framework, despite being articulated in economic theories learned in the US. Isabella Weber explores how the ancient Chinese philosopher Guan Zhong sought price stability for food. Matthias Niedenführ describes the revival of business ethics in China during the era of state capitalism, beginning in the 1980s, after the Cultural Revolution. Traditional values and merchant ethos were invoked to meet the demands of the emerging entrepreneurial class.
In their conclusion, editors Iwo Amelung and Bertram Schefold call for a more systematic comparison of different forms of economic thought. While I agree with their vision, I must acknowledge that this collection of essays falls short of achieving such a high expectation. However, this is not to diminish the value of the volume, which serves as an admirable starting point for an important endeavor. We are at a pivotal moment as the neoliberal global order unravels, and the belief in the “end of history” has proven to be an illusion. At this critical juncture, historians of China need to reassess the lingering effects of Cold War ideology and reflect on China’s rise over the past three decades and its influence on the historiography of its past. The scholars in this volume make a commendable attempt to explore economic thought and practices, helping to navigate the complex and often unconscious influences shaping historical writing today.
