市场经济与资本主义：大分流视野下的中国明清经济史研究

本文比較中國明清經濟史的研究與大分流視野下的西歐經濟史,強調重視市場經濟與資本主義制度之間存在著本質差別。以勞動力、資本、土地等生產要素的流動性為突出特征的市場經濟,是明清中國社會經濟發展的一大成就,與工業革命前的西歐市場經濟沒有本質的差別。但如果將資本主義理解為國家財政與民間金融市場的深度結合,那么作為資本主義發展必要階段的現代財政國家,不僅沒有出現在明清中國,而且也是阻礙十九世紀下半葉中國工業經濟發展的重要因素。 This paper reviews the scholarship on the economic history of Ming and Qing China and compares it with the literature on the economic history of western Europe, and highlights some fundamental differences between a market economy and capitalism. By the eighteenth century, a market economy characterized by the mobility of the production factors of labor, land, and capital had consolidated in China, and was comparable to the market economies of pre-Industrial Revolution western Europe. However, if capitalism is understood as an economic system in which the state fiscal system is deeply interconnected with the private financial markets, then a prerequisite for its development is the modern fiscal state. Such a modern fiscal state not only did not emerge in Ming-Qing China, but its absence was a major stumbling block to the development of an industrial economy in China in the latter half of the nineteenth century.