The China Paradox

Chapter 2 Early Attempts at Industrialization: The Empire and the Republic

[Zhang Zhidong] had erected a gigantic cotton-mill at Wuchang with thirty-five thousand spindles, covering six acres and lit with the electric light.… He erected a magnificent iron-works and blast furnaces which cover many acres.… He has iron and coal mines, with a railway seventeen miles long from the mines to the river....”1

—Written in 1894 by G.E. Morrison, an Australian adventurer who travelled up the Yangtze to Wuhan, where he observed this industrial complex established by the Qing dynasty official Zhang Zhidong.

During most of its imperial history China performed well in the steady state of a sophisticated agricultural society but at the cost of leaving industry ...