China's History Shows Us How Elites Can Stop A Society From Progressing

James Pethokoukis

Economics,

The history of progress is mostly a history of false starts and a retreat.

For some reason, a great 2016 essay by economic historian Joel Mokyr, “Progress isn’t natural,” recently popped into my Twitter feed. In it, Mokyr reminds that the idea of progress — that through its actions and agency humanity can make the world a bit better tomorrow than it is today — is a fairly recent concept. And when people moved from thinking progress is possible to actually attempting to make progress happen, well, that’s when the modern world really began, Mokyr writes.

Of course, all that assumes people — or enough people or the right kinds of people — think progress is both possible and desirable. Historically that hasn’t always been the case, or even mostly the case. Rather, the history of progress is mostly a history of false starts and a retreat. In a recent Q&A podcast, Stephen Davies, author of the recently released The Wealth Explosion: The Nature and Origins of Modernity, offered the example of China. From that conversation:

In [the Song Dynasty period from the middle of the 10th to the late 13th century], China has all of the other conditions that you need for a dynamic and innovative economy: It’s got private property, it has the rule of law, it has complex financial institutions, it has double-entry bookkeeping — it has a whole range of institutions, as the economists call them. Plus, it has an enormously extensive trade network and a highly monetized economy. And all of this produces lots and lots of innovation, so much so that by the middle of the 13th or late 12th century, China is at the same level of technological and economic development as 18th century Europe, to put it in perspective.