The Era of Chinese Predominance, 1000–1500 49everybody else in Chinese society, were never autonomous. When
officials allowed it, technical advances and increase in the scale of
activity could occur in dazzlingly rapid fashion. But, correspondingly,
when official policy changed, reallocation of resources in accordance
with changed priorities took place with the same rapidity that had
allowed the upthrust of iron and steel production in the eleventh
century and of shipbuilding in the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.
The advantages of an economy sustained by complex market ex
changes yet responding to politically inspired commands were well
illustrated by these episodes. Chinese resources could be channeled
toward the accomplishment of some public purpose—whether build
ing a fleet, improving the Grand Canal, defending the frontier against
the nomads, or building a new capital—on a grand, truly imperial
scale. The vigorous market exchange system operating underneath the
official command structure enhanced the flexibility of the economy. It
also increased wealth and greatly expanded the resources of the coun
try at large. But it did not displace officialdom from its controlling
position. On the contrary, new wealth and improved communications
enhanced the practical power Chinese officials had at their disposal.
The fact that China remained united politically from Sung to modern
times with only relatively brief periods of disruption between regimes
is evidence of the increased power government personnel wielded.
Discrepancies between the ideals of the marketplace and those of
government were real enough; but as long as officials could bring
overriding police power to bear whenever they were locally or privately
defied, the command element in the mix remained securely dominant.
Market behavior and private pursuit of wealth could only function
within limits defined by the political authorities.
For this reason the autocatalytic character that European commer
cial and industrial expansion exhibited between the eleventh and the
nineteenth centuries never got started in China. Capitalists in China
were never free for long to reinvest their profits at will. Anyone who
accumulated a fortune attracted official attention. Officials might seek
to share privately in an individual’s good fortune by accepting bribes;
they might instead adjust taxes and prices so as to allow the state to tap
the new wealth; or they might prefer preemption, and simply turn the
business in question into a state monopoly. In particular instances
various combinations of these policies were always negotiable. But in
every encounter the private entrepreneur was at a disadvantage, while
officials had the whip hand. This was so, fundamentally, because most