(^56) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
feet on the techniques of production. Only Galilean-Newtonian science
was missing; but in the short run this was not important. Had the Chinese
possessed, or developed, the seventeenth-century European mania for tin
kering and improving, they could easily have made an efficient spinning ma
chine out of the primitive model described by Wang Chen. ... A steam
engine would have been more difficult; but it should not have posed insu
perable difficulties to a people who had been building double-acting piston
flame-throwers in the Sung dynasty. The crucial point is that nobody tried.
In most fields, agriculture being the chief exception, Chinese technology
stopped progressing well before the point at which a lack of scientific
knowledge had become a serious obstacle.^19
Why indeed? Sinologists have put forward several partial explana
tions. The most persuasive are of a piece:
- The absence of a free market and institutionalized property rights.
The Chinese state was always interfering with private enterprise—tak
ing over lucrative activities, prohibiting others, manipulating prices,
exacting bribes, curtailing private enrichment. A favorite target was
maritime trade, which the Heavenly Kingdom saw as a diversion from
imperial concerns, as a divisive force and source of income inequality,
worse yet, as an invitation to exit. Matters reached a climax under the
Ming dynasty (1368-1644), when the state attempted to prohibit all
trade overseas. Such interdictions led to evasion and smuggling, and
smuggling brought corruption (protection money), confiscations, vi
olence, and punishment. Bad government strangled initiative, in
creased the cost of transactions, diverted talent from commerce and
industry. - The larger values of the society. A leading sociological historian
(historical sociologist) sees gender relations as a major obstacle: the
quasi-confinement of women to the home made it impossible, for ex
ample, to exploit textile machinery profitably in a factory setting. Here
China differed sharply from Europe or Japan, where women had free
access to public space and were often expected to work outside the
home to accumulate a dowry or contribute resources to the family.^20 - The great Hungarian-German-French sinologist, Etienne Balazs,
would stress the larger context. He sees China's abortive technology as
part of a larger pattern of totalitarian control. He does not explain this
by hydraulic centralism, but he does recognize the absence of free
dom, the weight of custom, consensus, what passed for higher wisdom.
His analysis is worth repeating: