Browsing quickly the bookmarks and blogrolls on my blog and trying to catch up with recent topics, I found the discussion on China Law Blog on the topic of “why China stagnated – why China had failed to keep up with Europe through the Industrial Revolution” very inspiring and some of the points are particularly impressive.The author did two posts on this topic: the first is entitled Why China Stagnated — Economic History As Lesson, and the second post titled Why China Stagnated — A Chinese Response is a post following a response by Too Proud Of Our Culture? on the blog named Made in China. And the second post brought in extensive comments from different perspectives, including perspectives of ‘insiders’ who live in China viewing the issue from inside, and that of the ‘outsiders’ who live out of the country looking at the question from outside, and there are also insiders’ views from outside, and outsiders’ perspectives from inside.
Although to answer this question is far beyond the scope of this blog, I found that the discussion is particularly noteworthy in terms of the range that the points made in the discussion have covered in the exploration of the answers to the question.While it is true that cultural arguments are “inevitably generalizations without empirical support (by China Law Blog in Comment), I share the same argument that “at the same time, culture has to play some role in a country’s economy, even if it is only a determinant of a country’s governance, which, in turn, influences its economy (by China Law Blog in comment reply). I am particularly interested in some of the cultural factors raised in the discussion:
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