Event Details

Lancaster University Confucius Institute Academic Seminar Series

'Ideology and Economic Change: The Contrasting Paths to the Modern Economy in late 19^th Century China and Japan' with Professor Debin Ma

Abstract:

This talk revisits the old thesis of the contrasting paths of modernization between Japan and China. It develops a new analytical framework regarding the role of ideology and ideological change—Meiji Japan’s decisive turn towards the West pitted against Qing China’s lethargic response to Western imperialism—as the key driver behind these contrasting paths. We highlight the contrast between Tokugawa Japan’s feudal, decentralized political regime and Qing China’s centralized bureaucratic system as a key determinant driving the differential patterns of ideological realignment. We argue that the 1894-95 Japanese naval victory over China could not be justified under the prevailing Imperial Chinese ideology and thus served as the catalyst for China’s subsequent ideological transformation, which occurred via borrowing Japan’s successful Meiji reforms of both institutions and ideology. Our analytical framework, developed from a comparative historical narrative, sheds new insights on the importance of ideology and ideological change for our understanding of political and economic change.

Speaker Biography:

Professor Debin Ma is an economic historian with research interests centered on the long-run economic growth of China and East Asia. Professor Ma's Phd dissertation focused on the comparative paths of modernization of China and Japan through a case study of the production and export of silk during 1850-1936. Since then, the scope of their research extends to encompass growth, development and industrialization as well as political, legal and intellectual history, often placing Chinese developments in a comparative and global context. For the past two decades, Professor Ma has actively engaged in the Great Divergence debate on why the Industrial Revolution occurred in England but not in China or elsewhere.

(Bio correct at the time of the seminar)