Review On The Mercantile Thought Of The Late Qing Dynasty

Western powers launched the opium war. They began to invaded Chinawith advanced weapons opening the door of China,including political, economic,military, culture and other aspects of the invasion. It would make China involvedin capitalist world market step by step. With the rapid development of westerncapitalist economy, China became a semi-feudal and semi-colonial countrysociety. Meanwhile,feudal natural economy which continued several thousandyears began to collapse slowly.In the face of economic and political changedramatically, people began to look for the causes of lagging behind the world.The areas of thought in late Qing dynasty also began to transform, which thefeudal orthodox "heavy agriculture and suppressing the business" economicthought gradually transform for the requirements development modern nationalcapitalism economy "mercantilist thought". Because of meeting therequirements of the Times,which resisted foreign aggression and pursuednational prosperity, the thought caused widespread response which was from alllevels of society and gradually developed into the mainstream of economicthoughts in the Late Qing Dynasty. The mercantilist thought in the Late Qing Dynasty was the result of interaction of internal and external factors. Themercantilist thought in Late Qing Dynasty was on the basis of Ancient Chinesetraditional ideas of the mercantile. The introduction of advanced westernscience and technology, especially the western Europe mercantilist doctrineplayed a positive impact on the mercantilist thought in Late Qing Dynasty.From the context, it can be divided into three stages: germination, mature anddeepening. The three stages ran through all of the Late Qing Dynasty. Themercantile thought of Late Qing Dynasty involves a large number of groups andindividuals,for example, practical pie, westernization, bourgeois reformistsmight and industrial pie. The major representatives who belonged to earlybourgeois reformists had Wang Tao, Ma Jianzhong, Zheng Guanying, XueFucheng, Chen Chi etc. There was an abundance of context,including efforts tothe development of foreign trade, and foreign business war, advocate business,protect business, take back rights, revitalization and several aspects. Themercantile thought during the Late Qing Dynasty history period has thecharacteristics on universality, anti-aggressive and spontaneity. It changed sometraditional thoughts like "despise business""inhibit business""valuing" andpromoted the awakening of a national consciousness; At the same time, it also wavered the traditional economic policy which was called "attention toagriculture and despise business". Besides, it promoted the political reform ofthe political system of China in the Late Qing Dynasty.On the whole,it has hada positive far-reaching influence on ideology, economic, political.