Why Mercantilism Did Not Prevailed In China?

Mercantilism was the main stream economic theory and foundation of making national policies on commerce in Western Europe from middle of 15th century to middle of 18th century. The characteristic of mercantilism is that the theory considers international trade and commerce as a zero-sum game because of the constant amount of wealth in the world. Mercantilists proposed boosting the development of international trade based on internal manufacturing industry. Went through this period, Western European countries mainly accomplished the initial capital accumulation and began to transform from feudalism to capitalism and mercantilism economic theory is rather critical in this period.China also existed the mercantilist ideas in the feudalism period. Different with western counterpart, Chinese mercantilism theory was mainly about discussion about the relationship between commerce and agriculture, supporting the development of private commerce and proposal of promoting the social status of merchants. Chinese mercantilism theory in ancient China was always the subprime economic theory while the Physiocracy was the main stream during the whole period of feudalism. So the foreign trade subject which was the key point of western mercantilism theory did not arise until the late of Qing Dynasty.Absolutely, these two theories were different due to the different social environment. The thesis dedicates to analyze the differences between these two theories and find out the reasons.