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China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism
This monumental work reveals the continuities that underlie the changing surface of Chinese life from late imperial days to modern times. With a perspective that encompasses a thousand years of Chinese history, China's Motor provides a view of the social, economic, and political principles that have prompted people in widely varying circumstances to act, believe, and behave in ways that are labeled as Chinese. This original reinterpretation of Chinese culture, as meticulous in detail as it is vast in scope, will revise not only the study of China but also the very terms of social analysis.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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January 6, 2026Recommended by Dan Wang, who says he is "Tempted to say this is my favorite book about Asia."
Not at our libraries. ILL sometime?
Not at our libraries. ILL sometime?
August 7, 2020
This book provides a novel perspective too look at Chinese society, the behavior of its people, its state and its markets. This is much needed in a world where China is gaining a stronger position globally and more and more people are coming to the understanding that China's new-found capitalism perhaps is not like that of the west.
In her anthropological study of China for a thousand years up until the time of her writing (1996), Gates developed an alternative framework through which we can look at the economy of China. Gates introduces the Marxist concept of modes of production, which she defines as:
Gates does not find Imperial China’s economy to have been a case of the capitalist mode production that developed in industrialized Europe, characterized by its class divide into laborers and capitalists. Instead, she sees the Chinese economy as consisting of two separate but interdependent modes of production. Commoners were engaged in small scale capitalist production, limited by the bounds of their family, in an active urbanized commodity economy, this was the petty capitalist mode of production (PCMP). Officials lived of the fruits of this capitalist production, extracting wealth from it, this was the tributary mode of production (TMP).
Since the TMP dominated the PCMP (that is, the goals and means of the state dominated those of the private economy), the primary class divide became that between commoners and officials. One defining characteristic of TMP is that the state’s wealth extraction, the tribute, is exacted by political or military means. It often comes in the form of services or physical goods, rather than money. Thus, while China had long had very active private markets, the state to a large extent extracted the wealth it required by non-market mechanisms. (p. 20)
The concept of Marxism initially put me off, since I'm no big fan of socialism over all. But - It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice - I found her analysis quite convincing, and in many respects applicable on the China of today. Granted, that is, that I didn't understand half of it.
Which is the big negative here - this book is very heavy reading, in many ways. Lots of uncommon words, references to European thinkers of yore, and full of anthropological and Marxist concepts. Perhaps I'm not the target audience for this book, but since I found it interesting enough to finish, I'm still quite disappointed that it was so hard to get through.
All in all: tough, but very revealing and inspiring.
In her anthropological study of China for a thousand years up until the time of her writing (1996), Gates developed an alternative framework through which we can look at the economy of China. Gates introduces the Marxist concept of modes of production, which she defines as:
"behavioral/ideational systems of transferring surplus wealth from less powerful to more powerful classes." (p. 7)
Gates does not find Imperial China’s economy to have been a case of the capitalist mode production that developed in industrialized Europe, characterized by its class divide into laborers and capitalists. Instead, she sees the Chinese economy as consisting of two separate but interdependent modes of production. Commoners were engaged in small scale capitalist production, limited by the bounds of their family, in an active urbanized commodity economy, this was the petty capitalist mode of production (PCMP). Officials lived of the fruits of this capitalist production, extracting wealth from it, this was the tributary mode of production (TMP).
Since the TMP dominated the PCMP (that is, the goals and means of the state dominated those of the private economy), the primary class divide became that between commoners and officials. One defining characteristic of TMP is that the state’s wealth extraction, the tribute, is exacted by political or military means. It often comes in the form of services or physical goods, rather than money. Thus, while China had long had very active private markets, the state to a large extent extracted the wealth it required by non-market mechanisms. (p. 20)
The concept of Marxism initially put me off, since I'm no big fan of socialism over all. But - It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice - I found her analysis quite convincing, and in many respects applicable on the China of today. Granted, that is, that I didn't understand half of it.
Which is the big negative here - this book is very heavy reading, in many ways. Lots of uncommon words, references to European thinkers of yore, and full of anthropological and Marxist concepts. Perhaps I'm not the target audience for this book, but since I found it interesting enough to finish, I'm still quite disappointed that it was so hard to get through.
All in all: tough, but very revealing and inspiring.
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May 1, 2009China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism. by Hill Gates (1980)
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