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China: The Incomplete Transition

China’s technological precocity in iron manufacturing, transportation, maritime shipping and navigation, weaponry, market commercialization, and agriculture cannot be denied. Nor can it be denied that European industrialization borrowed extensively from Chinese practice. The problem, however, is that there was no energy revolution in China prior to the mid-nineteenth century, at which point Britain had outpaced China. The Chinese use of coal, petroleum, or natural gas, however early, did not constitute an energy revolution. Moreover, China’s expansion of iron production volume per se did not equate to an industrial revolution. What was needed for a breakthrough to sustained industrialization was the marriage of an energy transition and new technology that demanded greater energy inputs and yielded greater productivity as a consequence. China failed to achieve a full break from the constraints of the agrarian economy and this chapter is about why.