One Industry, Two Chinas: Silk Filatures and Peasant-Family Production in Wuxi County, 1865-1937

This book reopens and restructures the grand debate on the nature of economic development in China prior to the Communist revolution. It rejects the debate’s old contours in which quantitative data were used to argue that the trajectory of Chinese development was either “positive” or “negative.” Instead, the author combines quantitative analysis with a detailed study of local politics, culture, and gender to explain the shaping of the modern Chinese economy.

Focusing on silk production in W...