This book offers a unique guide to China's long economic history and to the embryonic development of Chinese capitalism. It makes a classic work of Chinese economic history from top Chinese scholars available, in abridged form, for the first time in English. The immense historic sweep runs from the Late Ming period through the early mid Qing to the time of the Opium wars. In each period there are detailed surveys of sectors of the economy, both industrial and agricultural, and of the technological development and methods used, in addition to overviews of the nature of economic change in China and the retarded development of capitalism prior to the nineteenth century.