ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the non-Euro-American history of Chinese globalization by tracing a political–economic genealogy of the longue durée for the southeastern coast of China. The point of departure is the so-called Wenzhou Model of China in Zhejiang Province, a model of dramatic rural development based on small family enterprises engaged in light industrial manufacturing or commercial ventures. It shows how today’s Wenzhou Model of rural economy is informed by deep structural patterns that have been played out in China since at least the eleventh century, and how Wenzhou’s social transformation today is not so much a reaction to the challenge of western capital as it is in many ways a reinscription of a key dynamic of power that extends back to the beginning of the Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century. It suggests that theories of globalization and global capitalism must also address older dynamics of power and economy that predate the formation and entrance of western capital and continue to exert their force today.
