ABSTRACT
In work published under his own name, Tao Xisheng (who had, ironically, been profoundly influenced by orthodox Marxist writings) argued that China had been ‘proto-capitalist’ since Sima Qian’s time but that the ‘commercial capital’, which should have transformed the country, had been squandered because of the survival of ‘feudal’ ideas. These had allowed the landed gentry, in league with imperial institutions (and, then, militarists from the end of the Han Dynasty) to appropriate the profits so that merchants, as a group, never really had an opportunity to develop until after the arrival of the West (Dirlik, 1978). Because so much was at stake, communist writers quickly entered the debate. If, as Mao would eventually add, unequal treaties and foreign competition, had arrested the country’s independent development along capitalist lines, should not ways be found to protect China’s indigenous capitalists? Just why had the country remained feudal and so backward? One Kuomintang (Guomindang) theorist, who incidentally advocated the eventual absorption of all private capital by the state, concluded that the government needed to ‘protect Chinese capitalism because of China’s unique society’ (cited by Bedeski, 1971:323).
