ABSTRACT
A number of theories have been advanced to explain the development of underdevelopment in China. The vicious circle of poverty thesis is another attempt to explain the phenomenon of underdevelopment generally. The emerging radical paradigm in development economics regards underdevelopment as essentially an historical process created by the imperialist-colonial expansion of the West. In assessing the impact of Western colonialism and imperialism on Chinese underdevelopment, the effect of foreign control over Chinese tariffs and support for a government that hindered modernization must also be considered. Ho Ping-ti, in an otherwise sophisticated discussion of the shortcomings of China’s traditional economy, writes: The lack of primogeniture and the working of the clan system proved to be great leveling factors in the Chinese economy. Many of the inventions and innovations of the West in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could have contributed decisively to Chinese economic progress.
