ABSTRACT
Since the People’s Republic of China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, its exports of manufactured goods have soared to a degree that earned it the label of the ‘workbench of the world’. 1 This study offers a retrospective view from the early modern situation of handicraft manufacturing in China to the beginnings of industrialization, spanning the period from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries when China was ruled by the Qing dynasty. The perspective is on the interior organization and the efficiency of the state administration relevant to the sector of craft production.
