The Mercantile Enlightenment in Late Qing and Early Republican China

Abstract

Although late Qing and Republican China failed to witness an enlightenment movement in the European sense, China did go through an enlightenment process of its own. Chinese mercantilism, in close association with industrialization and the rise of capitalism, constituted an intellectual movement that cannot be overlooked. The mercantile enlightenment expressed in mercantilism went through various evolutionary stages, from birth to development to maturation. In this process, the values and beliefs of China’s feudal agrarian society were rejected and attacked and the new values championed by industrialists and merchants grew and spread. Although China’s enlightenment movement had its limitations, it played an important role in promoting the country’s transformation from an agrarian to an industrialized society and helped lay the foundation for China’s modernization. It also has implications for the rebuilding of commericial morality in China.