Could Song China industrialize?

I know it's been discussed before, but in an ATL where there was no Mongol Empire, could Song China industrialize? We know it had many features that favor industrialization: high wages, coal production, relatively low military spending, a relatively limited government, relatively fast technological advances, population growth. My understanding is that it was also a non-Malthusian society: at the Song-Yuan boundary both population and living standards declined, whereas in Europe the population collapse a few decades later led to a rise in living standards.

In such an ATL, is it at all plausible that China industrialized early? How about Abbasid Baghdad? In either case, how early is early - would a 14th-century industrial revolution have been likely, or would it have taken another 300 years as between OTL's Columbian Exchange and European industrial revolution?
 
Avoid Southern Song from happening by at the very least repulsing Liao's attacks or even conquer it and make sure that Wang Anshi's reform succeeded.
 
That's a pretty early POD, though. If a late POD, around 1200, in which there's no Mongol Empire, is the Southern Song doomed?
 
A 1200 POD might be a little hard to do because Song is always threatened by its neighbors. A limited government that favors the rise of Capitalism is probably not too good to deal with foreign enemies. However, at that time the Jin are starting to see their decline as they are slipping into decadence, so this might give Song a few more decades before anything that can seriously endanger them rises in the north. The thing is, what about steam? I mean, for industrialization there has to be the technological capacity to create steam-powered machines, or maybe not steam but some way to make machines more automized. Do the Chinese of the time have any knowledge of steam power? And if not, how long do you think it would take them to discover it?
 
relatively low military spending, a relatively limited government
Is that so? I'm pretty sure it's the opposite since that's why Wang pushed for reformation.

Avoid Southern Song from happening by at the very least repulsing Liao's attacks or even conquer it and make sure that Wang Anshi's reform succeeded.

But I don't see how Wang's reformation has anything to do with potential industrialization?
 
The thing is, what about steam? I mean, for industrialization there has to be the technological capacity to create steam-powered machines, or maybe not steam but some way to make machines more automized. Do the Chinese of the time have any knowledge of steam power? And if not, how long do you think it would take them to discover it?

Steam power follows from high-quality steel production. Steam technology was known to the Greeks and the Romans, but Classical metalworking wasn't good enough for engines that could sustain themselves to create useful power without blowing up.

(In fact, assuming it's plausible for Song China to industrialize in the 14th and 15th centuries, the most fun I'm having is having European postcolonialists talk about the past greatness of Ancient Greece and Rome, mirroring how China, India, and the Middle East talk about their greatness a thousand years ago.)

Now, my admittedly limited understanding of Chinese technological history is that Tang and Song China had advanced metalworking, with very high steel production by preindustrial standards. I do not know whether the high quantity was accompanied by high quality. If it was, then the development of steam power is plausible.

Is that so? I'm pretty sure it's the opposite since that's why Wang pushed for reformation.

Song China taxed the merchant class to pay for the military, as did every state until the 20th century. The UK, too, had high military spending by today's standards, and the taxpayers viewed the tax burden of the 19th century as barely tolerable; total government spending in fact was about 10% of GDP.

When I proclaim the Song militarily weak, this comes from e.g. the dynasty's indifference to maintaining control of barely populated areas like Tibet and Xinjiang. This is why it was constantly threatened, of course.

I'm less sure about the part about limited government. I'm basing this on Dieter Kuhn's The Age of Confucian Rule and Timothy Brook's The Troubled Empire. Brook claims that the Yuan dynasty introduced absolutism into China, building upon past Song developments, contrary to Western claims that China had always been absolutist. Kuhn contrasts the aristocratic Tang with the mercantile and Renaissance-like Song; from his description, neither era comes off as absolutist, which is probably why China was so prosperous in both the Tang and the Song eras, whereas under the Ming and especially the Qing it was stagnant while Europe surged ahead.
 
Song China taxed the merchant class to pay for the military, as did every state until the 20th century. The UK, too, had high military spending by today's standards, and the taxpayers viewed the tax burden of the 19th century as barely tolerable; total government spending in fact was about 10% of GDP.

When I proclaim the Song militarily weak, this comes from e.g. the dynasty's indifference to maintaining control of barely populated areas like Tibet and Xinjiang. This is why it was constantly threatened, of course.

I'm less sure about the part about limited government. I'm basing this on Dieter Kuhn's The Age of Confucian Rule and Timothy Brook's The Troubled Empire. Brook claims that the Yuan dynasty introduced absolutism into China, building upon past Song developments, contrary to Western claims that China had always been absolutist. Kuhn contrasts the aristocratic Tang with the mercantile and Renaissance-like Song; from his description, neither era comes off as absolutist, which is probably why China was so prosperous in both the Tang and the Song eras, whereas under the Ming and especially the Qing it was stagnant while Europe surged ahead.

I wouldn't say that spending 5/9 ~ 5/12* of total budget on military maintenance a "relatively low" spending at peace. And the bureaucracy was only small at the beginning, according to Sima Guang, the number of bureaucrats around 1050(90 years after the founding of Song) is ten times larger than when Song was founded.

While the spending was huge, it is true that the actual military was weak, it's a long story but I'll make it short:

Song was founded in a troubled time with barbarian at doorstep and its northeastern border was a plain―a previous warlord sold the easily defensible parts to the Khitans to show good will. So Song had a policy that encouraged people to join the army. Initially there wasn't much problem as soldier wasn't exactly an easy job, and throughout Taizu's reign(960~976) the number of military personnel was around 400 thousand men.
Later, Song underwent a rough Enclosure analog and many former serf/peasants became free but unemployed, however, unlike England, there wasn't a big requirement of labors in Song China, so these job seekers end up in local recruitment stations and the result was the 1.25 million men army during Renzong's Qingli era(1041~1048)
This gigantic army, however, wasn't as affordable as it was when only a quarter as large, so the quality deteriorated severly, and contemporary sources stated that some soldiers were seen peddling goods and paintings in markets while others hired people to carry their own rations, and most men hadn't seen a war in their life**.

* 50 mil guan out of either 90 mil guan(1048) or 120 mil guan(1049).
** Song had not fought any wars with the Khitan Liao after the Chanyuan Treaty in 1005, and the war against Xi Xia in 1040~1042 was regional and a military disaster for Song as they lose all three major battles, though it was also an economic disaster for Xi Xia so it ended in status quo.

By the way, Song dynasty used to have fixed exchange rate between coin, grain, silk and silver for tribute, trade and accounting purpose, but was effectively abolished by Wang's reform in favor of a pure monetary system. So it is beneficial for a more liberal market.

And actually the Conservatives were only at the helm between 1085~1093, Wang's reformations were reapplied in 1094 and Reformers dominated politics all the way to the end of Northern Song in 1126. However the two factions were constantly feuding all along and crippled the government.

I don't 100% agree with Kuhn, while court politics were more absolute during Ming and Qing, it wasn't really better during Tang and Song, where Yue Fei can be executed for no reason at all(maybe Jurchen Jin's secret demand)
And Ming and Qing weren't stagnant at all beside Qing's reluctance to accept firearms, as they will give Han people an easy way to defeat steppe people like themselves.
 
Military spending as a percentage of total spending was always high. IIRC, half of 19th century Britain's government spending was on the military. The US federal government was also at that level in the Eisenhower administration - federal spending was about 20% of GDP and the military was about 9-10% between Korea and Vietnam.

The Ming-Qing stagnation isn't just firearms. The Allen paper comparing real incomes in England and the Yangtze Delta finds that Yangtze Delta incomes were very high in 1620 but were in slight decline in the next two centuries, unlike England's rising incomes. Likewise, many of the technologies that China discovered first were better in Europe by the Early Modern Era: Gutenberg's printing press was capable of more than the Chinese printing presses (it was less labor-intensive and could print double-sided), European clocks were more accurate than Chinese clocks, etc.
 
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