Can you provide me with something to show me how I'm wrong? I'm not intentionally going to lie to people here. I'm going off of what I actually believe from my understanding of the Chinese economy. Now, what I study is largely archaic, being not from the Qing or even largely from the Ming, but from what I understand the essence is relatively similar. The Confucian elite tended to stay out of commerce and frowned upon blatant profit seeking. Merchants did tend to accumulate inside of the cities, but most people in the cities were not what could be called independent workers. Most of the populous were Artisans, Soldiers, and Officials alongside their families. The Artisans were almost invariably employed by the officials. The Soldiers were also amongst their pay. The farmers were relatively secure on their plots of land, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was understood that they didn't privately own it as the land was the government's land. [The Emperor of China technically, nominally, owned everything inside of China.] Much of the produce would be taken by government officials for later use. Soldiers were invariably employed by the state and the nobility. Those that weren't weren't called soldiers at all, but bandits or rebels. Merchants, the only self employed of the major people dwelling inside of the cities, made up only a tiny fraction of the population. This is compounded by state run monopolies on salt, mining, and wine-making.
What is wrong with this statement? What is misinformed, slightly correct, misleading, or completely fallacious? I'm eager to learn more than I'm eager to talk about and correct, but in order to correct something I need to be sure that what I'm saying is accurate and therefore I have all the greater drive to learn as much as I can.
You fundamentally misunderstand the role of the Chinese state's involvement in the economy. While certain artisans were under contract from the state and worked only for the state in state owned industries, others simply paid taxes in goods (or as "tribute" to the Imperial Court). Using your logic, you could make the argument that modern taxpayers work for their governments because 15-50% of of their income goes to the government.
Also, just because they said they scorned commerce for profit didn't stop many Confucian bureaucrats from engaging in commerce for (massive) profit. An ideal is just that.
This is a good primer, it addresses the Qing Dynasty, but many of its points are true for earlier dynasties as well: http://www.learn.columbia.edu/nanxuntu/html/economy/
Also: http://www.zhangzhiyong.cn/english/gentry.htm (for the Song Dynasty)
For most of its history, Europe was very, very poor relative to China and India. The Chinese had little incentive to colonize places seeing as how they were wealthiest country in the world. They were risk averse because chances are, any colonial effort is going to lose money at the outset with no guarantee of success. There's simply no reason to engage in colonialism when your already extant processes have made you absurdly wealthy to the point where you can afford to (and had to) implement a fiat currency, something that didn't entirely catch on in the Western Hemisphere until the 19th Century (hence the invention of paper money, there simply wasn't enough bullion in circulation to fully monetize the Chinese economy).
In short, there was simply no need for a colonial empire when the rest of the world was scrambling to exploit the resources of the New World to pay for goods you make.
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