Why didn't the industrial revolution happen in China?

First of all, the industrial revolution here definitely refers to the first industrial revolution, and I may seem redundant in this statement, but I would therefore like to make two points: 1. Industrialization can spread, and China is currently in the midst of a wave of industrialization, and it may even lead the fourth industrial revolution.

2. Your question should be: why was the industrial revolution born in Britain, because the rest of the world didn't have one either, and China is not special.

Many people in China have used cultural theories to explain why China did not give birth to the Industrial Revolution. Today, I will introduce a perspective that answers this question from the geographical environment.

Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? Of course you can say that Britain had a scientific tradition, capitalism, and a patent system, but there were two other important objective conditions in Britain.

First, Britain had tons of coal. Second, British workers are paid the most expensive wages in all of Europe.

The outstanding feature of Britain during the Industrial Revolution was the rise of the coal industry. The Frenchman Ticquet (Ticquet) once referred to coal as ? the greatest source of British wealth? Without the coal and iron industry, there would have been no industrial revolution in Britain. Compared to England, Jiangnan lacked coal and iron, and even wood. People in the south of the Yangtze River had to use both bamboo and wood to build their houses. to use both bamboo and wood. At that time, British metallurgists cut down 200,000 large trees a year just to burn charcoal, which was unimaginable to the Chinese.

The Wealth of Nations says? In China, the lower class people have a low standard of living, worse than even the poorest countries in Europe? The low price of labor in China and Japan (and southern European countries) did not inspire others to invest in machinery with the same passion as Bolton. In 1880, the cost of opening a mine employing 600 Chinese workers was estimated to be $4,272, nearly the same as the price of a steam pump. Even when they had other power options available, savvy Chinese investors were still usually happy to hire cheap labor rather than buy expensive steam engines.

You have to realize that when the steam engine first came out, it was very inefficient. It had to burn lots and lots of coal to only put out so little power. If a country had expensive coal and cheap labor ? For example, in China at the time, coal was probably only available in the whole country in Shanxi, which is far away from the industrial areas, and labor was exceptionally cheap ? then the steam engine would have no commercial value at all. The fact that labor was expensive would have been a disadvantage for Britain, but for the development of the steam engine it became instead a major advantage for Britain. These conditions are completely objective limitations, and it is useless to have any good system or advanced ideas.