Yi Wen’s The Making of an Economic Superpower and Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking Away the Ladder and Bad Samaritans converge on a single, historically grounded claim: modern industrialization follows a universal and sequential logic. Britain pioneered this process during the Industrial Revolution, while China, after 1978, rediscovered and dramatically compressed it. Despite profound differences in political systems, institutions, and historical context, China’s industrial rise and Britain’s earlier transformation followed the same underlying sequence and relied on similar forms of active state involvement.
Taken together, these works challenge the conventional narrative that attributes Britain’s industrial success to free markets, democracy, or “inclusive institutions,” and that treats China’s experience as an anomaly. Yi Wen explains the internal mechanics of industrialization—sequencing, market creation, and learning through mass production—while Ha-Joon Chang exposes how today’s rich countries misrepresent their own histories after development has been achieved. The combined argument shows that China’s rise closely mirrors Britain’s path, and that the policy prescriptions now promoted by advanced economies often amount to having “kicked away the ladder” they once climbed.
1. Proto-Industrialization as the First Break from the Malthusian Constraint
Before the rise of mechanized factories, Britain’s path toward industrialization was anchored in rural proto-industrialization, which provided a crucial escape from the Malthusian trap. Through the putting-out system, textile production was organized within rural households, allowing families to earn monetary income without abandoning agricultural work. This arrangement expanded commercial networks, stimulated demand for manufactured goods, and gradually integrated the countryside into market exchange. Most importantly, it raised rural incomes while preserving food production, enabling population growth and rising consumption to proceed together rather than collide.
China followed a strikingly similar path after 1978. Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) absorbed vast amounts of surplus rural labor and specialized in low-value, labor-intensive goods such as textiles, buttons, and simple manufactured products. Like Britain’s proto-industrial households, TVEs commercialized the countryside without dismantling the agricultural base. Rural incomes increased, markets expanded, and industrial capabilities accumulated, all while grain production and food security were maintained.
In both cases, proto-industrialization functioned as a necessary transitional stage rather than a peripheral phenomenon. It acted as a buffer between agrarian stagnation and factory-based industrialization, allowing each economy to escape the Malthusian constraint before the adoption of large-scale mechanized production. By building mass markets, mobilizing surplus labor, and raising incomes in advance of technological transformation, proto-industrialization laid the indispensable foundation for subsequent industrial revolutions in both Britain and China.
2. Textiles as the Leading Sector of Early Industrial Takeoff
In Britain, cotton textiles emerged as the central engine of the First Industrial Revolution and set the direction for the broader industrial transformation. The sector benefited from high income elasticity, ensuring rapidly expanding demand as incomes rose, as well as from vast domestic and colonial markets that could absorb large volumes of output. At the same time, textile production was particularly suited to mechanization, as demonstrated by innovations such as the spinning jenny and the water frame. These characteristics made textiles the ideal industry through which capital accumulation, labor mobilization, and technological experimentation could proceed simultaneously.
China’s industrial ascent followed a closely comparable trajectory. From the 1980s onward, textiles and garments were deliberately prioritized as the leading industrial sector. The industry required relatively low capital investment, could readily employ China’s abundant labor force, and faced enormous demand in global markets. By exploiting these advantages, China rapidly scaled up production and, by 1995, had become the world’s largest textile producer, marking a decisive milestone in its industrial takeoff.
In both Britain and China, textiles functioned as more than just a successful export industry. They served as the gateway to mass production, instilling industrial discipline, standardization, and organizational capability across the economy. As the anchor sector of early industrialization, textiles generated the skills, capital, and market scale necessary for subsequent industrial deepening, thereby laying the foundation for the transition into heavier industries and more complex forms of production.
3. Market Formation as the Precondition for Technological Transformation
In Britain’s Industrial Revolution, technological breakthroughs did not initiate industrialization; rather, they followed the creation of large and reliable markets. Mechanization became economically viable only after sustained demand had been established for mass-produced goods, particularly textiles. The British state played a decisive role in this process by actively constructing markets through mercantilist trade policies, protectionism, and the integration of colonial economies into British commerce. Naval power and global trade networks—often sustained by coercive systems such as the slave trade—expanded demand on a scale sufficient to justify the high fixed costs of mechanized production.
Only once these markets were securely in place did technologies such as steam engines and factory-based production become profitable and widespread. Technological adoption was therefore a response to market expansion, not its cause. Innovation was pulled into production by the pressure of growing demand and competitive markets, rather than pushed forward by abstract scientific discovery or technological ambition alone.
China’s post-1978 experience reflects the same underlying logic. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms prioritized deliberate market creation before large-scale technological upgrading. Domestically, Township and Village Enterprises expanded demand and commercialized the rural economy; internationally, export promotion and Special Economic Zones integrated China into global markets. As demand grew and markets deepened, advanced machinery and modern production technologies were gradually adopted once their costs could be economically justified. In both Britain and China, industrialization was driven by politically constructed markets, confirming that sustained demand—not technology in isolation—is the true starting point of industrial transformation.
4. The Developmental State as the Architect of Industrial Emergence
Britain’s industrial transformation was not the product of laissez-faire markets but of a highly interventionist and strategically oriented state. Far from standing aside, the British government actively shaped economic outcomes through protectionist tariffs and bans, such as the Wool Acts, export subsidies, and the Navigation Acts. These policies were reinforced by naval power and colonial expansion, which secured raw materials—most notably cotton—and guaranteed external markets. Through these measures, the state deliberately constructed industrial advantage rather than allowing it to emerge spontaneously.
China’s industrial rise relied on a comparable logic of state leadership, adapted to a different historical context. The Chinese government functioned as a “public merchant,” particularly during the early reform period. Local governments organized and supported Township and Village Enterprises, provided infrastructure and access to credit, and coordinated exports and industrial clustering. In doing so, the state compensated for the absence of a mature private capitalist class and ensured that production could expand in a disciplined and coordinated manner.
In both Britain and China, industrialization was fundamentally state-led rather than institution-neutral. Success depended less on abstract notions of property rights or market liberalism than on the state’s capacity to organize production, mobilize resources, and create protected spaces for industry to grow. By actively creating and defending markets, the state acted as the midwife of industrialization, guiding economies through their formative stages until industrial capabilities became self-sustaining.
5. Industrial Development as a Sequential Process Rather Than a Leap
Britain’s industrialization unfolded through a clearly ordered sequence of transformations rather than through sudden leaps across stages of development. The First Industrial Revolution, spanning roughly from 1760 to 1830, was centered on labor-intensive light manufacturing, particularly textiles. This phase established mass production, expanded markets, and generated sustained demand. Only after these foundations were firmly in place did Britain enter a Second Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, characterized by heavy industries such as coal, steel, and railways, which were themselves driven by the needs and scale created in the earlier phase.
China’s post-reform experience mirrors this same step-by-step progression. Between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, China underwent its own first industrial revolution, dominated by light manufacturing sectors including textiles, toys, and basic electronics. These industries absorbed labor, expanded exports, and built industrial capabilities. From the late 1990s onward, China transitioned into a second phase marked by heavy industrialization, encompassing steel, cement, large-scale infrastructure, high-speed rail, and more recently electric vehicles.
In both cases, industrialization followed a consistent and cumulative sequence: proto-industrial activity gave way to light industry, which in turn generated the demand and capabilities necessary for heavy industry and large-scale infrastructure and energy systems. This “industrial trinity” underscores that development is a process of layering capabilities over time. Neither Britain nor China attempted to bypass stages, because each phase created the economic conditions required for the next. Industrial revolutions, in this sense, are sequential by necessity, not optional steps to be leapfrogged.
6. Political Institutions as Outcomes, Not Preconditions, of Industrialization
Britain’s experience demonstrates that democracy and modern political institutions emerged well after industrialization had already transformed the economy. Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 is often portrayed as a foundational moment for political liberty, its primary effect was to strengthen state capacity and stabilize authority in support of mercantilist policies. Britain achieved industrial dominance long before the expansion of political rights, with universal suffrage arriving only in 1928, decades after the country had become the world’s leading industrial power.
China’s industrial rise reinforces the same historical pattern. Since 1978, rapid industrialization has taken place under an authoritarian one-party system, without prior political liberalization. Economic transformation was driven by coordinated state action, disciplined labor mobilization, and long-term planning rather than electoral competition or pluralistic institutions. Political reform, where it occurs, has followed economic change rather than initiating it.
Taken together, these cases show that industrialization tends to create the social complexity, income growth, and institutional demands that later give rise to democracy and broader political participation. Rather than being prerequisites for development, political institutions evolve in response to it. In the early stages of industrialization, effective coordination, administrative capacity, and policy continuity are more critical than democratic governance, underscoring that economic transformation precedes—and ultimately enables—political change.
7. Industrial Learning as Practice Before Theory
Britain’s early industrial advances were driven less by formal science than by practical experience accumulated on the factory floor. Many of the key innovations of the Industrial Revolution emerged from workshops and production sites, where inventors were skilled craftsmen responding to concrete manufacturing problems. Technological progress arose through experimentation, adaptation, and incremental improvement, embedded directly in the process of production rather than in academic research or theoretical inquiry.
China’s technological ascent followed the same experiential pathway. Chinese firms initially focused on scaling up production through mass manufacturing, learning technologies through use rather than invention. Mastery was achieved through reverse engineering, imitation, and continuous iterative refinement, with research and development expanding only after firms had reached sufficient scale and operational competence. In this sequence, R&D became the consequence of industrial capability, not its cause.
In both Britain and China, technological leadership emerged from sustained engagement with manufacturing itself. Hands-on production generated cumulative knowledge, process innovation, and tacit skills that could not be designed in advance through abstract institutional arrangements. This pattern underscores that industrial progress is fundamentally rooted in learning by doing, where practical experience within large-scale production systems precedes and ultimately enables formal scientific and technological advancement.
8. The Developmental Ladder and the Politics of Historical Amnesia
Ha-Joon Chang’s central contribution is to explain why the striking parallels between Britain’s industrial rise and China’s contemporary development are so often denied. He situates industrialization within a global political economy shaped by power, timing, and narrative control. Once countries achieve industrial and technological dominance, they tend to reinterpret their own histories in ways that legitimize their current advantages while constraining the policy space of late developers.
A key mechanism in this reinterpretation concerns trade policy. Britain protected its domestic industries extensively during its developmental phase, using tariffs, bans, and regulatory barriers to shield emerging manufacturers. Yet in the modern era, advanced economies routinely pressure developing countries to liberalize trade prematurely, portraying protectionism as inefficient or illegitimate despite its central role in their own historical experience.
Chang also highlights the historical flexibility of intellectual property regimes. Britain freely copied and adapted foreign technologies during its ascent and imposed restrictions on the export of machinery to preserve its technological lead; the United States followed similar practices in the nineteenth century. Against this background, contemporary accusations that China’s technological development relies on imitation or weak intellectual property enforcement appear less as deviations and more as repetitions of a standard developmental pattern. Likewise, Britain actively recruited skilled engineers and craftsmen from continental Europe, mirroring modern criticisms of China for talent recruitment and technology transfer.
Finally, Chang draws attention to colonialism as a hidden but decisive subsidy to early industrialization. Britain’s empire supplied raw materials and captive markets that lowered costs and stabilized demand, advantages unavailable to most late-developing nations. Modern forms of state support in China—though institutionally different—play a structurally analogous role in nurturing domestic industry. Chang captures this historical asymmetry with the metaphor of “kicking away the ladder”: once development is achieved, rich countries promote narratives of free trade, strict intellectual property, and liberal institutions, while denying others access to the very tools that made their own rise possible.
Final Thoughts: A Single Industrial Logic in Varied Historical Forms
Taken together, the works of Yi Wen and Ha-Joon Chang demonstrate that China’s rise did not represent the invention of a new development model, but rather the rediscovery and systematic application of the tacit knowledge embedded in Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Beneath differences in political institutions and historical context lies a common industrial logic that governs successful economic transformation. China’s experience confirms that industrialization is not institution-specific but process-driven.
This logic is defined by several universal principles: development proceeds through an ordered sequence of stages; markets must be deliberately created before large-scale production becomes viable; the state must coordinate and organize industrial activity; and technological progress arises primarily from learning through production rather than from abstract design. Within this framework, political institutions and democracy emerge as outcomes of industrialization rather than as its prerequisites. China’s achievement, therefore, lies in compressing Britain’s two-century industrial journey into roughly thirty-five years—not by defying historical experience, but by adhering closely to it.
References
- Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. By Ha-Joon Chang, 2007
- Kicking Away the Ladder: An Unofficial History of Capitalism, Especially in Britain and the United States. By Ha-Joon Chang, 2002
- The Making of an Economic Superpower: Unlocking China’s Secret of Rapid Industrialization. Yi Wen, World Scientific. 2016