# **4. When does culture matter?**

There are other complications, however, in attempting to use cultural explanations for nations’ economic development. For instance, Lee Kuan Yew speaks of a set of values— “thrift, hard work, filial piety and loyalty to the extended family, and, most of all, the respect for scholarship and learning”—as having provided a powerful cultural backdrop for the development of East Asian countries, a Confucian-based ethic at the foundation of East Asian prosperity. The problem, of course, is that when one examines China’s development—the last two and a half millennia, corresponding to the period under the presumed spiritual and moral guidance of Confucius—one can discern periods of remarkable creativity and progress, leading to the invention of printing, paper, the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, silk, all contributing in various ways to the advancement of civilization, but one can also note periods of backwardness, decay and mass killing. For instance, why China failed to realize its great scientific potential and in the middle ages fell hopelessly behind Europe is an intriguing question. Several explanations have been put forward by sinologists, among which the role of the state figures prominently. At one level, the lack of a well-defined framework for property rights and the absence of a free market seem to have been lethal. “The Chinese state was always interfering with private enterprise—taking over lucrative activities, prohibiting others, manipulating prices, exacting bribes, curtailing private enrichment.”<sup>15</sup> During the Ming dynasty (1368– 1644), serious attempts were made to shut down all trade with the outside world, efforts which in turn led to the proliferation of smuggling, rent-seeking, corruption, and violence. Indeed, in the early part of the 15th century China was the preeminent naval power in the world, with Admiral Zheng He leading armadas (1405-1430) around the Indian Ocean and beyond of up to 62 ships, some of them 5 times larger than the typical Portuguese caravel. But in 1433 the Ming emperor banned foreign travel, the state archives were purged of all records pertaining to the construction of Chinese vessels and these were destroyed. Even sea transport of supplies along the Chinese coast from south to north was proscribed.<sup>16</sup> The sinologist Etienne Balazs puts the blame for China’s still-born technological prowess squarely on the emergence of totalitarian control: The word ‘totalitarian’ has a modern ring to it, but it serves well to describe the scholarofficials’ state if it is understood to mean that _the state has complete control over all activities_ (emphasis in original), absolute domination at all levels...Nothing escaped official regimentation. Trade, mining, building, ritual, music, schools, in fact the whole of public life and a great deal of private life as well, were subjected to it...A final totalitarian characteristic was the state’s tendency to clamp down immediately on any form of private enterprise (and this in the long run kills not only initiative but even the slightest attempts at innovation), or, if it did not succeed in putting a stop to it in time, to take over and nationalize it...Most probably

> 15 Landes,  p. 56

> 16 Landes (1997, p. 641) invites us to contrast this with “the bulimic appetite of European sailors, their greed cloaked with missionary virtue, ready to venture on unknown seas in small boats and to put up with months of verminous crowding and famine to get their hands on the riches of the Indies, nothing deterred by failure or disappointment, each voyage a stepping stone to the next. Once they caught the whiff of wealth in their sails, no change in government policy, no want of official support, was going to stop them.”