Pre-industrial China had reached a ‘high-level equilibrium’, a plateau of economic success. Its misfortune was that there was no incentive to climb any higher: the high-level equilibrium had become a trap.

By some estimates, China’s population increased threefold between 1723 and 1796 under K’ang-hsi’s successors. There was a large increase in the area under cultivation, which may have doubled between 1650 and 1800.

China grew quantitatively, not qualitatively. Part of the reason, Elvin argued, was the inward turn we have noticed already: the shrinking of China’s external contacts as the Ming abandoned the sea.