China’s online and offline world would begin rubbing shoulders in a way not seen anywhere else in the world. They were refashioning China’s urban landscape and the world’s richest real-world datascape. But building an alternate internet universe that reaches into every corner of the Chinese economy couldn’t be done without the country’s most import

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The incursion of the European imperialists put China into an economic tailspin from which it would not recover for more than a century. With the Qing Dynasty humiliated and weakened by the losses of the First Opium War, an internal rebellion broke out between 1850 and 1864. Known as the Taiping Rebellion, it pitted the Qing Dynasty against the foll

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The Industrial Age marks a distinct and remarkable phase in the history of globalization. For the first time in history, technological progress was rapid enough and broad enough to create sustained and rapid increases in material living standards. For the first 150 years of the new age, the economic gains went overwhelmingly to a small part of huma

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At the same time, private commercial trade independent of the tributary trade was highly restricted. Indeed, in 1371, the Ming emperor had prohibited purely private trade. Zheng He’s patron and sponsor was the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24). Upon the emperor’s death, his son discontinued the voyages on the grounds that they were unnecessary, expensive

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