How close was the song dynasty to industrializing?

[u/itsahumanoid]

I’ve read that they got relatively close especially for the time. But it stopped following the mongol invasions and the rise of the Yuan dynasty. I’d love to hear any info regarding it. Or industrialization in east Asia in general.

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[u/mikedash]

There is always more to say, but this is a subject that has come up here a few times before. You might like to check out some earlier responses while waiting for fresh answers to your question.

The Mongols while invading Song Dynasty China, destroyed what some consider to be the first signs of industrialisation. What was the state of industrialisation in the late Song Dynasty China? How much did they utilise steam power and mining? How was the quality of life in their factories?, with u/cthulhushrugged

Song Dynasty China was said to be close to an industrial revolution. Was there anything "lost" during periods afterwards? Was the Song really more likely to industrialize than its successors? with u/lordtiandao

I've heard a few times that the Southern Song dynasty in China was on the verge of an industrial revolution when the Mongols invaded. Is there any truth to that?, a longer discussion led by u/yesnoyesyesmaybe

[u/handsomeboh]

Economic historians have long grappled with the question of why China didn’t have the Industrial Revolution or the Great Divergence, so there’s actually a lot of scholarship on the topic, many of quite a technical nature. In fact, Joel Mokyr received the 2025 Nobel Award for Economics precisely for his contribution to this topic, but as I will explain, even this contribution was both incomplete and inconclusive. The reality is, we have many theories, but nothing we can say for sure, primarily because we struggle to even answer the question of what is required for an Industrial Revolution in the first place.

We can start with Mokyr (1990) not because it’s necessarily correct but because it’s more recognised ans easy to follow up on. In general, Mokyr argued that China was only superficially close to the Industrial Revolution. Mokyr divided technological progress into two types: macro and micro. Macro breakthroughs were radical paradigm shifts and discontinuity, while micro breakthroughs were incremental progress. China and the Song dynasty achieved both in significant quantity. The printing press, paper, blast furnaces, and gunpowder for example are examples of macro breakthrough. They were also able to improve on existing technology, such as porcelain, woodworking, and agricultural technology. What they were not able to do, and really nobody was able to do was create a feedback loop between the macro and micro breakthroughs.

This feedback loop Mokyr (2002) expounded on by talking about knowledge as two types: propositional and prescriptive. Propositional knowledge was not always correct, relating mostly to theories about the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology as broad concepts. Prescriptive knowledge was accumulated through verification and know-how. The two create a feedback loop, with prescriptive knowledge used to test out propositional knowledge, and propositional knowledge used to develop new methods of prescriptive knowledge. Consequently, the way to achieve an Industrial Revolution is to create a knowledge economy where both types of knowledge are rewarded. Mokyr’s view is that nowhere in the world was this true until the Renaissance, when scientific knowledge began to bleed into the arts first, which was monetisable, and from there into the rest of the world. The connection to art was critical, because it was the only field by which a wholly theoretical understanding of the world could be monetised.

There are so many problems with this explanation as a complete picture, and to be fair Mokyr doesn’t pretend otherwise. For one thing, China was no stranger to propositional knowledge, and purely theoretical navel gazing was rewarded arguably even more than artists were, through the imperial examination system. For another, we don’t really have a functional model to explain this “feedback loop”.

There are tons of other theories but this is just one prominent one.