Has China experienced a capitalist society?

No. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there were embryonic capitalist relations of production in China. Before the development was sufficient, history entered the great turmoil at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the economic development naturally lost its political environment.

Later, the Qing Dynasty was established and implemented a policy of seclusion for 200 years, which caused Chinese goods to suffer an unprecedented blow in history, and the whole Chinese society gradually lagged behind the European countries. After 1840, the colonizers came, and China's sovereignty was lost, and the political situation was turbulent. China's national capital struggles to support itself in a harsh political environment, and at the same time is heavily squeezed by foreign capital (see Mao Dun's "Midnight").

Therefore, on the whole, modern China is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and the development of national capital is extremely imperfect. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China directly entered the socialist society, which it has been until today. So, I don't think there has been a capitalist life in Chinese history.

This is not a form of human society, and it cannot be juxtaposed with the other three. At that time, China had the germ of capitalism and had a tendency to develop in this direction, but due to the complex social nature and imperialist aggression, it was the germ and destruction of China's capital, and then with the correct guidance of the CPC, China entered a socialist society.

After the end of the Xinhai Revolution, China was subjected to a large amount of foreign aggression and its sovereignty was lost! Although some advanced intellectuals at that time hoped to develop capitalism in China, they were resisted by China's own feudalism, and capitalism was not suitable for China's actual national conditions at all, so it could not develop successfully. It was not until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 that China began to embark on the road of socialism.

Of course, the line that Sun Yat-sen tried can be said to be early capitalism.

China's history can be divided into different phases, which are closely linked to economic, political and social development. If we define capitalism as a market economy in which the means of production are privately owned and profits are made through investment and labor purchases, then the history of China is not exactly a history of capitalism. Although various forms of capitalism have appeared in China during certain periods, China has been a country very different from capitalist countries throughout history.

As the Industrial Revolution spread across the globe, so did the form of capitalism. China's first contact with capitalism was in the first half of the 19th century, when foreign powers forced China to open up through unequal treaties and established concessions in China. These foreign capitalists saw China as an economic resource and tried to impose forms of colonialism and imperialism in China.

These foreign capitalists, in collaboration with China's feudal aristocracy and bureaucratic elite, gradually plunged China into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal state.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sun Yat-sen's coalition ** tried to lead China out of the stage of semi-colonization and semi-feudalism through capitalist transformation. However, under the leadership of the Communist Party, China eventually chose the path of socialism and established a social system based on socialism, in which the means of production were wholly or largely owned by the state, and the state planned and controlled the distribution and utilization of resources. In the early years of socialism in China, state ownership of the means of production and the planned economy replaced the mode of operation of the market economy to a certain extent, while industrialization and agricultural modernization were also based on collectivization and nationalization.

In recent years, China has undergone a series of reform and opening ups, which have also re-entered the shadow of the market economy and capitalism. However, this kind of economic reform and reform is not simply a turn to the capitalist economic model, but chooses to introduce market mechanisms, gradually liberalize and try to break monopolies. China has achieved rapid economic development, but at the same time, it has not lost the influence of the planned economy, and has always been centered on the country, and enterprises and markets are operating under the guidance and supervision of the world.

In short, China's history has experienced various forms of economic and political development, among which capitalism also has its shadow. Even today, China's economic model does not fully fit the definition of a market economy. Although China has become the world's second largest economy, it is still exploring and practicing a new economic model, which to a certain extent integrates a market economy, a planned economy, and a socialist economy.