Religion and the Great Divergence of East and West : The Persistent Effects of Networks of Church and State in the Economic History of China and Europe

Networks of Church and State that originated in premodern times played an important role as conduits for the transmission of cultural values that have endured into the present and set the economic history of China apart from that of Europe. The imprints of those networks, which preceded the Great Divergence in living standards and GDP by at least a millennium, have led to important underlying differences between Chinese and Western market structures and persist in informal constraints—customs, norms, ethics—despite the recent gains in industrial development and global integration of the Chinese economy. “…indeed society developed only so fast as religion enlarged its sphere. We cannot say that religious progress brought social progress; but what is certain is, they were both produced at the same time and in remarkable accord” Fustel de Coulanges