Introduction

There are at Canton a great number of temples, by the Europeans commonly called Pagodas. … The most considerable of these is the Pagoda of Ho-nang in the southern suburbs, of which Plate I is a plan. It occupies a large extent of ground, and contains, besides the idol-temples, lodging rooms and other conveniences for two hundred Bonzes, with hospitals for a great many animals, a large kitchen garden, and a burying ground where priests and animals are promiscuously interred, both being equally honoured with monuments and inscriptions.¹

Architect William Chambers recalled the city of Guangzhou vividly after he visited in the 1740s. Chambers was so enthused by Guangzhou’s pagodas (see illustration 5) that he built a replica in Kew Gardens in the 1760s. But while Kew’s Great Pagoda still stands today, the Chinese original that inspired Chambers has drowned in a landscape of skyscrapers. China’s third largest metropolis after Beijing and Shanghai, Guangzhou is a defining example of the post-Mao economic miracle where skyscrapers dominate the urban landscape. High-rises have become a symbol of modernisation and the more a city has, the more developed it appears to be. Scholars of China have researched China’s modernisation from various perspectives. But few have asked: what has China lost in its quest for and in achieving modernity? This article probes what modernisation has destroyed, investigating the ways in which we can count the cost of China’s apparent success. Taking inventory of the damage done opens a unique window to interrogate the transformation of modern China.

Historians of China have carried on a lively debate about the nature and extent of China’s modernisation and produced outstanding scholarship. Joseph Levenson’s trilogy Confucian China and its Modern Fate set the tone for the field.² In this debate, the industrial and progressive West is often pitted again agrarian and tradition-bound China, put perfectly by Lu Hanchao: “traditionalism was frequently associated with things indigenous and an attitude of looking back in time. Modernity, however, was associated with things foreign and an attitude of looking forward.”³ This debate has diversified in the post-Mao era. Some have studied the transformation of cities, some have probed the characters who propelled the Qing onto the path of modernity.⁴ Some have examined how modernisation improved education and enhanced the arts, while others have exposed the complexities and problems of modernity.⁵ A recent book—Making China Modern—epitomises the dominant way in which history from the late Qing to the post-Mao era continues to be studied through the story of progress.⁶ The problem with this approach is that it denies the traditional a voice and we lose sight of what has been lost in the name of progress. To be sure, modernisation has had its critics. Yu Yingshi for example has examined the “radicalization of the Chinese mind” during the late Qing and early Republican era.⁷ He highlighted the “contempt for tradition” among pro-modern intellectuals which contributed to the May Fourth Movement.⁸ Pierre Fuller has identified the perception that China lacked morality and that hence the country could only be saved by Western modernity, which resulted in the “civilising mission” between the May Fourth Movement and the Cultural Revolution.⁹ These historians encourage us to think more carefully about the notion that modernisation can be directly equated with progress. This article joins them by exposing the problem with modernisation, but from a different angle, asking what was lost.

How exactly did the “contempt for tradition” do damage in the name of progress? Answering this question takes us to the mid-nineteenth century when defeats by Britain and France in the opium wars and the inability to crush rebellions forced the Qing court to undertake reform in the name of Tongzhi Restoration in 1862. Pro-reform officials such as Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang realised that to survive in the new world dominated by European powers, they had to abandon some Chinese tradition and learn from Europe; thus began China’s long march to modernisation. Modernity is defined as “a departure from or a repudiation of accepted or traditional styles and values”; it means “embracing innovation and new ideas”.¹⁰ Key to the idea of modernity is the notion of improvement and advancement which Angelos Mouzakitis discussed in an excellent article.¹¹ As Peter Wagner puts it: “the idea of modernity is inextricably tied up with the one of progress”.¹² For Karl Löwith, “progress” has become the new “religion” where it was supposed to provide for the future.¹³ This is made possible by what Shmuel Einsenstadt called a “distinct civilisation with distinct institutional and cultural characteristics”.¹⁴

To repudiate Chinese tradition and embrace European beliefs and practices was an extremely difficult undertaking for most late Qing officials, which explains why reform was slow and met with resistance during the late nineteenth century. Failure to modernise in the fashion that Japan had done allowed the scramble for China to intensify in the 1890s, and efforts to salvage the situation by the Guangxu emperor led to the Hundred-days Reform in 1898.¹⁵ Although it failed, the call for modernization became louder in the 1910s. Hu Shi called for “total westernisation”, while Dr. Sun Zhongshan detailed his vision in Jiangguo fanglue [建国方略].¹⁶ China’s intellectual elite and political leaders believed that modernisation was the only way to save the country, and they would champion the cause from then on. Despite the interruption of wars and social upheavals, the country has been modernising ever since then. More than a century of modernisation—163 years if we count from 1862—has injected new blood into the old civilisation and brought China into the orbit of a modern world. But at what cost? This article takes a concrete look at the damage done by industrialisation and urbanisation, offering the first glimpse into what has been lost. It argues that these processes have devastated traditional crafts and household/village-based industries, ruined traditional cities, and wrecked the urban landscape/environment. They have led overconsumption that has and will continue to beset not just China, but the world.

Skills Lost to Machines

George Wilkinson joined the Royal Navy and embarked on a journey to China on Monday 8 April 1811, his frigate sailing into the Pearl River estuary on its way to Guangzhou by early November. His eyes were immediately drawn to Chinese boats:

The boat’s hull, also formed of the bamboo cane, was curiously sewed together with a cordage wrought of the same material, rendered tight and waterproof, containing a deck, the under part of which served as a cabin to live and sleep in, with mats and cushions for the latter convenience, the whole made from the bamboo, of which every article of wooden manufacture in their domestic furniture, as well as their marine requisites, were peculiarly and ingeniously constructed.¹⁷

Wilkinson was right in thinking that China’s boat-making was particularly sophisticated. Four hundred years earlier, the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) had built the most advanced ships with which Admiral Zheng sailed in the Indian Ocean and across to East Africa, 80 years before Vasco Da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope. As his frigate drew closer to the city, Wilkinson observed that “the numbers of every description of craft, passing and repassing, rendered our approach to the place for landing extremely difficult.”¹⁸ After landing, he strolled the streets of Guangzhou, admiring its “articles of manufacture and curiosity” from ornaments, jewellery, fans to porcelain, modellers, and bird-fanciers.¹⁹ China had been the land of crafts and industries that had drawn foreigners ever since the Sui-Tang dynastic era (581–907), if not earlier. Baghdad born El-Masudis (896–956) wrote that: “The Chinese are the most-clever people on earth: they have extraordinary skills in plastic and other arts, so that no other nation can be compared with them in any kind of workmanship. … China is rich in remarkable objects.”²⁰ It was these “remarkable objects” that spread the name of China as Europeans arrived by the early sixteenth century. But traditional crafts and industries began to disappear with the influx of foreign goods and the onset of industrialisation by the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

Scholars of China have studied the country’s industrial modernisation from the late Qing to the Mao era.²¹ Thomas Rawski has called this long process “China’s transition to industrialism”; it laid a solid foundation for the post-Mao economic reform.²² Many scholars have turned their attention to the impact of post-Mao industrialisation. Alexandra Harney, Ross Garnaut and Ligang Song have questioned the labour and environmental cost of the Chinese competitive advantage.²³ Fureng Dong and Chris Bramall have discussed industrial development in rural areas whereas Susanne Lingohr-Wolf has exposed its impact on rural livelihood and agriculture.²⁴ He Bochuan, Elisabeth C. Economy and Richard Smith have highlighted the ecological degradation wrought by unprecedented industrialisation.²⁵ Yet few have examined how industrial modernisation destroyed China’s traditional crafts and industries. Lillian Li and Linda S. Bell are the only two who have written about the silk industry in transition from the late Qing to the eve of the Japanese invasion.²⁶ Meanwhile Jacob Eyferth has recently authored an excellent book on how papermaking survived in rural Sichuan.²⁷ Cataloguing the loss of traditional crafts and industries will expose the cost of modernisation.

The industrialization that began in the late Qing, continued throughout the twentieth century and intensified in the post-Mao era, has destroyed small scale and demand-driven crafts that had fed, clad, housed, moved and entertained the Chinese people for thousands of years. They had fascinated many foreign visitors who left us extremely rare images. George Henry Mason, a British Army officer, travelled to China in 1789. He documented Chinese crafts in sixty engravings.²⁸ One such craft that Mason depicted, and which would find itself under threat as a result of industrialisation, was cotton-clearing (see illustration 1). It was part and parcel of the work of traditional tailors. Some of them operated from their home or shops, some travelled, while others formed guilds. Lu Hanchao mentioned Ningbo tailor shops on street corners in late Qing–ROC (Republic of China) Shanghai.²⁹ They monopolised the business not just in Shanghai but also in Yokohama, Japan, and colonial Hong Kong.³⁰ Itinerant tailors stayed with families they worked for, making new clothes and accessories, like bedding, before such occasions as Chinese New Year, weddings and new birth. The host families prepared the raw material required which included cotton for the padded winter garments and duvets. While some of the cotton was new, they were mixed with cotton from old clothes and quilts—they had to be cleaned and blended. This was a skilled job called tan mianhua [弹棉花], which translates literally as ‘bouncing cotton’, what Mason called cotton-clearing, as they mixed and cleansed the cotton of its old and dirty elements to ensure an equal new blend. With their simple tool and plugging, cotton was cleaned and revived, ready to make new outfits, especially duvets with auspicious symbols and characters imprinted on them for daughters to carry to their new families on their wedding day—a reminder of the warmth of their own families. Cotton-clearers did good business despite the anti-Japanese war, as humorously portrayed in the film Ingenious Escape [巧奔妙逃]. Itinerant tailors survived well into the 1970s; we know this from the multitude of essays and memoirs about the Cultural Revolution and the “lost generation” who are now nostalgic for the by-gone era.³¹ We see them vividly in memoir-turned film Balzac and the Little Seamstress [巴尔扎克和小裁缝]. Like most Chinese of the time, I myself grew up wearing padded jackets and pants made by itinerant tailors with hand-bounced cotton.

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Traditional craft: cotton clearing

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

George H. Mason, The costume of China illustrated by sixty engravings with explanations in English and French (London: Printed for W. Miller, 1800): 204

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Traditional seamsters tailor-made outfits for every individual, including babies, in the family. In many cases, old clothes and materials were recycled and transformed into new outfits for younger siblings. This kind of production was based on demand, sourcing locally and small in scale. It was personalised as each individual and family had their preferences for style and fabric which provided room for innovation. There was no waste as leftovers were used to make accessories in the household, such as beddings, quilts and pillow covers, diapers, and even mops, or be saved for future use or recycling, especially with expensive fabrics like corduroy and wool. Itinerant tailors moved from family to family to serve an entire neighbourhood. They were not just fashion-makers but also story-tellers as they recounted tales of their travels. The same can be said of itinerant carpenters as they made or repaired furniture and household necessities. Photographer John Thomson saw them in action in the 1860s and suggested that carpentry was “a branch of industry in which the Chinese may be fairly said to excel”.³² There were also itinerant knife sharpeners and popcorn makers who arrived with their unique calls and songs. However, these small-scale, demand-driven, no waste, environmentally friendly crafts have disappeared in the post-Mao era after more than a century of industrial modernisation.

Machines revolutionized production, reduced cost and improved efficiency; they made goods/things affordable and enhanced our lives. But they have also made local craftsmen and women such as itinerant tailors redundant. They have destroyed not just traditional crafts but also household or village- based industries. Porcelain manufacturing was an ancient industry with an elaborate procedure: from crushing the raw material, mixing and forming the body to bisque-firing, glazing and firing again, not to mention the painting and decorating process.³³ Chinese porcelain supplied the domestic market and met foreign demands for more than a thousand years. It fascinated Europeans and galvanised the China trade.³⁴ This rare image from the John Rylands Library depicts porcelain making before the age of industrialisation. It catered to the European market as the sign read: “This shop accepts orders for and paints Western-style blue-and-white, multiple-coloured figures, landscapes and birds” (see illustration 2).³⁵

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Painting and decorating porcelain in Guangzhou, eighteenth century

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

“Painting Porcelain”, Chinese Collection, Drawings vol 14, number 7, John Rylands Library, the University of Manchester

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The human hands are the most important tool in porcelain production; the same can be said in the case of tea- and silk-making. From plucking leaves and rolling to drying, curing and sorting, the human hands were the most important instrument in the making of tea. From raising and collecting cocoons, extracting silk threads which had to be washed, degummed, bleached and dried, to spinning and weaving, the human hands were indispensable in the manufacturing of silk. Richard Tawney (1880–1962) called this the “old industrial order”, and believed that “till the rise of machine production a century and a half ago, her technique was identical in character with that of the West, and, in quality, not infrequently superior to it.”³⁶ This traditional “order” was still thriving in the 1850s, Wang Tao (1828–97) detailed the thriving silk industry in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, in his diary.³⁷ But it was threatened by machine-driven production and began to disappear by the early twentieth century. We know this from the life and work of Mao Dun (1896–1981).³⁸ Born and raised in Jiaxing, Mao witnessed the industry’s decline and its devastation to his hometown, vividly detailed in his journalistic reports and in the novel Spring Silkworm. Some of them survived into the 1930s; Linda S. Bell has argued that a “developmental continuum exited between urban-based, machine-driven silk industry and rural household handicraft”.³⁹ Lillian Li has discussed the stagnation, failed modernisation and resultant demise of the silk industry in the Jiangnan region from the late Qing to the late 1930s.⁴⁰ Tawney elaborated China’s problem:

In technique and organisation, the major part of her industry belongs either to the pre-capitalist era or to the first infancy of capitalism. Its characteristics are not power-driven machinery, joint-stock finance and a hierarchy of economic authority, but primitive tools, handicraft methods, and minute investments of capital by merchants or small masters controlling a multiplicity of tiny undertakings.⁴¹

China had fallen behind because its industries failed to modernise and exploit machines. Tawney’s opinion was representative of both elite scholars and political leaders in China by the early twentieth century. Most of them believed that China’s industries would not survive without modernisation. China’s silk, porcelain and tea had fascinated Mongols, Persians, Arabs, and Europeans, clad them, decorated their cabinets and quenched their thirst for novelty for more than a thousand years. But more than a century of industrialisation has by now mechanized the production of not just porcelain, tea and silk but almost everything, annihilating what Tawney called the “old industrial order”.

Machines replaced hands in modern industrial production. The Industrial Revolution changed the mode, nature and scale of manufacturing. It saw the birth of factories and streamlined production operated by machines that run nonstop. The early textile factories in Shanghai that destroyed Jiaxing’s silk industry is a defining example of this. Machines elevated production to mass scale; it reduced cost and churned out products much faster—progress made possible by modernisation. But this wiped out traditional small-scale crafts and household/village-based industries.⁴² Instead of working from home at low agricultural season, textile workers, mostly women, became slaves to the never-ending machines in factories. Their suffering was graphically detailed in journalistic reports such as Indentured Labour [包身工], a 1935 investigative exposé by Xia Yan (1900–95).⁴³ In the case of the clothing industry, machines churned out ready-made garments. Consumers had to fit in with factory-dictated sizes and everyone wear the same design, size and colour—something that would have been inconceivable in the age of itinerant tailors. Modern industrial production aims at maximum profit. It floods the market to not just meet but to also create and grow demand. This leads to over-sourcing, over-production and over-supply, hence massive waste as production is not based on demand.

This was only the beginning of the problems with machine produced goods. In the pre-modern era, nearly everything could be repaired and recycled; among the products that could thus be given a new lease of life included clothing, shoes, furniture, cooking utensils, even porcelain.⁴⁴ George Mason noticed this, as we see in the picture above.⁴⁵ Unlike handmade products, machine made products are not manufactured for repair—the factory’s goal is to churn out new generations and more sales. In other words, machine made products have a purposefully-designed life span. Once broken or malfunctioned even if slightly, consumers would have no choice but to dispose them. Industrial scale production exhausts resource and damages the environment, not once, but twice: that is, by dint not just of their production but also of their disposal. Home appliances like the electrical kettle is a good example. They make life easier for us by satisfying our need fast and conveniently. But they need steel and plastic to manufacture, and waste electricity as they are always plugged in. They consume valuable resources and drain energy. This double damage characterises all machine-made products, especially plastic and electronic devices.⁴⁶

Industrial modernisation enabled economic development, generated jobs and transformed lives. But it has also destroyed cultures that identified China. Machines stifle diversity and indigenous aesthetics; they churn out standardised products devoid of human touch. They are monotonous and reductionist, T-shirts and jeans are good examples. They lack meaning and characteristics, seen in modern furniture, household utensils and architecture. Machine-made products rob us of our unique identities as everybody wears the same clothes and look increasingly similar. They break easily and cannot be repaired. But the problem does not stop here. Modern industrial production caters to the worst of human nature: greed, immediate gratification, and conspicuous consumption. Today’s female fashion is a great example: it aims at making the female body sexually appealing, robbing womenkind of their humanity.⁴⁷ Industrialization has decimated traditional crafts and industries—wisdom derived from centuries of practice and experiences. Sadly, this is far from the only cost of modernisation.

Fengshui Lost to Concrete Jungles

George Wilkinson saw more than Chinese boats as his frigate sailed into the Pearl River estuary on its way to Guangzhou in early November 1811:

As we approach the land of China, our eyes were struck with a number of blue mountains, which appear to be very high. Many of these scattered over the lands in a pleasing perspective, presented to the observation a perfect conical form. … The whole country in the vicinity of Chum Pee, (the anchoring place of our frigate), is without setting bounds to the most heightened description possible, extremely beautiful. Its surrounding scenery, exhibited such a variety of charming objects, that I felt the greatest satisfaction contemplating the varied landscape as it appeared in the ship’s decks.⁴⁸

If he were to take the same journey today, he would see gigantic manmade structures: the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau bridge on his left, the Hong Kong International airport to his right, and then the Shenzhen International airport, followed by industrial complexes, residential clusters, holiday resorts, and new towns on both sides of the river bank. The “blue mountains” and “perfect conical form” have been dwarfed by the new landscape after more than a century of industrialization and urbanisation—processes that have wrecked the landscape and ruined traditional cities.

Historians of China have studied cities and urbanisation; they have authored excellent books on China’s ancient and major cities prior to 1949.⁴⁹ Rhoads Murphey argues that China had four thousand years of “urban experience, probably longer on a continuous basis than that of any other society”.⁵⁰ Joseph Esherick has edited an excellent volume on the remaking of Chinese cities in the first half of the twentieth century, whereas Wen-hsin Yeh’s edited volume explored the city and its shifting dynamics in the making of modern China.⁵¹ Rapid urbanisation in the post-Mao era has attracted much attention.⁵² Some scholars have examined what they called “China’s great urbanisation” as Chinese cities modernised quickly and caught up with, even surpassing, its counterparts in the West.⁵³ Francois Gipouloux has labelled this “China’s urban century”.⁵⁴ An increasing number of scholars have examined the problems, from environmental damage to socio-economic inequality.⁵⁵ Some have focused on politics of urbanisation and its impact on the agricultural sector.⁵⁶ However, few have examined how urbanisation devastated traditional cities; counting the cost would expose the problem with modernisation.

The urbanisation that began in the late Qing, continued in the twentieth century and accelerated in the post-Mao era has wrecked fengshui [风水], literally translated as “wind and water”. Fengshui is the “practice of analysing landscapes to determine the most auspicious sites and orientations for houses, graves, temples, and other kinds of structures, based on principles of harmony between humans and their environments”, as Tristan Brown has correctly re-defined in a recent book.⁵⁷ It had dictated the construction of manmade structures, especially cities. Minimising disturbance to and fitting into the existing environment is the most important element as men and nature should live in harmony. Surrounded by walls, gates, towers and moats, the traditional city was a “religious shrine center” and the “pivot of the four quarters of the universe” where a multitude of deities, the city god for example, resided and were worshipped.⁵⁸ Fengshui was part and parcel of the “cosmology of the Chinese city”, “relating the city and its various parts to the gods and to the forces of nature”.⁵⁹ A symbol of imperial power, the city was where the government settled disputes, convened the imperial examinations, and collected taxes. It was also a centre of trade where merchants gathered, guildhalls operated, and business was conducted. Garrisoned to deter the assault of enemies, cities were demarcated to enable better management, with temples, government offices and bell or drum towers taking pride of place. This is what Ruth Mostern calls “dividing the realm in order to govern”, and what Sen-dou Chang labelled the “morphology” of Chinese cities, for an example of which see below.⁶⁰

The capital of Zhili region, Baoding was home to many places of worship, government offices, two learning academies, an imperial examination hall, an orphanage, residential and commercial areas separated by the four main avenues leading to/from the four gates. Baoding was hidden among greenery and surrounded by gardens, fish ponds and cultivations of all kinds within the city wall. Guangzhou, with the pagodas that inspired Chambers, was similarly situated amidst greenery, as we see from the image below.

Living and breathing cities, they complemented and integrated into their natural surroundings. European visitors to China were struck by this aspect. Alvarez Semedo (1585–1658) served the Jesuit mission in Nanjing, Xi’an, Beijing and Guangzhou, he noticed the unassuming height of Chinese buildings in these cities.⁶¹ So did Matteo Ripa (1682–1764) who worked in Beijing during the 1710s and 1720s:

This, as well as other country residences which I have seen in China, is in a taste quite different from European; for whereas we seek to exclude nature by art, levelling hills, drying up lakes, felling trees, bring path into a straight line, constructing fountains at a great expense, and raising flows in rows, the Chinese, on the contrary by means of art endeavour to imitate nature.⁶²

William Chambers was more explicit, concluding that, “nature is their pattern, and their aim is to imitate her in all her beautiful irregularities.”⁶³ Chinese people respected nature and endeavoured to live in harmony with it. John Thomson, who travelled in China between 1868 and 1872, spending much time in Fuzhou, noted that:

Foochow lies about thirty-six miles inland, and three miles from the banks of the river Min. It stands in the centre of a highly tilled plain of unsurpassed fertility, which is dotted over with villages and homesteads, while mountain ranges close in the distant horizon on every side. The town itself is built around the bases of three hills, whose summits have been appropriated exclusively to temples, official residences, and pagodas. The walls make a circuit of about six miles, and the space they enclose is supposed to be occupied—as at Peking, Canton, and all other great cities—in part by the cantonments of the Tartar garrison, in part by the Chinese citizens. The actual result is a densely populated trading quarter on the west, and gardens, waste lands, and fish ponds in the eastern half.⁶⁴

Fuzhou, like Guangzhou and Baoding, lived in harmony with nature. The construction of traditional cities must follow elements of fengshui and minimise disturbance to the natural habitat. Fengshui was embedded in the Qing’s legal code as “laws of the land”, local governments used it to authorise constructions and settle disputes.⁶⁵ Failure to comply with the laws could lead to punishments. But missionaries such as Joseph Edkins labelled fengshui geomancy and dismissed it as superstition, as we see for instance in the words of Rev. E. J. Hardy: “no superstition has had a more cramping effect on the mind and life of a people than that which is known in China as Feng- or Fungshui”.⁶⁶ Such missionary-critics were not alone. Pro-modern intellectuals and political leaders saw fengshui as another example of China’s backwardness. Anti-superstition was one of the four keystones of the New Culture Movement which Vera Schwarcz has labelled the “Chinese enlightenment”.⁶⁷ The ROC regime launched “anti-superstition” campaigns as Rebecca Nedostup discussed in her book.⁶⁸ The philosophy and practice of living in harmony with nature was disinherited as fallacy in the desire to embrace science and modernity. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) was more radical, turning “anti-superstition” into a political platform sustained by waves of cleansing in the 1950s.⁶⁹ The Cultural Revolution began in 1966 with the drive to destroy the “four olds”: old thought, culture, customs and habit. The “contempt for tradition” had its origin in the late Qing.

Modernisation of traditional cities began with the arrival of Europeans after China’s defeat in the First Opium War (1839–42) as they procured “settlements”—areas allotted to them where they could live and work, free from Chinese law and restriction, in Treaty-port cities such as Shanghai. They built business districts, paved and lit the streets for modern transportation and commerce. They planted foreign cities on Chinese soil, serving as a window to the West and setting the standard for modernisation. They introduced modern—or, to be more precise, Western—architecture and city planning to China.⁷⁰ Rhoads Murphey argued that Treaty-port cities like Shanghai were “key to modern China” because they served as examples of progress.⁷¹ Lu Hanchao concurred “as China’s foremost cradle of new ideas and innovations, Shanghai itself was a product of modernity.”⁷² Marie-Claire Bergère has called Shanghai “China’s gateway to modernity”.⁷³ Shanghai embodied everything modern and it became the prototype for urban development. John Thomson was surprised to see in the late 1860s that “there are in most cities large open spaces of tilled land that might have been used for the better accommodation of the citizens”, and he asked: “did they not prefer to crowd their houses and shops together for the purposes of trade and social intercourse, as close as the cells of a bee-hive?”⁷⁴ Thomson did not have to wait long for that to happen.

Modernisation has enriched our lives, improved transportation and hygiene as well as providing easy access to amenities, education and leisure. But it has also wrought havoc on nature-friendly traditional cities. This began with the demolition of city walls—manifestation of imperial power and “ideal social order”, as Xu Yinong explained in the case of Suzhou.⁷⁵ This “order” survived into the late Qing. Joseph Esherick has observed that the last decade of the Qing and the Republic of China era “saw a major effort to remake Chinese cities” where “walls were torn down, streets were straightened, widened and paved.”⁷⁶ The effort to remake Chinese cities might have been initiated by foreigners, but the Chinese themselves soon came to lead the campaign. The destruction of ancient cities with their light environmental footsteps, what Wang Jun called the battle between “preservation vs. demolition” when discussing the case of Beijing, had begun.⁷⁷ Tianjin was the first city to experience this. Its city wall was badly damaged by foreign troops who came to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Instead of rebuilding it, the local government dismantled the city wall, in an effort to show its determination to break from the past—fengshui and “cosmology of the Chinese city” were destroyed, physically as well as metaphorically. This only intensified after the Nationalist Revolution when the ROC regime embarked on building a modern nation—they tore down the walls of many ancient cities starting from 1912, including:⁷⁸

• Shanghai 1912–

• Hangzhou 1912–

• Chengdu 1912–

• Guangzhou 1913–

• Yichang 1916

• Beijing 1921–

• Kunming 1922–

• Changsha 1922–

• Xiamen 1925–

• Wuchang 1926

• Fuzhou 1927–

• Guiyang 1927–

• Nanchang 1927–

• Ningbo 1927–

• Chongqing 1929–

City walls had constrained expansion; they stood in the way of modernisation. Toppling city walls meant unlimited extension into the surrounding countryside. The city had become the battleground in the ROC’s quest for a modern nation with a new identity. China’s foreign educated scholars, Wu Jingchao chief among them, argued that the government should “develop cities to relieve the countryside” [发展都市以救济农村].⁷⁹ Traditional cities were reborn with modern appearances, they began to look like European cities. This was documented by foreign visitors and scholars. British journalist Edwin John Dingle witnessed the change that was taking place in 1909–10: “The Whangpoo looked like the Thames, and the Shanghai bund the Embankment.”⁸⁰ He saw in remote Chongqing that “the modern spirit is spreading speedily into the domains of life everywhere”.⁸¹ French writer and politician Abel Bonnard visited China in 1920–21: “The modern spirit is now fermenting more actively at Canton than elsewhere. … Tall, modern houses, are rising fast along the river banks”.⁸² American sociologist Sidney Gamble conducted many surveys from 1908 to 1932, he wrote of the capital: “Peking is rapidly adopting modern ways”, and “the National Assembly and various government boards are housed in large modern building.”⁸³ No wonder Shanghai became “Paris of the East”, Harbin “Manchurian Petersburg”, and Qingdao “Switzerland of the East”.⁸⁴ As Rhoads Murphey acutely observes, these were “essentially replicas of the modern Western commercial-industrial city”.⁸⁵ John S. Thomson simply called them “foreign cities of China”.⁸⁶ Xuelei Huang sheds new light on the transformation of traditional cities from a unique perspective, what she called “olfactory modernity”, as China was modernised not just in the image but also in the smell of the West.⁸⁷

The philosophy and practice of fitting into the natural environment and living in harmony with the gods, city god in particular, were completely abandoned. Whatever the ROC regime did not finish or start, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) picked up after 1949. The CCP regime took down the walls of many more cities. Madeleine Yue Dong and Wang Jun discussed the “city wall dismantling spree” in the capital Beijing.⁸⁸ The regime destroyed not just walls but also old neighbourhoods. Joshua Goldstein wrote of today’s Beijing: “little remains of the city’s trademark alleys (hutong) or city walls of a century ago”.⁸⁹ Mark Baker discussed the case of Zhengzhou where post-Mao expansion turned “suburban fringe to city centres”.⁹⁰ This kind of modernisation intensified in the post-Mao era, arguably the most destructive period. An increasing number of scholars have written about coercive demolition of old neighbourhoods and forceful relocation of residents.⁹¹ But we still don’t know how many city walls and neighbourhoods have been destroyed since the late nineteenth century. We can try to gauge the expansion of cities through data compiled by mainland scholars. Their research indicates that “China’s national urban land expanded from 5619 km² circa 1949 to 74,827 km² in 2018”.⁹² We can also see this from the growth of urban population. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) monitors urbanisation by permanent resident population. The statistics are staggering:

• 10.64% in 1949

• 50.00% in 2011

• 59.58% in 2018.⁹³

Urbanisation is the process during which more and more people leave the countryside to live and work in cities. Factories are located in cities. They offered better wages than the dull, dirty and back-breaking agricultural work in the countryside. Industrialisation deprived peasants of opportunities to make supplementary income that could be garnered from traditional crafts and household/village industries. It began to devastate the agriculture-based economy and social order, as noted by scholars such as Sydney D. Gamble, Li Jinghan and Fei Xiaotong.⁹⁴ Some peasants went to cities at the low agricultural seasons or times of disaster to find work. But increasingly, as Lu Hanchao noted, “industrialised, and highly commercialised cities came to be seen as better places than small towns and villages”.⁹⁵ Rural-to-urban migration was already “considerable” in the 1920s, as John L. Buck discussed.⁹⁶ Despite that, only ten percent of Chinese lived in cities before 1949.

The Mao era saw massive growth in permanent urban population. This explains the housing and food crisis in cities, and why the Mao regime introduced a rationing system where the government issued stamps for essentials like grain, meat, cotton and textiles. The regime tried to curb rural-to-urban migration by issuing permanent resident permits, the hukou [户口] or household register, without which one cannot move to and live in cities. But the restriction was relaxed with the ascent of economic reform in the 1980s, as millions flooded into cities, leading to what Gregory Eliyu Guldin has called “farewell to peasant China”.⁹⁷ This contributed to unprecedented urbanisation in the post-Mao era where brand-new industrial zones, residential clusters, commercial districts, high-rises and skyscrapers shoot into the sky—turning cities into concrete jungles.

Old Yueyang hidden among greenery has now been isolated on the edge of the expanded city amidst masses of high-rises (see illustrations 6). Once a small town on the confluence of the Jialing and Yangzi rivers, Chongqing is now a mega metropolis with skyscrapers rivalling those in New York and Singapore. Yueyang and Chongqing are just two among many. The urbanisation programme in the post-Mao era is elaborate, it has to satisfy the five layers of socio-spatial configuration dictated by the regime: traditional, proto-globalization, socialist, market-led, and globalization.⁹⁸ The “traditional” refers to old neighbourhoods that have been saved with a purpose—tourism, as a source of profit for governments. “Socialist” denotes communist politics, “market-led” means shopping and leisure, whereas “globalisation” indicates catching up with developed countries, most obviously through the proliferation of skyscrapers. Respecting and living in harmony with nature is absent from the list—modernisation has no need for fengshui, let alone the city god, it simply dominates and ruins the landscape. Urbanisation has accelerated in the new millennium; it has turned fields and villages into cities—destroying farmlands, forests, and the environment.⁹⁹ Shenzhen is a defining example of this. A tiny settlement across the border from Hong Kong, it was surrounded by rice fields and a small number of houses that served the PRC’s border control. American journalist Harrison Salisbury left us a vivid description in 1966:

I caught my first glimpse of China through the slit of an observation post atop the barbed-wire-nested guardhouse at Lo Wu station, terminus of the 27-mile railway that runs from Kowloon through the Lease Territory to the Chinese frontier. I looked through the slit, focusing my binoculars as directed by the chief of the Hong Kong defence battalion, and saw through the lens the grim visage of the People’s Liberation Army soldiers on guard on their side of the Lo Wu Bridge …… There, across the Shumchun River, I saw cattle grazing in the green meadows on the China side and a few peasants tending them.¹⁰⁰

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Traditional craft: mending porcelain

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

Mason, Costume: 128

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Baoding dotted with gardens, fish ponds, and cultivations, 1880

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

Ji Hongmo & Guo Chun, Baoding Fuzhi (29 vols. Zhili: Baoding, 1680 edition): v1, 45; Li Peihu and Zhu Jingxuan, Baoding fuzhi (80 vols. Beijing: Tushuguan chubanshe, 1886): v 35 (no page number)

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Guangzhou pagoda and neighbourhood hidden among greenery, 1870

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

“The flower pagoda and rooftops, Guangzhou, 1870.” Photograph by A Chan (Ya Zhen). Image courtesy of Arthur Bayley and Special Collections, Identifier AB-s03, University of Bristol Library at https://hpcbristol.net/visual/AB-s03, accessed 29 August 2023

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High-rises rose in the post-Mao era to dwarf 1900s Yueyang.

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

Baidu public domain image and “Gate and city wall, Yochow”. Image courtesy of Bannister Family and Special Collections, Identifier Ba-s050, University of Bristol Library, at https://hpcbristol.net/visual/Ba-s050, accessed 27 August 2023

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A massive concrete jungle has erased 1900s Chongqing from the earth.

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

Baidu public domain image and “Yuzhong and Jiangbe, Chongqing at the confluence of Jialing and Yangtze Rivers, 1905”, Cornell Plant and Special Collections, Identifier CP-s049, University of Bristol Library, at https://hpcbristol.net/visual/CP-s049, accessed 27 August 2023

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The settlement, with its cattle-grazing green meadows, was declared a Special Economic Zone in August 1980. Four decades later, a concrete jungle had risen in its place. Du Juan called it an “instant city”.¹⁰¹ Rivalling Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Shenzhen was transformed into the world’s factory, China’s high-tech city, shopping paradise and holiday destination. Home to a population of more than 17 million as of 2024, Shenzhen is only one among many that suddenly sprang up during economic reform.

Urbanisation has now been taken to rural areas in the government’s desire to alleviate poverty in less developed regions and to reduce rural-to-urban migration. This has led to rural industrialization—a process that Nick Smith has called the “end of the village”.¹⁰² Andrew B. Kipnis captures this in a volume titled From Village to City.¹⁰³ From an impoverished town of 30,000 in 1988, Zouping in Shandong province had transformed into a city of 300,000 by 2013. Zouping is just one among many. In a documentary entitled White Horse Village, British journalist Carrie Gracie documented the case of Wuxi in the Sichuan basin where a small town of a few hundred grew into to a modern city of 540,000.¹⁰⁴ This was made possible by the post-Mao regime as it tried to address the problem of “top-heavy urban development”, leaving the matter largely in the hands of regional or local governments.¹⁰⁵ This has led to the rise of “ghost cities” as the construction boom was hit by the covid pandemic and recession.¹⁰⁶ Economist Mark Williams estimates that China still has about 30 million unsold properties, which could house 80 million people—the entire population of Germany.¹⁰⁷ Yujiapu in Tianjin is an example where the entire area stands empty of people and traffic. There are many others, such as Ordos in Inner Mongolia, China’s largest ghost city.

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A concrete metropolis is sitting on 1960s cattle-grazing green meadows

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

Baidu public domain images

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Annual deforestation since post-Mao reform intensified in the 1990s

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

Our World in Data, “Annual deforestation, China”, at https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual -deforestation, accessed 2 August 2024

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Rising outdoor pollution death, 1990 versus 2021

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

Our World in Data, “Outdoor pollution death 2009–2017 China”, at https://ourworldindata.org/grapher /outdoor-pollution-deaths-1990-2017, accessed 2 August 2024

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China’s rising diabetes population

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 1-2 (2026) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341667

IIN, “2018 China diabetes popula tion (million)”, at http://www.chyxx.com/industry/201808/671815.html, accessed 2 August 2024; International Diabetes Federa tion, at https://diabetesatlas.org/data-by-location/global/, accessed 21 August 2024

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Urbanisation is destroying the very fabric of Chinese culture and society silently—it has severed ties to ancestors and roots in the countryside. Traditional cities were places for sojourners, not one’s permanent residency. Officials were often shuffled every few years, a mechanism to prevent cultivation of local power while merchants travelled to wherever business took them. They might work and live in cities but they left their family in the countryside where their ancestors were buried in family/clan cemeteries and worshipped in ancestral halls.¹⁰⁸ They returned for important rituals/festivals and ultimately upon retirement. John Thomson saw and knew the importance of Chinese worship of ancestors:

The Hall of Ancestors, or simply the shrine, has its place in every abode. Among the poor it occupies some obscure spot, some niche or shelf on which the ancestral tablet, a simple piece of wood, inscribed with the name and rank of the deceased, is placed upright on a stand. … The tablets are objects of daily worship, the eldest son acting as high priest of the ceremony.¹⁰⁹

But more than a century of urbanisation has severed ties to the land in the countryside and destroyed ancestor worship. Urbanisation is not new to China: as Glenn T. Trewartha argued, it “appears to be almost as old as China itself”.¹¹⁰ Much bigger than their European counterparts, Chinese cities like Xi’an and Quanzhou had impressed foreign visitors since the Sui-Tang era. But there is a distinction between then and now. The common phrase “returning to the countryside upon retirement” [解甲归田] has become obsolete as a result of industrialisation and urbanisation.¹¹¹ Today’s Chinese live and work in cities—and they die and are buried there too, in public cemeteries rather than those owned by, or associated with, one’s articular family and clan. They would never return to their ancestral homes, abandoning their ancestors and leaving their tombs unattended, the most serious offence in the dictionary of Chinese morality. Industrial—urban modernisation also forced the removal of many burial sites—another offence. The irreversible damage is that it has destroyed kinship—the real substance of Chinese culture and society. The Chinese have changed from a people tied to their ancestral land in the countryside and who had profound respect for nature to a population that desert the countryside, despise agricultural work, and prefer to live in cities. Modernisation has destroyed the values and customs enshrined and practised for thousands of years—notwithstanding the effort of some to maintain these beliefs, as Andrew Kipnis has detailed in his new book.¹¹² It is not an exaggeration to say that industrialisation and urbanisation have nearly destroyed a nature-friendly, land-bound and sustainable civilisation. Sadly, the cost of modernisation is far from this. It has destroyed not just traditional crafts and cities but also lives.

Lives Lost to the World of Plenty

William Chambers admired Chinese architecture and landscape art, and he marvelled at the uniqueness of Chinese culture, stating that:

Whatever is really Chinese has at least the merit of being original: these people seldom or never copy or imitate the inventions of other nations. All our most authentick relations agree in this point, and observe that their form of government, their language, characters, dress and almost every other particular belonging to them, have continued without change for thousands of years.¹¹³

Chambers saw what made the Chinese unique. Abel Bonnard expressed his concern about the survival of Chinese culture in 1921: “one wonders what unforeseen defences the Asiatic soul will present to the attack of modern influences”.¹¹⁴ The Chinese did put up resistance, but they eventually capitulated to the assault from the West. More than a century of modernisation has completely changed the ways in which the Chinese dress, eat, live, move, work and relax. Every morning, many Chinese wake up in their high-rise apartments—still sometimes referred to foreign house [洋房], with their western style décor and furniture. They have toast and milk for breakfast—said by many to be more healthy than Chinese food and drinks. Men put on their suit and tie, and women their skirt and blouse, for the day ahead. Many drive themselves to work—a sign of being middle class.¹¹⁵ Travel could not be easier or faster today on highways, railways, and subways. The highspeed train carries one from Guangzhou to Beijing in about eight hours. At work, they collaborate with colleagues from around the country and the world through the internet. They drink tea in bags and with water boiled in electric kettles.¹¹⁶ Lunches can be ordered by a phone call or a click. After work, some enjoy themselves at “happy hour”. Some go to the gym, some shop online, while others “see” their friends/family on the internet. Life could not be more convenient today as everything is quite literally at one’s fingertips and doorstep. But what is the cost of such a modern life?

Maintaining such a modern lifestyle demands resources that are diminishing rapidly. More than a century of industrialization and urbanisation has for example destroyed China’s forests. Robert Marks has reminded us that increasing population from the Ming had already put pressure on the environment.¹¹⁷ Nanny Kim has detailed how copper mining drove deforestation during the Qing.¹¹⁸ Ian Miller argued that “it was only in the nineteenth century that China’s forests began to face catastrophe”.¹¹⁹ Meng Zhang was precise, pointing out that “in 1750 about 25 percent of China’s land surface had been forested, but by 1950 that had shrunk to less than 10 percent”.¹²⁰ The mid-Qing to the ROC era saw much destruction. This continued into the Mao era. Judith Shapiro authored an excellent book on deforestation that took place during the Great Leap Forward, and which resulted in the death of millions.¹²¹ The CCP regime was the most destructive, Mao Zedong himself promoting the idea that “man will conquer nature” [人定胜天]. Yu Yingshi called him the “Chinese Marxist radicalism incarnate”, and “a genius in destruction”¹²² Sadly deforestation only intensified after Mao died. Our World in Data provides statistics for the post-Mao era.

The annual rate remained steady for three decades until 2015. The sharp decline thereafter may look like good news to China, but it is bad news for the world—China has “exported” its deforestation at the cost of developing countries in Africa and Latin America, thereby giving rise to the term “imported deforestation”.¹²³ With resources from less developed countries, China’s industrialization and urbanisation have accelerated. The NBS put the rate of urbanisation by permanent resident population in 2023 at 66.16%, an increase from 59.58% in 2018.¹²⁴ The Industry Information Network (IIN) has predicted that China’s urban population will reach 1 billion by the 2030s when more than two-thirds of Chinese will live in cities.¹²⁵ What more would it take to clothe, feed, house, move and entertain such a gigantic urban population?

The destruction is hardly limited to forests. Industrialisation and urbanisation have poisoned the very substance for human existence—the air. Outdoor air has deteriorated rapidly since the 1990s, contributing to lung cancer, the number one killer for both men and women, with nearly a million deaths in 2021, see above.¹²⁶

Polluted air contributes to lung cancer; even more so does tobacco smoking. Industrialisation and urbanisation have completely changed the way in which tobacco is consumed. Instead of going to the local tobacconist to purchase tobacco leaves/slices, chopping, mixing and fitting them into the pipe, lighting it, and sitting down to enjoy a pipe, the cigarette makes consumption quick and easy. One can purchase and smoke anytime, anywhere, and continuously. Indeed, the cigarette itself has become a symbol of modernity, whereas the pipe denotes tradition, as Carol Benedict has argued.¹²⁷ Production on an industrial scale has led to a massive increase in consumption. Smoking jumped from 80 billion cigarettes in 1949 to 1200 billion in 1990, and by the mid-1990s, China was smoking 1.7 trillion per year, “a third of the world’s total”.¹²⁸ Tobacco smoking in China has become an “epidemic”.¹²⁹ Even while smoking killed 1,060,600 Chinese in 2022, tobacco companies and the Chinese government have continued to pocket giant profits.¹³⁰

Industrialization and urbanisation enhanced commerce and consumption, and made modern lives easy and convenient. But they also enabled overeating, leading to a multitude of diseases. Modern consumerism preys on the most vulnerable aspect of human nature: greed, immediate gratification, and conspicuous consumption. Children and young adults are the most vulnerable. Bombarded by targeted advertisements, many are lured into excessive eating and drinking. Aside from the three meals plus evening snacks [宵夜], all kinds of foods and drinks, including foreign attractions like McDonalds, beckon to youngsters on their way to/from school.¹³¹ Many, not just children but also adults, are eating and drinking all day long. Machine-processed foods, drinks and snacks contain unhealthy ingredients to keep them tasty and their shelf life long. They are saturated with sugar. Popcorn is a good example. As late as the 1970s, itinerant popcorn makers travelled from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, their arrival heralded by their familiar cries/songs. Excited children rushed to queue, waiting to see the magic that turned rice or corn into snacks. Many cherished their treats: ate little so that they would last longer. But industrialisation and urbanisation made it possible for children to have as much popcorn as they wished and as often as they want. Over eating and drinking have led to obesity.¹³² Before 1980, few had heard of obesity. In 2020, China’s type 2 diabetic population reached 116.4 million.¹³³ CII estimates that the total diabetic population will grow to 119.8 million by 2045, see above.

Industrial and urban modernisation have wrought havoc not just in China, but also on a global scale. Concentration of a large population in close proximity within urban areas has led to the quick spread of pandemics that might previously have been contained locally. As the world saw with covid 19, modern transportation links turned a local epidemic into a global plague. Undeterred, China is forging ahead with new industrialisation today. The Guardian reported in March 2023 that “China leads in 37 of 44 technologies tracked in a year-long project”.¹³⁴ Four months later, The EurAsian Times announced that “At 453 km/h, China tests world’s fastest, new-gen high-speed train”.¹³⁵ Heavily industrialised cities are seeking further development, while urban sprawl continues to march into the vast countryside.¹³⁶ Human ingenuity knows no limit. Where is the pursuit for progress and the race to outpace others leading us to, other than self-destruction?

Coda

Modernity is generally understood to entail improvement and advancement. Dynasties came and went in the past three or so thousand years; they all, to a large extent, “modernised”. But the modernisation that began in the late Qing, what Li Hongzhang called “change unseen in three thousand years”, is different.¹³⁷ It is violent and it annihilates. Is it too late to put the brakes on? Perhaps we could take some comfort that modernisation has not yet destroyed everything native to China. Some city walls, such as those in Xi’an and Nanjing, and some traditional towns, such as Fenghuang and Pingyao, have survived. So too have some crafts, such as papermaking in rural Sichuan, as Jacob Eyferth has illustrated. Chinese cuisine, dialects, and traditional Chinese medicine or TCM have endured the onslaught of modernisation. The Chinese taste buds have not been coarsened; neither has the language the Chinese speak even though it has absorbed new vocabularies. In fact, TCM has been “modernised” in the ways it is researched, manufactured, and consumed. Why have these aspects of Chinese culture been more resistant than others to the assault of modernisation? This demands more research. Modernity could co-exist with tradition; they could complement each other. Charles Musgrove revealed how the ROC regime tried to modernise its capital Nanjing by turning it into a “ceremonial centre and cosmological microcosm”—whereby the traditional served a modern purpose: emulating earlier dynasties to legitimise its rule.¹³⁸ A complete return to tradition is not a solution; neither is rejecting modernity. But continued industrialization and urbanisation on today’s scale is not sustainable; it is threatening the survival of nature and humanity itself. The traditional has nourished the Chinese people for thousands of years, as is the case for other civilisations, while the modern has done some deadly and irreversible damage in a relatively short lifespan. It is time we look back to tradition for inspiration in order to undo the damage done for a sustainable and renewable future.