Sun Hui, who knows history, knows that, in fact, the Song Dynasty was a budding capitalist society, which can also be understood as the stage of upgrading from early capitalism to modern industrial capitalism. So the question now is, why has China, which had the germ of capitalism as early as the Song Dynasty, been in a pre-capitalist society? Could it be that it has sprouted for six or seven hundred years without bearing fruit? Is this still in the bud? The fundamental reason is that the budding capitalism of the Song Dynasty suffered a serious external blow and did not get the space for continuous growth and progress.

The budding of capitalism in the Song Dynasty was interrupted by the invasion of foreign forces twice, the first was the blow of the Jin State that led to the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty, which not only interrupted the budding of capitalism, but also lost the industrial energy base of the northern coal and iron resources. This blow was quite serious and had an extremely negative impact on the development of capitalism in the later Song Dynasty. The second was the Mongol blow that led to the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty, and this time it was even more devastating uprooting. Originally, after more than 100 years of development in the Southern Song Dynasty, capitalism had sprouted and grown again, and although it lost its coal and iron base in the north and had many disadvantages to its development, it would not be a problem to become industrial capitalism over time, and as a result, it was once again annihilated by foreign aggression.

Why were the Song and Ming dynasties, which were more civilized, more economically powerful, and already had the germ of capitalism, so fragile that they suffered the same fate over and over again? The West was equally fragile when it developed capitalism, so why didn't the West encounter a similar situation?

The causes can be divided into two aspects, one is internal and the other is external.

The internal causes can be broken down into two aspects: on the one hand, the embryonic capitalist society is indeed a relatively fragile society, which must be recognized, and on the other hand, the fragility of the embryonic capitalist society in China has its own special reasons, which must be analyzed as a whole from the macro trend of the entire history.

External causes can also be divided into two aspects, one is the difference caused by the external geographical environment, and the other is the different role of one's own culture on the external backward nations.

The first internal cause is that the embryonic capitalist society itself is fragile and unstable.

Every civilization has times when it is strong and strong, and there are times when it is weak and soft, and the kind of civilization that has always been strong and strong has never existed in the entire history of mankind. When a civilization is fragile and soft, it is often the time for it to renew and evolve itself, and if it can survive this hurdle, it can embark on a higher stage of development and enter a more brilliant stage of civilization; If you don't, you may perish or fall into a cycle of turbulence in history. If we take the analogy of the phenomena of the biological world, it is very easy to understand. The insect pupates when it is at its weakest and most vulnerable, the same is true for snakes, and it is of course especially weak when a woman is pregnant. When a society has the germ of capitalism and is in the midst of a critical breakthrough, it is precisely when the old factors are disintegrating and the new ones are growing but have not yet really taken over, and this is also the time when the society is relatively fragile, and its ability to resist foreign aggression will inevitably decrease.

However, the West has also experienced the embryonic society of capitalism, so why has the West not been interrupted by foreign aggression because of its vulnerability? In fact, even in the West, it was the germ of British capitalism, which was separated from the European continent by the Strait, that grew smoothly first, and it was only after Britain became a powerful industrial country that capitalism spread throughout Europe. Britain is an island country, but at the same time it has close ties with the European continent, so on the one hand, the advanced economy, culture, ideas, and science of the European continent can spread to Britain in a timely manner, and on the other hand, when Britain moves towards capitalism, it is invaded by foreign wars, so that the danger of budding interruption is minimized. This is also an important reason why capitalism really developed in Britain in the first place, while the rest of the continent struggled. This is not the whole reason, but it is an essential condition.

Japan, on the other hand, is an island country like Britain, but it has not independently embarked on the road of modern industrialization, because the road of progress in China, as the birthplace and engine of civilization, has been blocked, and it has fallen into dark national oppression and autocratic rule, and has become a relatively isolated closed system, lacking a steady stream of ideological and material stimulation in economic and cultural aspects, of course, it cannot be like Britain.

The second aspect of the internal cause is simply that, since the Song Dynasty, the reason for the excessive fragility of China's budding capitalist society is the excessive development of the budding capitalism, or more precisely, the progress of the political system for more than a thousand years has led to too little resistance in the budding development of capitalism. It is for this reason that when foreign aggression comes, the country as a whole shows weakness and weakness that is grossly disproportionate to its socio-economic development.

The embryonic societies of capitalism are inherently fragile, but this vulnerability cannot be infinite, nor theoretically worse than at the end of the ancient long-cycle dynasties. Because the country at that stage is also in the process of social collapse and disintegration, and it also lacks the support of new forces. But neither the end of the Han Dynasty nor the end of the Tang Dynasty, the invasion of the nomads was powerless to invade the whole of China. After the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were three kingdoms, after the Three Kingdoms was the Wei and Jin dynasties, after the Wei and Jin dynasties were the Northern and Southern Dynasties, after the Northern and Southern Dynasties were the Sui and Tang dynasties, and after the Sui and Tang dynasties were the five dynasties and ten kingdoms.

Therefore, the Song Dynasty was invaded by barbarian peoples, and the whole of China fell completely, which led to the regression of civilization and the interruption of the normal social development process. As a matter of fact, this evil result is caused by the excessive development of capitalism and the too little resistance encountered in the process of capitalist germination. And this point must not only be found in the dynasties themselves, but also in the historical context of China's embryonic capitalist society, which has lasted for too long.

China had already entered the embryonic period of capitalism as early as the Warring States Period, during which it experienced several cycles of imperial rise and fall. And not every time these cycles are just simple repetitions and cycles of the original society. In fact, each cycle develops and changes on the basis of the original. Generally speaking, these changes reflect the historical trend of increasingly clear boundaries between the royal family and the government, the continuous improvement of the government structure, the rising political power of the common intellectuals, the continuous decline of the aristocracy, the continuous breaking of the hierarchical system, the continuous eeration of imperial power, and the growing sense of anti-local separatism.