It turned out that the germs of capitalism began to appear on the mainland as early as the Ming Dynasty
Common knowledge of Chinese history
Chapter 65, The Germination of Capitalism
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the industrial and commercial economy in the Jiangnan region developed rapidly.
At that time, Suzhou was the center of Jiangnan silk weaving industry.
Due to the differences in technology and operation of silk weaving producers, differentiation gradually occurred.
Some people rose to become workshop owners who owned several or dozens of looms, called "machine households"; Others are reduced to dispossessed wage workers, called "mechanics".
The relationship between the machine owner and the machine worker is that the machine owner contributes the money, and the machine worker contributes to the production of the silk weaving industry.
There is an obvious employment relationship between the two.
Some machine owners hired more workers, expanded the scale of production, and formed a preliminary capitalist operation.
The germs of this capitalist relations of production also began to appear in other handicraft sectors.
In the Songjiang cotton socks manufacturing industry, summer socks shopkeepers distribute raw materials, take them home to make summer socks, and then return them to the store and receive payment, which is a capitalist operation in the form of a package buyer.
In the oil extraction industry, there are also cases where employees in oil mills are paid daily wages.
The germination of capitalist production relations in this period shows that the society at that time was already at the end of feudal production relations.
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