-How did European Capitalism come into being? Series 5 1. Introduction Why did capitalism come into being in Europe and China, such as the Ming and Qing Dynasties? The primitive embryo of European capitalism is the industrial and commercial city in medieval Europe, so Weber said that China did not produce capitalism because China did not have an independent industrial and commercial city in medieval Europe; However, why couldn't China have an independent industrial and commercial city in ancient times? Some scholars believe that China's capitalism did not appear because of the bureaucracy in ancient China; But you know, the kings and nobles in medieval Europe were not inferior to the bureaucrats in China in terms of autocracy. Some scholars believe that it is the difference between Christianity and Confucianism that leads to the easy emergence of capitalism in Europe; As will be mentioned later in this book, traditional Christianity and Confucianism have the same position in dealing with industrial and commercial development, otherwise there is no need to carry out religious reform on traditional Christianity. Some scholars believe that China's imperial examination system attracted talents from society to officialdom; However, scholars in medieval Europe did not go into business, but became priests. Some scholars believe that it is the contractual relationship between kings and nobles in the middle ages that makes the contractual relationship of commodity economy easy to establish later; But we can see that the contractual relationship is only an agreement and compromise between loose and evenly matched political forces at that time, and has nothing to do with the commodity economy. Moreover, kings and nobles often break their contractual relationship with capitalists, such as the bankruptcy of the Fugel family that we will talk about later. Some scholars believe that capitalism originated in Europe because there is a civil class in Europe; However, why can there be a citizen class in Europe, but not in ancient China? Why did capitalism develop from medieval Europe? This is what we will discuss, and we will try to explain that the political situation in feudal Europe played a key role in it. Let's enter this period of history. It can be said that the social differences between China and the West today are rooted in this history. Capitalism is a form of interpersonal relationship, which was bred and grown in medieval European cities. So, let's focus on the city at that time. Capitalism in Europe today can be regarded as an adult; However, the initial form of any adult is that a sperm and an egg are combined and implanted into the mother's uterus. The origin of medieval European cities is the initial form of capitalism as an "adult"-a process in which a sperm is combined with an egg in the mother and implanted. There are two questions here, the first is the characteristics of this embryo, and the second is how this embryo grew up. This article only talks about the first question. In the stage of agricultural civilization, cities are not a rare phenomenon. Cities existed in ancient Egypt, Persia, the Roman Empire and ancient China. But those cities are generally political centers, where emperors, kings and even "governors" and "county heads" are located, and relying on the nature of this political center, some handicrafts and businesses have emerged and accumulated.