Appealing Points of List to the Chinese
The Chinese were attracted to Friedrich List primarily because of List ’s emphasis on tariff protection for catch-up industrialization.As remarked by Wei Chenzu，the Chinese minister at the German legation who wrote a preface for the translated List work，“China has been deprived of the right to set its tariff rates；on the other hand，the Chinese are becoming Europeanized in their consumption taste.As a result，foreign goods abound in our market，driving domestic industries to further declines.Given our weak productivity and heavy reliance on other countries for various needs，it is highly proper that List ’s theory should be adopted in China.”[9]
Those who introduced List into China were fully aware of the role that the Listian strategies had played in German history.It was believed that Germany and America became able to rival Britain in industrial competition largely by drawing upon the propositions of List.List ’s theory was therefore compared to “a good prescription for the current Chinese disease”，deserving “research by patriots and political economists”.For these Chinese，as noted by Wang Kaihua in his own preface to the translation，“If our country hopes to seek wealth and power，industry and commerce must be developed，and to develop them，it is imperative to resist the foreign competition in our market，so that domestic products may prevail.Protective tariff is an effective strategy for curtailing foreign competition and a sharp weapon for nurturing our own business.”[10]
List was appreciated by the Chinese also for his nationalist inclination.The Chinese economic community viewed western economics broadly in three schools: individualism represented by Adam Smith，nationalism represented by List，and socialism by Karl Marx，a position still strongly held today.[11] While each school of economic thought had its distinctive strengths，it was pointed out that the nationalist approach of List was especially applicable to China，since it was recognized that the Chinese state was not functioning effectively just as the Chinese market was not yet consolidated.Specifically，the Chinese conceived of using List ’s theory to offset the excessive liberalist influence of Smith ’s theory.As Liu Binglin，the Chinese biographer of List，wrote，“Those Chinese with inadequate knowledge of economics are often misled by works of the British into believing that economic undertakings have no national boundaries”，even though economic cosmopolitanism is far from an established existence in the real world.[12]
On the whole，Friedrich List had ardent followers in China in the early 20th century.As assessed by Liu Binglin，“List should be considered No.1 in terms of his contribution to the development of the German manufacturing”；and “List should also be considered No.1 among all the German economists during and before his time”.The Chinese concluded that，with his outstanding achievements，List“occupies a status actually no lower than that of Adam Smith in the history of economic thoughts”.[13]