Causes and Consequences of Crises Under the Interplay of General Economic Laws

This section argues that modern economic crises in China exhibit a persistent duality: they recur as a chronic domestic ailment while also being rapidly aggravated by downturns in the capitalist world market. It contends that explanations confined to circulation (market fragmentation, transport, currency, tariffs, and external shocks) are insufficient to account for the enduring and recurrent character of the crisis. The analysis therefore shifts to the production and reproduction process, proposing that the fundamental crisis is agrarian in nature and rooted in insufficient production under small-scale commodity production. On this basis, urban phenomena associated with overproduction and cyclical fluctuation are interpreted as derivative manifestations rather than primary causes. By tracing the formation and diversion of surplus across land rent, commerce, usury, taxation, unequal exchange, and external concentration of capital, the section offers a unified account of the crisis’s chronic persistence and its heightened vulnerability to external disturbances.