Completely false. Although Ming receives favorable treatment in some traditional histories of China, economic historians today have concluded its its economic policy was nothing short of completely destructive and that it was inferior to both Song and Yuan that preceded it and Qing that replaced it. More importantly, economists have done a lot of work on what it takes to have an industrial revolution, and found that the very specific, and often counter-intuitive, ingredients were nonexistent in Ming.

Ming had a disastrous economic policy, especially during the reign of the first two emperors. Almost all trade, overseas and overland with Mongolia and Manchuria, was legally monopolized. After the 15th century, private businesses illegally circumvented the law and began trading with Japan in larger numbers, but overland trade to the North remained government-dominated. The Ming during their early years hyper inflated their paper currency into near worthlessness, creating massive economic disruption. The Ming used a system called Lijia in which commoners could perform duties instead of paying certain taxes, regulated by their communities. Only those with an imperial examination degree were exempt in any community. Most rural landlords did not have this degree, but their wealth and influence allowed them to evade taxes far better than the commoners, as the local bureaucrats would be in charge of what duties were assigned to whom. This resulted in an inefficient tax system which punished small landowners, and over time consolidated the countryside into a series of large states, with the majority of the labor pool being tenants.

As we can see, Ming policy, especially that of Hongwu and Yongle, was economically self-destructive. However, more importantly, Ming would have lacked the critical ingredients to produce an industrial revolution even if they had done none of the above policies.

Industrial "revolution" is somewhat of a misnomer. Growth rates in Northwestern Europe, the heartland of the industrial revolution, averaged 1-2% over the course of the First and Second industrial revolutions. Austria Hungary's early 20th century growth rate, which barely exceeded 2%, was considered alarmingly fast by contemporaries. Those numbers pale in comparison to growth rates in the developing world, and even parts of the developed world, today. However, the Industrial Revolution was so amazing and awe-inspiring to contemporaries because, prior to the period, real GDP per capita growth throughout history was zero. That's right: zero. A Sumerian farmer in 3000 BC was no poorer than an English farmer in 1714, on average. While agricultural techniques did increase, they always corresponded with an increase in population. In other words, growth was slow enough that it could be outpaced by population growth at any time.

The reasons for this were twofold. First, the level of technology available in agriculture at the time meant that it was most often a labor intensive, not capital intensive process. In other words, a landlord might become richer by buying more land, but would benefit little from investing in a new kind of fertilizer. In the 17th century in the Low Countries, there was an agricultural revolution resulting from better technique, but this was due to an increase in knowledge, not capital invested. Second and more importantly, prior to the early 18th century, there was absolutely no way to deposit funds in a bank and expect with certainty to see them back.

Economists broadly believe that in any modern economy, savings = investment. Nations where more income is saved, such as Singapore and China, grow faster in a near-perfect correlation than in nations where less is saved. However, this equation only holds true if savings actually do equate to investment, which, throughout most of human history, they did not.

Prior to 1694, government defaults were near-universal among the states of Europe. Interest rates on government bonds exceeded 10% in the vast majority of recorded loans between banks and governments. Spain, the most powerful empire in the world at the time, notoriously defaulted four times under the reign of a single monarch. In England under the Stuart Dynasty, the government was forced to oblige lords to loan to them, the so-called "forced loans", which were seen as a tax in all but name.

Two developments in late 17th century England led that country to create the Bank of England in 1694, the first oversight organization handling state debt. First, England faced the prospect of continental war, given its recent takeover by the Dutch Stadtholder William of Orange, whose country was embroiled in disputes with the Habsburgs and France. A relatively weak country at the time, England needed a way to borrow funds reliably to finance wars. Second, the 1688 Glorious Revolution had decisively ended the crown-parliament dispute in favor of parliament, giving local gentries the power to create the equivalent of an oversight committee for royal finances. Almost all loans had specific revenue earmarked from areas of tax revenue towards their payoff. In the early 18th century, interest rates for government debt in England plummeted from over 15% in some cases to less than 3%. This low interest rate persisted even after the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain's debt to GDP was over 250%, officially making it one of the most indebted nations in history. This low interest rate in spite of a vast increase in borrowing suggests vastly improved credibility in government debt. This benefited the financial sector greatly, as now there existed a safe investment with guaranteed returns, vital to the stable operation of any bank. This in itself proliferated other financial ventures - joint stock companies, imperial companies like the South Sea and East India Companies, and industrial ventures, who now found it easier to borrow money at lower rates.

The 18th century saw the governments of Western Europe attempt to copy the English system, which later historians termed the "fiscal-military state". Taxes in Britain during this period were some of the highest of any country worldwide. Some estimates place the share of British GDP going towards the state budget, the effective tax rate, at over 50%-70%. This represents a vast increase in the efficiency of tax collection and financial institutions in that country - the British state had become a veritable revenue-generating machine. Not all the money was raised through pure land taxation - Britain had mastered the art of raising revenue through commerce and overseas trade. A huge section of British revenues came from customs and trade dues, which the state invested to increase by backing the East India Company, among other colonial ventures. France was the second most successful at copying this model, creating wide-ranging financial institutions itself, but it ultimately failed to perfectly duplicate. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British interest rate - despite a much smaller economy and population than that of the French Empire - was less than half of France's. Strikingly, effective tax rate during the fiscal-military state period and speed of industrialization are nearly perfectly correlated. The industrial "revolution" was a financial revolution - the first time in history that governments and private banks could mobilize huge amounts of capital to re-invest. This was the first time that economic growth could exceed population growth, where enough money was being invested year over year to exceed the birthrate.

China was nowhere close to a financial revolution, because it never had to be. While earlier historiography claims that many Chinese dynasties fell due to over-taxation, modern historians have proven the Chinese effective tax rate was almost always under 20%, and in many cases under 10% of GDP. There was a perception among the common people of over-taxation, however, due to exemptions on scholars and the ability for the rich to evade taxes. Thus, the Chinese imperial tax system, throughout almost every dynasty, taxed those who could least afford it, but was entirely inept at collecting taxes from the rich. This problem recurred from the Han Dynasty all the way to Qing, and was never fully solved, because it was a problem China could afford to have.

Without a doubt, comparatively low tax rates in Ming and Qing China made the lives of the average peasant family better there than in Britain during the Fiscal-Military state period. China was the unquestioned superpower of the East, and had no rival. Therefore, reforming taxation to make it more efficient was a largely pointless adventure. There were periods of intense revenue shortfall in China - especially during the beginning of Ming - but these shortfalls were too short-term to respond to with systematic tax reform, as reform's effects would come too late.

It should be noted that this all does not mean Ming and Qing were bumbling and inept, simply that they had a different reality. Northwest Europe stumbled into the industrial revolution. A small England was forced to punch above its weight, and saw its gentry win a struggle for power against the King. Therefore, they created a debt management system, which led to a deficit requiring ever-increased taxes, earmarked to pay off specific loans, and financial innovations that created the world's most complicated financial system to date. Not one parliament member in 1694 would have known the oversight institution on royal debt would eventually change the global economy. In order for Ming or Qing to develop financial institutions advanced enough to facilitate industrial growth, China had to borrow immense amounts of money - maybe even in excess of its GDP. There was absolutely no foreseeable reason for either dynasty to do so.