China recently joined the group of G2 countries, alongside the United States, but the Chinese model has been offered as an alternative to the Western model. The Beijing consensus includes not only other political and socioeconomic options but also cultural and philosophical replacements. Professor R. Bin Wong argues that the traditional China of the Ming and Qing dynasties has something in common with today's welfare state. By examining Chinese notions of good governance (shanzheng), based on light taxation and the provision of social goods – pursued between 1500 and the mid-nineteenth century – and the pre-1850 success of this ideological state-operation, he finds that, ideologically, the traditional Chinese state was a transcendental arbitrator between contradictory interests among social groups and played the role of agency to flatten social inequality.

Meanwhile, to win routine wars, Europe gradually created militaryfiscal nations and developed a technique for fiscal operations of modern states by adopting indirect taxes, such as commercial and excise taxes, and raising finance from the private sector and overseas capital markets by issuing bonds. This model contrasts sharply with that of the Chinese moral economy where it is not permitted for the state to “contend with the people for interests.” Superficially, this Chinese large-scale granary system to relieve famine and the fiscal subsidy system to move finances between the rich and poor provinces is similar to the current welfare state.

But what about the reality? According to the governing philosophy of the Chinese empire, the widening of wealth inequalities often led to rebellion and turmoil.