就像西班牙的哈布斯堡王朝一样，中国明朝的皇室倒在了它所不了解的现代性力量面前

 就在欧洲列强变得自信和强大的时候，中国却陷入了一场危机，一些知识分子认为，中国从未真正从中恢复过来。

腐败、阴谋和堕落削弱了明朝；洪水、饥荒和短暂的冰河时期毁了农民，边疆的麻烦迫使人们增加税收以资助军队；在绝望中，明朝繁荣所依赖的农民和工匠起来反抗。

 很久以后，一些马克思主义者认为，澳门的葡萄牙商人--中国这个巨大的有机体中的微小异物--应该受到指责，因为他们购买了中国的丝绸，并将其换成了白银，而白银正从墨西哥和秘鲁的矿场涌出；由此产生的

大量白银流入中国的农业经济，导致了通货膨胀、疯狂的投机过度和繁荣与萧条的循环，当时的儒家学者-行政官员没有能力管理。

在这种情况下，就像西班牙的哈布斯堡王朝一样，中国的皇室倒在了它所不了解的现代性力量面前。

经济史学家对16世纪世界性白银危机的原因和影响仍有争议，但它在中国所有后来的统治者中留下了对外国投机者的怀疑。

But just as the European powers grew confident and powerful, China fell into a crisis from which, some of its intellectuals argue, it has never truly recovered. Corruption, intrigue and decadence weakened the Ming dynasty; floods, famines and a brief ice age ruined farmers, trouble in the borderlands forced tax rises to fund the military; in despair the peasants and artisans upon whom Ming prosperity rested rose up in rebellion. Much later, some Marxists argued that Portuguese traders at Macau – that tiny foreign body in the great organism of China – were to blame because they bought up Chinese silk and traded it for silver, which was pouring out of the mines in Mexico and Peru; the resultant huge inflow of silver into China’s agrarian economy led to  inflation, wild speculative excess and a boom-and-bust cycle which the Confucian scholar-administrators of the time were incapable of managing. In this telling, like the Spanish Habsburgs, the imperial house of China fell to forces of modernity it did not comprehend. The causes and effects of the worldwide silver crisis in the sixteenth century are still debated by economic historians, but it left a legacy of suspicion of foreign speculators among all subsequent rulers of China.