明后期,在封建社会内部,随着生产力的提高,手工业商业的发展,城市经济的繁荣,新興的资本主主生产方式的萌芽在孕育和发展着。对此,国内史学家的意见大致是一致的。但是对於这种“萌芽”存在的程度,对於它瓦解封建社会的意义,都有一些不同的意见。譬如,有人根据中国封建社会长期停滞的特点,断定明代后期,土地、商业资本、高利贷资本三者结合,强大的中央集权的专制主义底存在等等“并未变动”!因而,当时新興的资本主义没有发展起来的现实条件。据此,他们又判断明代后期城市的经济地位没有多大意义,城市中没有新興的市民阶级的存在,晚明的城市 In the late Ming Dynasty, within the feudal society, with the improvement of productive forces, the development of commercial handicrafts, the prosperity of urban economy, the embryonic emergence of emerging modes of production of capitalists was under way. In this regard, the views of domestic historians generally agree. But there is some disagreement as to the extent to which this “budding” exists and its significance for dismantling the feudal society. For example, according to the long-term stagnation of feudal society in China, it was concluded that the combination of land, commercial capital and usury capital at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the existence of a strong centralist despotism, etc. “did not change”! Thus, The real conditions for the development of capitalism are not developed. Accordingly, they did not make much sense in judging the economic status of the cities in the late Ming Dynasty. There was no emerging class of citizens in the cities. The cities in the late Ming