大宋 - 大元 - 大明

choi

I thought I published this one yesterday.

The rise of nations | How Golden Ages Really Start -- and End; The greatest civilisations of the past 3,000 years all had one thing in common. The Economist, May 3, 2025, at page 68
(book review on Johan Norberg, Peak Human; What we can learn from the rise and fall of golden ages. Atlantic Books, May 1, 2025.

Note:
(a) "He finds that the polities that outshone their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to strangers and to ideas that discomfited the mighty. * * * Song emperors were much keener on the rule of law than their predecessors, who tended to rule by whim. To enforce predictable rules, they hired lots of officials via meritocratic exams. The first Song emperor enacted the 'unconventional policy reform' of '[not] killing officials who disagreed with him.'
(ii) The two sentences about Song dynasty is new to me. The insertion of "not" is original, by The Economist.

(b) "In the 1100s Kaifeng, the capital, had 65 times the population of London. Canals made domestic trade easier."
(i) Sui dynasty (581-619; 隋炀帝迁都 from 大兴 (now Xian) to 洛阳 (605-619) )
Tang dynasty (618-907)
Northern Song dynasty (960－1127; capital 东京 (present-day 开封) )
Southern Song dynasty (1127－1279)
(ii)
(A) Kaifeng. Encyclopaedia Britannica, undated
https://www.britannica.com/place/Kaifeng
("It seems probable that in the 11th century Kaifeng’s population was between about 600,000 and 700,000")
(B) The Song Economic Revolution. In China in 1000 CE; The most advanced society in the world. Asia for Educators (AFE), Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, undated
https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/s ... -rev-intro-pop.html

At the tip horizontal bar, there is this tag "Economic Revolution" which has a pull-down menu. The preceding URL supplies the first item in the pull-down menu: Population Boon.  
(C) London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London
(section 2 History: "In 1100 its population was some 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000.[50] With the Black Death in the mid-14th century, London lost nearly a third of its population.[51]")
(ii) 隋唐大运河
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/隋唐大运河
("隋唐大运河以洛阳为中心")

洛阳 was capital in a portion of Tang dynasty.