It has been only a short time since the study of the Chinese economy was formally proposed as a dedicated research object. Yet its progress, though still inadequate, is commendable, driven by two forces: the urgent demands of practice and the broader trend of world development, which has tended to drive practice both directly and indirectly. On this basis, I divide Chinese economic research into three stages. The first stage (roughly 1929–1932) concentrated on debates over the nature of the Chinese economy, whose main achievement was not to settle the issue but to raise it, despite definitional wrangling and an excessive focus on urban industry. The second stage (1933–1937) shifted attention to the rural economy and pushed the debate toward method and concrete categories, aided by surveys and new social-science materials, yet still lacked an integrated system. The third stage began with the July 7 Incident (1937); wartime reality exposed backward forces and also the distortion caused by ahistorical theoretical imports. Hence, the present task is critical and constructive: to critique obstructive theories and to adopt a progressive, comprehensive, and comparative approach grounded in correct economic theory.