在这本内容广泛的著作中，穆素洁就为何在18世纪中叶尚被认为是世界上经济最发达的中国，到了19世纪停滞不前这个基本的问题提出了新的答案。《中国:糖与社会(农民、技术和世界市场)》集中探讨了蔗糖产业、国内及国际贸易、生产技术以及千年间的消费历史，以此提出了更大的问题。她指出，中华帝国晚期的经济发展不是停滞不前的，也没有抑商；事实上，早在鸦片战争之前，中国就已经融入到了世界市场里面。但显然，发展的轨道没有改变社会生产组织，也没有实现持续的经济增长。 穆素洁将地方史和区域史的研究置于全球的视野下进行，探讨了广东与台湾之间的资产与生产的联系，以及国家在这当中发挥的作用。她运用比较的方法，将晚期中华帝国的历史置于全球史的框架下，提出地方史与全球史的结合，以重塑我们对清朝史的认识。

In this wide-ranging study, Sucheta Mazumdar offers a new answer to the fundamental question of why China, universally acknowledged as one of the most developed economies in the world through the mid-eighteenth century, paused in this development process in the nineteenth. Focusing on cane-sugar production, domestic and international trade, technology, and the history of consumption for over a thousand years as a means of framing the larger questions, the author shows that the economy of late imperial China was not stagnant, nor was the state suppressing trade; indeed, China was integrated into the world market well before the Opium War. But clearly the trajectory of development did not transform the social organization of production or set in motion sustained economic growth.