Abstract: With China’s great economic achievements, the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics has ushered in a new era. It is particularly important to adhere to and develop the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In view of this, the experts participating in the major project of the National Social Science Fund of China (NSSFC)—“Historical Correlation between the Comparison of Chinese and Western Traditional Economic Thoughts and China’s Road to Development” chaired by Professor Ma Tao from the School of Economics in Fudan University, fully discussed several important issues such as the collectivism versus individualism, comprehensive dialectical thinking versus analytical formal logic concerning the methodology of Chinese and Western traditional economic thoughts, the process of establishing public economic system facing development divergence, the differences in value orientation, mode of thinking, research perspectives between Qin and Han Dynasties as well as the source of historical genes of divergence, in the hope of drawing academic attention to the comparative study between Chinese and Western economic thoughts.

Key words: Key words： economic thought, comparison between China and the West, road to development, historical and cultural gene