And China had more free enterprise during the Song Dynasty than anywhere in the world. Some argue that China couldn't have free enterprise because they had a long history of trying to impose monopolies on items like salt and iron. And that's true, but when it comes to enforcing those monopolies, they also had a long history of failure. So really, in a lot of ways, China was at least as prime for an Industrial Revolution as Britain was. So why didn't it happen? Well, Europeans, specifically the British, had two huge advantages. First, coal.