I am not sure how relevant this matter will be felt to be, since I am
viewing these macro/micro matters from a standpoint of a monetary historian.
 But I will raise it as it has long troubled me.  There is a great deal of
Chinese literature surviving from the ancient world bearing upon management
of the economy as a whole, in which quantity theories of money are well
understood and of fundamental importance (see primarily the Kuan Tzu/Guanzi,
but also ‘Food and Money’ and ‘The Salt and Iron Debate’ etc).  In the West
however there is very little concerning economic thought in ancient sources,
and what little there is, primarily in Aristotle, seems to lead us for the
most part down a microeconomic route.

Broadly, we have two ways of explaining this difference.  Either the ancient
Chinese were a lot cleverer than the Greeks and Romans when it came to
macroeconomic matters, or it was somehow considered bad form to discuss such
matters in public in the ancient west (or amongst the subsequent librarians
who preserved such works).  I tend towards the second suggestion.

Parallel to this in the 20th century, we find writers who denigrated (eg
Fernand Braudel) or ignore (eg Thomas Sargent) the early Chinese input to
economic thought prospered in their careers.  Those who strove to highlight
it saw their careers founder (eg Lewis Maverick).  An effort recently to
rehabilitate the reputation of Alexander del Mar seems to offer something
close to corroboration for such a view.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268003000764

Rob Tye