AbstractThe Religion of Chinais an overlooked but pivotal key to understanding Weber's life work. A careful reading of this work shows that Weber's analysis of the rise of rational capitalism in the West and its absence in China is intrinsically contradictory. While Weber's official position is that the ultimate cause of the absence of capitalism in China (and inversely, its presence in the Occident) was to be found in religion, his political analysis indicates that the politico‐legal conditions alone were sufficient to prevent the rise of rational capitalism in China. Moreover, he finds that the Chinese religion, which was unfavorable to the rise of rational capitalism, was to a significant extent the product of Chinese political conditions. This contradiction reflects the tension, never resolved, between Weber's institutional and religious explanations of the Occidental developmen