Chinese Philosophy

[[BL]Phalanx]

Easy. Because it wasn't always stable. You could ask yourself this; stable for who? Maybe for the average peasant their life doesn't change, but perhaps not for the aristocracy. Also it would depend on location.

XPViking

And they weren't all exactly "revolutions" in terms of reshaping society and the power structures. They just put someone else in charge. If that person had virtue and people of talent to serve him, thing's would be alright. If he was inept or an asshole, well he or his house wouldn't last very long.

[Darth Yoshi]

Reactionaries always fuck things up.

Huh? Aren't reactionaries people working against the status quo, such as the Founding Fathers of the US?

How can they always fuck stuff up?

Actually, reactionaries work against the status quo of today, to change it back to the status quo of yester-whatever. They are right-wing, just short of counter-revolutionaries. The Founding Fathers were revolutionaries, leftists.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

For an industrial revolution to take place, you need 3 things: Navigable waterways, coal, and iron. China had the first 2, but it's iron was locked away so deep in the mountains that it was inaccessible.

I had read that China actually had plenty of private metallurgical production as far back as the Warring States period, and only later did the Han Emperor Wu Di decree a state monopoly on it (conveniently depriving the citizens of the ability to forge their own weapons...).

If, over 2000 years ago, they were able to mass produce it, I am not sure why they would be unable to do so just a few hundred years ago.

Hmm. Wish I had my sources handy. Maybe it was coal that they couldn't access. I'll get back to you.

Basically, The_Nice_Guy, or at least his sources, are peddling thinly veiled racism and religious bigotry.

The Nice Guy is Chinese. I don't think it's racism. He's probably trying to be objective.

It's his sources then. You don't have to read between the lines very far to see the racism inherent in the arguments.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Wrong again. China's technology was better until the 17/18th century, when western scientific philosophy enabled them to catch up and surpass the Chinese in every way that mattered. Newtonian physics, for example. China had nothing on that. The chinese during Ming actually believed they had attained the most satisfactory civilization possible, and wanted things to stay that way forever. Of course they didn't.

Wrong again? This is your first reply to one of my posts, how can I be "wrong again"? Anyway, it wasn't the 17th/18th century that Europe surpassed China, it was well into the 19th. Until then, they were vastly inferior.

And yes, the agriculture was better, but that was more due to the fertile land they had in the Central Plains. And rice has the highest grain yield of any staple crop.

War was hardly a distant distraction. Guess when the Qing came to power? 1644. BTW, it was not a peaceful transition. Chinese loved to blame Wu Sangui for allowing the Manchus to take over, but it was hardly the fault of just one person. Even during Kangxi's reign, rebellion and civil strife were ever present worries for the Emperor, what with guerilla bands trying to "Fan Qing Fu Ming". If you can, figure that one out.

You're talking about internal conflict, which is quite different from a war.

Now that, I believe, is hyperbole. More guns than all those used in the Napoleonic Wars combined? Any historian with definite figures? With that many guns, they wouldn't need to worry about the US' puny boats, did they?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. All Europe's wars before that point. In any case, Japan had refined and put guns to far superior use than the Europeans ever did scant decades after seeing them for the first time, but they decided to give them up in the 16th century, so that by the time Commodore Perry showed up in 1868, most Japanese didn't even know what a gun was. However, Japanese military prowess and technological genius allowed them to go from no guns at all in 1868, to kicking the Russian's ass in a major war in 1904, that's only 36 years! My source for this info is a great book, short and easy to read, called Giving up the Gun. It's really good, check it out.

Korea, also next door, had warships called Turtleboats that could defeat European ships against forty to one odds!)

Sure they did. That didn't do them any good, did it?

Actually they did. Japan purchased warships from Europe (Dutch, I believe) to escort their transports in the second Korean invasion and the turtleboats trashed virtually their entire fleet, sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a watery grave.

Your father may be right. However, Europe, due to its wars and the idea of the nation state, were indeed more dynamic in every way that mattered, while China was unable to come up with scientific and technological innovations to improve the lives of its people. The chinese believed that they were perfect, that they were better than anybody else. Ever thought of what the chinese name for China, "Zhong Guo", meant?

It didn't mean "Middle"(another misconception by Westerners). It actually means "Center". The chinese believed their nation to be the center of the universe! Is this hubris? I certainly think so.

Only if you accept that Europeans were superior. In truth, however, they were better than everyone else in terms of literacy rate, standard of living, etc., and they were the center of the world, at least as far as trade was concerned. More trade was done internally in China over the rivers than in all of Europe combined. How's that for "backward, stagnant people"?

Eurocentric historians like to point out that while Europe was sending expeditions all over the world, China didn't send a single one after the 15th century. What they don't realize is that there was a legitimate reason not to send expeditions. The expeditions they sent found other civilizations, sure, but they weren't large and advanced enough for the future trade to make up for the cost of the expedition. They concluded (rightly) that future expeditions wouldn't pay off.

Is Western culture superior? Perhaps. Were they dynamic? Certainly. Was this dynamism a result of their culture? I would say their culture was a factor, but not the only one.

But chinese cultural values, in terms of promoting dynamism, were indeed incapable of doing that. So were they inferior compared to Western ones? Perhaps in this sense, they were.

Cultural values are hardly independent of the realities of a people's situation. To give a recent example, the cultural acceptance of infanticide in China was born of the "one family, one child" law and overpopulation. It wouldn't have been acceptable just a decade or two earlier. If China had the ability to undergo an inudstrial revolution (they did not), and their culture would not have allowed it (this inward-looking, stagnant stuff is way overblown and doesn't jibe with accurate research, btw), the culture would have changed to allow it.

China, even if it had easy access to iron, would not be able to carry out any industrial revolution. Frankly speaking, if the government at the time had really wanted to, they could have managed somehow.

Justify that statement. Explain to me how exactly one is supposed to undergo an industrial revolution without the 3 key elements. Btw, as an example, Spain didn't undergo the revolution because they didn't have access to good navigable rivers. I guess they just weren't trying hard enough .

That they did not speaks volumes about the basic unwillingness of the chinese people(okay, the government) then to expose themselves to new ideas. But the people themselves did not care much either.

Chinese merchants and entrepreneurs were plenty open to new ideas. The industrial revolutions in Europe didn't occur at the government level, and they would not have in China either.

No, I'm just stating facts. Some values are indeed better than others. The values of the Chinese people at that time doomed them to exploitation and colonisation by the West. You think that I, as an ethnic chinese, liked that my ancestors were bashed up by the West?

Your ancestors weren't "bashed up" by the west until after the industrial revolution. Standard Eurocentric history, that's only recently being re-examined, has invented a superiority for Europeans before the revolution that simply did not exist. If there were any advantage for the Chinese to be explorers like the Europeans, they would not have been "inward-looking", which they weren't really anyway. Trade within China encompassed a larger volume of trade and area than Europe's trade with each other. Perhaps you don't realize that China is bigger than all of Europe combined? China was only "inward-looking" if you accept the dichtomy between intra-national trade and inter-national, which is nonsense.

China did in fact trade with other nations as well, contrary to revisionist history. While they had no official trade with Japan due to hostile politics, they used the Europeans as middlemen to trade with Japan. So much for "dynamism". These "dynamic" Europeans in reality just plugged into existing trade networks and were used as middlemen, and didn't revolutionize anything in Asian waters. I understand you're only repeating what you learned, perhaps in college, perhaps by reading books, but your sources are wrong.

No, I didn't. But if the chinese people didn't face up to the fact that they were lagging behind because of their value systems, their culture, they would never have been able to attain the success they have today. Confucianism, as I studied a bit of it in its original form, is extremely stifling. Nobody studies it, nor cares for it nowadays. Okay, some, but very few.

Modern China has realized the folly of closing itself to ideas. Nowadays, they are so hungry for technology they are even willing to steal it from the US!

So if you can't beat them, join them!

See above.

Bah! Christianity cannot take sole credit for Europe's dynamism. Competition among the squabbling nation states, the drive to attain more wealth, ambition, curiosity, organization. All these were factors in Europe's overall dynamism.

How is competition among nation states more dynamic than competition among regions and merchants? As for desire for wealth, ambition, curiosity, and organization, the assertion that China did not have these was made without evidence, and in fact, no evidence exists in favor of that.

For science, the recovery of ancient greek texts from the Arabs were as much the galvanising factors behind Europe's sudden lurch towards scientific method and discovery. The Church never did approved of Galileo. And as the early scientists came up against the limits of Aristolean knowledge, they had the guts to break through into a new understanding of the world.

Absolutely correct. Are you starting to see why the idea that Europeans were these wonderful, dynamic heroes is bullshit?

So, there's no single one reason for Europe's dynamism, just like it may be folly for me to claim China's past ills were solely due to its culture, when, as you have mentioned, geographical factors were also important. What's important is that Europe was dynamic, in ways unique in the world. This dynamism enabled them to take great risks, and also attain great rewards.

Europe was no more dynamic than anyone else, and they didn't have much success against other civilizations before the industrial revolution, a freak accident of geography, catapulted them ahead. Before that, the only meaningful success they had was against the Native Americans, and only because diseases conveniently wiped out 95% of the population. They were driven back in Africa (at least some parts of it), driven back in India, and confined to Manilla in Asia and only allowed to remain there because they were useful middlemen (they were absolutely terrified of the Japanese). Their ballyhooed naval superiority was laughable in the face of Korean turtleboats and Turkish merchants who, while not having weapons on their ships, had ships that were so huge that Dutch cannon fire simply bounced off the hull as the merchant ships sailed serenely along, ignoring the attempts at piracy. Europe leapt ahead of the world after the industrial revolution, but they were relative barbarians compared to Asian civilizations before that, and the countless books that suggest otherwise are revisionist history.

As an ethnic chinese, one who had studied quite a bit of China's past from chinese texts, I can say that culture had a great deal to do with the stagnation of chinese society, preventing them from attaining the dynamic nature of european societies. It may not be the only condition, but it was a necessary one. Even now, in many chinese cultures, the tendency towards stability and obedience towards authority runs strong. It's not just China. This can also be observed in Korean and Japan, though these influences are declining as the educated youth flex their freedoms.

Thus proving my earlier point. Culture changes with changing circumstances. Asian societies are starting to cast off cultural norms of duty and obedience as it is no longer convenient in today's world. What makes you think anything different would have happened if they had the ability to undergo an industrial revolution.

And Buddhism's not one of the causes. It's Confucianism, which was encouraged by the state to instill obedience in the populace(revolts were a bit of a bother). It's Confucianism that's the inward looking philosophy that practially denigrates everything else, including scientific innovation.

See above.

When did I ever claim that? Stop putting words in my mouth.

Sorry, didn't mean to. I thought that's what you were saying.

What I meant was that even if they were inferior technologically, scientifically, and all sorts of -fically at a time, the dynamism of their society/s would enable them to catch up and overtake other cultures(eg. China) much quicker.

In conclusion, Chinese society during the dynastic age was stagnant, for reasons of culture, geography, and politics. While that might not necessarily be a bad thing, in a world with ravenous Europeans, it was a bad state of affairs. Even after their inferiority was demonstrated to them during the various wars with the Europeans, the Chinese did not understand the lessons taught, nor the actions they need to take to remain strong.

It was only when Sun Yat-Sen managed to overthrow the Qing dynasty did this start to change. And even then, it would be an ardous road before China finally got on the highway to progress.

See above.

I hope the debate doesn't get more detialed. With my dad on vacation in Spain, and me not knowing where he keeps the books I want, I'm having to rely solely on my memory.

[The_Nice_Guy]

Oh, yeah, and my sources were chinese as well. Plenty, plenty of them, all from China. So they're racist?

Actually, I would say they are realists. Saying that particular values and philosophies were inferior does not imply racism. Certainly, color had nothing to do with it. It had everything to do with culture.

Transplant chinese to a different place, like Malaysia, and Singapore, away from the stifling bureaucracy of the dynastic government and the predominant culture, and suddenly you see the chinese prospering and learning quickly under the eyes of the British as they pick up western modes of thought.

For China, when something fucks up, a chinese friend(he got 3rd in his country's Math Olympiad) told me you can either
1). blame somebody else. In this case, the europeans.
Or
2). Try to identify what went wrong with yourself, and change for the better.

Part of that identification process found that the restrictive culture and certain values(misogyny, submission to imperial rule etc) of the chinese in that day and age were clearly holding back progress. So they did the simple thing.

Get rid of them.

The Nice Guy

[Frank Hipper]

Actually they did. Japan purchased warships from Europe (Dutch, I believe) to escort their transports in the second Korean invasion and the turtleboats trashed virtually their entire fleet, sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a watery grave.

You have got to give me a source on this, please! The Japanese bought Dutch ships in 1592???

[The_Nice_Guy]

Wrong again? This is your first reply to one of my posts, how can I be "wrong again"? Anyway, it wasn't the 17th/18th century that Europe surpassed China, it was well into the 19th. Until then, they were vastly inferior.

They had far better science and technology by the 18th century, not the 19th. IMO, scientific advances count for a great deal, much more than other factors like agricultural output, manufacturing capacity, and population.

By the time of the American Revolution, I would say the West had all the tools it needed to accelerate its progress.

You're talking about internal conflict, which is quite different from a war.

Semantics. What matters is that there was hardly peace throughout the land. Perhaps that was the reason for not industrializing?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. All Europe's wars before that point. In any case, Japan had refined and put guns to far superior use than the Europeans ever did scant decades after seeing them for the first time, but they decided to give them up in the 16th century, so that by the time Commodore Perry showed up in 1868, most Japanese didn't even know what a gun was. However, Japanese military prowess and technological genius allowed them to go from no guns at all in 1868, to kicking the Russian's ass in a major war in 1904, that's only 36 years! My source for this info is a great book, short and easy to read, called Giving up the Gun. It's really good, check it out.

So how did the Japanese do it? Why them, and not the chinese, with their infinitely greater territory, access to materials, and greater population? Perhaps sheer size was the problem, but industrialization started in Europe as a regional process, not a national one.

Actually they did. Japan purchased warships from Europe (Dutch, I believe) to escort their transports in the second Korean invasion and the turtleboats trashed virtually their entire fleet, sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a watery grave.

You gotta give us some links or excerpts for that! Frank seems skeptical(actually, so am I).

Only if you accept that Europeans were superior. In truth, however, they were better than everyone else in terms of literacy rate, standard of living, etc., and they were the center of the world, at least as far as trade was concerned. More trade was done internally in China over the rivers than in all of Europe combined. How's that for "backward, stagnant people"?

Trade of what goods? What items? Are you trying to say that cloth and salt are actually equivalent in value to steam engines?

It's not just trade that's important. It's what that trade consisted of. If you compare two trade networks, one with exchanges of grains and fabric, while the other consists of TVs and VCRs, obviously you would consider the one with agricultural products and garments to be the 'backward, stagnant' one. And yes, this is really an exagerration. The Europeans dealt with items that were often worth more in value. Sugar, tobacco, opium, for example.

Eurocentric historians like to point out that while Europe was sending expeditions all over the world, China didn't send a single one after the 15th century. What they don't realize is that there was a legitimate reason not to send expeditions. The expeditions they sent found other civilizations, sure, but they weren't large and advanced enough for the future trade to make up for the cost of the expedition. They concluded (rightly) that future expeditions wouldn't pay off.

Future expeditions might have paid off. Damn Yongle for dying early.

China could have dominated the entire South East Asian region if they had dared to establish colonies. And once the importance of rubber came up in the 19th century... well, we would have been sitting pretty.

So why not chinese imperialism? It's good to be on top of the world.

But yes, there was very little China could have gotten from its contacts that it didn't have itself. Save perhaps for metals, as you had mentioned. But then, they never saw much use for metal beyond weapons and tools, did they? Which brings me back to my first point. Unwilling, and unable to change.

Cultural values are hardly independent of the realities of a people's situation. To give a recent example, the cultural acceptance of infanticide in China was born of the "one family, one child" law and overpopulation. It wouldn't have been acceptable just a decade or two earlier. If China had the ability to undergo an inudstrial revolution (they did not), and their culture would not have allowed it (this inward-looking, stagnant stuff is way overblown and doesn't jibe with accurate research, btw), the culture would have changed to allow it.

I don't think so. The culture persisted all the way until the start of the 20th century, by which time the imperial government should have uncovered or imported the mining methods necessary to further squeeze out mineral resources. Even after the Opium Wars, adavnced methods for mining were already present, possibly in China. Why didn't they industralise then?

But perhaps it was too little and too late.

Justify that statement. Explain to me how exactly one is supposed to undergo an industrial revolution without the 3 key elements. Btw, as an example, Spain didn't undergo the revolution because they didn't have access to good navigable rivers. I guess they just weren't trying hard enough .

Oh yes. Spain(and Austria, Italy) managed to achieve a certain level of industrialization. They did import machinery and techniques to modernize their traditional crafts. However, they remained agrarian based economies, because they had neither the labor for industrial production nor purchasing power for industrial goods. But they did have raw materials and primary products for their neighbours.

It wsn't just rivers. The lack of well-built roads in Spain was also a factor. In many history texts, it was mentioned that the social structures, agricultural organization, and commercial policies in the European countries which did not industrialize all hindered the adoption of new methods, machines, and production. These were reasons why industrialization did not take place in Spain, Austria, and Italy. It wasn't just natural disadvantages. And when they did industrialize, it was mostly symbol without substance. Obviously, these countries were hardly at the forefront of colonialism, much less the imperial powers like Britain, France, and Germany. In fact, they seem rather similar to China!

China, with a population of 100 million, surely had the labor, and the purchasing power. They had the agricultural organization, the trade network in place. Sure, lack of metal was a problem. But the bigger one laid in its culture.

Chinese merchants and entrepreneurs were plenty open to new ideas. The industrial revolutions in Europe didn't occur at the government level, and they would not have in China either.

You'll have to show that chinese merchants and entrepeneurs were indeed more receptive. Industrilization occurred at regional, not national levels. The government doesn't need to be an active participant. It only needed to create the conditions conducive to industrialization. But China's one didn't do that.

Then again, the monopolization of metals by the state might have something to do with the fact that they could not build any factories.

Your ancestors weren't "bashed up" by the west until after the industrial revolution. Standard Eurocentric history, that's only recently being re-examined, has invented a superiority for Europeans before the revolution that simply did not exist.

That doesn't change the fact they were bashed up.

The superiority might not have existed before the revolution, but it certainly did after it. But before the revolution, what was it about the Europeans that enabled them to have the revolution in the first place? It's not just geographical reasons.

If there were any advantage for the Chinese to be explorers like the Europeans, they would not have been "inward-looking", which they weren't really anyway. Trade within China encompassed a larger volume of trade and area than Europe's trade with each other. Perhaps you don't realize that China is bigger than all of Europe combined? China was only "inward-looking" if you accept the dichtomy between intra-national trade and inter-national, which is nonsense.

But trade wasn't the only factor in determining industrialization and/or superiority. Just because somebody has a greater volume of trade doesn't automatically confer on them 'developed nation' status.

The inward-looking trait isn't just about trade. It's about being receptive to new ideas, which the chinese, at the time, were not! If chinese merchants were, as you have said, receptive to new ideas, why didn't we see garment factories springing up in China? Light manufacturing industries for goods? It doesn't take much metal nor fuel!

Something was obviously preventing them from doing so. Whether the merchants refused to invest, or whether the government didn't allow them, is moot. It all stemmed from the value system.

China did in fact trade with other nations as well, contrary to revisionist history. While they had no official trade with Japan due to hostile politics, they used the Europeans as middlemen to trade with Japan. So much for "dynamism". These "dynamic" Europeans in reality just plugged into existing trade networks and were used as middlemen, and didn't revolutionize anything in Asian waters. I understand you're only repeating what you learned, perhaps in college, perhaps by reading books, but your sources are wrong.

Oh yes. The Europeans were smart to be middlemen, earning something for practically little effort. That's called being clever.

How is competition among nation states more dynamic than competition among regions and merchants? As for desire for wealth, ambition, curiosity, and organization, the assertion that China did not have these was made without evidence, and in fact, no evidence exists in favor of that.

Chinese had greed. But not enough ambition, and not enough curiosity. They regarded the knowledge of the past as infallible, and that progress could only be made in incremental steps.

Absolutely correct. Are you starting to see why the idea that Europeans were these wonderful, dynamic heroes is bullshit?

You missed the point. The europeans managed to break through to a new understanding of nature. They managed to realize that their past recovered knowledge is fallible. The chinese, unfortunately, did not.

The Enlightenment was just as important as the Industrial Revolution.

Europe was no more dynamic than anyone else, and they didn't have much success against other civilizations before the industrial revolution, a freak accident of geography, catapulted them ahead. Before that, the only meaningful success they had was against the Native Americans, and only because diseases conveniently wiped out 95% of the population. They were driven back in Africa (at least some parts of it), driven back in India, and confined to Manilla in Asia and only allowed to remain there because they were useful middlemen (they were absolutely terrified of the Japanese). Their ballyhooed naval superiority was laughable in the face of Korean turtleboats and Turkish merchants who, while not having weapons on their ships, had ships that were so huge that Dutch cannon fire simply bounced off the hull as the merchant ships sailed serenely along, ignoring the attempts at piracy. Europe leapt ahead of the world after the industrial revolution, but they were relative barbarians compared to Asian civilizations before that, and the countless books that suggest otherwise are revisionist history.

True, but then they leapt ahead, didn't they. Again, perhaps it was those 'barbaric' values that helped them. It wasn't just geographical advantages.

Thus proving my earlier point. Culture changes with changing circumstances. Asian societies are starting to cast off cultural norms of duty and obedience as it is no longer convenient in today's world. What makes you think anything different would have happened if they had the ability to undergo an industrial revolution.

It would have been very, very different. China might now be a modern state on par with the United States.

*dreams of world where everybody has to learn chinese*

Sorry, didn't mean to. I thought that's what you were saying.

No problem. Honest mistake.

I hope the debate doesn't get more detialed. With my dad on vacation in Spain, and me not knowing where he keeps the books I want, I'm having to rely solely on my memory.

Hey, I'm referring to my books too!

The Nice Guy

[Cap'n Hector]

Trade of what goods? What items? Are you trying to say that cloth and salt are actually equivalent in value to steam engines?

Not sure about equilivant value, but salt has only been cheap recently, and an alternate name of the silk road was the salt trail. Salt has long been valuable. Source.

And silk had also been quite valuable to Europe in that time frame, up there with saffron, as I recall.

[Frank Hipper]

In any case, Japan had refined and put guns to far superior use than the Europeans ever did scant decades after seeing them for the first time, but they decided to give them up in the 16th century, so that by the time Commodore Perry showed up in 1868, most Japanese didn't even know what a gun was.

That is patently untrue. The Japanese used MATCHLOCK arquebuses unchanged from the Portugese models they were based on until the 19th century.
How did the Japanese refine them?
How was Japanese use superior to European?
Are you telling us that they gave them up after improving them, improving their useage, and then simply gave up on them after less than a hundred years?[/i]

[The_Nice_Guy]

Are you telling us that they gave them up after improving them, improving their useage, and then simply gave up on them after less than a hundred years?

Japan did enter a period of peace during the Tokugawa era. I think they gave up on their guns at that time, since they weren't trying to kill each other anymore. Whether or not they actually had improved on those weapons is up for debate.

The Nice Guy

[Frank Hipper]

Are you telling us that they gave them up after improving them, improving their useage, and then simply gave up on them after less than a hundred years?

Japan did enter a period of peace during the Tokugawa era. I think they gave up on their guns at that time, since they weren't trying to kill each other anymore. Whether or not they actually had improved on those weapons is up for debate.

The Nice Guy

The book I'm getting my info from states the examples given date from the 19th century, a pistol and an arquebus.

[The_Nice_Guy]

19th century? Probably the start of their own modernization already, I guess, even though the Americans opened up trade only in 1854.

The Nice Guy

[Frank Hipper]

These have got to be pre-Perry. But they don't have that *centuries* old look... And it's hard to imagine modernising in the face of percussion fire weapons with matchlocks from 350 years ago.

[The_Nice_Guy]

But Japan did modernize, while the chinese didn't. It's more than just geographical factors at work.

For example, the metal resource problem. If the chinese had imported western mining techniques, could they have increased their supply of metal? Quite possible. But again, they didn't. It's another symptom of the closed mind problem.

At the regional levels, there has to be some place where local conditions existed for industrialization to take place, but they didn't. Coal, waterways, and metal are necessary conditions(though France managed to industrialize without much in canals and waterways, so I would consider that an enabling condition), but taken together they are not sufficient. There's something else at work, and that's the people actually living on the land.

You cannot just put a people on a land with all three conditions(coal, waterways, metal) and expect them to industrialize. They had to be at a certain stage of scientific and organizational development before they could take advantage of those resources. The chinese, quite evidently, were not at that stage.

So regardless of whether the chinese lacked the scientific knowledge, the organizational structures, or just plain hindered by their government, I would still boil it all down to one thing.

They simply could not accept ideas from the outside. Ideas to improve their mining techniques, ideas to increase their production, ideas to further their knowledge of the world. Ideas which could have brought them to the point where they could have industrialized if the opportunity presented itself.

The Nice Guy

[PainRack]

Anyone else find ancient China fascinating?

I found a book in one of the libraries at San Jose State University that chronicled ancient Chinese cultural. I found it fascinating at the time and decided to check it out. That was 8 years ago so Ive forgotten most of it.

One thing that still stand out, was how Chinese hero's almost never get the girl like a Hero in the West does.

Probably something like duty and obedience before the self and all that. So the hero doesn't get the girl at the end.

Chinese Heroes are all tragic buggers who usually suffer a horrible end.Hell,Hua Mulan appears to be the only Chinese Hero who isn't murdered,killed,backstabbed,lost position and property,generally doesn't suffer any calaminity in life.

Although one suspect the author emphasis at the end on how Mulan sighed at the loss of her beauty and youth to be a sufficient horrorible fate in itself.

[PainRack]

But Japan did modernize, while the chinese didn't. It's more than just geographical factors at work.

For example, the metal resource problem. If the chinese had imported western mining techniques, could they have increased their supply of metal? Quite possible. But again, they didn't. It's another symptom of the closed mind problem.

At the regional levels, there has to be some place where local conditions existed for industrialization to take place, but they didn't. Coal, waterways, and metal are necessary conditions(though France managed to industrialize without much in canals and waterways, so I would consider that an enabling condition), but taken together they are not sufficient. There's something else at work, and that's the people actually living on the land.

You cannot just put a people on a land with all three conditions(coal, waterways, metal) and expect them to industrialize. They had to be at a certain stage of scientific and organizational development before they could take advantage of those resources. The chinese, quite evidently, were not at that stage.

So regardless of whether the chinese lacked the scientific knowledge, the organizational structures, or just plain hindered by their government, I would still boil it all down to one thing.

They simply could not accept ideas from the outside. Ideas to improve their mining techniques, ideas to increase their production, ideas to further their knowledge of the world. Ideas which could have brought them to the point where they could have industrialized if the opportunity presented itself.

The Nice Guy

{Cracks knuckles}
China did industralise.Critical factors however were key to the failure of an industrial Revolution.

The beginings of industrialisation could actually be traced all the way back to the Han dynasty,as it was around that time that the beginings of factories,iron-works,saltworks began.

This continued and degraded,according to the situation of the times,up until Kangxi Qing dynasty.

The massive saltworks and ironworks in provinces/cities as diverse as Sichuan and Xiangyang is a clear indication that factories were present.Kangxi realm garned revenue through the monopolisation and trade of salt,grain,iron and silk.Cottage works,the stepping stones of the first modern factories were prevalent even in the Qing Dynasty.

Arguing that the Chinese were not at a sufficient scientific,political and organisational level to industrialise is inane,considering the level of political coordination it took to build the riverways,canals,walls,irrigation and other public works.

No.The Chinese did industrialise,and they could have gone on to an Industrial Revolution save for one thing.
Food.

Unlike Europe,which received the boon of herring and the potato from America,China was never capable of producing enough food and storing it such that famine could not occur.The reason why Britain,France and other countries could industralise was not just because of advances in agriculture,it was because for the first time in history,the main effort of a society was no longer in providing enough resources to gather in food but instead to produce material goods instead.Changes in the weather,with its boon in herring and cod,the potato which was more fertile,more nutritious and could store longer than any other foodstuff in Europe meant that when the factories first started to appear,it made more economic sense to start a factory rather than a farm.A green revolution,fueled by the growing factories,railways.which cut transportation costs and travel time,all this contributed to an ever-growing food supply that kept the workers fed.

China never received this benefit because even until now,she does not have a stable grain and food supply.Mao Zedong himself never completed China industrialisation programme.It was only until Deng Xiaoping and his Cao Cao rendition of Black Cat,White Cat that China completed her industrialisation programme.This was made possible primarily because China imported food and ensured a stable grain supply for her populace.

Russia herself never entered the Industrial Revolution proper until Stalin.Yes,she had the trappings of the Industrial Revolution.Guns,Steel,Railways,but her inability to feed herself meant that she was never capable of organising the inherent factories in Russia into anything resembling the great corporations of Britain and France,and only sheer numbers of such small works produced the modern materials for a modern society.

Stalin changed all that by forcing the production of energy and steel.And suffered the cost by the deaths of millions.More Russians died from famine for Stalin Industrial Revolution than from the Germans.

[The_Nice_Guy]

Actually, during the Ming and Qing period, the emphasis placed on an agrarian-centered society did result in impressive agricultural output. Subject to weather conditions, of course.

In fact, as Arthur said, the average standard of living for a chinese before the industrial revolution was comparable, and may be actually better than the Europeans.

So food was never really a factor. Okay, at least until the early 16th century, when droughts, famines, and the like did become a problem.

But why not before? Why didn't the chinese industrialize befre their food problems occured, if they had the organization, the science(now this I doubt), and the required geographical conditions? Before the europeans, I might add. Why couldn't they come up with the scientific principles that we use today? Why, for all of Europe's Dark Ages, which China is fortunate not to have(at least not as long), didn't chinese scholars discover the scientific method? Sure, we might had the first rocketeer and the first pilot to die in rocketry(according to ancient texts!), but there was no true scientific breakthrough.

It all still boils down one thing: Closed minds!

And the definition of industrialization used is the one that occured in Europe at about the 18th century. You know, where they used steam power, coal, and machines to do the work? With that definition, China can hardly be said to be industrialized.

The Nice Guy

[PainRack]

Actually, during the Ming and Qing period, the emphasis placed on an agrarian-centered society did result in impressive agricultural output. Subject to weather conditions, of course.

In fact, as Arthur said, the average standard of living for a chinese before the industrial revolution was comparable, and may be actually better than the Europeans.

So food was never really a factor. Okay, at least until the early 16th century, when droughts, famines, and the like did become a problem.

But why not before? Why didn't the chinese industrialize befre their food problems occured, if they had the organization, the science(now this I doubt), and the required geographical conditions? Before the europeans, I might add. Why couldn't they come up with the scientific principles that we use today? Why, for all of Europe's Dark Ages, which China is fortunate not to have(at least not as long), didn't chinese scholars discover the scientific method? Sure, we might had the first rocketeer and the first pilot to die in rocketry(according to ancient texts!), but there was no true scientific breakthrough.

It all still boils down one thing: Closed minds!

And the definition of industrialization used is the one that occured in Europe at about the 18th century. You know, where they used steam power, coal, and machines to do the work? With that definition, China can hardly be said to be industrialized.

The Nice Guy

The rising quantity of food still did not prevent regular famine from arising in many of China province.Even relatively wealthy provinces like GuangZhou suffered from food shortages.

The rising numbers{China population doubled from the last emperor of Ming to the end of Kangxi} and an inadequate distribution system did not create a large,available labour force.Any labour force generated was also used in public works instead.

In Britain,the impetus towards industrialisation was the huge labour force created by the economic failure of farms,when a change in climate and food meant that agriculture,to grow the best food available no longer became a viable economic activity.


Steam power,coal and machines?You're talking about the first nation in the world to use natural gas to boil brine in Sichuan in 100 AD.Incidently,in 1835,the Chinese built a new salt well.Shen Hai well in Zigong,Sichaun.It struck natural gas at 2700 feet.At 3,000,it reached the brine.They continued digging until t reached 3,300 feet.

24 years later,the Americans celeberated the advant of deep drilling when a American drilled 69.5 feet in Pennsylvania.


No,the beginings of industry did start off in China,and the beginings of factories did begin in China.The difference was in the scale and Industrial Revolution of Britain.Which I did agree with you.China never began the Industrial Revolution until Deng XiaoPing.Hell,that guy just died!His reforms took off in our lifetime.

As to what held back China,I'm more in favour of Sun Yat Sen belief.That supersitition was what held back China.China remained a highly superstitious nation until the 1911 Republic and Mao victory in 1947.This high level of superstition effectively meant that the systematic study of science never took off.The advent of scientific instruments in Europe was used to study the universe for science.In China,it was used to advance the knowledge of astrology.

Do not forget that even before 1911,the Chinese Royal Court retain an official "Prediction of events through astrology and {blah blah blah}" post.

[[BL]Phalanx]

I still want to hear about these uber magical turtleboats.

Anyway, the problem with old China is that they weren't warlike enough. War forces you to expose thousands upon thousands of men to foreign lands, foreign weapons, foreign technology. When you're warlike, you pretty much have to stay near the cutting edge, or be whelmed under.

Are you kidding me? Do you realize how many civil wars China has been through? Dynastic changes, upheavels, rebellions, foreign invasions (and being conquered by non-Han!), splintering of the realm to be later reunited by force of arms..... etc....

For example, in the Three Kingdoms period, the total population of China was 56 million. The San Guo Zhi gives the final population figure of 8 million when the realm is finally reunited after decades of warfare. The San Guo Zhi is history, unlike Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so those numbers are reliable. In fact, I have a separate source, a Taoist book, that relates the same general figures for the population decline ("tens of millions perished").

BTW, I suggest some of you read "Ah Q".

[The_Nice_Guy]

As to what held back China,I'm more in favour of Sun Yat Sen belief.That supersitition was what held back China.China remained a highly superstitious nation until the 1911 Republic and Mao victory in 1947.This high level of superstition effectively meant that the systematic study of science never took off.The advent of scientific instruments in Europe was used to study the universe for science.In China,it was used to advance the knowledge of astrology.

Do not forget that even before 1911,the Chinese Royal Court retain an official "Prediction of events through astrology and {blah blah blah}" post.

Superstition(Taoism?) can be considered to be part of the chinese value system, its culture. Though I would argue that together with Confucianism, the overall effect practically immobilized scientific progress.

So it's still the culture and values, isn't it? The original point I wanted to make is that static ancient chinese culture was decidedly inferior to the dynamic West, and not worthy of praise. Good thing we've changed.

Oh, and about Britain? They actually had a food surplus, as new agricultural techniques allowed them to have surplus labor. There was no 'economic failure of farms'. Rather, it was a paradigm shift from the village farm to the enclosed estate, as modern methods showed he advantages of the latter over the former. The dispossessed(how we love this word! ) farmers would become fodder for the factories.

The Nice Guy

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Eeek! Completely forgot about this thread

Let me go back and read before deciding what to respond to.

[PainRack]

I still want to hear about these uber magical turtleboats.

Anyway, the problem with old China is that they weren't warlike enough. War forces you to expose thousands upon thousands of men to foreign lands, foreign weapons, foreign technology. When you're warlike, you pretty much have to stay near the cutting edge, or be whelmed under.

Are you kidding me? Do you realize how many civil wars China has been through? Dynastic changes, upheavels, rebellions, foreign invasions (and being conquered by non-Han!), splintering of the realm to be later reunited by force of arms..... etc....

For example, in the Three Kingdoms period, the total population of China was 56 million. The San Guo Zhi gives the final population figure of 8 million when the realm is finally reunited after decades of warfare. The San Guo Zhi is history, unlike Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so those numbers are reliable. In fact, I have a separate source, a Taoist book, that relates the same general figures for the population decline ("tens of millions perished").

BTW, I suggest some of you read "Ah Q".

I been researching into the figures you tossed out and I still can't find any corrobating data from San Guo Zi.Are you sure you're not using San Guo Yan Yi?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Oh, yeah, and my sources were chinese as well. Plenty, plenty of them, all from China. So they're racist?

When my dad gave a talk in South Korea, all of the Chinese historians present were quite surprised (pleasantly) to find out that claims of Chinese inferiority relative to Europeans were false. The problem with the way history has traditionally been studied is that you had all these specialists studying very specific regions, and they didn't really communicate much. This made getting a "big picture" very difficult, and is probably the primary reason why this kind of revisionist history was allowed to take hold, even with Chinese historians. My father's research partner is a Spaniard who's passion in life is to read through old archives. He's studied the original correspondences and reports of the Spanish Empire, which traded heavily with the Chinese, and nobody, not one person at that time period, ever talked as if Asian powers weren't vastly superior to European ones.

P.S. I never meant that the historians themselves were racist, just that if you follow the train of logic, and hear people try and defend the reasons why some cultures should be more or less advanced, you get racist conclusions.

Actually, I would say they are realists. Saying that particular values and philosophies were inferior does not imply racism. Certainly, color had nothing to do with it. It had everything to do with culture.

Transplant chinese to a different place, like Malaysia, and Singapore, away from the stifling bureaucracy of the dynastic government and the predominant culture, and suddenly you see the chinese prospering and learning quickly under the eyes of the British as they pick up western modes of thought.

I know basically nothing about Malaysia and Singapore, and can't debate here, but I do know that claims of Chinese stagnation and backwardness in China are way overblown. Take, for instance, the Grand Canal, which required 1 million workers building at once. A million! The population of London and Paris combined wasn't even half that. All for the sake of facillitating trade. Yet the conventional Eurocentric history would have us believe that the Chinese were backward and didn't have meaningful trade until the dynamic, heroic Europeans came along.

For China, when something fucks up, a chinese friend(he got 3rd in his country's Math Olympiad) told me you can either
1). blame somebody else. In this case, the europeans.
Or
2). Try to identify what went wrong with yourself, and change for the better.

Part of that identification process found that the restrictive culture and certain values(misogyny, submission to imperial rule etc) of the chinese in that day and age were clearly holding back progress. So they did the simple thing.

Get rid of them.

The Nice Guy

Are you saying that the Europeans weren't misogynistic, and didn't have restrictive values? Are you insane?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Actually they did. Japan purchased warships from Europe (Dutch, I believe) to escort their transports in the second Korean invasion and the turtleboats trashed virtually their entire fleet, sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a watery grave.

You have got to give me a source on this, please! The Japanese bought Dutch ships in 1592???

Probably not Dutch. Maybe it was British or something. Like I said, I'm relying solely on my memory. Anyway, the ships were pathetic compared to the Turtleboats, and the fleet got trashed.

[PainRack]

Superstition(Taoism?) can be considered to be part of the chinese value system, its culture. Though I would argue that together with Confucianism, the overall effect practically immobilized scientific progress.

So it's still the culture and values, isn't it? The original point I wanted to make is that static ancient chinese culture was decidedly inferior to the dynamic West, and not worthy of praise. Good thing we've changed.

Oh, and about Britain? They actually had a food surplus, as new agricultural techniques allowed them to have surplus labor. There was no 'economic failure of farms'. Rather, it was a paradigm shift from the village farm to the enclosed estate, as modern methods showed he advantages of the latter over the former. The dispossessed(how we love this word! ) farmers would become fodder for the factories.

The Nice Guy

Let's deal with Britain first.There was an ecomoic failure of farms,in the sense that because of weather and new foodtypes,it no longer became profitable to grow the "best" food and they shifted to growing the "most" food.
From there,the failure of farms to compete and the begining of agroindustry further created a labour force on the industries.

Yes,its a pardigm shift,but one prepicitated by the non-viable farming methods of the past.

Supersititions is not just Taoism or even Confucianism.Yes,no doubt,the Han version of Confucianism,further adapted during the Song/Tang dynasty placed an inordinate amount of emphasis on "fa",a concepte that's translated as religious rites or tradition,whereas the orginal meaning was Law.
Yes,no doubt,this contribute to superstition because the Law,was religious in nature.

Taoism,in a religious sense is just lots of deities,and this wasn't a factor.

The factor,the key crippling death in China advance,was the fact that everyone from top to botton believed in superstition.It crippled and shackled them.This isn't a value based system or not,its an entire faith based belief that shackled them.

Europe unshackled themselves.Slowly and surely,they seperated the power from Church and State and undemonised the night.China never went through that stage.