China likes to boast of it’s long lasting culture and like to claim that they have been at the front of civilization for thousands of years (nice timeline here) (although India has actually the oldest records of culture and cities).

Anyone remotely interested in history and technology knows that the old Chinese seem to have invented almost everything way ahead of Europe or were never far behind: paper, printing, movable type, crossbows, gunpowder, rockets, compass, blast furnace and cast iron – to name just the most important ones.

China with it’s man- and brainpower seemed to be destined to take over the world, but they didn’t. Instead tiny Britain conquered the Chinese giant with ease …

So what went wrong with the old Chinese?

 

Click image to see how the Chinese Empire grew through the ages.

Why didn’t China conquer the whole of Eurasia and sailed around the world – like the Europeans did later?

To be fair, they were Chinese did explore some parts of the world. They actually visited in 1434 to Venice / Italy.  And there was Zheng He and his seven naval expeditions from 1405 to 1433. And there were many Chinese ship in the Asian waters after that – better there were never as many explorers and Conquistadors as from Europe.

And the only Asians who really made the effort to conquer were the Mongols under Gengis Khan and not the Chinese themselves – although it was already a huge empire at that time (the so called Jin Dynasty).

We know there is a big world out there – we are just not so interested in exploring it …

Armed with gunpowder, crossbows, canons and rockets a huge Chinese army would have conquered Asia, then the Middle East and finally sleepy medieval Europe pretty quickly.

But they didn’t.

Let’s have look again at one invention of the old Chinese and in which way it was different from it’s European counterpart – and how it’s illustrates how the Red Dragon lost it’s groove …

Printing & Paper – great Chinese Inventions

Paper and printing are important for any mass cultural revolution. In Europe Gutenberg’s reinvention of the printing press (Europe: 1450/ China: 1040 by Bi Cheng) in combination with the movable type resulted in a total transformation of knowledge, propaganda and balance of power.

It is important to note the differences: the earlier Chinese version used movable type made out of clay which obviously wasn’t very practical for large volume printing, while Gutenberg used cast iron letters, which allowed huge production runs. Plus the mechanical printing press was unknown (read: not invented) in Asia. It was imported to most Asian nation in the early 19th century.

Printing with clay type is crap.

There is another important difference: European printers used oil-based inks, while Asian printers used only water-based inks. That meant that European printers could print on BOTH sides of the paper, because the Asian water colors already soaked the paper bad enough. In consequence: you needed more expensive paper to print one book in China compared to it’s twice as effective European counterpart.

So the Chinese used paper and printing before Europe, but their versions were not as suitable for mass production and not as technically sophisticated.

Printing is good for your wallet and progress.

It has to be noted that in around 1500 AD during the Ming period metal type was also invented in China, but it was made of Bronze (hardly a tough material) and it hardly had the same impact as Gutenberg commercial venture.

To illustrate my point even further during the Quing period (1644 – 1911!!!) the imperial court made WODDEN type it’s official printing technique, while Europe raced ahead with even more sophisticated printing methods like the rotary printing press.

(For those interested: the History of Printing)

Gutenberg plus Church vs Luther = good business

Apart from the technical aspect there was a different social and political situation.

Gutenberg had started his printing venture as a purely commercial idea. And he made good money with his Gutenberg Bible. Printing was the Internet Bubble of the 15th century.

Also the Catholic Church loved the printing press – for printing Indulgences which was literally like printing money. And for the Church printing was a very practical tool to speed up the cumbersome book production in the cloisters and standardize the content of it’ sermons, songs and religious writings.

Buy yourself a piece of heaven …

But those Indulgences and the printing press was the very reason why Luther exploded. He hated those Indulgences and he wrote his famous 95 thesis to rant against them and so many other things. Luther never intended his thesis to be widespread – it was normal for scholars like him to write such essays, which were only meant to circulate between a small group of fellow scholars. His thesis were actually pretty hardcore theological work – hardly anything you would consider easy-to-read propaganda.

What you mean by "this will change everything"? 

But Luther didn’t include the printing press in his considerations. His writing suddenly was mass produced and quickly spread all over Germany. Instead of a quiet discourse his thesis had turned into a huge public affair.

During the Reformation printers made good business with both sides. The printing press was equally important in this struggle then swords and later bullets in the wars between Protestants and Catholics.

But in China?

The Chinese Officials started some impressive printing projects – similar to the Gutenberg Bible like the 1000 volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era. But printing was never such a successful and influential affair in China like it was in Europe.

Commericalism, the greed for knowledge and entertainment made prints from people like Luther as well as Albrecht Dürer bestsellers.

Attitudes: civilized China vs aggressive Europe

Confucius wanted his disciples to think deeply for themselves and act morally and ethically.

Here we come to the most important aspect of why China didn’t profit as much from it’s innovations then Europe: attitude.

Until the late 13th century Europe was asleep. A boring, dark place, hardly enlightened or technologically advanced. That all changed with the re-import of knowledge via Spain (by basically conquering the former highly successful and educated Muslim part of the country) and therefore kick starting the Renaissance. At to this the fire of the Reformation and you get the "old Europe" thriving on competition (Kingdom vs Kingdom, Protestants vs. Catholics, Christians vs Muslims and later Europe against the rest of the world). This resulted in endless wars, loads of trade, many invention cooked up by competition and the greed for evermore profit.

Compared to that China’s main philosophy Confucianism is simply boring and slow. It was chosen by the Emperor Wu of Han as the political system already around 140 BC. That changed everything for China until today.

One of the important aspect of Confucianism was the Great Learning – even today. Learn something great, that allows you to get a good job and you don’t have to anything else in your life.

Imperial Official – bring honor to your family and put innovation to sleep …

Combine this with the great idea of Meritocracy:  everybody who is well educated can rise in the system – no matter from which class or background he comes. This led to the Imperial examination system and an ever growing class of bureaucrats and officials.

Stagnation instead of Innovation

Instead of many competing ideas and systems in Europe, you had one big Confucian blanket that covered China’s everyday life.

China became a very orderly society – but too orderly for it’s own good. Because bureaucrats have the tendency to over-regulate and suppress new ideas. And they hate change.

Terracotta doesn’t win battles …

While in Europe heads, governments, popes and religions fell, China was mostly busy administering itself and keeping the status quo of the Imperial System.

The Chinese result was stagnation, while Europe exploded into the dominant colonial power we know from history. Not even the Holy Mother Church could stop the European hunger for innovation and competition.

The Curse of being too organized

Similar things happened in Imperial Japan, the Mogul Empire (India) and the Ottoman Empire. All these Empires lost their creativity and vitality to state doctrines and internal fights.

Most of all they lost their curiosity.

Chinese were not great explorers, nor were the Mayans, Incas, Africans, Ottomans, Indians or Arab countries.

China lost it’s edge and was easily conquered and abused by the Europeans (or to be precise by the British Empire).

A slice of China please!

If you look at a map it’s actually a joke, that such a small nation like the Brits could thumb down such a huge Empire like China. But this tells you how weak and backward China was back then.

(A historical side note: modern China basically did the same to backward Tibet in the 1950’s – by overrunning it with advanced military power).

And modern China?

Confucianism is still deeply embedded in the Chinese mind, cultural and political systems. Individualism, curiosity and innovative thinking can be planted into people’s head over night – or twenty years of capitalist counterrevolution.

He just replaced the old imperial system with his own. Loads of new rules, but no change in attitude.

Modern China is far from being modern, creative and sophisticated by itself. Cities like Being and Shanghai maybe all the rage these days, but especially rural China is still very primitive, low tech und uneducated.

Like Japan in the 1980’s China still has to import or simply steal innovative ideas from the more dynamic West. It doesn’t matter if it’s cars, trains or computers – anything get’s copied by Chinese companies.

State of Mind

But there is more to it. The typical modern day Westerner might not be the perfect example of good education and sophistication, but concepts like creativity, looking for the better deal, rule of law, democracy, social justice and internationalization are not foreign concepts to him.

I am here to buy some peanuts and some capitalism.

China: corruption, one party rule, social justice (Chinese Communism is hardly social – since it’s medical, social and pension systems are falling apart, there are no trade unions allowed and workers have hardly any rights).

Creativity, entrepreneurship and independence are relatively new concepts to Chinese society. Caring for the environment – something the green movement in western societies have been banging on for over 25 years – is hardly an issue for the Chinese citizens – while their western counterparts are almost worried sick of the impending doom.

The Future of China

Compared to Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea or even the declining USA – China hasn’t reached the same level of being a creative, democratic and dynamic society.

Thanks for the design Honda, we just cloned it here in China.

It still lacks variety, individualism and home grown democratic institutions and political and social diversity.

Public debate, dissent and an overall competition of ideas and concepts is alien to China. It will first take another revolution to get rid of the tyranny of the so called Communists to form a new society.

But it will take many decades until Chinese society grows and learns to use it’s freedom and hopefully democracy to get back to reinvigorate that old creative genius from a thousand years ago – that was killed so early by Confucianism and it’s bureaucracy.