Joseph Needham did gather a lot of interesting source material from ancient Chinese literature on developments in science and technology in China. I studied Chinese and sinology as his lengthy book series was published, and have read many hundreds of pages of his books. The general view of the historians of China whom I know best is that Needham did a fair amount of axe-grinding with his primary sources to prove ideological points and bolster his theory of history that other historical sources would not support. The primary historical literature in Chinese (literary Chinese) is VAST--the usual statement is that ancient Chinese literature outnumbers all other ancient literature from all other world cultures combined in word count by a considerable margin.
What I find most disappointing in Needham's work is his too Marxist explanation for what historians of technology think is what is most remarkable about the historical comparison between China and the West. Until the late Western middle ages, China was plainly ahead of the West in technology, and arguably very much ahead in science. Historians of technology refer to the West in those days as having "precocious technology" that couldn't be explained at all by Western science of that day. But as the Western middle ages gave way to the Renaissance, there was an explosive growth of science in the West, and ever since the West has been ahead of China in both science and technology, for reasons that I don't think Needham explains adequately. And of course the development of political freedom in the West in the same period has very much been world-leading all that while.
The west is still ahead of China in both Science and Technology, but they're moving fast and we're slowing down.
I would not be surprised if in another four or five decades the situation is going to be reversed.
China has it's problems, but it has one thing that the west does not have, which is the power to make very bold decisions and to realize them. No such thing as turf wars between parties or coalition building to dilute any plans.
The west is still ahead of China in both Science and Technology, but they're moving fast and we're slowing down.
I'd say that China is moving faster because they're still catching up. Once they've caught up, I doubt they'll be moving any faster than the West.
China has it's problems, but it has one thing that the west does not have, which is the power to make very bold decisions and to realize them. No such thing as turf wars between parties or coalition building to dilute any plans.
When the way forward is very clear, as it often is when playing catch-up, this is handy. This isn't as useful once a country has caught up, and needs to figure out the way forward without somewhere else showing the way. At that point, the way forward isn't clear, and discussion and disagreement are useful for arriving at a better solution than one could get from top-down.
When I make that point, I make it even stronger: If China was merely growing at the same rate as an established country, that would actually be surprising. Undeveloped countries moving to developed country status should be expected to develop more quickly than developed countries.
The reason China may exceed others as a world power is that the developed China will still be five times larger than the US. It will take longer than people who naively project a continuous trend for China think it will take, though. And then there's the matter of India, too, which doesn't strike me as a natural Chinese ally.
If you have a hard time understanding why, imagine a time portal to the United States fifty years from now opened up in downtown Manhatten (and suppose they are causally disconnected, parallel universes, so forget sci-fi paradoxes and stuff). Trade would begin, and technology would begin advancing very rapidly in the developed world as we learned how to build fusion reactors (probably) and grabbed their computer tech, bought copies of their educational materials, etc. (Presumably we'd trade for oil or something.) That's the sort of situation the developing world is in; they can buy things essentially decades or centuries (in some sad cases) ahead of their "natural" technology for the price of money, and advance far faster than the people who were at the same level of tech, but were at the apex of the world, did.
Indeed this is a prediction of Solow's exogenous economic growth models: there are diminishing returns for investment in either capital or labor alone, but linear returns for investment in both. With a country which has had very low capital investment (later growth models separated capital and technology), you will see very high growth rates, which will experience diminishing marginal returns as additional investment is made.
Ultimately, you will return to the point where investment in capital, labor or technology have equal returns to each other, so all must be invested in. It is argued that this is where developed nations are today.
But what if the bold decisions are idiotic and destructive?
Turf wars and parties seem to be what gave Europe its advantage, as the grandparent states the rise of freedom was concurrent with the rise in technology. So perhaps more distributed competitive decision making results in better outcomes, and the reason you stated will be precisely the reason China will not achieve its potential.
[EDIT: Corrected incongruent verb tenses in last sentence.]
That's similar to the argument Jared Diamond makes in his book Guns, Germs and Steel. In order to explain the obvious problem - China was clearly ahead of western Europe in terms of technology and science - he appeals to the political structure. China was politically unified around 300 AD, while western Europe was only recently politically unified (and not in the same sense as China was).
Political unification has advantages, but it also gives you less people making decisions, with fewer competitors. So decisions to not pursue technology and science were magnified and unchallenged. In western Europe, if you didn't do something, your neighbors would.
I felt this was a fair assessment. But I also though that, considering the path China is on now, western Europe being so dominant in the world might become a historical blip.
There is a 'stereotypical' China, the communist country which just like Russia is soon going to implode and there is the real China, a very large country with a set of unique challenges and a very large amount of energy to try to overcome those challenges.
Modern China is not to be compared with the country that it was 30 (or even 20) years ago, it is evolving rapidly and it has a very good shot at becoming the dominant power in the next couple of decades.
It is by no means a certainty, but while western politics are centered around special interest groups and their lobbyists China is working very hard at becoming if not top dog then at least an equal.
A friend of mine has just emigrated to China and the stories he tells me about life there and the level of economic and social change in the last 10 years alone are almost incredible. If they can keep that up they will be very powerful indeed.
western politics are centered around special interest groups
Currently internal politics in China is centered around a much smaller segment of the country's population. The masses and their concerns are largely ignored. I don't think that is good for the future of China, as the future is with the masses.
They may not have turf was between parties (since one political party controls the entire government), but don't they have turf wars among factions within the party?
(I am not anything close to an expert on Chinese politics but this seems to be a feature of just about any large organization, no?)
> ... [The new National Library] has at its centre what looks like a vast opencast mine, hundreds of feet deep, with scholars and readers at rows of desks on every level, hemmed in by walls of volumes.
That sounded incredibly impressive, until I found pictures:
Communism set China back so much. The Cultural Revolution and one-child policy especially. This is a country with a tradition of great scientists, statesmen, inventors, engineers, traders, and so on - and they suppressed it all for... what exactly? Forced labor camps so that everyone is equal, except for the Party leaders who are more equal? If China had even a semblance of classical liberalism, human rights, and free trade, they'd probably be the strongest nation in the world. Lots of natural resources, a large population, strong family ties and loyalty, and an unreal work ethic.
That said, the one child policy hurt the country a lot. Countries where the old outnumber the young vastly tend to go in heavy decline, and that's going to bite China pretty hard in the coming years. Also, the male:female ratio is getting to a crazy point. Historically, wars break out when the men outnumber the women so much. I could see China fighting a pretty brutal war in Asia at some point in the next 30 years.
That's if there isn't a civil war first. They're built as a highly centralized empire where the Han Chinese have basically all the power, and the other groups - Xianjianese, Chen Chinese, Hong Kongese, Taiwanese, Macanese, and Tibetans all have no power and basically don't want to be part of China. Historically that produces civil wars. I think as soon as one of the areas pushes hard for independence, others will follow. It happened to the English, Spanish, French, and Dutch at various periods, happened to the Greeks and Romans, happened basically everywhere. The only way an empire holds itself together with diverse groups is through decentralization of power, and representation of all groups in the central government. To truly bond a nation, you need to mix blood and local groups so it's diverse. That means encouraging movement and mixing of people, but the Chinese are pretty outwardly racist (and it's not really seen as a bad thing there - there's not the same moral judgment about it was have in the West). Talking down and making racist jokes about people from lesser provinces or areas of China, and especially China's neighbors is par for the course. People do it at formal dinners and nobody really bats an eye unless the person goes too far with it.
I see China being a world power over the next 50-100 years, but they do have some bad things coming up on them: The male:female ratio imbalance, the old/young ratio, and the lack of representation under a powerful central government and oppression/conquest of minority groups and parts of the nation are going to be a problem. If China can liberalize (in the classical sense, not the modern - basic individual rights) and grant representation and bring the distant parts of their nation willing into the fold, they can probably weather the storm. Or who knows - perhaps the conquer parts of India or Russia, or find a pretense to "stabilize" North Korea after it starts falling apart, or invade Japan if it loses its status as an American protectorate (perhaps because the US goes bankrupt and needs to cut foreign military bases - improbable but possible).
Interesting to look at that part of the world. They have the potential to be the dominant world power and set the pace for the world, but they face a lot of problems. If they sort their house out and move away from Communism and the Party fast enough, the nation could have the influence over the next 50-100 years of the world that America has had over the last 50-100.
I took a class on "Revolution in the 20th Century" as an undergrad, and the professor there pointed out that Chinese agriculture is built on marginally-fertile land; they absolutely depend on large irrigation networks and on using human waste from the cities to fertilize the countryside. And those networks require a large centralized government to maintain them. Which is why China has had large centralized government, of one form or another, for so many centuries (although not continuously).
>That's if there isn't a civil war first. They're built as a highly centralized empire where the Han Chinese have basically all the power, and the other groups - Xianjianese, Chen Chinese, Hong Kongese, Taiwanese, Macanese, and Tibetans all have no power and basically don't want to be part of China. Historically that produces civil wars. I think as soon as one of the areas pushes hard for independence, others will follow.
You would have to combine that with a weakened Chinese government to get a civil war. If one of those groups pushed hard for independence now, you'd be more likely see a brief civil war, ending with lots of dead Tibetans/Xianjianese/etc, followed by a return to the status quo - which is probably why they're not pushing hard for independence.
What I find most disappointing in Needham's work is his too Marxist explanation for what historians of technology think is what is most remarkable about the historical comparison between China and the West. Until the late Western middle ages, China was plainly ahead of the West in technology, and arguably very much ahead in science. Historians of technology refer to the West in those days as having "precocious technology" that couldn't be explained at all by Western science of that day. But as the Western middle ages gave way to the Renaissance, there was an explosive growth of science in the West, and ever since the West has been ahead of China in both science and technology, for reasons that I don't think Needham explains adequately. And of course the development of political freedom in the West in the same period has very much been world-leading all that while.