Yes I know China has had several civil wars, but it was never rendered permanently too weak to ever rise again like Rome. But yeah I agree I was not wording mys

Yes I know China has had several civil wars, but it was never rendered permanently too weak to ever rise again like Rome. But yeah I agree I was not wording myself very clearly there. > China fell behind because the KMT and CCP fought a decades long civil war that was interrupted by the Japanese raping the country. I disagree. At that point China had already fallen way behind. The KMT and CCP was fighting in large part because China had already stagnated and failed to keep up with European powers. When China got humiliated by Britain in the opium wars it was already a failed empire. Long before KMT and CCP western powers started carving out their own enclaves in China. They had whole city sections where Chinese where not allowed. China was being humiliated on home turf by the west. Relative to the west China was not that different from today in terms of economy when this happened. The west could not outright take China. However the technological advantage the west held in maritime warfare meant that western powers could cause massive damage in China without them having a way of retaliating.