4 ms·

“Without Haste, Without Fear. We Will Conquer the World”

41 points by blasdel 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago
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.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  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.
  - aswanson 17y ago
    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.]
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      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.
      - tokenadult 17y ago
        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.
        gjm11 17y ago
        "If there is hope, it lies with the proles." -- Winston Smith, in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
    - 17y ago
ggchappell 17y ago
Nice article. One note: > ... [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: http://images2.sina.com/english/china/2008/0909/U99P200T1D185180F8DT20080909070804.jpg http://images2.sina.com/english/china/2008/0909/U99P200T1D18... http://www.architecture-page.com/assets/images/content/prj_ksp_nati/3.jpg http://www.architecture-page.com/assets/images/content/prj_k... I think he exaggerates a bit.
- cdr 17y ago
  Those look like artistic renderings, from before it opened - not pictures. I don't doubt it's much more impressive in person, also.
  - ggchappell 17y ago
    Perhaps, but it pretty clearly is not "hundreds of feet deep".
lionhearted 17y ago
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.

41 points by blasdel 17y ago

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.

jacquesm 17y ago
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.
- aswanson 17y ago
  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.]
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    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.
    - tokenadult 17y ago
      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.
      - gjm11 17y ago
        "If there is hope, it lies with the proles." -- Winston Smith, in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
  - 17y ago

ggchappell 17y ago

Nice article. One note: > ... [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: http://images2.sina.com/english/china/2008/0909/U99P200T1D185180F8DT20080909070804.jpg http://images2.sina.com/english/china/2008/0909/U99P200T1D18... http://www.architecture-page.com/assets/images/content/prj_ksp_nati/3.jpg http://www.architecture-page.com/assets/images/content/prj_k... I think he exaggerates a bit.

cdr 17y ago
Those look like artistic renderings, from before it opened - not pictures. I don't doubt it's much more impressive in person, also.
- ggchappell 17y ago
  Perhaps, but it pretty clearly is not "hundreds of feet deep".

lionhearted 17y ago

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.