[bra4you]

"Until the Opium War of 1840–42 the European merchants and voyagers who reached the distant land of China had looked upon the Chinese with a good deal of awe as a people of superior culture."

Bullshit and Chinese Propaganda with their "5000 years old culture".

5000 years ago we are talking about bones inscribed with precursors of the Chinese writing system. Not bad, but compare this to the Pyramids at the same time?

Around the year 0 the Chinese culture was en par with the level of western culture and technology - speak Rome.

Only during the middle ages the west fell so far beyond and Chinese had indeed a superior level of technology, knowledge and administration. Things reversed again with the industrial revolution and the center of industrial GDP moved to the west again. Now since China and the rest of Asia has also industrialized and due to far more people in Asia, the center of world GDP has shifted back to the East.

If you can really talk about a "continuous civilization" for 5000, 3500 or even 2000 years is doubtful.

The experience from businessman with Chinese: 30 years ago they had an inferior complex because they were technological too far behind and a feeling of cultural superiority. Now the have the feeling of technological superiority combined with cultural superiority.

Chinese culture has a lot of strengths. But it also comes with a lot of weaknesses. I am skeptical about the "Chinese Century"

[geowwy]

  > Around the year 0 the Chinese culture was en par with the level of western
  > culture and technology - speak Rome.
  >
  > Only during the middle ages the west fell so far beyond and Chinese had indeed
  > a superior level of technology, knowledge and administration. Things reversed
  > again with the industrial revolution and the center of industrial GDP moved to
  > the west again.

I think you've got shifting definitions of the West.

The Roman Empire was on par with China, but the Roman Empire was centred around the Near East – Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, etc.

Western European parts of the Empire were very under-developed, and only really served as a buffer for Rome. (Consider how quickly the Roman Empire gave up the West after moving its capital to the East.)

In the Middle Ages the West was behind, but it was in ancient times too, so no difference. And the Near East was still on par – no difference again.

It's only really modern times that have been difference, with the West exploding out of nowhere. But that is probably just a blip, and in the grand scheme we will probably end up with China and the Near East rising again.

[cygx]

That's not the impression I get from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/byzantine-philosophy/

Quote:

There was never in Byzantium anything resembling the autonomous universities of the Latin West. Higher education was designed to train officials of the state and church, not masters of the arts and sciences.

edit: I guess that's a reference to later developments, though...

[mdiesel]

I can only really comment on UK institutions.

The article is talking about between 730 and 1453. Oxf*rd wasn't teaching until 1096, so I think it's fair to say England was behind for at least 300 years. It wouldn't be until the renaissance (after 1450) that you started seeing a break from scholastic teaching and academics like Bacon.

[bra4you]

I think there is little doubt that Rome was en pare with China. I don't see me shifting definitions of the West. You could argue that I switch between Egypt and Rome. While not the same culture, they are interconnected and influenced each other (visit the Vatican if you have any doubts).

I looked up "ancient history": "Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD"

China was far inferier compared to Egypt of that time. For now, lets consider Egypt be part of my "western" argument.

So when between the Highs of Egypt and the rise of Rome was China superior in technology? I admit, out of my head, that Asia may have had the far greater GDP product based on the number ob people. But I don't see any Asian or Chinese superiority.

"with the West exploding out of nowhere." Ignoring the Cultures and Empires of Egypt and Rome is a bit of a stretch.

"But that is probably just a blip, and in the grand scheme we will probably end up with China and the Near East rising again."

Doubt it. The Chinese culture has tremendous strength. But, as often, it comes with tremendous weaknesses.

Since we talk about empires. I know what Rome, what the Soviet Union, what Islam, what "America" had or has to offer. What does China has to offer?

[haecceity]

> Bullshit and Chinese Propaganda with their "5000 years old culture".

This is actually propaganda from the US War Department.

[usrusr]

Propaganda nonetheless, and this is what makes it interesting. Was ror just a bit of the-enemy-of-my-enemy posturing to make Japan look bad (not much to do there in 1944 America), or were they mentally preparing for a possible intervention in China post VJ? Given the military presence America had on mainland China before the war this must have been a rather natural idea to some.

The linked text is part of a bigger publication, it's linked at the bottom. Scanning through it revealed some juicy "dictator, but a good one" love notes to Chiang Kai-shek.

[haecceity]

ROC government was, to put it lightly, extremely friendly with the US government.

[brailsafe]

Are you saying that China isn't a civ because economic centres move from time to time? I'm also fairly sure you're not quite characterizing either western or eastern fairly during the years 0 to ~1500.

[bra4you]

What is Chinese Culture? If nothing else, the writing system? Putonghua was only adopted in all of current China under Mao.

I could also talk of the "western culture" and take Sanskrit and all indu-germanic languages that are descendant from it - so basically nearly all of the European languages" as "one culture".

[brailsafe]

I don't know a lot about the specific languages of either the "cultures" you mentioned, but you'd have to assert that culture didn't exist before writing for writing to be the definition of culture. That's not supported in cultural anthropology or history and is a bit contrived, perhaps unless your view is only that of a cunning linguist ;)

[amriksohata]

Continuous civilisatiins can exist for that long if they aren't targetted by the greed of invaders, in this case there weren't large scale invasions big enough to topple it

[jacobush]

That's a very fluffy definition. Also "China" was invaded all the time. You could argue that Europe and some kind of continuum over the Middle East / North Africa also preserved a civilization.

[usrusr]

That's the entire point I think: Chinese cultural identity is broad enough to consider all those numerous competing kingdoms of its past predecessors in direct line. Contrast this with Europe, where almost everybody has at some point in time claimed succession to the Roman Empire but even something as small as a united Italy is actually a fairly recent invention, with forced language unification and all that.

Egypt, to take an example GP used, had numerous cultures and languages sweep through its geographic location so that modern Egypt has nothing in common with the one 5000 years ago except for the fact that some pyramids are still standing.

Perhaps the secret to perceived Chinese contiuity is (besides considerable geographic isolation) the non-phonetic writing system which should be relatively stable when dialects inevitably diverge when regions shift apart politically for more than a few decades.

[LunaSea]

Well even China has some disputes about succession with Taiwan as well as territorial disputes with Tibet, Hong Kong, Japan, etc.

So it would seem that the case for a continuous civilization isn't as clear cut.

[usrusr]

I don't think that the Taiwan situation can count as a counterexample, actually I'd rather see it as a contemporary manifestation of "the idea of China is bigger than its governments". The way I see it the main issue preventing a normalization of relationships between continental and Taiwan is that they agree on one thing that is important to them: they both are far too Chinese to be anything but China. The fact that there is more than one operational government within China? Not that big of an issue, happened before, will likely happen again.

[LunaSea]

In that case, couldn't you argue the same about the Roman empire?

[brailsafe]

It certainly could be. That's how history works.

[elfexec]

> Bullshit

It wasn't bullshit. Generally, the merchants and voyagers who reached china were in awe. It was why europeans wanted to get to china in the first place and not the other way around. Even decades after the opium wars, europeans were still in awe even while burning and pillaging.

"... I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one's heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Summer_Palace

Now that the roles are reversed, it's the chinese that are in awe of us. It's why they send so many students, merchants, etc to the US. For a few hundreds years, it was europeans who were as eager to go to china as chinese are now eager to get to the West.

> Chinese Propaganda with their "5000 years old culture".

Yeah, the continuous 5000 years is really a stretch. If they have 5000 years, then might as well say europe has 5000 years or more.

> If you can really talk about a "continuous civilization" for 5000, 3500 or even 2000 years is doubtful.

Even 1000 is doubtful as the mongols conquered china for a while there.

> I am skeptical about the "Chinese Century"

We are 2 decades in and nowhere close to a "Chinese Century". This century will most likely become a multipolar century.

[bra4you]

> It wasn't bullshit. Generally, the merchants and voyagers who reached china were in awe.

Well, this was after Rome, and while after the middle ages, still before the industrial revolution.

> It was why europeans wanted to get to china in the first place and not the other way around.

The reason why Europe explored more during that time says more about China than Europe.

"Even decades after the opium wars, europeans were still in awe even while burning and pillaging."

Why should they? Even if they are writings about "superior culture" from that time, we had Roman writers write too about "superior Germanic culture" (bellum germanicum). By the way, do you know why the Opium war happened? Besides having the inferior technology on the Chinese side? Do you know what the reasons was? It should be a warning to China today.

[frozenport]

China was actually vastly inferior to Rome in terms of metal production:

https://en.m.wikiversity.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Roman_a...