Was China equal, if not, superior to Western Europe up until

Also England only industrialized by accident because they had coal on their island

>>2336035
>Also England only industrialized by accident
They had the right context for it to happen. Most historical events where "accidents" using this logic.

>>2336032
Medieval China was kinda awesome. thats all I can say about that topic ^^

>>2336032
Yes
Though you could argue that the seeds that drove europe to surpass them were already being planted in the fifteenth century

>>2336046
Is there not coal in china?

>>2336052
Coal exist in alot of places. The Greeks and Romans could have industrialized as well but they didn't need to as they had slave labor. England didn't. It had a society which was ready to foster such an event as the industrial revolution.

>>2336035
Not just coal, they figured out how to put the Steam Engine to good use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine

>>2336032
its true
though your professor is a cuck for admitting it

The British pushed the Chinese' shit in with 1 frigate and 1 sloop, sinking 16 junks. China couldn't hold up against pre-industrialized tech from the British.

>>2336057
What was china's excuse?

>>2336086
>What was china's excuse?
The confucian social order which held merchants and artisans at the bottom was certainly part of it, among other things

>>2336057
>England didn't have slave labor
???

>>2336069
Doesn't that make you a cuck too?

>>2336243
dumb

>bigger is always better

Some help having "bigger" civilizations did for India and China when they were met and subjugated by smaller European expeditionary forces

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Western Europe already surpassed China in science with this guy

>>2336035
wrong, the industrial revolution began using water power

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China had worse technology. If not when Spanish galleons with sailing around their coasts then definitely by the 18th century, unless you fixate on meme tech like porcelain and lacquer.

>in b4 the inordinate amount of butthurt surrounding which country was better at what

>>2336483
>China had worse technology.
This wasn't always the case, though. It's interesting to speculate about why they fell behind when they started with a noticeable lead.

>>2336035
How the fuck do you "accidentally" industrialize?

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This might be a bit harder to determine, but was Edo Japan more developed than Qing China ? I believe, Japan was going through some kind of pre-industrial revolution, and was in touch with the progress made by Europe thanks to the dutch studies. But what about China ?

>>2336032

China was more productive than any individual country. Of that we have no doubt. But one must understand the nature of that production. China had the easiest construction material on the planet in bamboo. Bamboo is the fastest growing and largest grass in the world. It has a tensile strength of 500 Mpa. Cast iron has only 200 Mpa. Steel has 531 to 2000 (modern industrial methods) Mpa.

A flammable, edible, and flexible material as strong as primitive steel meant that massive construction projects became child's play. Even today the three gorges dam was made with bamboo scaffolding. Because the materials were so cheap the Chinese had no economic incentive to use more expensive stone as a construction material. Because cellulose rots after a while, this generated work orders for construction projects, maintaining a permanent and sedentary class of craftsmen. Construction in Italy for example was nomadic. Skilled workers would take a job, and then move elsewhere to a new benefactor. Buildings were built to last, feast and famine was the rule (except when earthquakes destroyed the stone buildings. Marble only has tensile strength of 3 Mpa, so the irony is that bamboo would have survived).

One could make an argument of quality over quantity, but as plastics have taught us, the society with lighter and cheaper materials tends to be the more sophisticated society. Remember stonehenge was built of stone, but space stations are built out of carbon.

>>2337270

This is why I come to /his/ , thank you based anon.

>>2336032
Nah. Europe outpaced China by the 1700s.

>>2336483
Spain was being BTFO by Muslim Southeast Asians in the Philippines in the 18th Century.

>>2337270
>Bamboo is the fastest growing and largest grass in the world. It has a tensile strength of 500 Mpa. Cast iron has only 200 Mpa. Steel has 531 to 2000 (modern industrial methods) Mpa.
Holy fucking shit.
Why didn't bamboo spread out of China/Japan?

>>2337396

At a guess because the cost of moving it abroad when you can't grow it surpasses the advantage of it. It was cheap, easy and plentiful in China because it grew there.

>>2337396
....it did?

India, Southeast Asia, and Bits of the Middle East grow bamboo.

And isnt there bamboo in Latin America?

>>2337424
I was going to say "asia" but then I realized my knowledge on the subject wasn't broad enough for that to be accurate.

I should have said "why didn't europeans get on the bamboo train?"

>>2337396
>>2337424

It does. It's a highly invasive species. It has a tendency to cover everything, like Kudzu. I love the shit out of bamboo, but if I see my neighbor planting some I get mad over the potential ecological destruction of North America.

>>2337431

The thing is, bamboo was considered so worthless, even though it was used for so many things, because people took it for granted. Agents of Byzantium famously stole the silk worms from the emperor's gardens, the resulting monopoly subsidized the empire until its dying day. But poor old Justinian never realized the real treasure was right under his nose. Bamboo is a weed. To anyone but an untrained eye, it's nothing but common rubbish. Silk was famously valuable, as was porcelain, but the true treasure of Asia grew naturally on the ground. Even the best spies would overlook it. It was hidden in plain sight.

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

On the other hand it is worth noting that one time Europeans did manage to steal technology from China (remember it was the arabs who stole the printing press), it resurrected a dying empire with a source of wealth that literally grew on trees. China has this magnificently productive biosphere, and it allows a self contained production cycle that can domestically produce all of its needs, the kind of economy anti-globalists salivate over.

>>2336084

>a civilization's level of advancement is determined solely by its navy

When comparing regions by estimating the gross value of goods and real estate, the analysis is often blind to factors of redundancy. For example a fragmentary continent might have many nations. Each nation has a prince of some sort, and each prince has a palace. Each palace of course has value. A unitary continent may have one nation and one palace. Clearly the arithmetic sum of the values of palaces comes out in favor of disunity; the many palaces have a combined worth greater than the single palace.

But is having more palaces actually good for the economy? This analogy applies other constructions. Virtually anything you create, one of your neighbors probably already has. But you build it anyway out of pride.

At the least building more than one of the same thing could be wasteful. Or it could actually cause damage. If you dam a river, that really screws over everyone down river who depended it. If someone builds a dam upriver to your dam, well, your dam is now worthless. If people don't cooperate, everyone gets fucked over.


The point of this really, is that it's impossible to compare dollar values across civilizations. There's too many variables. What we need are the Three Ls. Literacy, Life expectancy, Liesure. Literacy is self explanatory, as is life expectancy. Only an advanced society can afford leisure, it is the top of the pyramid.

>>2336052
>Is there not coal in china?
There was, but without the particular conditions that existed in the British coal mines there was no incentive to make better steam engines that could take advantage of the coal.