It can't be denied that the Chinese have made many great discoveries and inventions through the centuries, they were the ones to invent paper, gunpowder, and the first to conduct printing, among many other inventions and discoveries
However, through a lot of reading about China, I have often found that may claims made about China are often not true, or are a distortion of the truth. We all know about the claims of Gavin Menzies regarding the completely unfounded assertion that the Chinese discovered the Americas before Columbus, but there are many other such claims for prior Chinese invention or discovery that are equally untrue, if less spectacular. It seems at times that scholars on China are more interested in boasting of the achievements than in providing honest assessments of Chinese achievements, both good and bad, and anything that implies the Chinese were not the best often provokes a storm of criticism.
1. Shape of the Earth
An example is the Chinese belief in a flat earth. Despite what is often claimed, it was the medieval Europeans and others who believed in a spherical earth, and the Chinese until the early modern age who believed in flat earth. This can be clearly seen in the Ming/Qing scholar Yang Guangxian , who criticized the Jesuits for their belief in a spherical earth:
It is clear that the Chinese scholar Yang Guiangxian believed in a flat earth, and Yang was at one time head of the Chinese Bureau of Astronomy, so he was no fringe scholar. There are other evidence that the Chinese believed in a flat earth, such as when they attempted to calculate the distance of the sun, they had specifically used an assumption that the earth was flat between the points they were measuring the sun from. Since their premise was wrong, the resulting distance they calculated to the sun was totally off. Yet despite all this, Needham in Science and Civilization tried to argue that Zhang Heng might have been referring to a spherical earth, and there are those who still try to argue that the Chinese had believed in a spherical earth before the arrival of the Jesuits:On the later point, Yang stated "........if he {Schall von Bell, Jesuit in China advocating spherical earth} can not produce these effects, then that means the earth is flat just as the surface of the water is, and cannot possibly be spherical. If indeed there are countries existing on the curving edges and the bottom of the globe, then these places are surely immersed in water" Making the New World Their Own offers a systematic study of how Chinese scholars came to understand that the earth is shaped as a globe. This notion arose from their encounters with the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. By Qiong Zhang page 156
There appear to be conflicting accounts of when the Chinese came to view the earth as spherical. Chinese sources might suggest the 11th century, while western sources suggest the 17th century.........
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However, Joseph Needham, in his more recent 1993 text Chinese Cosmology reports that Shen Kuo (1031-1095) used models of lunar eclipse and solar eclipse to conclude that "celestial bodies" are round, not flat. .......
What is not clear here is whether or not Shen Kuo considered earth to be a "celestial body". If not, then perhaps Cullen's claim is the current view. https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questi...th-is-a-sphere
There is nothing ambiguous about the clear statement of Ming scholar Yang's belief in a flat earth, and to argue the Chinese or least some of them somehow believed in a spherical earth on the basis of creative interpretation of what some Chinese scholars said against the clear statements of noted Chinese scholars to the contrary is disingenuous.
Needham never shares any information on Yang's belief in his Science and Civilization, which was clearly very pertinent on the subject of the Chinese view of the shape of the earth, and given his extensive knowledge of Chinese history. it is impossible for him not to have known of Yang's views. His failure to include such information that was clearly so relevant is dishonest. The argument that some Chinese held the view of a spherical earth and some did not is disproved by the lack of discussion and argument on the topic, similar to the discussion the Jesuits had with Chinese scholars like Yang on the subject. Such kind of half truths happens not infrequently when it comes to inventions and discoveries with regard to China.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...D4F8A60131B55F
What is of interest on the subject is the Chinese persistence in the belief of the flat earth despite the evidence to the contrary if one looks, and the universal belief of all the other old work civilizations. With the Chinese extensive trading contacts with India and the Muslim civilization, it does not seem likely the Chinese could not have been exposed the concept of a spherical earth, and may have deliberately ignored the idea of westerns. That might indicate a wider spread attitude of non-Chinese discoveries and willingness to reject ideas non in accordance with their own tradition views, despite. Only when the Jesuits were actually camped among the Chinese, and actually had indisputable proof, including actually sailing around the world, did the Chinese relent. Other non Chinese ideas and inventions might have similar faced rejection, until their importance could no longer be denied.
2. Wheelbarrow
Another example of half truths with regard to Chinese inventions is the claim that the Chinese invented the wheelbarrow. Though often made, this is really a half truth, since the Chinese "wheelbarrow" isn't a wheelbarrow at all in the western sense. It serves a different purpose and has a difference than a western wheelbarrow, and while superior as a cart for transporting objects for distances, it is inferior and isn't used for the purpose the western wheelbarrow was create, namely as a labor saving device around construction sites, to allow person to carry what previously took 2 people.
Superior Chinese designIn the characteristic Chinese design a much larger wheel was (and is) placed in the middle of the wheelbarrow, so that it takes the full weight of the burden with the human operator only guiding the vehicle. In fact, in this design the wheel substitutes for a pack animal. In other words, when the load is 100 kg, the operator of a European wheelbarrow carries a load of 50 kg while the operator of a Chinese wheelbarrow carries nothing. He (or she) only has to push or pull, and steer.
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Thanks for an outstanding article. Some points, though, about the European wheelbarrow:
It’s low-slung, balances itself when not in motion, and has the form of a bin, box, or hod. That makes it vastly easier to load, especially for soil, manure, root crops, or construction materials, all of which start out on the ground. I’ve shifted many a ton of limestone building blocks in my day, and many a barrowful of mortar. I would not have wanted to prop up a one-wheeled vehicle, lift everything much higher, and meticulously balance the load, for a trip of only a hundred metres. The European design is also easy to empty by dumping, as everything is held in place by gravity alone, not strapped on.
Basically, if you’re carrying the load a long distance, it’s worth the extra trouble to load a Chinese-style wheelbarrow. If you need to move something terribly heavy a short distance (say, to get a load of swedes from the field to the barn) then easy loading and unloading out-weigh efficiency in carriage.
For the purposes to which the Chinese put their wheelbarrows, their design was clearly better—and the Europeans did, as you say, suffer for the lack of that design. For the purposes to which the Europeans put their wheelbarrows, I think their design was better. No doubt that’s why the Chinese also used wheelbarrows of the European type, as you mention..
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http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/...eelbarrow.html
While the Chinese have been said to invented the "wheelbarrow", what they really invented was a one wheel cart, and there is nothing that the Chinese "wheelbarrow" can't do that a 2 wheel cart couldn't. The 2 wheel cart would be more stable, but slightly less maneuverable. The European wheelbarrow allows one man to carry and maneuver loads that previously required 2 men. It is the ability to reduce labor that made the wheelbarrow an important invention.
3. Engraving Printing
You often find the definition of words changed, to give different meaning and make it seem that the Chinese were the first to invent something when they did not. An example is the use of copper plate printing.
[quote] This fine-art intaglio printmaking process, derived from goldsmith engraving techniques, dates from pioneering work by Northern Renaissance German printers during the first half of the 15th century. Engraving involves the incision of a design onto a metal surface (usually copper), by making grooves using a steel tool with a square or diamond-shaped end, called a burin. This produces a high quality line with a clean edge. Other tools - like mezzotint rockers, roulets and burnishers - are employed by the printmaker to create additional textured effects.
Up until the mid-19th century, engraving (also called copper-plate engraving or line engraving) achieved widespread popularity as a method of replicating fine art images on paper, as well as illustrations for books and magazines http://www.chinavista.com/experience/engrave/engrave.html
Yet you will find it claimed that the Chinese the Chinese invented engraving
China's earliest extant engraving was made in the year 868. The works of engraving created in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the Five Dynasties (907-960) have been discovered in the northwest and southeast......Due to practical requirements, copperplate printing appeared in the Song Dynasty to print paper currency and advertisements. http://www.chinavista.com/experience/engrave/engrave.html
Note, the above is incorrect. What they Chinese called "engraving" is a form of carving, and it is not the intaglio printmaking process that is meant when we say a print is an engraving, or what is meant by "copper plate" printing - "copper plate printing " is not just printing using a copper plate, as the Chinese article would have you think. The Chinese "engraving" entailed carving away all the surface except where the ink was to be applied, the exact opposite what is meant by "copper plate engraving", where the ink goes into the etched lines, and the surface not carved has no ink.
4. The transition from scrolls to codex (modern book format).
The discussion of the transition of the scroll writing format to the modern book format, the codex, is another topic where there is silence by Needham and other Chinese sources discussing the history of Chinese technology and invention. The codex allowed greatly improved storage of writing of information over the older scroll. The 27 books of the bible used to be 27 different scrolls, and the book of Kings had to be split up into 2 separate books, 1 & 2 Kings, because it was too long to be in one scroll. Plus the codex allowed for random access to any page to quickly access information, while it could be tedious to have to unwrap a lengthy scroll to find a text in the middle of the scroll.
This is a significant transition, which is virtually ignored in discussion with China. Again, in Needham in Science and Civilization virtually ignores the topic, and is difficult to find any information on the topic, although some alleged it was during the Song dynasty. However none of the Dunhuang manuscripts were a codex., The famous Diamond Sutra, the first printed work, was actually in the scroll format, which had been obsolete in the west for about 400 years, a fact seldom mentioned.
Based on what I could find, codex style format did not come into use until the Yuan dynasty. The butterfly backing referred to in the Song dynasty is a type of scroll, quite unlike the codex.
t. Until the introduction of foreign paper, paper used for printing Chinese books was invariably thin and transparent so that only one side could be used. There were different kinds of binding of this type, the earliest of which was known as 'butterfly binding' (蝴蝶裝), that flourished in the Sung Dynasty. Like the wings of a butterfly, the thin leaves, with text on one side of the paper, were folded at the back. As the text faced each other after folding, it necessitated the placing of two printed pages and two blank pages alternately. At the middle of the text where the leaves are folded were the running title and pagination. Placed one upon another, the folded leaves were pasted together at the inner fold, and a hard paste-board covered with silk was supplied to form a volume. Books of 'butterfly binding' of the Sung Dynasty were big in size and were placed on their edges with their backs up. It is evident that reading such a kind of book was laborious, since pagination was supplied at the middle of the book. To overcome this difficulty, a thumb index was furnished by means of a small piece of silk pasted on the margin to indicate the different parts of a book. Books in 'butterfly binding' of the Sung Dynasty are distinguished for their superior and artistic workmanship, and are highly treasured today.
Later on in the Yuan Dynasty 'wrapped back binding' (包背裝) displaced the 'butterfly binding'. Externally there was no difference between the garbs except that the cover was not necessarily stiff, but internally the folding was reversed so that the running title and pagination, specially marked as a guide to the binder in folding, could be easily seen as one turned over the pages. The place of folding of a typical Chinese binding is known today as the 'mouth of the book' (書口) and the place where the separate sheets or leaves are held together, regardless of methods, is called the 'back of the book' (書背). Hence we have the name 'wrapped back binding', for a piece of cloth or paper is wrapped around the back of the book as its cover. The famous Yung Lo Ta Tien (永樂大典) and the Sze K'u Ch'uan Shu (四庫全書), for instance, are bound with beautiful satin in this way.
Finally, the supremacy which 'wrapped back binding' established waned, and our present day binding for old Chinese literature began in the Ch'ing Dynasty and has continued even to the present time. This arrangement of sheets is essentially the same as 'wrapped back binding', but the way of holding them together is decidedly different. After the leaves folded at the middle are placed one upon the other, two pieces of paper or cloth cover, one at the top and one at the bottom, are supplied. The leaves are held together by a piece of thread laced through holes, four, six, or eight in number according to the size of the volume, pierced sideways right through the entire thickness of the back of the book. Obviously this can only be applied to thin volumes. This is known as 'thread binding' (線裝).
As volumes of 'thread binding' are thin and pliable and cannot stand upright on the shelves, they have to lie flat instead. Furthermore, the book does not last long if subject to wear and tear. When placed in piles, the title and volume number of the books are usually written at the lower end of the books. To remedy these handicaps, there are devices to protect and to hold together many volumes. And with the aid of a wrapper known as han (函), the books can be made to stand on their ends like Western book .........
After the introduction of Western books and printing presses, Chinese books on modern topics began to appear in modern commercial paper and cloth bindings like their prototypes in the West. Generally speaking, there are three kinds of bindings in China today, namely, the stitched or stabbed binding for books printed only on one side of soft paper, the paper binding and the cloth binding, the last two being more or less a kind of advanced 'wrapped back binding' with paper and cloth covers respectively. ...
http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.or....inc&issue=020
5. Invention of the mechanical clocks
It is often claimed that the Chinese invented the mechanical clock, as in the example below
The above is incorrect. These Chinese clocks time regulating mechanism that functioned as an escapement required a fluid to function, an could not be mechanized. The Chinese clocks had gears, but so did Islamic clocks at the same time, and the Chinese were no more mechanized than those. The Chinese clocks also required a fluid to power them. They were not even close to being all mechanical. The All mechanical clock, that required no fluid, water, sand, etc., to operate were invented in Europe.The mechanical clock was invented by the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty was the most amazing time in history, from 960 - 1279. https://sites.google.com/a/nvusd.org...nical-was-made