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Thread: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

  1. #1

    Default Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    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:

    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
    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:

    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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    Comments ...
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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 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
    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.
    Last edited by Common Soldier; February 04, 2018 at 02:57 PM. Reason: correct typo

  2. #2
    hellheaven1987's Avatar Comes Domesticorum
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    So your point is?
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by hellheaven1987 View Post
    So your point is?
    Sorry, I forgot to mention my point, sorry about that.

    My point is one should treat with greater skepticism claims about Chinese inventions and discoveries than for other societies.

    While exaggerated and false claims are not unique to China, and you find exaggerated and false claims for other societies, such exaggerated and false claims are made far more frequently for China and more likely to be believed. You can find similar exaggerated claims sometimes made for India or Korea, but pretty much nobody believes them outside of Indians and Koreans. Chinese claims are often taken seriously, and often accepted as fact.

    Now, I want to stress not all the claims made aout China are incorrect, a lot of them are true. China did invent gunpowder and the first guns, and they did invent paper, porcelain and were the first to use cast iron long before everyone else. But there is a lot the Chinese did not invent, and some of their inventions just weren't as great as claimed, and some of the inventions claimed for them weren't actually made by the Chinese. Needham in Science and Civilization flat out states in volume 7 the Chinese were long more advance than others, and it is this kind of exaggeration I am trying to combat. While the Chinese were advance in many fields, they were also behind in a number of fields also, and while the Chinese were advanced, there were others as advanced or more as the Chinese in other fields. While Menzies claimx are so exaggerated few real scholars believe them, there are other more believable but still false claims that many do believe .

    It is a shame really, China has many genuine real achievements there is really no need to claim additional ones, yet some try. I have had a number of debates with others trying to convince others that the Chinese really did believe the world was not a sphere, but flat or kind of dome shaped. it is as if they can't acknowledge that China wasn't the best in every single thing. I read one person state the Chinese had to have believed in a spherical earth because they were so smart. It was inconceivable to them that the others could come up with something the Chinese did not.
    Last edited by Common Soldier; February 01, 2018 at 01:43 PM.

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    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    One should remember that in reading Needham one is reading both a massive scholarly undertaking but also a Polemic against previous err 'meta trends' in Western scholarship both the older veneration of the Classical World and its achievements or the near concurrent to Needham the 'Mediviel Revolution' (Think Lynn White) and the the thundering of MI Finley with his classical era primitive and embedded economic parmigiana etc. One should also never forget the second step the bleed over of scholarship into the realm of general history in a refined CW kind of way and than the use/misuse of history for 'propaganda' by nations, ethnicity, and the like. Also with increasing balkanization of history and related fields by specialty (and by publication language) can lead to lots of odd survivals that can end up in standard texts or the web or or even published in peer review stuff. For example while the ideal of silent reading being all but unknown in the classical would was effectively a myth. Crated by what amounts to off the cuff scholarship over century ago and long since dispelled 60-50 years ago in classical (Greek/Rome) scholarship (often by experts who were surprised to encounter the notion), you can still find it cited in say Biblical scholarship published in the last 5 or10 years, and floating all around the web and in secondary school texts...

    Never forget in addition to all that sources are often obscure, fragmentary and contradictory or late (or you name it), thus depending on interpretation any two even extremely competent scholars with no particular agenda can arrive at a vastly different interpretation of what was, and also be at the mercy of any one new data point dropping out of the dark and back into history.

    With Needham's key work(s) I would say that they likel any broad work on such a scale are bound to be flawed in some cases and of course subject to the risks of new data and also are polemical in some ways - but still a very 'good' thing. He opened a vast pool of data that was often not considered due to language issues, and provoked of course solid push back. It seems to me you are dealing with as I said above the gap between say the current state of the academic debate and state of work at the specialist level and macro level of say how that ends up in generalist texts. A comparable might be the erroneous conclusions of Richard Lefebvre des Noettes about Roman (or more generally Classical) traction systems (read you know attaching a horse to a cart). Excepted for 100 years - loved by the Medieval revolution crowed and primitivist classical economy types and even used uncritically in the oft cited (for all logistics of the ancient world) Engel's book on Alexanders military logistics , when the Noettes was already shown to be wrong. Thus you still find references all over the place that Classical horse transport was massively inefficient and it chocked horses etc.


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    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.
    No need to denigrate the poor wheelbarrow, it does have a very useful place over a small two -wheeler (turning for example) but you do have pay attention to balancing the load. But in any case everyone knows the wheelbarrow was invented in democratic Athens several centuries before China got in the game (or at least firmly attested)
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  5. #5
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Common Soldier View Post
    Now, I want to stress not all the claims made about China are incorrect, a lot of them are true...
    In fact, the Chinese civilization has exercised an enormous influence on much of the rest of the mankind. For instance, exporting writing (eg Japan), intellectual traditions, many art forms, and a serie of technological innovations to Europe and around the world.
    Let us say that until the last 300 years most of the technical advances and innovations which made a real difference to people's lives came from China. For example, paper, the printing press,the blast furnace, competitive examinations, gunpowder, and the ship's compass.
    And, contrary to popular belief, the huge range of Chinese contacts abroad in the late antique/medieval periods is documented/illustrated by the flow of information back to China, with an outstanding archive of knowledge of the world, and that was unmatched in any other civilization.

    Let me tell you a story/a joke (false or true) that rings true. It's a story from the Tang period. A Muslim traveler visited the I Tsung emperor in 872. Quoting, from Of Shoes and Rice, The Shining Fields of Mud, transcending Environments in China and India, page 224,

    The emperor called for a box containing scrolls, which he has put in front of him and passed them to his interpreter, saying "Let him see his master".Recognizing the portraits of the prophets, I said,

    "Here is Noah and his ark, which saved him when the world was drowned..."

    At this words, the Emperor laughed and said. "You have identified Noah, but as for the ark, we do not believe it. It did not reach China or India"

    "That is Moses with his staff", I said.

    "Yes" said the Emperor. "He lived only a short time. His mission lasted only thirty months"

    Then I saw a the Prophet on a camel...and I was moved to tears.

    "Why do you weep?, asked the emperor..."His people founded a glorious empire, though he did live to see it completed"
    ----------

    As you can see, it's a picture of a detached superiority of China,and also a story of the receptivity to knowledge of the rest of the world, a picture of mastery of information.
    --
    Back to Needham, this is a must read,An Examination of the Needham Question
    Last edited by Ludicus; February 03, 2018 at 10:43 AM.
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    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    For example, paper, the printing press,the blast furnace, competitive examinations, gunpowder, and the ship's compass.
    And, contrary to popular belief, the huge range of Chinese contacts abroad in the late antique/medieval periods is documented/illustrated by the flow of information back to China, with an outstanding archive of knowledge of the world, and that was unmatched in any other civilization.
    I think you just kinda proved his point. No - block printing, no press (or least that seems in the East to have been Korea's thing and with a screw), no movable type, no particular implication of diffusion to Gutenberg (per say)... "ship's compass" Not clear to me. South pointing magnetism as toy yes but compass on a ship certainly looks even. From Chinese sources to spawned out of Arab interation - since they were the ones doing the high seas sailing and about even with the first indications of European use. Again this is the point of the OP it seems to me taking what amounts to a technological demonstration toy -> imply a fully developed mariners compass in wide spread use. The Hellenist world certainly demonstrated steam power, but I would not say they pioneered steam engines for work, for example.

    And, contrary to popular belief, the huge range of Chinese contacts abroad in the late antique/medieval periods is documented/illustrated by the flow of information back to China, with an outstanding archive of knowledge of the world, and that was unmatched in any other civilization.
    Umm broadly you could say the same almost any civilization, but than I would like to see some rigorous definition of what makes a purely Chinese civilization innovation and how exactly to quantify unmatched in any other civilization?
    Last edited by conon394; February 03, 2018 at 02:22 PM.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    In fact, the Chinese civilization has exercised an enormous influence on much of the rest of the mankind. For instance, exporting writing (eg Japan), intellectual traditions, many art forms, and a serie of technological innovations to Europe and around the world.
    Let us say that until the last 300 years most of the technical advances and innovations which made a real difference to people's lives came from China. For example, paper, the printing press,the blast furnace, competitive examinations, gunpowder, and the ship's compass.
    And, contrary to popular belief, the huge range of Chinese contacts abroad in the late antique/medieval periods is documented/illustrated by the flow of information back to China, with an outstanding archive of knowledge of the world, and that was unmatched in any other civilization.

    Let me tell you a story/a joke (false or true) that rings true. It's a story from the Tang period. A Muslim traveler visited the I Tsung emperor in 872. Quoting, from Of Shoes and Rice, The Shining Fields of Mud, transcending Environments in China and India, page 224,

    The emperor called for a box containing scrolls, which he has put in front of him and passed them to his interpreter, saying "Let him see his master".Recognizing the portraits of the prophets, I said,

    "Here is Noah and his ark, which saved him when the world was drowned..."

    At this words, the Emperor laughed and said. "You have identified Noah, but as for the ark, we do not believe it. It did not reach China or India"

    "That is Moses with his staff", I said.

    "Yes" said the Emperor. "He lived only a short time. His mission lasted only thirty months"

    Then I saw a the Prophet on a camel...and I was moved to tears.

    "Why do you weep?, asked the emperor..."His people founded a glorious empire, though he did live to see it completed"
    ----------

    As you can see, it's a picture of a detached superiority of China,and also a story of the receptivity to knowledge of the rest of the world, a picture of mastery of information.
    --
    Back to Needham, this is a must read,An Examination of the Needham Question
    This kind of overstatement is exadtly why I wrote the thread. While the Chinese made some critical contributions, many equally critical inventions to the modern world were not made by the Chinese, and the Chinese had nothing to do with, steam engines, airplanes, elecrtricity, telegraphs and the entire ffield of telecommunications.

    And many of the inventions you listed for the Chinese were independently invented by others. Printing, blast furnace and magnetic compass were all invented separately in Europe. For example, it is seldom mentioned that the Chinese did not master the art of printing with metal type until 40 years after Gutenberg, the Chinese earlier attempts were unsuccessful. Of the forms of printing used today, only one, letterpress, was invented by the Chinese, and that is the least important method today.

    And those inventions that were not independently reinvented might have been if the need arose. This is no idle boast - when the Chinese refused to share the secret of making porcelain, the Europeans were eventually able to reinvent it for themselves. Modern gunpowder is a completely different and superior compound than the blackpowder invented by the Chinese.

    And I question the "superiority" of a people who hadn't figured out the world was round when everybody else had. I am not saying they were inferior either, just not better than everyone else. For every field the Chinese led, I can show you another where they lagged.

    Anyways, I don't deny the Chinese made critical contributions, they did, but I do deny statements like "they made the majority of the modern inventions", or that they wesre far in advance of all the other civilizations.
    Last edited by Common Soldier; February 03, 2018 at 03:13 PM.

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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    No - block printing, no press (
    Come on, I mean printing on paper. Printing on paper is a Chinese discovery/innovation.The earliest woodblock-printed paper book that we can reliably date is a Chinese book, Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest printed book. And about the 1000s Bi Sheng invented movable type.The invention of printing by the Chinese spread to Europe, probably through the Arabs.
    The earliest European reference to Chinese books seems to by Jovis, an Italian, about 1550, that mentions that such a present was sent as a gift from the King of Portugal to the Pope, carried by Portuguese traders from China to Goa, and sent to Lisbon.
    That said,our printing press entered India and the east via Goa, I have a book from a limited re-edition of the first book published there, written by Garcia da Horta, a Portuguese physician, published in 1563.
    ...
    As we know, the compass is a navigational tool used for directional orientation, and shows directions relative to geographical cardinal directions.The use of the compass extends over 2,000 years ago to the Han Dynasty between 300 and 200 BC, and was used later for navigation in the Song dynasty.The first models of the compass were made using a naturally magnetized ore of iron called lodestone. Later models were used by taking needles of iron and magnetizing them using lodestone.
    The first inventions of the compass existed in the Han Dynasty, where it was known as the "south-governor".
    Read the full article, The Compass: History, and Impact of the Invention - UK Essays 2017.

    By "unmatched in any other civilization" I mean that although the earliest stages by which a compilation of a data bank on the rest of the world are undocumented, it was possible for Chinese travelers to cross Eurasia by land in the second century BC., and for Chinese traders to reach Ethiopia by sea no long after.The story from the Tang quoted above illustrates nicely the range of Chinese contacts and the compilation of the knowledge and flow of information back to China.They knew much more about the west than the west about the East/China.

    We know that the Romans traded with Indians, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea contains quite a lot of information about trading to India, but says no ships are known to have sailed further. It simply mentions, sic, "a city called Thina", "from which silk is brought by traders". Is it a reference to China? probably. What did the Roman knew about China? close to zero.

    ---
    Download and read, Chinese Culture, Strategy, and Innovation - Springer
    History of Innovation in China, check the conditions for innovation, figure 2.1

    ----
    Quote Originally Posted by Common Soldier View Post
    This kind of overstatement is exadtly why I wrote the thread.
    Well, it's not an overstatement, and your posts are a very clear attempt to downplay the Chinese civilization: "I question the "superiority" of a people who hadn't figured out the world was round when everybody else had". That's the leitmotiv of the opening post.Talking about "the inferiority" of the Chinese Civilization, well, look what happened to invaders (barbarian neighbours of the Sung dynasty, Mongol conquerors in the 13th century, or the Manchu in the 17 th century), see what happened to them.Their rulers quickly became thoroughly imbued with Chinese traditions. And let's keep in mind that Confucianism is a reminder of how much of the world of our own day owes to the world of his.
    Last edited by Ludicus; February 03, 2018 at 07:10 PM.
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    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    I mean that although the earliest stages by which a compilation of a data bank on the rest of the world are undocumented, it was possible for Chinese travelers to cross Eurasia by land in the second century BC., and for Chinese traders to reach Ethiopia by sea no long after.The story from the Tang quoted above illustrates nicely the range of Chinese contacts and the compilation of the knowledge and flow of information back to China.They knew much more about the west than the west about the East/China.
    You basing all that on apocryphal Tang story??? Sure I guess that's how they got the Athenian Wheelbarrow.

    We know that the Romans traded with Indians, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea contains quite a lot of information about trading to India, but says no ships are known to have sailed further. It simply mentions, sic, "a city called China", "from which silk is brought by traders". Is it a reference to China? probably. What did the Roman knew about China? close to zero.
    So the sum of all the Roman's knew is one sailing manual?

    Really do at least compare Apples to Apples - Tang Dynasty, what 600 - 900 years after the The Periplus. A time when say the Byzantines where able to acquire silk worms (eggs/larva)- kinda puts the shoe on the same foot for the same era - if you want to start randomly deciding on diffusion directions... And of course the Chinese do not seem have made it to Rome circa the Periplus era.
    Last edited by conon394; February 04, 2018 at 08:44 AM.
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  10. #10

    Default Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    
    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    Come on, I mean printing on paper. Printing on paper is a Chinese discovery/innovation.The earliest woodblock-printed paper book that we can reliably date is a Chinese book, Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest printed book. And about the 1000s Bi Sheng invented movable type.The invention of printing by the Chinese spread to Europe, probably through the Arabs. The earliest European reference to Chinese books seems to by Jovis, an Italian, about 1550, that mentions that such a present was sent as a gift from the King of Portugal to the Pope, carried by Portuguese traders from China to Goa, and sent to Lisbon. That said,our printing press entered India and the east via Goa, I have a book from a limited re-edition of the first book published there, written by Garcia da Horta, a Portuguese physician, published in 1563...

    As we know, the compass is a navigational tool used for directional orientation, and shows directions relative to geographical cardinal directions.The use of the compass extends over 2,000 years ago to the Han Dynasty between 300 and 200 BC, and was used later for navigation in the Song dynasty.The first models of the compass were made using a naturally magnetized ore of iron called lodestone. Later models were used by taking needles of iron and magnetizing them using lodestone.The first inventions of the compass existed in the Han Dynasty, where it was known as the "south-governor".Read the full article, The Compass: History, and Impact of the Invention - UK Essays 2017.By "unmatched in any other civilization" I mean that although the earliest stages by which a compilation of a data bank on the rest of the world are undocumented, it was possible for Chinese travelers to cross Eurasia by land in the second century BC., and for Chinese traders to reach Ethiopia by sea no long after.The story from the Tang quoted above illustrates nicely the range of Chinese contacts and the compilation of the knowledge and flow of information back to China.They knew much more about the west than the west about the East/China.We know that the Romans traded with Indians, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea contains quite a lot of information about trading to India, but says no ships are known to have sailed further. It simply mentions, sic, "a city called Thina", "from which silk is brought by traders". Is it a reference to China? probably. What did the Roman knew about China? close to zero.---Download and read, Chinese Culture, Strategy, and Innovation - SpringerHistory of Innovation in China, check the conditions for innovation, figure 2.1----

    Well, it's not an overstatement, and your posts are a very clear attempt to downplay the Chinese civilization: "I question the "superiority" of a people who hadn't figured out the world was round when everybody else had". That's the leitmotiv of the opening post.Talking about "the inferiority" of the Chinese Civilization, well, look what happened to invaders (barbarian neighbours of the Sung dynasty, Mongol conquerors in the 13th century, or the Manchu in the 17 th century), see what happened to them.Their rulers quickly became thoroughly imbued with Chinese traditions. And let's keep in mind that Confucianism is a reminder of how much of the world of our own day owes to the world of his.
    What you wrote demonstrates exactly why you can't trust half of what you read about China.1. That the Chinese first invented printing is not being disputed. But Gutenberg's printing press differs from Chinese printing in virtually every key specifics, and there is no evidence that Gtuenberg had any knowledge of Chinese printing. The ink, the metal used for the type, how the type was made, and the use of a press all are different than Chinese printing. The Arabs didn't use printing of text until 400 years after Gutenberg, so it was most unlikely they could have transmitedtransmitted tedhnology they themselves were ignorant of. And printing began not in the port cities where ideas of Chinese pprintings must have come through but in the interior of Europe, well aware from any such ports, or transmission routes over land routes.

    As far as the Chinese book given to the Portuguese court, we don't even know if it was a printed book, since many Chinese books remained handwritten until the 19rh century, at least 300 years later than Europe. And in any case, a book will not tell you the process of how it is made, unless the book was describing the process of printing, which it did not, and so is completely irrevalent to the discussion, as doestone reference :to Goa. Chinese did not have printing presses, their printing did not use presses, and the screw press was completely unknown them and not used. Chinese were ignorant of screws. And I happen to know the Portuguese brought a Gutenberg press to Goa, your book was not printed using Chinese printing methods.

    As for the magnetic compass, the first Chinese reference to using the compass for navigation at sea was thousand years after it was allegedly invented in China, and only a 100 years before the first European reference to a compass used for sea going navigation. That it took a 1000 years for the Chinese to figure out using a compass for navigation at sea is rather poor. The First European compass reference predate the first Muslim reference, and one of the arab word for compass appears to be borrowed from Italian, all indicating the Muslims did not transmit the compass to Europe. And from the first the European compass pointed north, while Chinese compasses pointed as South. Medieval compass were not like modern ones, they were often arrow shaped, or otherwise assymetric bdtween the north and south poles, so it did make a difference whicn say the compass was designed to point. In addition, we have no indication in any writing the Chinese were even aware that every magnet had both and north and south pole, but we do have writing the Europeans were specifically of that fact. We have no evidence that shows any transmision of the compass from China to Europe, and several pieces that indicated it was an independent invention (north versus south pointing, any/possible middle man for transmitting the compass from China, like the Arabs, are only shown using the compass after the Europeans, the points of the compass were different between Chinese and European compasses).

    (PS - Needham gives a good possible reason for why magnetic compasses became popular when they did, because it was due to availability of steel needles.

    The use of steel needles helped enable the use the magnetic compass. If you magnetized regular iron needles, they lose their magnetism easier than a steel needle, and shaping a naturally magnetic piece of iron might cause it to lose its magnetic property, since the heating of iron in order to shape it into a needle might cause it to be heated past the Curie point, after which the iron will lose its magnetic properties. Using a spoon or fish shape magnetic would require less working of the magnetic to shape, but it is not nearly as practical for determining a bearing direction as a needle. Hence it might not have been until the widespread of steel needles that the magnetic compass became practical. I don't know when steel needles became widely available in China, but it wasn't until the middle ages that steel needles became common in Europe, Romans and Greeks using bronze needles for sewing. )

    And while the Chinese themselves record representatives from the Roman Emperor arriving at the Chinese court, the Chinese representatives admitted failing in their attempts to reach the Roman Empire and Rome. Also, while men like Marco Polo traveled to China and recorded their journey, no Chinese ever traveled to Europe and recorded their journey for their fellow Chinese. (Except perhaps after European sailing ships arrived in China). Also, while Roman manufactured goods like glass ware, and silver trays have been found in China, no Chinese manufactured goods have been found in ancient Roman sites. Although the Chinese silk likely would have all decayed away by now. Chinese knowledge of the Roman Empire was very meager, and the Roman Empire knowledge of China could have been greater, but was lost during the dark ages. The Roman envoys in China that Chinese sources attest to are no recorded in any Roman source we now have, for example, and we know that many works were lost with the fall of the Roman Empire.
    ,

    PS

    Ludicus,

    While it may seem I am denying the influence of the Chinese civilization, I would like to make it clear I am not. I have always acknowledged the influence and debt modern civilization owes to the Chinese.

    However, I am saying that other civilizations, such as the Greek and Roman, have had just as great an influence, if not more. The barbarians around the Romans also adopted Roman civilization, adopting the Roman writing and the Roman language for learning, for example. Long after the Roman Empire was gone, a Swede created the modern scientific system of naming animals and plants based on the Roman language, and Sweden was a country that was always far beyond the boundaries of the limits of the Roman Empire. The name of both Kaiser and Tsar both derive from the Roman title Caesar, and the eagle of imperial Germany and Russia derive from the eagle standards of the Roman legions. The world uses a calendar directly derived from the Roman calendar, not Chinese one.

    Great is the influence of Confucius, but equally great is the influence is that of Greek philosophers like Socrates.

    And while the Chinese were without doubt the first to invent printing, and a great achievement it was, the method of printing that truly revolutionized the world by all evidence appears to be an independent invention. Had European printing depended on Chinese methods, the impact of printing, while significant, would not have been as revolutionary as it was. Printing had a enormous impact in China, but you simply did not see anywhere near the same growth in the number of new book titles as was seen in Europe after the introduction of the printing press. Moreover, the intaglio printing methods of engraving and etching, were invented in Europe about 50 years or so after the invention of the printing press, and it was through these methods that many of the maps displaying the modern European discoveries were printed. Engraving and etching allowed finer details than could be achieved using the letter press method of the Chinese, and most of the maps printed in Europe were printed using engravings.

    The growth of the book sector in Western Europe over the 1300 years studied by the authors is enormous. Until the year 700, around 120 books per year were produced, but a millenium later in 1790 20 million copies were printed. The most decisive development for the increased book production was the invention of the printing press. Buringh & Van Zanden note: "in the year 1550 alone, for example, some 3 million books were produced in Western Europe, more than the total number of manuscripts produced during the fourteenth century as a whole". https://ourworldindata.org/books
    The overwhelming majority of maps produced between the mid-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries are engravings, normally on copper http://www.maphistory.info/understanding.html
    Note, engraving is not a method used by the Chinese as I previously explained. Printing spread geographical knowledge in Europe in a way it did not in China.

    Simply because the Chinese were the first to invent something doesn't mean their's was the most important or the ones responsible for spreading to the rest of the world. A hypothetical civilization of Atlantis might have invented all kinds of things first, but, so what? Whatever knowledge these hypothetical people of Atlantis had disappeared with them when their land sank beneath the waves, and so unimportant to the history of the world. Concrete in the modern world plays an indispensable role, but the Roman contribution to modern concrete is rather questionable, since it is not clear to what degree, if any, modern inventors of concrete were influenced by Romans. Romans might have been the first to use concrete, but the world might not be indebted to them for its importance today. Likewise with a number of the Chinese inventions, but by no means all or even most. The world clearly owes an enormous debt to China for the invention of paper, and gunpowder, and the use of gunpowder in warfare, whose worldwide use was directly derived from China. But other inventions that was not the case.

    If one must judge of which had the greater influence, then it is clear that the Greco-Roman civilization had the most influence, not because it was in anyway superior, but because it, being the ancestral civilization of the Westerners who were responsible for creating the modern world. It was westerns who first sailed around the world, and tied all the continents of the world together economically and culturally for the first time in history, creating the inventions (ships regularly sailing around the world, steam ships, trains, telegraphs) that made it possible.


    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    One should remember that in reading Needham one is reading both a massive scholarly undertaking but also a Polemic against previous err 'meta trends' in Western scholarship both the older veneration of the Classical World and its achievements or the near concurrent to Needham the 'Mediviel Revolution' (Think Lynn White) and the the thundering of MI Finley with his classical era primitive and embedded economic parmigiana etc. One should also never forget the second step the bleed over of scholarship into the realm of general history in a refined CW kind of way and than the use/misuse of history for 'propaganda' by nations, ethnicity, and the like. Also with increasing balkanization of history and related fields by specialty (and by publication language) can lead to lots of odd survivals that can end up in standard texts or the web or or even published in peer review stuff. For example while the ideal of silent reading being all but unknown in the classical would was effectively a myth. Crated by what amounts to off the cuff scholarship over century ago and long since dispelled 60-50 years ago in classical (Greek/Rome) scholarship (often by experts who were surprised to encounter the notion), you can still find it cited in say Biblical scholarship published in the last 5 or10 years, and floating all around the web and in secondary school texts...

    Never forget in addition to all that sources are often obscure, fragmentary and contradictory or late (or you name it), thus depending on interpretation any two even extremely competent scholars with no particular agenda can arrive at a vastly different interpretation of what was, and also be at the mercy of any one new data point dropping out of the dark and back into history.

    With Needham's key work(s) I would say that they likel any broad work on such a scale are bound to be flawed in some cases and of course subject to the risks of new data and also are polemical in some ways - but still a very 'good' thing. He opened a vast pool of data that was often not considered due to language issues, and provoked of course solid push back. It seems to me you are dealing with as I said above the gap between say the current state of the academic debate and state of work at the specialist level and macro level of say how that ends up in generalist texts. A comparable might be the erroneous conclusions of Richard Lefebvre des Noettes about Roman (or more generally Classical) traction systems (read you know attaching a horse to a cart). Excepted for 100 years - loved by the Medieval revolution crowed and primitivist classical economy types and even used uncritically in the oft cited (for all logistics of the ancient world) Engel's book on Alexanders military logistics , when the Noettes was already shown to be wrong. Thus you still find references all over the place that Classical horse transport was massively inefficient and it chocked horses etc.
    While erroneous ideas can persist long after they have been debunked, as the persistence of the totally incorrect idea that the medieval Europeans believed in a flat earth shows, in the case of Needham it happens for to often to be due to just the fragmentary nature of scholarship of Needham's time.

    While some of Needham's incorrect ideas indeed might have been due to the scholarship of the time, such as his claim the Roman did not know of cranks and crankshafts, the role of the Ming/Qing scholar Yang Guangxian was simply to prominent to have been overlooked due to the fragmentary nature of scholarship at the time. It not just one example, but a number of examples where Needham glosses over or gives short thrift to inventions and discoveries where the Chinese lagged behind others. The transition of written material from the scroll to the codex format cries out for a discussion of what role, if any, outside influences had in this switch, given the fact that China's trading partner's had centuries before made the switch. That the Chinese too eventually realized the limitations of the scroll format and abandoned it makes one wonder why it took the Chinese so long, given it had to have been exposed to codex format through its extensive trade with others. But it is a question Needham never asks, just like he never ask why the Chinese persisted in a belief of a flat, non spherical earth.

    Nailed iron horseshoes is another example. Without iron horseshoes, even with an adequate horse collar, the use of horses for heavy duty hauling will be limited, the stress on horses hooves becoming an issue with unshod horses. While recent studies have challenged the previous belief of the inadequacies of Roman horse collars, there is no evidence and much against that the Romans used iron (or bronze) nailed horseshoes. Roman roads were inadequate for the use of heavy horse carts, and Roman iconography doesn't indicate the extensive use of horses in farming and heavy duty hauling that one sees in medieval illustrations. Horseshoes played a vital role in of horses for becoming the prime animal for hauling and farming, and certainly worth merit of discussion, if only to current state of lack of knowledge. But Needham pretty much ignores the topic completely, again I suspect because an analysis would reveal Needham lagged the West in the use of horseshoes.


    No need to denigrate the poor wheelbarrow, it does have a very useful place over a small two -wheeler (turning for example) but you do have pay attention to balancing the load. But in any case everyone knows the wheelbarrow was invented in democratic Athens several centuries before China got in the game (or at least firmly attested)
    I am not trying to denigrate poor Chinese "wheelbarrow", bu it was The Chinese simply was not a wheelbarrow in the European sense, and served a completely different purpose. The benefit to be gained from the Chinese wheelbarrow over using a small 2 wheel cart is rather marginal and dispensable, it is not that tough to turn a small 2 wheel cart, and the requirement of balancing the load a drawback.

    The evidence of a wheel barrow in ancient Athens is very flimsy, and in any case, and if it existed, any knowledge of it disappeared with the collapse of the Roman civilization in the west. The wheelbarrow as we think of it was invented in the middle ages or possibly reinvented.

    It is just such overstated claims for China that there is an issue with. It is not just an isolated, one time example, but happens frequently. For example, the oft made claim that the Chinese invented the escapement for clocks is another of numerous such examples. The Chinese so called "escapement" worked on completely different principle from European clocks and all modern time pieces, and could not be mechanized. It really wasn't an escapement as such, just something that served the same function. All modern time pieces, including atomic clocks, worked on the same principles as first devised for European mechanical clocks, using an oscillating motion to regulate the time, atomic clocks merely using the oscillation of atoms instead of some mechanism, but the principle is the same.
    Last edited by Abdülmecid I; February 12, 2018 at 04:29 AM. Reason: Consecutive posts merged.

  11. #11
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Common Soldier View Post
    you can't trust half of what you read about China.
    Why should I trust you? however, if you are a truly expert on the subject, if you haven't published your work, it's time to start.I wonder, how to become an expert in anything?
    ----
    In praise of the oldest living civilization in history - China has the longest continuous history of any country in the world—3,500 years of written history,
    Francis Bacon,on the Significance of Chinese Inventions,

    "It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries. These are to be seen nowhere more clearly than those three which were unknown to the ancients [the Greeks], and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder, and the magnet.
    For these three have changed the whole face and stage of things throughout the world, the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries
    ."

    ------

    Brief but significant excerpts from "The Flow of History- A Dynamic and Graphic Approach to Teaching History" Chris Butler.

    The Shang Dynasty (c.1500-1028 B.C.E.)

    China saw several technical developments during the Shang period in the way of silk textiles, carving in ivory and jade, and especially bronze technology. Bronze artifacts from the Shang period are some of the finest examples of metalworking found in any Bronze Age culture.
    Another advance during this time was writing. Chinese writing was and remains ideographic, being based on pictures rather than sounds. Such a script required many more symbols to memorize, making it harder to read and seriously restricting the number of literate people. However, ideographic writing had one benefit.

    Since it was not based on the sounds of any particular language, it was readily adaptable to different dialects of Chinese and even non-Chinese languages in East Asia such as Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. As a result, Chinese culture spread and became the predominant cultural influence across East Asia.

    Han Dynasty (202 B.C.E.-220 C.E.)

    The idea of hiring government officials on the basis of ability rather than birth or personal connections traces its roots back to the Chinese civil service exams of the Han dynasty. Despite China's varying fortunes, the Chinese civil service was generally the best in the world until the 1800's.

    Even after the demise of the civil service exam system, this emphasis on education has remained a powerful factor in East Asian societies, helping to account for their high literacy rates and rapid economic development in recent history.

    ...especially in times of turmoil, semi-civilized nomads would often prove to be...dangerous to China. But, as always, such invaders would eventually be absorbed by Chinese civilization. As the historian, Fernand Braudel put it, China let in such invaders and then shut the door behind them. Science and technology flourished, making China the leading culture in those fields for centuries.

    The Six Dynasties Period (220-581 C.E.)

    ...In addition, there were several technological innovations to compensate for labor shortages at this time: the wheel barrow...etc..all of which allowed Chinese culture to prosper more than the Germanic heirs of Rome were able to at this time in Western Europe.

    The T'ang Dynasty (618-906)

    ...Chinese culture and technology spread to Korea, Japan, and even the tribes in Central Asia. One example of this influence was the spread of rag paper, which was invented, in the early Christian era.

    Most likely it reached the Muslim world as a result of the Battle of the Talas River in 751, when the victorious Arabs captured Chinese technicians skilled in its manufacture.

    Eventually, it would spread to Western Europe where it would be combined with another Chinese invention, block printing to create the printing press, one of the most dynamic and important inventions in history. While it is a European invention, its roots lie deep within Chinese history.

    ... exchange notes, known as "flying money", proved to be popular, since they eliminated the need for carrying heavy coins. The use of credit slips soon spread among Chinese merchants and money changers and eventually westward to the Arab world, where they were known as sakk, and eventually to Western Europe where the term sakk became check.

    Meanwhile, in 1024, the Chinese government would expand the use of credit slips by issuing the first true paper currency in history.

    The Sung Dynasty (960-1279)

    ...Several technological innovations helped the Chinese in their maritime ventures.

    First of all there was the Chinese sailing ship, the junk, which was faster and several times larger than any European ships then sailing. It also had a sternpost rudder and separate watertight compartments, (*) something European sailing ships would not be able to match until the 1800's.

    Another invention brought back by Arab traders to Europe that would be vital to later European explorations was the compass. For centuries, the Chinese had used the compass for divination and fortune telling before applying it to navigation.

    Two other Chinese inventions deserve mention here: the water-powered clock and gunpowder. The Chinese clock was powered through a complex system of gears and escapements. In addition to keeping daily time, it also tracked celestial time and the movement of the sun, moon, and planets for astrological purposes so the emperor would know the best time to embark upon various projects and ventures.

    ...the clock made its way to Europe where it would be adapted in the later Middle Ages to tracking daily time. Eventually, the clock would heavily influence Western Civilization's concept of time by breaking it into precise and discrete units that still regiment our lives today.

    Gunpowder, according to legend, was the accidental result of a Taoist alchemical experiment for replacing salt with saltpetre (the active ingredient in gunpowder). Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese did use gunpowder for military purposes in the form of rockets and firing projectiles out of bamboo and metal tubes.

    Most likely, it made its way westward to Europe thanks to the Mongol conquest of China in the 1200's. Eventually, the Chinese invention of gunpowder would be instrumental in the rise of the nation state in Western Europe and Europe's colonial dominance of the globe in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

    The Mongol Empire (1279-1368)

    ...Among the Mongols' ruling policies was replacing the civil service exam system with the use of non-Chinese governors and officials and even a foreign script. However, in the 1300’s, the civil service exam was restored as the Mongols in turn succumbed to the influence of Chinese civilization.

    The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)

    China's cultural vibrancy can be seen in several aspects of the Ming era. For one thing, architecture flourished, as the Chinese constructed arched bridges and tall pagodas with graceful curved roofs.
    As stated above, the setting of these buildings in broad horizontal planes provided a more balanced effect than the lofty spires of cathedrals one found in Europe at that time.
    ... Ironically, the Jesuit leader, Matteo Ricci, won court favor by presenting the emperor with a wind-up clock, which, of course, was ultimately derived from the Chinese water clock.
    ... Europe learned a great deal from China as well, such as the idea for its first suspension bridge, built in Austria in 1741, over 1000 years after the first such bridge had been built in China.
    ------
    On a side note- innovation versus invention- building on the distinction made by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1961), "invention" has come to mean the creation of something new (i.e., any new traits that appear), while "innovation" refers to traits or characters that are selected and adapted to fitan environment (O’Brien 2011:62).
    ------

    Chinese Inventions and Machines - Springer
    It's about the development of Chinese machinery up to the end of the seventeenth century. Quoting,

    It is evident that Chinese technical know-how surpassed the engineering skills in Europe or the Islamic world during the same period of time. It is also curious to reflect that some of their discoveries did not reach us (or were not reinvented in the West) until the middle or the end of the eighteenth century.
    For over 2,000 years Chinese society was pre-eminent in technological development.

    It was only at the beginning of the fifteenth century that it began to decline and was passed by Europe. Its technology began with agricultural, textile, and war machines; it was enhanced with hydraulic machines; and it was completed with the ingenious clocks and automatons that were built while the rest of the world was just waking up.
    Check the chapters - On War Machines - On Textile Machinery - On Hydraulic Machinery - On Clocks and Automatons - On Continuity over the Millennia

    --------
    A simple overview and short summary of some Chinese/innovations/inventions,

    1) alcohol - according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, chemical analysis of the residue confirmed that a fermented drink made of grapes, hawthorn berries, honey, and rice was being produced in 7000–6650 BC. "Fermented beverages of pre- and proto-historic China"
    By using a combined chemical, archaeobotanical, and archaeological approach, we present evidence here that ancient Chinese fermented beverage production does indeed extend back nearly nine millennia.

    2) Mechanical Clock - The Chinese did not invent the first clock of any kind, merely the first mechanical one. Su Sung's hydro-mechanical clock was possibly the greatest mechanical invention of the middle Ages. This clock-really an astronomical instrument that served as a clock--operated by dripping water that powered a wheel that made one full revolution in 24 hours. An iron and bronze system of wheels, shafts, hooks, pins, locks, and interconnected rods made the clock work. This system caused the automatic chiming of a bell on the hour and the beating of a drum every quarter hour.

    3) Tea - likely originated in southwest China during the Shang Dynasty as a medicinal drink. First introduced to Portuguese priests/ merchants in China during the 16th century. From China the Portuguese took to Europe, tea - it was introduced to England by Catherine of Braganza, on her marriage to Charles II.

    4) How to make Silk - It is Chinese people that invented how to harvest the silk and use it in clothing and paper thousands years ago. The oldest evidence of silk made by silkworms has been found buried in 8,500-year-old tombs in China, revealing that people may have used the luxurious material thousands of years earlier than previously thought, a new study finds. Oldest Evidence of Silk Found in 8,500-Year-Old Tombs - Live Science

    5) Advanced Iron and steel smelting - Around 2500 years ago, when no one in Europe or the Middle East could melt even one ounce of iron the Chinese were casting multi-ton iron objects. It was not until the mid-1700's in Europe that such feats of metallurgy were achieved in Britain, the technically most advanced country of Europe.
    Iron and steel in ancient China: origins and technical change
    The origins and subsequent development of iron production in China is one of the most important subjects in the whole history of technology. From a very early date the Chinese smelted iron as a liquid and rapidly developed techniques of treating the resultant cast iron that were not attained elsewhere for many hundred years afterwards.
    6) Porcelain - originated in China. The invention of porcelain in China was a development that changed the face of art throughout the world. The origin of porcelain pottery-making technology dates back 6000 years to the Neolithic period, and the related technologies and skills were continuously developed throughout early Chinese history. By the eleventh century, it was being shipped to Japan, India, Arabia, Turkey, and Africa. The Portuguese began exporting porcelain directly to Western Europe in the sixteenth century, and by the late seventeenth century Europeans had developed a passion for porcelain "china".

    7) Compass - See previous post. Zhu Yu's book was the first book in history to mention the use of the mariner's magnetic compass for navigation at sea.

    8) Gunpowder - Early references to gunpowder can be found in the Daoist book Zhenyuan miaodao yaolue, written circa 850, and gunpowder was utilized in Chinese warfare as early as the 10th century. However it was not until the Wujing Zongyao that the exact chemical formulas for early Chinese gunpowder was revealed.

    9) Movable- type printing - Bi Sheng of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) invented movable clay type printing. When adapted to the Roman alphabet, this system worked surprisingly well.
    All later printing methods such as wooden-type, copper-type and lead-type printing were developed on the basis of Bi Sheng'idea. See above and previous post. Additionally, read the full paper, a precious book, highly recommended -The beginnings of printing at Macao - University of Macau Library


    10) Paper-making - Well, see above. In China, where paper was invented, the earliest newspaper that has survived was apparently circulated in Beijing in the year 748.

    -----
    (*)
    Oceanography: An Invitation to Marine Science

    During the middle ages Europe received from China the sternpost rudder, the magnetic compass, multiple masts with multiple sails, and the lug sail.
    The lug sail
    INFLUENCE AND EVOLUTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE OF THE BATTEN LUG SAIL...
    Since the forefathers of the ancient Chinese populated the highlands of central Asia some 700,000 years ago, this eastern culture has often eclipsed the western world with its technological advances. Perhaps the single most poignant example of China’s historical primacy is its long history of naval innovation. Developments in ancient China frequently predate similar technology in Europe by centuries.
    Among China’s staggering collection of naval achievements are paddle-wheeled warships, 150 m-long super-ships, articulated vessels, multi-layer hulls, watertight bulkheads, dampening compartments designed to flood, stern sweeps and yulohs, lee-boards, centreboards, the stern rudder, and the compass. In addition to this litany of innovations, it has long been believed that the Chinese shipwright’s remarkable independence of thought gave rise to yet another development, and perhaps one of its greatest, the batten lug sail.
    ---
    Quote Originally Posted by Common Soldier View Post
    However, I am saying that other civilizations, such as the Greek and Roman, have had just as great an influence
    Different subjects.
    Now we are talking, but that's deeply offensive to the Greeks. (j/k).
    You see I'm more Greek than many Greeks. In the West, we are all Greeks. Between 800 and 300 BC, people who spoke Greek made a rapid series of intellectual discoveries that propelled the Mediterranean world to a new level of civilization. The inquiring minds of the Greeks were absolutely extraordinary; Greek articulacy colonized the Roman mind.Suffice to say that the most vivid insights into the minds of all inhabitants of the Roman Empire were produced by the great celebrities who wrote in Greek.
    I highly recommend one of my favourite books, The Ancient Greeks, Ten Ways They Shaped the World. Edith Hall.
    Last edited by Ludicus; February 04, 2018 at 04:00 PM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  12. #12
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    You see I'm more Greek than many Greeks. In the West, we are all Greeks. Between 800 and 300 BC, people who spoke Greek made a rapid series of intellectual discoveries that propelled the Mediterranean world to a new level of civilization. The inquiring minds of the Greeks were absolutely extraordinary; Greek articulacy colonized the Roman mind.Suffice to say that the most vivid insights into the minds of all inhabitants of the Roman Empire were produced by the great celebrities who wrote in Greek.
    And they did so without the slightest bit of Chinese influence, which clearly doesn't match your original claim that China influenced "much of mankind" like it's the mother ship of human civilization. Here is how it is: Except of paper, gunpowder and perhaps arts, China was irrelevant for global history/culture.
    Last edited by LinusLinothorax; February 05, 2018 at 05:47 AM. Reason: Apostrophe

  13. #13

    Default Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    Why should I trust you? however, if you are a truly expert on the subject, if you haven't published your work, it's time to start.I wonder, how to become an expert in anything? 
    You can look up my sources if don't trust what I say. If you need references that I haven't provided, just ask. If you find flaws with my arguments, you can't point out the flaws.

    And why should we trust what someone said about the Chinese simply because someone said it?


    What is the basis for your ideas and works? Have you done any research for yourself, or are you merely repeating what others have said without examining the basis of what they reported?

    As for publishing, If I were interested in that I would be discussing this in a scholarly site, not a kind of site like this. I am amateur, not a professional, but that doesn't make my points any less valid. In the past, many great scientist and historians were essentially amateurs

    ----
    In praise of the oldest living civilization in history - China has the longest continuous history of any country in the world—3,500 years of written history,
    Francis Bacon,on the Significance of Chinese Inventions,

    "It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries. These are to be seen nowhere more clearly than those three which were unknown to the ancients [the Greeks], and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder, and the magnet.
    For these three have changed the whole face and stage of things throughout the world, the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries
    ." 
    Francis Bacon, if it is the famous Renaissance scholar, wrote before the steam engine, the steam ship, the train, and electricity, all of which had as great an impact on the daily lives of people as the inventions whidh Bacon named. Trains, for the first time in history, made land transportation cheaper than by sea, and allowed an ordinary person to travel in a day what would have taken a rich person a week by other modes. The might of the might Chinese Empire was no match for the superior technology of British steam ships in the Opium Wars. And telegraphy allowed a message to be sent in a day half way around the world what would have taken many months otherwise.

    And I as I already showed, both the compass and the printing press were independent European reinventions. The forms that transformed the world were the European versions, not the Chinese ones. Chinese block printint did not have the far reaching effect Francis Bacon described in China nor would it have had it in Europe either. It was the printing press, not just printing that revolutionized the world.


    The Shang Dynasty (c.1500-1028 B.C.E.)

    China saw several technical developments during the Shang period in the way of silk textiles, carving in ivory and jade, and especially bronze technology. Bronze artifacts from the Shang period are some of the finest examples of metalworking found in any Bronze Age culture.

    Another advance during this time was writing. Chinese writing was and remains ideographic, being based on pictures rather than sounds. Such a script required many more symbols to memorize, making it harder to read and seriously restricting the number of literate people. However, ideographic writing had one benefit.

    Since it was not based on the sounds of any particular language, it was readily adaptable to different dialects of Chinese and even non-Chinese languages in East Asia such as Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. As a result, Chinese culture spread and became the predominant cultural influence across East Asia. 
    Other civilization had their achievements. The written history of the Flood stories like Noah's are far older than any Chinese tale we have record of, and European cities like Athens have been continously inhabited for more than 3500 years as a city of note.

    As for Chinese writing, while it has some advantages, its great complexity has even greater disadvantages, which is why the Vietnamese abandoned the Chinese script when the Latin base script came along, and the Koreans seem to be abandoning the Chinese based script in favor of their won locally invented alphabet. North Korean I know has completely abandoned the script, and South Korea seems to be switching from it. Nor were the Chinese ever successful in convincing their Mongolian neignhbors in taking up Chinese writing. The Latin script, on the other hand, is the predominant script in 4 continents, and widely used by the other 2. The Turks switch from the writing they had been using for centuries to the Latin script all on their own. Only those countries near China adopted Chinese characters for writing.

    Han Dynasty (202 B.C.E.-220 C.E.)

    The idea of hiring government officials on the basis of ability rather than birth or personal connections traces its roots back to the Chinese civil service exams of the Han dynasty. Despite China's varying fortunes, the Chinese civil service was generally the best in the world until the 1800's. 
    In theory, yes the Chinese civil service was supposedly good, but in practice the Chinese civil service didn't seem to manage Ming and Qing dynasty China that much better than other empires, such as the British or Roman.

    And in areas such as electing officials, legislative bodies, elected offices with set requirements the Chinese lagged far behind. Republican Rome was an example was the inspiration and basis for modern governments like the US, while imperial China is not the basis of any modern government, not even China.

    
    Even after the demise of the civil service exam system, this emphasis on education has remained a powerful factor in East Asian societies, helping to account for their high literacy rates and rapid economic development in recent history. 
    Did Japan use the imperial civil service exam system?

    ...especially in times of turmoil, semi-civilized nomads would often prove to be...dangerous to China. But, as always, such invaders would eventually be absorbed by Chinese civilization. As the historian, Fernand Braudel put it, China let in such invaders and then shut the door behind them. Science and technology flourished, [I]making China the leading culture in those fields for centuries.
    The various barbarian cultures in Europe absorbed the Roman culture, adopting its script, and usinng its language for scientific and cultural purposes. China lagged in the field of civil engineering, the oldest Chinese stone bridge was 500 years after the Romans, and China boasted no form of indirect heating such as tne Romand had, nor did they build any civic structures like artificial harboe similar to Caesaria in Israel, or light houses, or public buildings capable of seating large numbers of people, such as the 50,000 for the Coliseum, or the thousands in the public baths of Rome. There is no actual evidence of ancient Chinese ships that compare in the size to the giant ships that we know existed from ancient Rome, based on both written sources and archaeological remains (Caligula ship, Lake Nemo ships), and it is not until the middle ages that we have evidence of ships matching the size of those of ancient Rome.

    That China was one of the leading civilizations is of course true. That it was THE leading civilization more advanced than other is point of that is not supported by the fact.


    ...In addition, there were several technological innovations to compensate for labor shortages at this time: the wheel barrow...etc..all of which allowed Chinese culture to prosper more than the Germanic heirs of Rome were able to at this time in Western Europe. 
    Again, another example of why you can't trust half of what you read about China. The Chinese wheelbarrow saved no labor, a 2 wheel cart doesn't take any more labor to move than the Chinese one wheel cart called a Chinese wheelbarrow. The European wheelbarrow most definitely was a labor saving device, replacing 2 men carrying a load to one man just pushing a wheelbarrow. Where illustrations formerly showed 2 men carrying loads, they showed just one man transporting similar loads with a wheelbarrow. Going from 2 to one man is definitely a labor saving.

    And Europe had many labor saving device China did not. Water powdered sawmills date back to Roman times, aand were continued to be used in the middle ages, while the first Chinese sawmill didn't date until the 16th century. Anyone who has ever sawed large logs by hand with a manual saw knows what back breaking labor it was. The first water powered slitting mills, which produced the slits of iron required as a precursor for making nails, date back to medieval times?. And Chinese printing never completely replaced the labor intensive method of writing books out by hand, as European printing did. The widespread European farmers reliance on horses for ploughing meant that more acres could be farmed in the same time due to the faster speed of the horse. Most of China relied on the slower ox, or the very labor intensive rice farming. (Rice used to be a big crop in the Southern US, until the end of slavery dried up the cheap labor to make it profirble).

    China had its share of labor saving devices, true, but some of their labor saving devices they later abandoned, like the textile machinery, while European labor saving devices continued to advanced. While China was richer per capita in the early middle age, that doesn't seem to be true in the later middle ages, and the richest parts of Europe were higher than China in the early modern era. China remained richer by virtue of its larger population until even with its much larger population, it was smaller than the richer European countries. But calculating wealth is very tricky in the past. All we can say for certain is that by the 19th century, when China was crushed in the Opium wars, it was much poorer than Europe, and during the European dark ages in the early medieval period, it was richer. All else is just estimating.

    ...Chinese culture and technology spread to Korea, Japan, and even the tribes in Central Asia. One example of this influence was the spread of rag paper, which was invented, in the early Christian era.

    Most likely it reached the Muslim world as a result of the Battle of the Talas River in 751, when the victorious Arabs captured Chinese technicians skilled in its manufacture.
    So? Yes, the Chinese did invent paper and they did influence their neighbors. You have said that before.

    European technology and culture spread to and dominated 4 entire continents (the Americas, Europe, Australia) and spread if not dominating to a good chunk of Asia (India) and Africa. China's influence remained largely confined to the area surrounding China. 4 continents trumps China's one continent.

    Note, the spread of paper to the West was not because of China's willingness to share its technology. It had to be taken from China. In contrast, the Jesuits were willing to share and transmit western twchnology to China.

    Eventually, it would spread to Western Europe where it would be combined with another Chinese invention, block printing to create the printing press, one of the most dynamic and important inventions in history. While it is a European invention, [I]its roots lie deep within Chinese history.
    True, although you don't actually need paper for printing. Many of the first printrd European books were on parchment, a form of fine leather. Very durable, but very expensive. But without paper, books would have remained very expensive.


    ... exchange notes, known as "flying money", proved to be popular, since they eliminated the need for carrying heavy coins. The use of credit slips soon spread among Chinese merchants and money changers and eventually westward to the Arab world, where they were known as sakk, and eventually to Western Europe where the term sakk became check. 
    The sakk did not derive from China. It dated from the Islamic Middle East around the 9th century, and was fundamentally different the Chinese credit slips. The sakk and check were just an authorization for a specific individual to withdraw a specificed anount on a particular individual's account, typically large sums that would be inconvenient for tne individual to carry aroumd. The credit slips represented a set amount of coins held by an institution or government, and were not made out to a specific individual nor were the money's with drawn from a specific individual's account, as was the case with a modern check or the medieval sakk. Unlike flying money, the sakk and money checks are not freely traded. just another of many examples why we can't trust what is claimed for the Chinese, another of one of many false statements made about ttone Chinese.

    The Chinese credit slips, flying money came about because China, unlike other areas, lacked precious metal coins. Even not particularly large purchases could require an inconvenient amount of copper/brass coins. A single gold coin could be worth a hundred copper ones.



    ...Several technological innovations helped the Chinese in their maritime ventures.

    First of all there was the Chinese sailing ship, the junk, which was faster and several times larger than any European ships then sailing. It also had a sternpost rudder and separate watertight compartments, (*) something European sailing ships would not be able to match until the 1800's. 
    We don't know the speed of the Song junks, so the sailing speed is speculative. Larger possibly, but it would depend on what specific period. Earlier part of the middle ages, later part, perhaps not. Some cogs and other European sailing ships could be quite large.

    As for adopting water tight bulkheads, European did not have them, because they did not want them. Water tight bulkheads robbed space for cargo, and they made loading and distributing cargo load more difficult, because all cargo sections had to be loaded and accessed directly from above. There was a popular ship built in Far Eastern waters called the Lorca, which had an European hulls, and a Chinese sail design. The European hull allowed for more cargo, and faster speed, while the Chinese sails meant local sailors would be familar with the rigging and could sail it. The very existence of the lorca is evidence that the Chinese ships were not as superior as claimed.

    It must be pointed out that anyone who could a watertight hull could build a watertigh bulkhead. Europeans didn't start using watettight bulkheads until they switched to iron/steel hulls, which allowed the to add removable access doors or plates, allowing acess from one compartment to another. Chinese watertight bulkheads had no access panels or doors, all access to the compartment was from above.

    Another invention brought back by Arab traders to Europe that would be vital to later European explorations was the compass. For centuries, the Chinese had used the compass for divination and fortune telling before applying it to navigation.
    I already pointed out that there is no indication that the Arabs brought the compass to Europeans. As i mentioned, the earliest European references to the magnetic compass were earlier than the first Arab ones. You apparently didn't read my previous posting on the subject. Taking centuries to figure out using the compass for such an obvious purpose as navigation does not speak well of the cleverness of the Chinese.

    Two other Chinese inventions deserve mention here: the water-powered clock and gunpowder. The Chinese clock was powered through a complex system of gears and escapements. In addition to keeping daily time, it also tracked celestial time and the movement of the sun, moon, and planets for astrological purposes so the emperor would know the best time to embark upon various projects and ventures.

    ...the clock made its way to Europe where it would be adapted in the later Middle Ages to tracking daily time. Eventually, the clock would heavily influence Western Civilization's concept of time by breaking it into precise and discrete units that still regiment our lives today.
    I have already explained how everything you wrote was false. The European clock tradition is derived from a completely independent Greco-Roman tradition that owes absolutely nothing to the Chinese.

    At the time the Europeans created the first mechanical clocks, the Chinese had forgotten their knowledge of clock making, and so it would have beenn impossible to transmit any knowledge to Europe. Even the grandson of the famous Sung clock couldn't rebuild it, how quidkly the Chinese themselves had forgotten, and it is entirely ridiculous for any knowledge to be transfered to Europeans when the Chinese themselves had forgotten it centuries earlier.

    Also the mechanism that functioned as an escapement in Chinese clocks, as I said, worked on a totally different principles from the escapement of European clocks and all modern time pieces. All modern clocks derive from the European clocks and not the slightest thing to the Chinese. The Chinese mechanism required a flowing fluild, and could not be mechanized, and as I said worked on a totally different principle from modern time pieces. The basis of the European mechanical clocks and all modern time pieces is a form of oscillating motion to regulate the time. whether the back and forth motion of balance wheel, the swing of a pendulum, or the oscillation of the atom as in an atomic clock.

    Gunpowder, according to legend, was the accidental result of a Taoist alchemical experiment for replacing salt with saltpetre (the active ingredient in gunpowder). Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese did use gunpowder for military purposes in the form of rockets and firing projectiles out of bamboo and metal tubes.

    Most likely, it made its way westward to Europe thanks to the Mongol conquest of China in the 1200's. Eventually, the Chinese invention of gunpowder would be instrumental in the rise of the nation state in Western Europe and Europe's colonial dominance of the globe in the late 1800's and early 1900's. 
    All true, but European rise began in the 16th century with the conquest of South America, and the beginning of the domination of the waters of India. The late 1800's is when the European near total doination of the world.

    And it was far more than just gunpowder that led to European domination. Without the sailing navigation technology they developed, the Europeans could never nave gotten to the colonies they dominated. Steam ships, trains, played an important role. And by the late 19th century, the Europeans were no longer using the Chinese invented black powder, but the entirely European invented smokeless gunpowder. Chinese gunpowder did not play much of a role in European dominance in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

    The Mongol Empire (1279-1368)

    ...Among the Mongols' ruling policies was replacing the civil service exam system with the use of non-Chinese governors and officials and even a foreign script. However, in the 1300’s, the civil service exam was restored as the Mongols in turn succumbed to the influence of Chinese civilization. 


    The Mongols never adopted Chinese writing for themselves, they never adopted Chinese language for themselves, and they retained their own Mongolian identitiy, nor did they adopt Chinese philosophy like Confucis and Taoism. That is hardly succumbing to Chinnese culture.


    The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)

    China's cultural vibrancy can be seen in several aspects of the Ming era. For one thing, architecture flourished, as the Chinese constructed arched bridges and tall pagodas with graceful curved roofs.
    As stated above, the setting of these buildings in broad horizontal planes provided a more balanced effect than the lofty spires of cathedrals one found in Europe at that time.
    ... Ironically, the Jesuit leader, Matteo Ricci, won court favor by presenting the emperor with a wind-up clock, which, of course, was ultimately derived from the Chinese water clock. 
    I prefer the lofty spires of the cathedrals, and I am not that impressed by the Ming buildings, but to each his own. The beautiful stainglass windows denonstrate an art and skill the Chinese had not mastered nearly as well. The European skill in glass working allowed them to build telescopes and microscopes, which in turn led to unprecendented scientific discoveries.

    The predominance of wood in Ming buildings made them more suspectible to the ever present danger of fire, even if they might have been more resistant to the occassional danger of earthquakes.


    ... Europe learned a great deal from China as well, such as the idea for its first suspension bridge, built in Austria in 1741, over 1000 years after the first such bridge had been built in China.
    ------ 
    Do we have any evidence the knowledge of the suspension bridge came from China, and not Tibet, or independently invented? The first Chinese stone arch bridge was build 500 years after the first Roman one, and perhaps Chinese learned the idea from their Perisan trading partners, who had acquired the knowledge. Austria isn't a country that had a lot of Chinese contact, alhtough someone in Austria might have read an account of Chinese suspension bridge.

    On a side note- innovation versus invention- building on the distinction made by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1961), "invention" has come to mean the creation of something new (i.e., any new traits that appear), while "innovation" refers to traits or characters that are selected and adapted to fitan environment (O’Brien 2011:62).
    ------

    Chinese Inventions and Machines - Springer
    It's about the development of Chinese machinery up to the end of the seventeenth century. Quoting,


    Check the chapters - [I]On War Machines - On Textile Machinery - On Hydraulic Machinery - On Clocks and Automatons - On Continuity over the Millennia 

    -------- 
    When it comes to the 17th century, we cannot rule out transmission of technologh from Europe by tne Jesuits. The Jesuirs wers actively transmitting all kinds of European knowledge to China, although the Chinese were often reluctant to give credit to the Europeans. The knowledge of tne size and shape of the earth (where 2000 years before the Chinese the Europeans had figured out it was a sphere), copper plate intalglio engraving, mechanical clocks with mechanical escapements, telescopes and a host of other things too numerous to mention.

    And Springer's work you quote is exactly the kind of crap claims about the Chinese you can't trust. Since Springer doesn't discuss rhe European and Muslim inventions at the time, he has no basis to make tne claim of Chinese superiority. Also, he doesn't identify what time period he is making the claim. The 9th century? The 13the century? The 19th century? By the 17th century his claims were certainly false.


    
    1) alcohol - according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, chemical analysis of the residue confirmed that a fermented drink made of grapes, hawthorn berries, honey, and rice was being produced in 7000–6650 BC. "Fermented beverages of pre- and proto-historic China"
    By using a combined chemical, archaeobotanical, and archaeological approach, we present evidence here that ancient Chinese fermented beverage production does indeed extend back nearly nine millennia. 
    And the oldest flute in the world was found in Germany and is 40,000 years old. Big deal. Fruit can naturally ferment in nature, can we say that the fermentation was deliberately intended or just accidental due to storage

    ?

    2) Mechanical Clock - The Chinese did not invent the first clock of any kind, merely the first mechanical one. Su Sung's hydro-mechanical clock was possibly the greatest mechanical invention of the middle Ages. This clock-really an astronomical instrument that served as a clock--operated by dripping water that powered a wheel that made one full revolution in 24 hours. An iron and bronze system of wheels, shafts, hooks, pins, locks, and interconnected rods made the clock work. This system caused the automatic chiming of a bell on the hour and the beating of a drum every quarter hour. 
    The Chinese did not invented the mechanical clock nor were they the first to use mechanical components, nor can we be certain that they were the first to use any kind of mechanism that worked as an escapement. We simply don't know that much about late Greco-Roman clock technology. The unexpected Antikythera mechanism demonstrates the Greco-Roman civilization was capable of making complex mechanism of great complexith, and there is no reason to assume that they didn't apply this to their clock making technology, which was continued into medieval times through Byzantine, Islamic, and perhaps also European as well.

    As far as the Su Sung clock contribution to future clock technology, it was nil. Even the inventors own son or grandson (I forget which) could not rebuild it just a few decadss after it was constructed.

    Complex automatons were also being made in Byzantine and Muslim lands, sucn complex mechanisms were not unique to China.


    5) Advanced Iron and steel smelting - Around 2500 years ago, when no one in Europe or the Middle East could melt even one ounce of iron the Chinese were casting multi-ton iron objects. It was not until the mid-1700's in Europe that such feats of metallurgy were achieved in Britain, the technically most advanced country of Europe.
    Iron and steel in ancient China: origins and technical change
    The Chinese were late to the iron age, people master the craft of making iron swords and other objects around 3000 years ago, about 500 years before the Chinese. You do sometimes find evidence of cast iron in Roman and otner times, but they regard it as a waste product and it was produced accidentally on occassions, but not consistently, or deliberately. That was one technology where the Chinese were far ahead of everyone.

    However, most cast iron was converted to wrougnt iron (and later steel), and you don't need to make cast iron to make steel or wrought iron, although it does allow you to make larger quantities, and cheaper.

    6) Porcelain - originated in China. The invention of porcelain in China was a development that changed the face of art throughout the world. The origin of porcelain pottery-making technology dates back 6000 years to the Neolithic period, and the related technologies and skills were continuously developed throughout early Chinese history. By the eleventh century, it was being shipped to Japan, India, Arabia, Turkey, and Africa. The Portuguese began exporting porcelain directly to Western Europe in the sixteenth century, and by the late seventeenth century Europeans had developed a passion for porcelain "china". 
    And in the 18th century the Europeans reinvented porcelain for themselves when the Chinese refused to share the secret of making it. They even made improvements to it, by adding bone to it to give it superior properties. Bone China was invented in England, not China.

    The Europeans recognized the value of porcelain, but the Chinese never recognozed the full value of glass, and even when knowldge of glass blowing was brought to China during Byzantine times, the Chinese never did much with the technology. Reading glasses, telescopes, microscopes were invented in Europe, and glass played a vital role in making test tube. Even when the telescope was brought to China, the Chinese did not do much with, making no new discoveries worth mentioning. Porcelain is nice, but glass is more essential to modern civilization.

    7) Compass - See previous post. Zhu Yu's book was the first book in history to mention the use of the mariner's magnetic compass for navigation at sea. 
    The "mariner" compass you mention is not the same thing as what is meant by an European mariner's compass. When we say a "mariner's compass", we mean a compass on a windrose mounted on a pivoting gimbal, not just a compass used at sea by a mariner. The Chinese "mariner" compass were not mounted on a gimbal nor did they have a windrose, and were simply inferior to the European mariner compass as a navigation aid. This is another example of the deceptive practice of changine the defintion of a word to make the Chinese seem more impressive than it was.

    9) Movable- type printing - Bi Sheng of the Northern Song Dynasty (960&#65?293;1127) invented movable clay type printing. When adapted to the Roman alphabet, this system worked surprisingly well.
    All later printing methods such as wooden-type, copper-type and lead-type printing were developed on the basis of Bi Sheng'idea. See above and previous post. Additionally, read the full paper, a precious book, highly recommended -The beginnings of printing at Macao - University of Macau Library
    Bi Sheng may have been the first to come up with the idea of a movable type, but Gutenberg was not indebted to Bi Sheng, no evidence he was aware of his work. And Bi Sheng never was success at making metal type work. Unlike Gutenberg, he was not able to come up with an ink that would work with metal.

    The idea of using type is not really that hard to come up with. The secret to Gutenberg's success is how the type was made. Gutenberg came up with an unique alloy the Chinese did not come up with that allowed Gutenberg to cast the type a a low temperature, to make it easy to cast, yet hard enough to be durable enough to use, and had the unusual property of expanding when it soldified, ensuring the type face would remain sharp in the mold and not shrink and distort.

    Gutenberg also used steel punches to make permanent copper molds to cast the type. A set of punches could make enough molds to support many printing shops, and once the molds are made, the punched are no longer needed. The Chinese method used wooden punches to make sand molds that are destroyed each time a casting is made. That means each shop would need its own set of punches to make new molds to make new type, and it is the creating of the punch that required a skilled craftsman. And the bronze with its much higher melting temperature was much harder to cast, and more expensive to cast.

    In short, Gutenberg's method was superior in almost every way. He could make more type far easier than the Chinese.

    So? Since the bambo the batten sails were made from didn't grow in tne west, it is rathdr a moot point. But no Chinese ship ever came close to the speed of a clipper ship. The only Chinese ship that sailed from China to the North Atlantic, the Keyint , too, about 6 - 8 months, about typical time. 3 clipper ships using square sails sailed from China to London in 3 months. Batten sails would have been too heavy and impractical to have the sail area needed for the speeds of a clipper ship.

    And while the batten slails wsre easy to reef, they were hard to raise due to their weight.


    ---
    Different subjects.
    Now we are talking, but that's deeply offensive to the Greeks. (j/k).
    You see I'm more Greek than many Greeks. In the West, we are all Greeks. Between 800 and 300 BC, people who spoke Greek made a rapid series of intellectual discoveries that propelled the Mediterranean world to a new level of civilization. The inquiring minds of the Greeks were absolutely extraordinary; Greek articulacy colonized the Roman mind.Suffice to say that the most vivid insights into the minds of all inhabitants of the Roman Empire were produced by the great celebrities who wrote in Greek.
    I highly recommend one of my favourite books, The Ancient Greeks, Ten Ways They Shaped the World. Edith Hall.
    Not sure what the insult was

    Ludicus,

    In your post, you provided serval examples that precisely illustrate my point why one can't trust much of what one reads about the Chinese.

    1. Sakk were not derived from Chinese credit slips. Like checks, they were made to to specific individuals, to be withdrawn on specific iindividuals account, which credit slips did not do. Credit slips were not made out to specific individuals, and gave them, and only them, the authorization to withdraw the designated amount of founds on other designated individual accounts. It was a like me writing a note to the bank asking them to withdraw a given amount from my savings and give it to my friend who is handing the letter to the bank.

    2. The Chinese mariner compass was not a specific design with uniqur features like the European mariner compass, but simply a compass used by a mariner at sea. The European mariner compass had unique features that made it superior to the Chinese compass for navigation.

    3. The Chinese did not invent the mechanical clock, their clocks requiring a fluid (wwater) to both power the clock and to act as the function of an escapement. Nor did they transmit any knowledge to Europe, since the Chinese had forgotten their own clock technology centuries before the Europeans invented the mechanical clockwise.

    4. While the Chinese were the first to invent printing, they were unsuccessful in making metal type work until after Gutenberg, a fact you failed to mention, and Gutenberg's printing press was different in almost every specific, and was superior in a number of points. The alloy Gutenberg invented was superior to the bronze the Chinese used, it was easier to cast due to its lower melting point and the property of antimony to expand when it soldifies ensured the type did not shrink and distort as the bronze tyoe could.
    Last edited by Abdülmecid I; February 12, 2018 at 04:30 AM. Reason: Consecutive posts merged.

  14. #14

    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    They knew much more about the west than the west about the East/China.

    We know that the Romans traded with Indians, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea contains quite a lot of information about trading to India, but says no ships are known to have sailed further. It simply mentions, sic, "a city called Thina", "from which silk is brought by traders". Is it a reference to China? probably. What did the Roman knew about China? close to zero.
    I can't speak for the ancient Greco-Romans, but, while few accounts from their end survive, the Byzantine Romans probably knew quite a bit about China. Justinian successfully sent monks to the region to steal silkworms; Theophylact Simocatta, in the 7th century, described the rise of the Sui dynasty in impressive detail and noted that the Chinese emperor was called "Taisson", a reference either to the title "Tianzi" (son of heaven) or the name of the current emperor Taizong; Constans II sent an embassy with gifts in the 640's, possibly to discuss a potential alliance against the Arabs, and followup embassies were sent by Justinian II and Leo III; Chinese ambassadors were received at court in the 10th century, where the emperor showed off his automata, the palace, and its waterclock (and no, it wasn't imported from China); and, later on, in the 11th century, Micheal VII and Alexios Komnenos would send more diplomats with impressive gifts.

    Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, intricately carved Chinese phoenixes appear on a 10th or 11th century Roman ivory box (the Troyes Casket) made in the imperial workshops, which may have originally been intended to be a gift to the eastern court, or might have been meant to illustrate the pan-national influence of New Rome to nearer peoples; personally, I find both options to be equally fascinating. The art that came out of the imperial workshops was also highly standardized (these two ivories, for example), so it's likely the Troyes casket wasn't a one off, but that only one example came down to us out of many.

    The box with a Tang dynasty mirror for comparison:





    Something to keep in mind is that, like the Chinese themselves, the Byzantines had an entire bureau dedicated to diplomacy and foreign peoples which collected information about politics and customs abroad, doubtlessly including those of China, but, unlike in China, none of these records have survived. That being the case, we don't really know exactly how much the Byzantines knew about the region, but the evidence we do have suggests a similar level of mutual understanding on both sides. Also, if anyone finds the subject as interesting as I do, a collection of Chinese accounts of the Roman/Byzantine empire can be found here.

  15. #15
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by LinusLinothorax View Post
    China was irrelevant for global history/culture.
    Or any other eastern country, I presume. Eurocentrism doesn't help you.
    Buy and read- Asia in the Making of Europe, three volumes, and take a bath of humility.This masterpiece reveals the impact of Asia's high civilizations on the development of modern Western society, art, literature, science, and religion since the Renaissance.
    And we know what we are talking about, it's telling that in the book Portugal has pride of place; the literature in that language gets 122 pages, as compared with 34 for Spanish, 56 for Italian, 70 for French, and 70 for all the Northern European languages. The Eurocentric view often considered other perspectives and peoples to be inferior, and that's plainly wrong.The West just dominated the globe for the past two hundred years.

    Quote Originally Posted by LinusLinothorax View Post
    they did so without the slightest bit of Chinese influence
    What was the Greek influence in China? And I never said that China was "the mothership of the human civilization".

    ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Common Soldier View Post
    ...snip...
    China's Gifts to the West - Asia for Educators - Columbia University
    Teach them how wrong they are.They don't know nothing.

    No irony intended, I'm not a Jack of all trades, with an almost supernatural knowledge about everything and anything. But I also have some good books.
    Vitorino Magalhães Godinho was one of the leading Portuguese historians of the 20th century. In his seminal book (I have the book) "A Expansão Quotrocentista Portuguesa", page 252, he writes (you know Portuguese).
    Sic: "Da China, o "indicador do sul" passou para o Mediterrâneo, e aqui, como lá também já acontecera, é a agulha magnética utilizada na navegação antes mesmo de se transformar em bússola propriamente dita. O texto mais antigo relativamente a este uso náutico é uma poesia satírica de Guyot de Provins, escrita em 1190..."

    "When gloomy darkness hides the sea
    And one no star and moon can see
    They turn on the needle the light,
    Then from the straying they have no fright
    For the needle points to the star
    ."

    ------
    We all know that the European mariner compass had unique features that made it superior. Reread my detailed posts about the Portuguese innovations...but that's not the point.

    Ship technology - Eastern hulks were typically more waterproof, thicker, and more robust than those of the European build. Let me exemplify.

    Although the Portuguese in the Indian ocean had a superior firepower and hegemony, the description by a Portuguese seaman of his fleet attempt to capture a Javanese junk in 1511 demonstrates the advantages of the prey:she was too tall for the Portuguese to board, and her hull, reinforced with four superimposed layers of plank, was invulnerable to artillery. The only way the Portuguese could cope was to snare his rudders and disable her. Chinese ships had the advantage of separable bulkheads, which keep them afloat when ordnance penetrated part of the hull (source/recommended reading, Springing: The Maritime Turn, Pathfinders A Global History of Exploration).

    We are humble enough to recognize that Zheng He voyages did display China's potential as the launching bay of a seaborne empire. China missed a strategic opportunity during the Sung dynasty to play the role of a leading world power (source/recommended reading, Long Cycles of World Powers, Chapter I, page 51) and missed again another opportunity in the mid-15th century, when the Chinese empire at the time the largest economy in the world, retreated from its projected oceanic expansion, and Portugal took advantage of a unique window of opportunity (source/recommended reading, Pioneers of Globalization).

    The Chinese had far more to gain by sailing the Indian lake. No state in the region wanted to explore new routes.It was unnecessary. The western imperialism was born of necessity, poverty, curiosity, and religion. I know the point you are trying to make: the west created a uniquely rational and dynamic culture, and that's the reason why the west is..."superior".

    But only somewhere between 1750 and 1800 western development overtook the East's, ending the 1,200 years Eastern edge. Given enough time, the easterners would have made the same discoveries and had their own industrial revolution. (source/recommended reading: Why The West rules- For Now- Ian Morris).

    You are biased against the Chinese civilization (and I suspect, against any other non western Civilization), trying to deny the far reach effect of some Chinese inventions, and the fact that China, who experienced no dark ages were generally far in advance of Europe; and the fact that not until the Scientific revolution of the Renaissance did Europe draw rapidly ahead.

    Every young student knows that Gutenberg's printing press was superior; we all know that the steam engine changed the world, or the railways in the Industrial Revolution, or the might Chinese Empire was no match for the superior technology of British steamships in the Opium Wars, or the fact that European technology and culture spread to and dominated the world, as you said. But the (for now) triumphant Western hegemony is not the point.
    Last edited by Ludicus; February 06, 2018 at 02:56 PM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
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    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  16. #16

    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    Or any other eastern country, I presume. Eurocentrism doesn't help you.
    Buy and read- Asia in the Making of Europe, three volumes, and take a bath of humility.This masterpiece reveals the impact of Asia's high civilizations on the development of modern Western society, art, literature, science, and religion since the Renaissance.
    And we know what we are talking about, it's telling that in the book Portugal has pride of place; the literature in that language gets 122 pages, as compared with 34 for Spanish, 56 for Italian, 70 for French, and 70 for all the Northern European languages. The Eurocentric view often considered other perspectives and peoples to be inferior, and that's plainly wrong.The West just dominated the globe for the past two hundred years.
    Yes, that is so, the influence of eastern countries was secondary and rather slight over all compared to the influence of Western origins such as the Romans and the Greeks, for the simple fact that it was the descendants of Westerners, the Romans in particular, that created the modern world, and modern technology.

    Had the roles been reversed, had Song Dynasty China had a full and true industrial revolution, had the Chinese been the first to establish a truly global economy by regularly sailing around the world, then perhaps achievements of Western scientist and philosophers would similarly be of only secondary importance to the modern world. The calendar we use might be based on a Chinese one, the months of the year and names of the planet might be based on Chinese names, the world might (but probably not) use Chinese script, and the international dating of years based on some Chinese one. But that didn't happen, and it is not the world we live in. The modern world was created by Europeans and their descendants in other continents (example, US), not the Chinese and others.

    When Europeans and their descendants created the modern world, they relied primarily on their own heritage, just as the people of India, or the Chinese, would have primarily relied on their own culture heritage. The use of the term "Eurocentrism" is just a sign of envy. The Chinese didn't create the modern world, and their contributions, although very essential, were just of secondary importance to the Europeans, who did create the modern world. Get over it.

    Note, a hundred years from now, the story will be completely different. Although Europeans may have founded the modern world, they don't own the modern world, and the world today is just as much Chinese and Indian, and will become more so with every year. There is no such thing as European, Indian, or Chinese science anymore, there is just science, and today, the contributions being made by China and India is every bit as great But we are talking about what the past, what was, not what is and is to come.

    What was the Greek influence in China? And I never said that China was "the mothership of the human civilization".
    Greek influence was about as great on China as China on the Greeks. While you never specifically claimed China was the mothership of human civilization, you certainly acted as if it were true, otherwise why keep boasting as you do of all the Chinese achievements. And you did specifically state the Chinese were responsible for most of modern civilization, which is really claiming that the China was the mothership of modern human civilization.

    ----------


    China's Gifts to the West - Asia for Educators - Columbia University
    Teach them how wrong they are.They don't know nothing.
    I already have. They are a perfect example I what I am talking about, why you can't trust all you see claim. I have given a number of examples showing how they are wrong. As to why, a case of political correctness gone wild, financial or other forms of incentives (had Columbia wrote negatively of China, they could have kissed the hope of obtaining any Chinese exhibition goodbye), or whatever. What incentive was there for Menzies to write his book? He didn't know it would be a success when he wrote it.

    American colleges and universities are dominated by far left leaning professors, and the departments of history and cultural studies are among the worst, practically communist. The historical revisionist and political correctness is rampant, and what is said must be viewed in that light.

    No irony intended, I'm not a Jack of all trades, with an almost supernatural knowledge about everything and anything. But I also have some good books.
    Vitorino Magalhães Godinho was one of the leading Portuguese historians of the 20th century. In his seminal book (I have the book) "A Expansão Quotrocentista Portuguesa", page 252, he writes (you know Portuguese).
    Sic: "Da China, o "indicador do sul" passou para o Mediterrâneo, e aqui, como lá também já acontecera, é a agulha magnética utilizada na navegação antes mesmo de se transformar em bússola propriamente dita. O texto mais antigo relativamente a este uso náutico é uma poesia satírica de Guyot de Provins, escrita em 1190..."

    "When gloomy darkness hides the sea
    And one no star and moon can see
    They turn on the needle the light,
    Then from the straying they have no fright
    For the needle points to the star
    ."
    I have read good books too, but more important, I have read a lot of information about primary sources, such as archaeological excavations, and there availability or lack there of.

    What strikes me as very noticeable is that compared to western discussions, the dating of the actually manuscripts and the textual history of the documents that so many claims made for the Chinese based upon are made. When it comes to scholarly works, Western discussions will discussed the manuscripts used, how it compared with other manuscripts, the possibility of later interpolations, archaeological evidence, and the meaning of words, and possible different interpretations, which seldom happen in the case of Chinese discussions. Only occasionally does Needham discuss textual history of his documents, and the possibility that the references to some invention or technology could be a later interpolation. I can think of only 2 times really, once where he showed the references to eyeglasses in a Chinese text did not exist in the earlier manuscripts, showing them to be Ming additions added after the Jesuits had arrived. I only think he did that because he didn't want to give the people of India credit for eyeglasses because of the India-Chinese rivalry at the time, and if he couldn't give the Chinese credit for the invention, he would prefer Europe than India. In another case, when discussing gunpowder and gunpowder weapons, he acknowledge the older text did not have the same reference as the newer text. bit insisted, without demonstrating why, the newer text were somehow better and more reliable. That does not inspire faith and confidence to Chinese claims, which often are based just on textual claims.

    Many of the Chinese claims for inventions are based on just texts, which unlike Roman and Greek claims, or medieval Europe, lack supporting archaeology. There is nothing to compare to the Antikytheria mechanism for ancient or medieval China that demonstrates they were actually capable manufacturing such complex machines. And what physical evidence there is, tiny clay figures or models, is exactly the kind most easily forged, by the nation that the acknowledge leader in forgery.

    Take for example, the claim the Chinese invented the pound locks. When outsiders were in China in the 16th and later centuries, they found no evidence of such locks which were supposedly invented during the Song dynasty, nor do we have any archaeological remains of such canal locks. When were the manuscripts that referenced the canal locks actually produced? Were they made after the arrival of the Jesuits in China, and could they be a later addition added to the original text? We already have one such example in the case eyeglasses of that happening. Or could the word we interpret as pound lock really be referring to something else? Again, none of that is discussion in included. All that matters is that the Chinese invented it first, and the fact they totally forgot how to build such a useful invention later is unimportant. Chinese ego, not history, is all that matters. That does not make for good history.

    Chinese text are, due to the very nature of Chinese writing, the easiest to forge, and China has the world's greatest forgers. The conservative nature of the Chinese writing makes in easy for skilled forgers to add material, Chinese scholars prided themselves being able to write in Classical language.



    ------
    We all know that the European mariner compass had unique features that made it superior. Reread my detailed posts about the Portuguese innovations...but that's not the point.

    Ship technology - Eastern hulks were typically more waterproof, thicker, and more robust than those of the European build. Let me exemplify.

    Although the Portuguese in the Indian ocean had a superior firepower and hegemony, the description by a Portuguese seaman of his fleet attempt to capture a Javanese junk in 1511 demonstrates the advantages of the prey:she was too tall for the Portuguese to board, and her hull, reinforced with four superimposed layers of plank, was invulnerable to artillery. The only way the Portuguese could cope was to snare his rudders and disable her. Chinese ships had the advantage of separable bulkheads, which keep them afloat when ordnance penetrated part of the hull (source/recommended reading, Springing: The Maritime Turn, Pathfinders A Global History of Exploration).

    We are humble enough to recognize that Zheng He voyages did display China's potential as the launching bay of a seaborne empire. China missed a strategic opportunity during the Sung dynasty to play the role of a leading world power (source/recommended reading, Long Cycles of World Powers, Chapter I, page 51) and missed again another opportunity in the mid-15th century, when the Chinese empire at the time the largest economy in the world, retreated from its projected oceanic expansion, and Portugal took advantage of a unique window of opportunity (source/recommended reading, Pioneers of Globalization).

    The Chinese had far more to gain by sailing the Indian lake. No state in the region wanted to explore new routes.It was unnecessary. The western imperialism was born of necessity, poverty, curiosity, and religion. I know the point you are trying to make: the west created a uniquely rational and dynamic culture, and that's the reason why the west is..."superior".

    But only somewhere between 1750 and 1800 western development overtook the East's, ending the 1,200 years Eastern edge. Given enough time, the easterners would have made the same discoveries and had their own industrial revolution. (source/recommended reading: Why The West rules- For Now- Ian Morris).

    You are biased against the Chinese civilization (and I suspect, against any other non western Civilization), trying to deny the far reach effect of some Chinese inventions, and the fact that China, who experienced no dark ages were generally far in advance of Europe; and the fact that not until the Scientific revolution of the Renaissance did Europe draw rapidly ahead.

    Every young student knows that Gutenberg's printing press was superior; we all know that the steam engine changed the world, or the railways in the Industrial Revolution, or the might Chinese Empire was no match for the superior technology of British steamships in the Opium Wars, or the fact that European technology and culture spread to and dominated the world, as you said. But the (for now) triumphant Western hegemony is not the point.
    The truth is the opposite of what you say. I am willing to acknowledge the Chinese contributions when justified, but I am not willing to allow stealing credit for achievements in an act of intellectual theft no different than the intellectual theft of the massive amounts of illegal pirated sofaware, movies, and counterfeits made in China today.

    It is you and your ilk who insist on the superiority of the Chinese and deny the achievements of others. For example, while the waatertight bulkheads had some advantages, they also had disaevantages that you are simply too bias to admit to. The watertight bulkheads restricted compartment access to above, and robbed cargo space, which the Europeans found to be an unacceptable trade off for any improved seaworthiness. Watertight bulkheads don't guarantee a ship will not sink, as Chinese shipwercks prove. Only when the drawbacks of watertight bulkheads could be minimized did Europeans adopt them - with iron and steel hulls, removable bulkheads allowed access to compartment from other compartments, and the iron/steel bulkheads took up less space due to the superior strength of steel. The very existence of the lLorca, an Asian built ship with an European hull desig, disproves the claims of Chinese superiority.

    As for your arrogant claims of Asian superiority for all of the 1,200 years you claim, it was medieval Europe that invented reading glasses, and counterweight trebuchets that changee siege warfareafar, that built mechanical devices that allowed ordinary men to cock powerful, more compastcom past crossbows, that came up with modern accounting method such as double entry book keeping, that came up with frame first building method of ship construction, that came up with the first modern universities, that came up with the matchlock all other reliable methods for firing guns. While Europe was in the early part of the middle ages, by the later medieval period they were technologically comparable, and by then they were more advanced that Asia.

    PS - Not everyone knows Gutenberg printing press, and it rather hypocritical to complain when I mentioned the fact when you have repeatedly in this very thread mentioned the fact that Chinese invented printing itself, a point that I never disputed. Unlike your repeated statements, which were just typical Chinese boasting, mine were made to show that it wasn't just the concept of printing, but a pparticular invention, the printing press, that had a revolutionary impact on the world. Had Europe been stuck with Chinese block printing, or Chinese method for type printing, printing would not have had tne revolutionary impact it did.

    Also, the Chinese merchants would have the financial incentive to sail to Europe, to reap the profitst the European merchants made, to cut out the middle man as it were. To claim the Chinese weren't interested in making money is such nonsense it isn't worth refuting. But Chinese lacked the courage, the knowhow, or ttone curiosity to sail around the world.

    As James Cook's voyages, there was also curiosity, a desire to explore, not just profit, as a motive. The same curiosity led the Europeans to explore the world scientifically, as well as physically. The Chinese lacked Tunis driving curiosity, at least from the Ming Dynasty on. While the Europeans were making unprecedented discoveries with the telescope, the Chinese never did anything worthy of note with the telescope centuries after it was introduced into China. We can't blame this on the Ming and Qing governments, many of the European astronomical discoveries were made by hobbyist. The famous astronomer Herschel was a muscmusician by profession, and he built his own telescopes and his own observatory, for example.
    Last edited by Common Soldier; February 06, 2018 at 10:25 PM.

  17. #17
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    I never said that China was "the mothership of the human civilization".
    No, you just said that "Chinese civilization has exercised an enormous influence on much of the rest of the mankind" and that "until the last 300 years", which clearly implies that China did so since time immemorial, "most of the technical advances and innovations which made a real difference to people's lives came from China". Totally different.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    Or any other eastern country, I presume. Eurocentrism doesn't help you. Buy and read- Asia in the Making of Europe, three volumes, and take a bath of humility.This masterpiece reveals the impact of Asia's high civilizations on the development of modern Western society, art, literature, science, and religion since the Renaissance. (....) The Eurocentric view often considered other perspectives and peoples to be inferior, and that's plainly wrong.The West just dominated the globe for the past two hundred years.
    Lol, look how you quickly change from China to all of Asia. We are not talking about Asia, we are talking about China alone. So again: If China contributed so heavily to human civilization, to "much of the rest of mankind" with its groundbreaking innovations which "made a real difference", why did the Greeks, Egyptians and Mesopotamians develop magnificent cultures with an own architecture, science, script, philosophy and so on with literally zero Chinese influence? Aren't these things that can be considered as those that make "a real difference"?
    Last edited by LinusLinothorax; February 06, 2018 at 04:48 PM.

  18. #18
    hellheaven1987's Avatar Comes Domesticorum
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    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    The Chinese had far more to gain by sailing the Indian lake. No state in the region wanted to explore new routes.It was unnecessary. The western imperialism was born of necessity, poverty, curiosity, and religion. I know the point you are trying to make: the west created a uniquely rational and dynamic culture, and that's the reason why the west is..."superior".
    From Western view perhaps, not from Chinese view however (particularly not from Ming Chinese). The pattern how conquistadors conquered New World or how British East India Company conquered India is never an acceptable way of expansion for Chinese government.
    Quote Originally Posted by Markas View Post
    Hellheaven, sometimes you remind me of King Canute trying to hold back the tide, except without the winning parable.
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    Cameron is midway between Black Rage and .. European Union ..

  19. #19

    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by hellheaven1987 View Post
    From Western view perhaps, not from Chinese view however (particularly not from Ming Chinese). The pattern how conquistadors conquered New World or how British East India Company conquered India is never an acceptable way of expansion for Chinese government.
    Not so. China tried to conquer Vietnam, it was because the Vietnamese defeated thes Chinese militarily, not out the goodness of the Chinese heart that the Chinese left.

    Most of western China was conquered, most of the people living there did not ask to be taken over by the Chinese, any more than the people of Tibet did or those of Inner Mongolia. Chinese has had a long history of expansion by military conquest. That it did not invovle overseas colonies doesn't alter the fact. In many of the areas the Chinese took over, the Chinese were not the majority at first.

  20. #20

    Default Re: Reliability of reporting on Chinese History - you can't believe all the claims you read about China

    Quote Originally Posted by Common Soldier View Post
    Not so. China tried to conquer Vietnam, it was because the Vietnamese defeated thes Chinese militarily, not out the goodness of the Chinese heart that the Chinese left.

    Most of western China was conquered, most of the people living there did not ask to be taken over by the Chinese, any more than the people of Tibet did or those of Inner Mongolia. Chinese has had a long history of expansion by military conquest. That it did not invovle overseas colonies doesn't alter the fact. In many of the areas the Chinese took over, the Chinese were not the majority at first.
    hellheaven1987 isn't implying any benevolence on behalf of Chinese rulers, only utter urge for control.

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