China has been civilized for thousands of years, with its dynasties covering vast geographical areas and encompassing large populations. The land itself contains vast resources.
Why did it take so long for China to arrive at the position it holds today as a key player on the global stage?
Why did other nations like Spain, Portugal, the UK, etc., and later the USA and the USSR emerge as global forces before China?
Governmental oppresion can be a bitch.
It never really wanted to be.
This is the answer you often hear. China has been a large and powerful nation for most of its history. Its weakest points were from the 1950’s-1970’s(Mao’s death was just wonderful for them).
Anyway, the traditional answer is that while Europe was interested in exploring and colonizing the rest of the world, China wasn’t. They had many technological and cultural advances there, but did not seek to spread out in the same way as, let’s say, England.
This, and the fact that they spent much of their time in civil wars, does a lot to explain why we aren’t all Chinese(or at least speaking it), so to speak.
By the way, do you think 25-30 years is a long time for them to recover from Mao’s rule, re-build their major cities(like Shanghai), and become aggressive in business again is a long time?
It seems like yesterday they were suffering from famine and starvation throughout the whole country.
I’d say they have re-surfaced stunningly quick.
Bad governance - the final Qing dynasty in China was a force to reckon with under Qianlong, but after that there were bad rulers on the throne. The history behind the Opium War is one example if China wanted to kick any ass, it could. But politicians play petty politics, they lose the war and foreign powers gets a foothold.
Civil war then split the country apart, then the Japanese came. After that, the communists drive one faction to what now known as Taiwan and did a couple of “shoot yourself in the foot” moments, like the great Culture Revolution and isolationist policies.
China was the richest nation on Earth until about 1820-25, which was after the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, as well as past the peak of the Dutch. Up until that period ( when the opium trade began to reverse the flow of currency ), China was the world silver sink - most of what was mined in the Americas from the 16th century on ended up buying luxury goods in China.
It didn’t take China so long to reach the top - they were sitting comfortably in that spot for most of recorded history. Rather what China experienced was a fall from an economically dominant position, to which they are now slowly returning ( or at least getting back to their feet ). The reason for the fall is multivarious, involving a collapse in bureaucratic efficiency in the face of suddenly and enormously expanding population, massive civil war, the opium trade and a number of other ills. But it is a mistake to assume that China in say, 1776, was lagging behind Europe. For the most part it was not.
An interesting, if not entirely uncontroversial, book on this topic is ReOrient:* Global Economy in the Asian Age* by the late Andre Gunder Frank ( 1998, University of California Press, Ltd. ). While some of his theses are challengeable, at the very least he draws together in one place a great deal of scholarship on China’s ( and other Asian states ) place in the world economic sphere before 1800.
But it is true that they were not very influential as a world power, despite their massive wealth, mainly because they didn’t want to be. They were content to merely sit inside their borders and look down their heads at the inferior Europeans scrambling around everywhere. Until, of course, those powers became not-so-inferior.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
It doesn’t seem like it was a major player because you don’t live in its neighborhood.
China’s period of expansion happened way before Europe’s and was far more successful. The Han Chinese went from a small ethnic group among many ethnic groups to a huge empire. There used to be other ethnicities and political entities in much of what we think of as “China.” China’s famous 55 ethnic minorities are a vestige of this. They are still around, but the Han have controlled what used to be their territory for a long time (yeah, I know the Han haven’t always controlled China, but they have been the ones populating the empire.)
It’d be like if the Dutch managed to take over all of Europe from Norway to Italy, and then managed to hold on to it for thousands of years. Compared to China, Europe’s little foray into Colonialism was an unsuccessful blink of an eye.
On the cultural front, China’s culture has heavily influenced all of East Asia. It has always been the cultural force in the neighborhood.
The western powers bled a lot of China’s mineral wealth during the colonial period.
Yes and no, but I think there is a tendency to exaggerate China’s supposed isolationism.
First of all china could be and frequently was quite expansionistic. It’s just that they tended to expand like Russia did - overland and into Central Asia. More than half of the modern nation of China was not part of China in the mid-17th century. A couple of illustrative maps. In addition to the out and out conquests, note the tributaries. Forced tributaries - for example the four overland assaults on Burma 1765-1769. As late as 1792-93 a Chinese army launched puntive raids into Nepal to halt Gurkha penetrations into Tibet.
Nor were the Qing the first Chinese dynasty to expanded aggressively or throw their weight around. The Han established embassies in Persia and sent at least one ( thwarted ) to Rome. The T’ang took it a step further and cooperated with the Sassanid dynasty to the extent of planning joint campaigns against common central Asian threats, sheltered the dynasty after the Islamic conquest and twice sent expeditionary forces to try to reinstall them ( one may have been partially successful on the fringe, albeit briefly ). The T’ang also ( purportedly ) intervened in the succession crises in India after the death of Sri Harsha. The Southern Sung were the naval trading giants of their day. The Ming, quite apart from the famous 15th century Indian Ocean expeditions, aggressively advanced into Mongolia until budgetary issues and heavy military defeats curtailed that activity.
China could be somewhat inward-looking in certain respects - as one example both social philosophy and the sheer self-sufficiency of China’s massive internal economy meant trading revenues were usually a drop in the bucket and hence not of great concern to the central government ( but independent Chinese traders and Chinese shipping nonetheless dominated the SE Asian trade ). But as I said I think the extent to which China was unconcerned with and ignorant of the wider world gets more play than it should.
If you’re interested a decent book in this vein is The Sextants of Beijing:* Global Currents in Chinese History* by Joanna Waley-Cohen ( 2000, W. W. Norton and Company ).
Interesting, and looking back on that post, I did overstate it more than I how I had intended to come across. However, they always were (and still are, to a large degree) more of a massive regional power than one with the force projection of contemporary Britain or the modern U.S., able to take a fight anywhere in the world. And although I think I’m more familiar with China than the average American, I think a large reason for most Western people’s ignorance of Chinese history is that they never did much to interfere with white people until the 19th and 20th centuries, so White European-centered histories don’t focus very much on them.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
One thing to add in though - they want Taiwan back.
Does anyone have any idea how is the internal security of China like. It is very interesting that modern China has conquered most of the countries that were their ancient enemies.
China at times also have the conceit that they are the best (they don’t call the Emperor ‘Son of Heaven’ for nothing), they don’t need anything else - the disbanding of Admiral Zhang He’s fleet is one example. There are indication of trade with China with Singapore before Raffles found the small tiny island.
I also do recall China is also a stablising force for the North Korea crisis. However, somehow I don’t see China going on a conquering spree. China throughout history has been invaded numerous times; perhaps as long as their country is safe they don’t really care.
Now? It’s harder to say
Thanks to everyone for the info, very interesting!
don’t forget that the Qing Dynasty was actually a foreign invading force that took over China and ruled it for a couple of hundred years. And ask the Manchu’s what the end game ended up being.
The other thing to not forget is that basically from around 1850-1949, China was in a constant state of anarchy and civil war. The Boxer rebellion wiped out a very significant chunk of the population, and aided by periodic floods and famines. The warlords controlled most of the core Chinese land mass, and of course before 1949 china didn’t include Manchuria, Inner Mongolia (nor Outer), Xinjiang and Tibet.
Net net, just as the Western powers were expanding and stong, China basically imploded.
Whilst Mao unified China, no mean feat, he then unleashed anarchy and crippling economic policies that really weren’t overcome until the 1990’s.
I think you meant the Taiping rebellion :). The Boxer rebellion was ugly, bloody and traumatic, but nowhere near as bad, casualty-wise.
Remember the fabled “riches of the orient”? Up until the 1700s, Europe was an impoverished backwater compared to the Ottoman empire, India, and China. Our notions of European countries conquering the world didn’t happen until the end of the 1800s.
China went through multiple rounds of civil war, foreign war, and disastrous misrule for the last hundred and fifty years. Even so they didn’t so much fall as that European countries rose due to the industrial revolution and the trade revolution. And even then China was never conquered by Europe, just kicked around.
China’s rise today isn’t due to any particular brilliant plan, it’s mostly due to the last 20-30 years of the leadership not tearing the country apart.
Mostly endless civil wars & foreign occupation.
Doh! I knew that. Brain fart
