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At over four thousand years old, China is the oldest continuous living civilization in the world. In that span of time, the people of that civilization have created a sophisticated and highly developed culture unparalleled by any other neighboring nations for millennia. With a recorded history that has remained largely unbroken since the days it began, China has exercised great influence over Asia and has commanded its respect and tribute for many centuries. With a highly developed culture, many significant advances emerged in government, art, and science that were beyond the caliber of its contemporaries throughout the ancient, medieval, and pre-modern eras. This paper attempts to explain how Chinese and European maritime voyages, military technology, colonialism, industrialization, philosophy, economic systems, and religious motivation eventually allowed the West to dominate global affairs and overtake China by the beginning of the modern era.
The Zhou Dynasty, a contemporary of the Classical Greek and Roman civilizations, gave birth to the likes of Lao Zi, Confucius, Mencius, Zhuang Zi, and Sun Zi who laid the foundations of Chinese thought and culture for the next two and half thousand years. The establishment of the Han Dynasty, a contemporary of the Roman Empire, marked the first golden age in Chinese history based on Confucian philosophy, and gave China its identity establishing it as the dominant super power of Asia. While Europe toiled in the Dark Ages, China flourished in the Tang Dynasty - an era of unprecedented wealth, freedom, and cosmopolitan culture unlike anything else in the world during that time. Its successor, the Song Dynasty, was highly industrial and inventive, marked by significant advances in engineering and military technology.
China was considered by its people as "the birthplace of history, the font of religious wisdom, the inspiration of philosophical insights, the source of technological innovation. It was the Middle Kingdom. The Celestial Empire. The Center of the World" (Hawley, 2005, p. 26). The Chinese saw themselves as the preservers of culture and considered all other people "barbarians". If this perspective of China is true, why then did the Chinese not lead the way to an Industrial Revolution that would pave the road towards the modernity we now live? What factors contributed to China's declined international influence causing the "great...