How did such a country with an organized meritocratic bureaucracy, a wealth of natural resources...

How did such a country with an organized meritocratic bureaucracy, a wealth of natural resources, a shitload of manpower, and goods that everybody wanted to trade for, somehow manage to never amount to anything in shaping history until the last three or four decades? What were the Chinese doing wrong?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_equilibrium_trap
chinagoldnews.blogspot.com/2008/05/chinas-gold-eternal-treasure-by-sang.html?m=1
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I see you moved past
>Why didn't Africa develop?

never modernized

japanese is an exception to this because of high literacy and shit, chinese are dumb as rocks

A country that worth nothing.

Except its people breeding like roaches to make it relevant with muh 1,3 billion

Why didn't Africa develop?

They've done a lot over the millenia, they had one of the largest empires after all. But fuck all after 1000 AD

>never amount to anything in shaping history until the last three or four decades

what did they amount before that considering they had
>organized meritocratic bureaucracy, a wealth of natural resources, a shitload of manpower, and goods that ever

>organized meritocratic bureaucracy,
Didn't that fail because the only thing you needed to pass the exams was spouting confusian bullshit?

>meritocratic bureaucracy
what?
>wealth of natural resources
what? (except coal, maybe)

They shaped east Asian history. You say they didn't shape history, but you are missing the for who part. The Roman Empire didn't do much to shape history for the Chinese.

with all the advantages they had they really did minimal shaping outside of their borders

Nixon opened them up and the US started buying cheap goods. Set up their manufacturing and they stole/reverse engineered intellectual/industrial secrets. Thank you US for waking up a monster.

Have you noticed how large their borders are?

>They shaped east Asian history
They got a bunch of barbarians to pay them tribute and also Japan liked to LARP as the Tang dynasty back in the Heian period, but it's hardly comparable to the impact that Rome left on the Mediterranean.

>japanese is an exception to this because of high literacy and shit
The burgers forced the japs to modernize
which fucked them over a bit in WW2

>can't manage grammar
>can't understand simple words

Moron detected.

>they stole/reverse engineered intellectual/industrial secrets
intellectual property is a meme

>what is buddhism
>what is language
>what is their entire culture in general
The Sino sphere would have taken a lot longer to develop without China.

>japanese is an exception to this because of high literacy and shit
Japan was a lot smaller and had fewer people and was easier to administer than China.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_equilibrium_trap

tl;dr, they already have everything. And their trade system are almost perfect. So, there were no reason to modernize.

China was never united until the Mongols rape everything an forced them to unite when ot qas all conquered. If anything China owes its state on the world stage to the Khans of Mongol even in the last 100 years china is still trying to fuck it up.

>China was never united until the Mongols
So the Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties don't count, do they?

Which one of those controled all of China? Because none of those did.

China was the mediterranean

>all of China

explain

They controlled the heartlands of China where the Han Chinese lived. All the Yuan and the Qing did was add a bunch of deserts and mountains with Turks and Tibetans that nobody cares about.

Too busy inventing the compass and sundial n shiet

>How did such a country with an organized meritocratic bureaucracy, a wealth of natural resources, a shitload of manpower, and goods that everybody wanted to trade for,
That is exactly what went wrong.

Stealing from neighbours makes nations better

7 different countries and 1.7 billion people are part of the literally Sinic culture.

Mandarin bureaucracy was extremely corrupt and China has very few natural resources so the premises are false

>7 different countries
China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam. What's the seventh?

>and 1.7 billion people
Of which 1.3 billion are from inside China itself so they don't really count.

>Brits made the United States united because the US 2016 and US 1787 don't have the same borders
Great logic!

>China
What is this thing you talk about?
Depending on your definition you could be correct or wrong.
Based upon the modern accepted definition of China, you are wrong.

Also, to answer your question, the Han.

>Can't use google
Singapore

China always viewed itself as the center of the world, there was never a need to try and enlighten the world.

>Of which 1.3 billion are from inside China itself so they don't really count.

I bet you and OP would not have made this thread if China today was separated into 5 separate Chinese states.

China is a civilization masquerading as a nation.

the joke is that in many parts it did. West Africa was on par with Europe until the Rennaisance, which didn't reach it because of the Muslim intellectual filter of North Africa. The Kongo kingdom actually converted to Christianity, and there's a pretty famous letter the king wrote to the king of Spain about recognizing the Kongo king's legitimacy as a fellow brother in Christ. The Ethiopians had an empire, the Zulus had an empire, the entire East African coast was alive with trade. Africa did develop, it just stopped after the europeans started choking it off, and only restarted when the Europeans colonized and began building themselves.

Their borders are geographical tho. A desert to the west, mountains to the southwest, impassable jungle to the south, ocean to the east, endless plans to the north and northwest

As did literally everyone before the Enlightenment.

China stagnating for far more complex reasons than the shit memes spewed here daily.

>This
Kind of like how America is really an empire, except in this case there are multiple very different language and culture groups at play, and the languages show no signs of disappearing. Manchuria, Hangzhou, Canton, Xiangqi and whatever you call central China could be reasonably seperated out as distinct units.

Would China have been better if the japanese conquered it centuries ago?

the Taiping rebellion for one

>the Zulus had an empire
Just having an empire doesn't make you developed. The Achaemenid Persian empire was more "developed" than the Zulus.

True, but the zulus didn't have a reliable dual river system civilization to emulate. It was the first imperial project in its region, and they managed some incredible shit considering that.

>if China today was separated into 5 separate Chinese states
I can only imagine that coming about if the imperial powers had decided to invade and carve up Qing China into colonies for themselves and these colonies were granted independence separately. But (perhaps excluding Tibet and Xinjiang) they would probably just decide to federalize anyway, because the meme of unity following division is too strong in Chinese history.

I think he only meant
>If the borders reflected the cultural realities of the nation

Japan would have been better if China occupied it.

Wouldn't be cucked by Americans, full of autistic otaku loli fuckers, and dying out because people don't have sex.

the vietnamese, korean and japanese owe much more to China than the whole southern and eastern mediterranean to Rome.

My point is that if China was 50+ states of 10 million people (Europe) instead of one giant 1.4 billion person blob, it would most likely be considered extremely culturally and scientfically relevant by OP and this idiot

>if China was 50+ states of 10 million people (Europe) instead of one giant 1.4 billion person blob
Maybe just the ones that correspond to the richest and most developed eastern provinces. Nobody would give a shit about those poorfags out west.

Eastern Mediterranean owed a lot to Rome, it just got overwritten by the Muslim conquests.

The Zulus were pretty fucking cool desu
They remind me of the early Irish, with their cattle-based wealth system and highly militarised clan society

when will landlocked cucks ever learn?
>t. island dweller

Except the Zulus weren't niggers

>tfw you realize 50% of Chinese live in rural areas and 30% work on farms in 2015

t. Hainan

The hukou system artificially regulates the rural to urban migration to prevent public services collapsing under mass influx of country bumpkins. But the so-called ghost cities are being built now in anticipation of them moving in the future.

They also couldn't use guns for shit, got btfo by anglos and never really got their own country

>on par with europe til the renaissance
oh please
they had nothing on the scale of european medieval monumentalism. Where is their equivalent of the cologne cathedral? I don't buy into the africa had no development meme but it never was in the same, even during the medieval era.

>japanese owe much more to China

They already paid that at Nanjing

becoz they're fake

The thing with China troughout history has been that their view of everyone else has been really ethnosentristic. They really felt they were superior compared to everyone else, and didn't feel the need to properly work together with for example europeans, because they felt like they already had the ultimate system and did not need any output from lesser civilizations. Even when europeans had clearly better and stronger civilizations, chinese kept their ethnosentric views. China did have an effect on Asia, but in their eyes they didn't have a reason to expand further as their empire was quite big.

Different needs. Of course they wouldn't have cathedrals if they didn't worship in cathedrals at all.

user they did use guns but they couldn't get them in ample amounts of them.

Why do you call them niggers. Ffs that word used to have a fucking meaning to it. It's like what cuck turned into.

Where would you draw up the borders for a hypothetical split up china that reflect the cultural realities? I guess Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia would be their own separate ethnostates but that would still leave over a billion people in what is left of China.

They did. Rome's North Africa holdings were more productive than Italy.

>Based upon the modern accepted definition of China, you are wrong.
What modern accepted definition? You mean the current borders of the PRC? Nobody before the Mongols even came close.

Bup

>What are filenames

They were incredibly important. However, if you are asking how they stagnated was getting the ass end of trade following the fall of the Song dynasty. The empire stopped trade for goods and instead had an autistic obsession with trading for silver. Thus, the mining and inflation in the Americas ruined them because they valued their whole economy around one currency. The military weakness of the trade-savvy Song and financial collapse of the Ming from inflation led the Chinese to reject modernization and mechanization instead of adopt it. This made sense from an administrative point of view, but it bit them in the ass.

TLDR: Unlucky at trade, lucky at life.

>japanese is an exception to this because of high literacy and shit, chinese are dumb as rocks
>China had a scholarly class running the country for god knows how long.
>Japan just gits lerned of Boo-ro-cracy during the 17th century.

Nomads. See Russia and the Middle East after each migration wave.

Why were they so obsessed with silver?

Silver is shiny and expensive.

Not to mention they lost metric fuck tons of silver as war compensation for losing wars consistently for over 50 years

China had no natural precious metals, and the Ming required all taxes to be paid in silver. This massive demand is actually what fed Asian colonization by Europeans in the 15-1600's.

Thing is that Rome died while china still lives.
Imagine A scenario where China divides. It would be much like what happened to Europe (talking about an imperial culture that gives birth to new populous countries)I presume. China is still recovering from the ''getting recked by guns and ships'' which happened to pretty much the whole world. Sea people I tell ya.

Welp history ends in 1992 so I know nothing of the future.

"china" still lives

define what part of china still lives.
as the nation it was in the past? hell no, Mao saw to that.
as a peoples that have managed to mostly survive the test of time and maintain their culture into the modern age? certainly. however, in this sense you can still argue that Rome didn't die either.

>China had no natural precious metals
Bruh, the abundance of Gold in China is the reason why it's not as hot as silver for le Chings.

>as a peoples that have managed to mostly survive the test of time and maintain their culture into the modern age? certainly. however, in this sense you can still argue that Rome didn't die either.
Nah. China doesn't have a bunch of countries screeching and yelling to each other that it is the real China.

Unless of course you include the stupid One China argument...between legit Chinese people.

>Thinking of ancient times, before the Qin and Han dynasties, seen and recorded gold rewards or transactions frequently ranged from a few dozen to 100 jin (a jin is about 16.1 troy ounces). After the Han Dynasty, this level of abundance was never seen again. There are two theories regarding this occurrence. The first says that what the ancients so-called gold was actually copper and not really gold. The second theory is that the previous riches of the ancients were frequently hidden by their owners in the chaos that surrounded the collapse of the Han Dynasty (about 220 AD). According to this theory, most of the pre-Han gold disappeared or was hidden underground. No matter what you believe, it is a fact that after the Han Dynasty the amount of gold in China has continuously been very little.

chinagoldnews.blogspot.com/2008/05/chinas-gold-eternal-treasure-by-sang.html?m=1

I thought they had very little. However, if you have a better source I'd be happy to be informed.

Ignore my shitty grammar.

What I meant abundance of gold relative to silver. There's more gold than silver in Chinkdom. Not that gold itself was everywhere.

Interesting though that for all it's rarity, Gold is below Jade in preciousness for the Chinese.

that's like saying the Roman Empire did minimal shaping outside of their borders, China had more than 1/4 of the world's population living in a single empire for thousands of years

>Thing is that Rome died

No, Rome is in Italy

That's true, sorry for my misinterpretation. This is simply conjecture, but maybe jade was seen as more valuable because it can only be cut once while gold and silver can be reforged.

>Jade was prized for its hardness, durability, musical qualities, and beauty.
>In particular, its subtle, translucent colors and protective qualities caused it to become associated with Chinese conceptions of the soul and immortality.
>Various myths about jade's mystical origins - some said it was fashioned by thunder and captured the force of the heavens, others that it was crystallised moonlight
>By the Han dynasty, the royal family and prominent lords were buried entirely ensheathed in jade burial suits sewn in gold thread, on the idea that it would preserve the body and the souls attached to it. Jade was also thought to combat fatigue in the living.
>玉不琢 不成器 is one of the well-known three letter sayings in China, "Jade, without chiseling, cannot become a useful object," referring to the fact that a person cannot be a talented person without learning. Jade, considered to be one of the most valuable stones, is used in the analogy for a person.
>There is another saying, "黃金有價玉無價," which translates to "Gold is valuable, jade is invaluable".

tl;dr it was harder and they thought looked nicer than gold

Huh, that's cool.

>ancient China's culture still existed after the cultural revolution

Mao ruined everything

meritocracy led to cheating in tests led to not actually learning anything led to a bunch of damn idiots

That's a good thing you dumbo

They WERE China, the country simply changed borders throughout history. Even in recent times there are large parts of the country which are inhabited mostly by non-ethnically Chinese peoples, like Tibetans or Uyghurs (pic related).

Most of those were Qing conquests.

[Citations needed]

*ring ring ring* China meme #2154

"Chinese" or "China" wasn't even a concept until the Southern Song (much like India wasn't a concept until the 1800's) and "Han" didn't even appear in the lexicon until the 1400's.

"Ethnicty" wasn't a concept until recent centuries as well. 'Chinese' in the Han/Tang/Song was "do you know a Chinese language and follow Chinese culture. Genetics and ethnicity had little to nothing to do with Chineseness.

The Tang had suzerainty over all modern PRC territory. Just because it isn't marked on a map and occupied by their soldiers doesn't mean the Tang didn't have effective control of Tibet/Taiwan in the 660's (at their peak).

Furthermore, the Tang/Early Song had control over the territory where 98% of Chinese live.

>The empire stopped trade for goods

Sorry to burst your meme but this never happened for any meaningful amount of time.

China has//had tons of gold

Furthermore, Ming inflation was directly caused by the overprinting of money. Where the fuck do you get this "only traded with silver" meme from?

Fuck this dogshit board

Modern Western consumerism did far more to kill ancient Chinese culture than Mao ever could.

>as the nation it was in the past? hell no, Mao saw to that.

Lol because 1948 Chinese culture and Emperor Wu of Han-era Chinese culture are the same.

I might mention to you that China's culture has been "destroyed" far more by foreign invasions/civil war/autistic imperial decrees than Mao's Cultural Autism in the urban centers.
Your average rural Sichuan chinese starving farmer in 1965 and your average Sichuan chinese starving farmer in 1975 were very very very similar.

Muh
>cultural revolution destroyed all chinese culturememe
is so tiresome to read spouted here on this piece of shit board each day.

Emperor Wu of Han conquered Tibet. So did the Tang, Ming, and Yuan.

Tang conquered Xinjiang as well. So did the Han, although less so.