Scientifically, why did China lack behind Europe

jesus OP, romans weren't even white by today's standards

Actually, no. The school system after the Song Dynasty had been quite sophisticated.
The actual problem is that the academia give much of fuck about natural science. Literature, Historiography, social science and statesmanship were all they prided themselves with. The merchant and craftsman class did occasionally come up with new technology (like the 17th century machine gun), but those classes were mostly illiterate. The educated scholar-gentries were usually too proud to consider those worthwhile "science", and if the craftsmen or merchants learn to read and write, the social expectation (also tax exemption) for them is to take the imperial examination and be a scholar-gentry or civil servant. So not a lot of them had enough insight to write the technology down and examine the mechanism behind those, except a few in the late among dynasty influenced by the Jesuits, whose works got banned when the Manchus took over.

Also the lack of competition part that someone mentioned

China was the greatest thing around, no incentive for anyone to innovate compared to the barbarians in the west that couldn't chill a day before figuring out new ways to kill themselves.

semi-related, why does China and India have such a big population compared to the rest of the world?

Iran used to be really populous but Mongols killed so many of them that they only recovered their pre-Mongol population in the 1950s. Europe also was becoming overpopulated until the black death killed 1/3 of it.

The only reason China had a stronger economy was because of a larger population

China and India have always had much larger populations than anywhere else

The Industrial Revolution is what allowed Europe's economies to become the world's largest, because the increased efficiency meant that fewer people could produce the same amount of economic value as the larger populations of Asia

Anyway, I question your idea that China "lacked behind" Europe because the East Asian countries are probably the most advanced and developed in the world besides Europe. China came out with many inventions before we did. East Asia is literally the only place on the planet that can even compare to Europe in terms of technological advancement (look at Africa and the Americas and everywhere else - yeah, they were all shit).

China, like everywhere else, had to learn about industrialisation from us - true. But before this, within the two thousand years of the common era, many of the East Asian civilisations were pretty advanced. East Asia is the cradle of the most advanced civilisations of Earth outside of Europe. Look at the Great Wall for Christ's sake, gunpowder, paper, all the things the chinks came up with.

Pretty amazing how US went from a backwater colony of religious nutters to the world's largest economy in less than a century.

These are shit answers; they're paraphrases of "it happened because it happened."

Because there was no institutional individualism in China or India in the same way there was for Europe; the Catholic Church created the idea of individualised contracts for the masses much earlier than the industrial revolution while the rest of the world did not have institutions that promoted economic and personal agency which enabled the groundwork of the Renaissance and Enlightenment

>scientifically, why did China lack behind Europe despite China having a stronger economy than Europe for centuries?

The question makes no sense. China didn't start lagging in comparison to Europe until around the 17th century (coincidentally when European economies really started to take off).

That just shows you what happens when colonial powers aren't stealing your vast natural resources.

Would it still have happened if the natives weren't replaced by european migrants?

>yfw the Song fell to mongols due to sjws

pottery

They graduate 30 million engineers a year and literally zero of those will dare say to "no" to a senior

Indeed. I wouldn't call them religious nutters though. The founding fathers, people like G. Wash, Benny Franks, Tommy J, they were all pre-eminent scholars influenced by the most sophisticated European thought of the day.

I guess the US became so powerful because the greatest race in the world (Europeans) finally had an entire continent's worth of resources to consume and use to develop themselves - plus they were far enough away from the rest of the most powerful civilisations (Europe, China) that they rarely had to deal with foreign invasion and the strong, well-equipped armies that were always putting European nations under threat.

No, it shows what happens when you're strong enough to seize resources for yourself.

US had to fight wars against Indians, the British, the French, the Mexicans, the Spanish. All of these people wanted to seize American land. And the Americans were strong enough to repel all of them.

If the Amerindians (or any other people that have been overcome by colonialists) had been strong enough, then they wouldn't have fallen. That's their fault. You lefty twat.

Of course not. That guy's a moron.

>might makes right
A fine sentiment until you're on the wrong end of the gun.

In the dynasties of old I think China was centuries ahead in some areas famaladingdong

Two new continents to feed its expanding population, as well as new resources from those places.

Uhhh "no"

Thankfully I was born an Englishman.

Kek the natives got fucked by disease and lost something near 70-90 percent of their population. They were easy targets

Should have been stronger then shouldn't they

If they had had guns and armour and shit like the Europeans did then they could have just taken them out and never have been exposed to diseases

Weak motherfuckers

Lol

The Chinese are a slave race with weak bones.

>China having a stronger economy than Europe for centuries
proofs? China hadnt industry before 1850.

>I am proud to be liberal

kys

Picture related - China and India have always had bigger populations. Purely by that virtue alone, they produced more.

The West was only able to produce more than those countries after the Industrial Revolution. Increased efficiency of machines meant each worker could produce much more dollar value - enough to compensate for our much smaller populations.

As you say, industrialisation is late to China - that's why they are only now catching back up with us.

>Russian GDP during 0-700

>what are eastern slavic tribes

>eastern slavic tribes, which arrived to modern Belarus and Ukraine after 700. From modern Poland and Chech.

Rice cultivation

I think you underestimate how fast-spreading and devastating infectious disease was before the advent of antibiotics.

Many natives who died of smallpox never even saw a single European.

How did scholar-gentry support themselves?
If someone came from a craftsman/merchant background did they just live off their business? The implication is that you stop being a craftsman/merchant so you can be a scholar "full time".

Plenty. They could
>WORK IN THE GOVERNMENT (WHOLE POINT OF THEIR EXISTENCE)
>Supported by family until they can work in government.
>Join the military (besides promotion, you can fast track to officerhood if you had schol-gen background for the Military Academy.
>Continue being Craftsmen-Inventors (as was the case popularly in Song China.)
>Investments (government salary was the highest you can receive in Chinkdom, you can invest that on anything, like Merchant relatives perhaps).
>[spoiler]Bribery & Corruption[/spoiler]
Some fail in life and end up as criminal masterminds or wandering swordsmen as per popular Chinese culture.

Mongols amd Jurchens

What would they actually do for the government that earns them a salary?

did China have clean streets and toilets before Europe?

Government office work? Come on, nigga. Same shit your Departments/Ministers down to your mayors and local government units do nowadays: collect taxes, oversee law enforcement, public projects, a bit of civic welfare, government shit. Most of them are trained lawyers too so they did that as well, as well as preside over court hearings.

I guess the only difference is that the Chinese equivalent of mayors and county sheriffs were basically Judge Dredd officials who had the power of judge, jury, and executioner. Many were also trained in basic military strategy and often led local militias of their jurisdiction versus bandits or internal threats, and wars even. Some higher ups were so steeped in military experience, they also sidelined as generals in emergencies, as in the cases of Ban Chao, Zhuge Liang, and Sima Yi.

Dude, by the time Europeans got around to North America the natives were already living in a Mad Max dystopia because our diseases raced north from Central America ahead of us. We genocided them before they ever saw a white man.

lack of visionary's, also why they fell into communism after we helped them out of it in ww2.

>they also sidelined as generals in emergencies
>dadudu

>our diseases
You mean hundreds of years of warfare, drought, famine, and disease native to North America.

>US had to fight wars against Indians, the British, the French, the Mexicans, the Spanish. All of these people wanted to seize American land. And the Americans were strong enough to repel all of them.
Actually, it's the other way around buddy.
Murrica took the lands of lots of other people

complacency

They didn't need to achieve scientific advancement, they had enough food, money, and land.

By the time all of that went to shit it was already too late.