Why was Japan able to surpass China in development if they didn't invent:

Why was Japan able to surpass China in development if they didn't invent:
>agriculture
>metallurgy
>writing
>guns
>printing press
Etc.

Throughout the majority of their history they copied China and the West... And yet China is a poor shithole and Japan has the 3rd largest economy.

Meiji

Japan is chinese clay

Why is western europet so rich if they did not invent agriculture, >agriculture
>metallurgy
>writing
>guns
>printing press

>europet

They are pretty much the Britain of the east.

A small stormy island of small peckered mongrels that never actually invented a damn thing but benifitted from the technology of their betters whilst still being physically removed from most of the bigger conflicts that the contenental nations had. Sure, they had some small internal struggles that they just wont fucking stop jerking off about, but it was all minor and really just a distraction from their true calling of being persistent little cunts who just won't stop trying to toss their cocks into every crack in the countryside when they decide to take a break from giving it to each other on their smelly boats and dock at an harbor.

Fucking fishniggers need to stick to their island and stop molesting my fucking cows, goddamit.

China imported western technology but were loath to totally reform their government along western lines since in their eyes westerners were barbarians. After getting btfo'd in the Opium wars and then by Japan in 1895 reformers tried to modernize China's institutions but were thwarted by conservative backlash.

Communism, duh

western help I presume.
china is a sleeping giant that has been kept down in the last 500 years by the western world dominance. they're just in the process of waking up and getting rid of the chains holding them down.
japan on the other hand is a western puppet, their apparent superiority over China is a reflex of representing the west

China's politics didn't go for a westernization while Japan's did. The late Qing were stuck in the past and it didn't help that the western powers started carving up slices of their territories, not to mention the two consecutive losses against Japan.

On a side note, the Mongols might have a part of responsability as well. After their initial defeat, the Song retreated in the south and even after the fall of the Yuan dinasty (the Mongol one) China's seat of power remained in the south (mostly Nanjing). However, the northern parts of the country are literally filled with coal, so if China would have had a better hold of its northern provinces, it might have triggered an industrial revolution of its own.

But those are just theories.

>And yet China is a poor shithole and Japan has the 3rd largest economy.
Look up which country is 2nd m8.

They didn't fall for the communism meme

I'd call the communist revolution in China a pretty big success against the conservatives.

Didn't they just wipe out a big Tibetan city? Not very Confucian at all, desu.

Since when did invention necessarily cause prosperity?

Greece practically invented the Western world, yet prosperity in the vein of Western Europe eludes it.

>Fucking fishniggers need to stick to their island and stop molesting my fucking cows, goddamit.
You know I once landed on land and found beings like us with legs and their digestive system was this big. You bet I smashed that.

China's government by the mid 19th century was very rigidly anti-modernization, their crushing defeat in the first opium war should have been a wake-up call but it wasn't. In fact there was a minor skirmish during that war where a group of British marines were raiding a village when they were encircled by Chinese spearmen. Because the fighting was taking place during a rainstorm the powder in the marines' muskets failed to ignite, and although they were able to fight their way out and retreat back to their ship they did suffer some losses. Realistically this was a very minor encounter but the Chinese siezed on it as a huge victory and legitimately believed that it was a sign that western weapons weren't actually as strong as they appeared. So 15 years later when the second opium war started they were completely unprepared and got crushed FAR harder than the first time, and had to give up some of their richest ports and pay enormous reparations to Britain and France. This was when China started to modernize its military, but they were so far behind, and saddled with so much debt that they simply didn't have the capital (and many political leaders still were unconvinced on westernization) to really make effective change. Japan had keenly noted China's troubles and was much more enthusiastic about westernizing. As Japan invested more into modernizing the gulf between the two countries grew and grew at an alarming pace. When they went to war in the 1890s Japan defeated China quite easily. This was a deep shock to the Chinese who had always considered Japan to be a rather insignificant and inferior tributary to China.

Pic related was a rather curious incident which occurred during the peace negotiations of the first sino-japanese war. An extremist samurai shot the Chinese ambassador in the face to derail negotiations because he wanted Japan to conquer China outright. The emperor personally apologized and offered this "apology".

That's all before Yuan dynasty though?

dumb frogposter

Bump

The same reason northern Europe eventually surpass southern Europe
Japan is white

Bump

Haha

>A small stormy island
Japan is a collection of very large islands that add up to the size of present-day Germany.

It's also not particularly stormy.