AHC: Advanced and innovative East-Asia vs stagnant/backwards Europe.

Sure they did. Why do you think Sichuan is now Han? It didn't used to be.

China expanded its borders PLENTY. It just had a lot of land nearby to do it in. For a significantly smaller cost than shipping people en masse across the Pacific.

China expanded its borders, but it seems to (like Russia) have just incorporated its colonization into the state. There were no areas that were developed as something like New England, say.

This isn't a bad thing, I suppose
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But its not as if the options for outside China (as in the modern borders, + Taiwan) are "across the Pacific" or "nowhere".

As for the static culture--Chinese culture changed plenty. However, much like the Papacy in Europe it was usually very skilled at incorporating these changes into a traditional framework. Things were the same as they'd always been in China for a long, long time, despite being quite different.
Culturally China may have changed (queues come to mind as the first thought), but it seems to have been - by the point of the late 15th century - slowing down on the innovations that drove economic and/or military power.
 
Europe split into lots of very small (compare even France to China) countries, each competing with the others trying to come out on top. They are ALWAYS looking for that competitive edge whether it be technological, economic, dynastic whatever because if they don't it's bye bye. This leads to rapid advances and agressive looking for new markets, and the easiest way to control thoses markets is to have your own controlling them rather than natives who could change sides.
A case in point is the chronometer, it wasn't beyond any civilisation such as China intellectually but it was the British who developed it first because their ships needed to know exactly where they were at any point in time.
China is big even when split into 7 kingdoms each would have had an area as large as ERE or WRE so much less need to continually develop new strategies to stay on top.
If it had been the other way round Europe was one big nation and East Asia had been a mess of very small principalities. Then East Asia would have been the explorers and aggressive merchants and Europe the sleeping giant.

As I said earlier that can't be the only factor. Look at India which was as divided as Europe
 
Ok is it then Europe's rather variable climate (mini Ice Ages etc) coupled with small countries? India's climate was rather less variable in this time frame.
 
Ok is it then Europe's rather variable climate (mini Ice Ages etc) coupled with small countries? India's climate was rather less variable in this time frame.

Frankly, as I've said before, I feel it was Europes relative resource needs which spurred the initial push to explore. This then led to the development of financial, intellectual and political institutions that spurred further advances.
 
Frankly, as I've said before, I feel it was Europes relative resource needs which spurred the initial push to explore. This then led to the development of financial, intellectual and political institutions that spurred further advances.
True but that had always been the case. What gave the kick required?
 
So how would we sum up at least the major factors, aside from having lots of domestic animals and crops that encourage the development of a complex society in the first place?

1. Europe is a fragmented mess that invites competition.

2. Europe initially has nothing worth offering to get outside traders to come to them.

3. Europe is vulnerable to the middle men in the eastern trade, but this backwater geographical position allows them to eventually sail around them.

4. Closer to the Americas, which allows Europe to plunder there.

5. The eastern cultures, being rich in what the rest of the world wants does not need to travel far to profit off trading, limiting any desire for overseas expansion.
 
Europe needed Newfoundland cod more than it needed Chinese silk and spices from the Indies.

That's the kind of need drove the construction of ships capable of handling stormy seas first, and that's a powerful part of what drove European exploitation forward in general.

To pick whale oil as another boring commodity, nothing stopped a Japanese whaling industry exploiting the Pacific for all it was worth long before Europeans ran out of Atlantic whales.

Nothing carved in stone, at least.
 
Europe needed Newfoundland cod more than it needed Chinese silk and spices from the Indies.

That's the kind of need drove the construction of ships capable of handling stormy seas first, and that's a powerful part of what drove European exploitation forward in general.

To pick whale oil as another boring commodity, nothing stopped a Japanese whaling industry exploiting the Pacific for all it was worth long before Europeans ran out of Atlantic whales.

Nothing carved in stone, at least.

Makes sense, it all fed into each other.
 
Makes sense, it all fed into each other.

Yeah.

And from me the standpoint of prosperity, at least in the short run - well, China did produce 32.8% of the world's manfucturing in 1750.

But its level of industrialization per capita (with the UK in 1900 as arbitrarily 100) is the same as the European average. This is not as backwards as sometimes claimed, but certainly not far beyond backwater Europe anymore.
 
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