CH: China First

Specifically, make China industrialize, among other things, before Europe. You may go back as far as you want, but China needs to come out on top, or at least establish parity to countries like the UK. For more specifics,

1. China never is controlled, in any way similar to OTL, by countries like the UK, France, or Russia. If anything, China is the one in the imperialist position.

2. China must industrialize before, or at the same time as countries like the UK, France, and so on.

3. Militarily, China must at least have parity with countries like the UK.

I'm curious for those who know more about China on how to do this, so... begin!
 

RousseauX

Donor
The southern Song had the right pre-conditions, butterfly away the Mongols might have set it off.

OTOH: maybe not.
 

Delvestius

Banned
The finer points of Chinese history elude me, though I know this: If China wasn't quite so damn big, it could have grown with greater central authority, which would allow industrialization to happen. Their problem was the size of their bureaucracy, as well as the numerous fragmented state and warlord periods...
 
The finer points of Chinese history elude me, though I know this: If China wasn't quite so damn big, it could have grown with greater central authority, which would allow industrialization to happen. Their problem was the size of their bureaucracy, as well as the numerous fragmented state and warlord periods...

When you say "size of their bureaucracy," I assume you actually want to make it larger, because Ming and Qing China had roughly one civil servant per 100,000 to 250,000 people, plus the people in Beijing.
 
Maybe the 'goldilocks size' for China to industrialize is a split between North and South that stays permanent? A northern state absorbs steppe invasions and provides a foe/trading partner/trading competitor that makes competition and therefore innovation necessary for the southern state, while the southern state provides the stability for industrialization that a balkanized China could not.
 

Delvestius

Banned
When you say "size of their bureaucracy," I assume you actually want to make it larger, because Ming and Qing China had roughly one civil servant per 100,000 to 250,000 people, plus the people in Beijing.

Right. It was not anywhere close to being big enough to support a central state of that size.
 
Europe (and especially Britain) industrialized pretty quickly because they had all the resources right there together... coal, iron, water, timber. Did China have all that stuff together in one place to make industrialization easy? If not, then that's one POD that could suffice...
 
China actually does have the resources needed it seems. Additionally, one must not forget the role of imperialism in boosting resources for the European powers, to say the least...
 
The Ming continue their imperialist-mercantile expeditions/explorations of Central Asia, South East Asia, and the Indian Ocean. Zhu Gaoxu's rebellion succeeding would seem to be a good starting point; the Yongle Emperor's rule was the highlight of the Ming from what I can tell, and his first son was more in line with his own personality. I think people tend to forget that prior to an Industrial Revolution you need a Mercantilist Revolution - e.g even with the 'supplies', you need a demand for industrial production first.
 
China actually does have the resources needed it seems. Additionally, one must not forget the role of imperialism in boosting resources for the European powers, to say the least...

the big question though is how concentrated were these resources... it doesn't help if all the coal is in the north, all the iron is way out in the west, and none of it is near any major rivers... Europe rather lucked out in that part of it...
 
the big question though is how concentrated were these resources... it doesn't help if all the coal is in the north, all the iron is way out in the west, and none of it is near any major rivers... Europe rather lucked out in that part of it...

By the Tang the construction of the Grand Canal certainly facilitated trade across China. By the Ming, coal merchants from Shaanxi were already operating large trade networks. The south also had sizable coal deposits of their own. All it really took was the invention of a breakthrough steam engine by a scholar-bureaucrat, most probably from somewhere in the lower Yangtze River. Once an early industrial belt is established in that region and railway lines are built parallel to the Grand Canal and other crucial corridors to the coalfields of northern China and Beijing and the south coast, the stage is set for mass industrialization. I'd imagine the Emperor himself will be obsessed with building railways and telegraphs to the furthest reaches of the empire at vast expense given China's historical centrifugal forces.
 
The problem with Chinese industrialization is that there population is so large that labor saving machines aren't really needed. You'd need a plague to wipe out much of the population, and it'd also help if there were multiple states in China at the time so that competition helps in the process of ingenuity. IOTL, China didn't see an incentive to follow paths that lead to industrialization because it had no civilizations that rivaled it (until the 19th century).
 
Just have there be some competing states around or in China that make competition popular. You know the southern parts of China that speak Cantonese and stuff? Have those never get fully integrated and make them grow into a group of states that encourage technological advances around the region. To a China that only has influence north of the Yangtze River, it's possible that they could be as foreign as Vietnam, and much more powerful.
 
Okay, the problem I have with China split is wouldn't that make it more vulnerable to European superpowers later possibly?
 
Okay, the problem I have with China split is wouldn't that make it more vulnerable to European superpowers later possibly?

It's a rather large and complicated process, but given that the point of divergence would be somewhere around 200 BCE, European superpowers might not ever pop up.

It would have to be something like this: Qin Shi Huang unifies China, and he goes south and conquers parts of Southern China as he did historically. Then the Qin Empire collapses roughly as it did historically. Now, reportedly, one of the two contenders in the resulting civil war wanted to turn China back into a collection of kingdoms as it was before, according to Han Dynasty historians. The guy who won, Liu Bang, won and created a new imperial dynasty. Personally, I don't think this guy, Xiang Yu, would really have rejected the imperial system and turn China back into kingdoms as it was before. However, I admit that the concept of China as a bunch of different kingdoms didn't go away completely. So, assuming the Han Dynasty historians are being honest, Xiang Yu wins, and China remains a bunch of competing kingdoms. Meanwhile, the southern parts of China become their own semi-Sinicized kingdoms, like Nanyue or Minyue. That way, you get a bunch of Chinese kingdoms that continue to compete with each other.

Without this, there's not that much incentive for the Chinese kingdoms to spread south on their own. Yue and Wu and Chu were next to Southern China for centuries but didn't expand.

The latest possible point of divergence might be during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, but I think this is a little too late, and the idea of China being one giant empire is already there.

Either way, the effects are going to be huge and the world as a whole might be unrecognizable.
 
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