Hello everyone,
I had a thought I'd like to discuss.
It's often said that Europe got an advantage in tech because there were competing states and the wars helped them hone each others' skills. On the other hand, China stagnated because they didn't have "serious" enemies for a while.
I'm simplifying but I see it often, and then people coming and said "oh but if China had reformed earlier/was more powerful/etc... we'd say unity is the great factor".
But I was thinking, China still had massive advances in tech and warfare, and a lot o it came from their fight against steppe people. So my thought was this: can we equate the threat of steppe people with the interstate wars of Europe in term of drive to innovate or is China's drive for tech an actually different model?