That's an excellent answer.
Thank you.
You know, Qing China's population boomed due to the adoption of foreign goods. It had an insatiable demand for certain foreign exotica, particularly luxury goods from southeast asia.
Unlike in Japan, Jesuits remained at the court into the 18th century, letting foreign ideas seep in.
So I think things are a bit more complex than portrayed.
This is true, but it hardly helps with regards to industrialization. The Southeast Asian goods which fed demand in China hardly helped industrialization. What really doomed the Chinese, besides their conservative state ideology and massive, nigh-unmanageable size, was the state's response to the various European incursions over the course of the 19th century. Rather than attempting to defeat the Europeans by imitating them fully (as in, changing their entire state and economic structure like Japan), they used half-measures to achieve superiority without real modernization. The crux of the issue here is Confucianism, which prevented any substantial changes to the state and economic structure. In fact, I'll go out on a risky limb here and say that without the incredibly destructive nature of the 20th Century in regards to Chinese culture and society, they wouldn't have been able to reach even the meager potential they have today (which is but a fraction of their total potential). Even today, despite widespread destruction of traditional social moorings such as Confucianism, Chinese economic movers are hampered by traditionalism and a lack of state restrictions, which has led to an extremely inefficient industrial sector (similar to the 1950s in the United States). It follows, therefore, that China is not even modernized today, at least not nearly to the level Japan is. The situation, thus, is fairly straightforward.
Were there many other countries that had similar advantages but didn't take advantage of them for whatever reason?
Siam can perhaps be seen as a potential Meiji parallel. With fairly widespread literacy (not as widespread as Japan, but still) and large cities, it certainly had the potential to industrialize in the late 19th century. Unfortunately, the combination of European incursion, a feudalistic system, and a surplus of natural resources stunted its growth, though one could say it did manage to become somewhat of a late bloomer in the 20th Century. This factor should be expanded upon; like modern Russia, Kuomintang China, and arguably modern India, Siam, rather than industrializing, relied on its extremely profitable first-sector industries (agriculture, mining, forestry) to subsidize the government. Unfortunately, this left it crippled industrially (like modern Russia, Kuomintang China, and arguably modern India) and unable to compete when these first-sector industries began to produce less and less. If a far-seeing Dhammaraja (the title of the Siamese Emperor) had decided to focus on industrialization, Siam could have been the next Japan.
The Sultanate of Aceh also has potential, with its large city of the same name (it was a fairly small country), widespread literacy and a bourgeois-urban culture, to appropriate the phrase Roger II used. Its real problem was twofold; its reliance on first-sector industries rather than craftsmanship (as mentioned above with Siam), and its lack of agricultural land. This last is somewhat of a deciding factor with regards to industrialization. Without efficient mass agriculture, an industrial state cannot develop. Britain was able to do so because of the growing efficiency of its agriculture and that of Ireland, though as the population grew, food was imported. The gigantic British colonial empire also helped in regards to food. Japan, too, had efficient enough agriculture and enough land to support an industrial state (though the growing population was eventually a deciding factor in the conquest of Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria, with a view to using the three lands for food production and population overflow holders). Aceh, however, did not, most of its agricultural land being used for the production of nutmeg, pepper, cloves, and betel nuts--none of which are very useful for feeding an industrial population. If there had been more agricultural land used for basic food products, Aceh's foundations would have been much more stable and it would likely have industrialized. Alternatively, if one of the Sultans had conquered more land in the center of Sumatra, there would have been ample food to go around and they would never have been embargoed and conquered by the Dutch (which was unsurprisingly a major factor in their lack of industrialization).
I could talk about more, but I think I've been long-winded enough for now. If you want to know more, PM me.