We should probably be wary of cultural essentialism, so I'm a bit wary to start off with this, but cultural differences do play a role. When your leading cultural ideology emphasises order, stability and tradition, that tends to lead to an attitude of...
complacency is not the exact word, I think... It's more of a sense that the way things
are is the way things
should be. Well, (neo-)Confucianism really had that effect. The idea of China being All-Under-Heaven didn't exactly help, either. If your basic assumption (at least in theory) is that your culture is the true one, the best one, the
only one... That has its effects as well. I mean, the Chinese assumption was that the Emperor ruled the entire world, but that there were barbarians who were so distant and unworthy that he had no reason to extend his governance/care over them in practice. That is: the idea was that he allowed them to muddle along in their silly ignorance.
It's not even that strange an idea. For a great big part of recorded history, China
was the most civilised and advanced culture on earth. So it's not strange that they'd come to look at things that way. Nor did these "background assumptions" baked into the culture always translate into policy. From time to time, they carried greater or lesser weight. But they were there, and they played a role. So we may say that to some extent, China suffered from "cultural victory disease". They were so far ahead of so many others for so long, needed so little that anyone else could offer, that it led to a certain amount of stagnation.
Again, that word - "stagnation" - is perhaps the wrong term: the popular notion that China was somehow frozen in time must be done away with. It's just that there was less need to undertake certain developments
when compared to Europe. One of the factors playing into that is the unity of China when compared to the disunity of Europe. Again, culture and geopolitical reality play off each other here: Chinese culture promotes the idea of stabilty, of unity and order under the Mandate of Heaven... and the very fact that such unity exists plays a role in allowing for a culture that never leaves the ideal behind.
This is something mentioned in another thread several months ago:
For what it's worth, one theory seems to be that unity itself causes stagnation. Or rather: that division and competition urge on change and innovation. That theory is outlined in the recent book that is talked about
in this article, for instance. The author, Joel Mokyr, argues that political and institutional circumstances, by themselves, are at least just as important as cultural factors: "
People have given different answers, and I’m giving mine. One way of thinking about it is culture. But to state, “Hey, the Chinese have a different culture because they were Confucianists, and the Europeans were Christian,” I don’t buy that for a second."
I actually don't agree with his view entirely; I don't think he's giving enough credit to the importance of cultural attitude. Although that's partly (it seems to me) because he is trying to get his own point about the importance of political and institutional circumstances across. His ultimate conclusion is that cultural attitudes and political and institutional circumstances both influence all of this, and are interrelated. Later on in the article he mentions (implicitly) how important general attitudes can be (although his statement is necessarily a simplification): "
China wanted stability and security, and they achieved that for a long time. The Europeans don’t want stability. They want progress."
The way I see it, cultural attitudes influence the political and institutional situations, so having different cultural attitudes can be an impetus to have a different situation, politically and institutionally.
But at the same time (and this is Mokyr's main thesis), the political and institutional citcumstances
also shape the cultural attitudes!
...so perhaps it isn't even needed to seek out a POD that hinges on a different philosophical/religious paradigm. Merely coming up with a POD that keeps China politically divided would likely lead to changes in the cultural attitudes. Specifically: the competition between various states would cause "stability" to be valued less, and "innovation" to be valued more.
I do agree that a fractured China will lead to a more technologically advanced China, but I'd say being fractured is not the ultimate cause--at least in China's case.
China has been, for the majority of its exsistence united, and the largest empire in the world. Yet for many of these centuries, ideas and technology flowed from east to west, not vice versa. Instead, IMHO, it is the presence of an external enemy. Song China can be united and strong, yet it faces a massive enemy in the Liao, Jin and eventually Mongols, giving it incentive to develop it's military and its technology. Ming China can be united and strong, yet it faces the Mongols, Manchus and Japanese, again giving it incentive to develop. Han China can be united and strong, yet it faces the constant threat of the Xiongnu. Being fractured is not the cause of innovation--the presence of an external enemy is. So perhaps we don't need a fractured China--all we need is a long lasting rival that is a constant threat for China, similar to the Persians for the Romans.
Very true. In many ways, the idea of 'competition is good for innovation' is just one iteration of the more general idea 'security leads to complacency, threats and crises force you to adapt and develop'. So the exact form of the threat/crisis doesn't matter... as long as 'too much security' is avoided, because it will lead to complacency and stagnation. (Of course, culture also still plays a role, but just as a fractured China would devlop differently from OTl in a cultural sense, I'm fairly confident that a united China facing a long-lasting rival power will also develop certain different cultural attitudes.)
...so we may conclude that China certainly had periods when external threats forced an adapt-or-die mentality, and what do we see? China, being so very strong and advanced compared rto pretty much everyone, time and again overcame threats and
did in fact innovate. But once order was restored, the existing cultural pardigm was once again confirmed as having been right: all was as it should be under heaven, and thus... things calmed again.
Then there was Europe. Following the Pax Romana (which had only ever meant peace within the Empire, not on its frontiers!), European powers were constantly at war. There was no status quo to return to. Not in the way there was one in China. We never had an Emperor of All Europe, with an undisputed mandate, whose throne could be held by this dynasty or that, but whose divine autority of office could never be questioned.
Basically, China had its business in order, by and large. Europe did not. And as it turns out, the lively spirit of evolutionary competition really
does rule the fate of us all.
There are, no boubt, many other factors. And we should really be careful of simplifying these particular factors that I have raised here. but I'm fairly confident that they played a role in the way things worked out.
