Ed,
Yes . . . well I mentioned this in my piece. Over the centuries the Chinese
amassed a large number of inventions here and there in a vast country which
then drifted into Europe in the Middle Ages. The real problem for China
began at the time of the Ming dynasty (early 1400s) when multi-masted ships
(that is, international trade) was outlawed. From then onwards they were no
longer receptive to catalytic ideas from the outside world. It's economy
was large enough (and its internal freight routes were adequate enough --
principally its grand canal linking the 'export markets' of the north and
south) for it to remain viable, but it never made any great strides from
then on. Its culture and economy was largely locked and introverted.
The original problem (that the abstract scientific ideas of the West from
about 1700 onwards couldn't be immediately written down in ideographic
Chinese) doesn't apply any longer. (Now that they've absorbed the ideas
they can be written down in Chinese -- albeit in railway length words!) The
problem today (which, as I said, the government is seriously worried about)
is that their children and young people are not curious or creative enough
-- and they (not I) put it down to the many years of intensive rote
learning necessary to acquire reading and writing.
Keith
At 12:28 08/01/2011 -0500, you wrote:
Interesting Keith, but despite the problem of their written language, the
Chinese do seem to have been able to come up with inventions in the
past. I recalled reading something about them having invented gunpowder,
so I looked that up on Wikipedia and to my surprise found that they had
not only invented gunpowder, but a host of other things:<?xml:namespace
prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China>China has been the source of many
significant <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention>inventions, including
the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Great_Inventions_of_ancient_China>Four
Great Inventions of ancient China:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papermaking>papermaking, the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass>compass,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder>gunpowder, and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_typography_in_East_Asia>printing
(both <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodblock_printing>woodblock and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movable_type>movable type). The list below
contains these and other inventions.
The <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_people>Chinese invented
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_China>technologies
involving <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanics>mechanics,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulics>hydraulics, and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics>mathematics applied to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horology>horology,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy>metallurgy,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy>astronomy,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture>agriculture,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering>engineering,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory>music theory,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craftsmanship>craftsmanship,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_history>nautics, and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfare>warfare. By the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_States_Period>Warring States Period
(403221 BC), they had advanced metallurgic technology, including the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_furnace>blast furnace and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_furnace>cupola furnace, while the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finery_forge>finery forge and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddling_(metallurgy)>puddling process were
known by the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Dynasty>Han Dynasty(202 BC
AD 220). A sophisticated economic system in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1
ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><?xml:namespace prefix
= u1 />China gave birth to inventions such as
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote>paper money during the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Dynasty>Song Dynasty (9601279). The
invention of gunpowder by the 10th century led to an array of inventions
such as the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lance>fire lance, land
mine, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine>naval mine,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon>hand cannon, exploding
cannonballs, multistage <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket>rocket, and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huolongjing#Fire_arrows_and_rockets>rocket
bombs with aerodynamic wings and explosive payloads. With the navigational
aid of the 11th-century compass and ability to steer at high sea with the
1st-century sternpost <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudder>rudder,
premodern Chinese sailors sailed as far as
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Africa>East Africa and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt>Egypt.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#cite_note-0>[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#cite_note-1>[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#cite_note-2>[3]
In water-powered clockworks, the premodern Chinese had used the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapement>escapement mechanism since the
8th century and the endless power-transmitting
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_drive>chain drive in the 11th century.
They also made large mechanical puppet theaters driven by
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterwheel>waterwheels and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoke>carriage wheels and
wine-serving<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton>automatons driven by
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddle_steamer>paddle wheel boats.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions)
The quote mentions agriculture, but not the intensive agriculture of the
rice paddie. I recall reading somewhere that rice paddies were partly a
response to the need to feed vast armies.
Despite the problems raised by their written language, the Chinese must
have had some way of encapsulating their inventions because they were
quite widely used. And in the case of Europe, it wasn't so much language
that was essential to the spread of ideas. Rather it was the invention of
the printing press and the movement away from Latin to the vernacular that
swept ideas across the continent.
If their written language presents a problem currently, there is good
reason to believe that the Chinese will have no problem in adapting. A
few days ago, I saw a TV interveiw with Justin Yinfu Lin, Chief Economist
of the World Bank. The interview was in English, and Yinfu Lin's
responses were in English, but in an English so thick that I had a lot of
trouble understanding what he was saying. However, he knew exactly what
he was saying.
My point is that if there is a problem, I'm sure that the Chinese will
find a way around it.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 5:44 AM
Subject: [Futurework] Why China won't win in this century
The reason why China will never win hands-down in its current economic
war with America is the same as why Japan didn't succeed in the 1980s
when all were expecting that its corporations and banks would eat America
up (Americans included). The reason is that both countries are good at
copying ideas and technologies; neither is good at inventing new ones.
It's their written language that's the main part of their problem. It's
non-phonetic. It means that in order to acquire a basic vocabulary -- of,
say, 2,000 or 3,000 words (the content of their average newspapers) --
children have to learn uniquely-shaped characters (whole words) which
have no, or very little, relationship with their utterance. A Chinese or
Japanese child can learn to speak his language quite as readily as
children do the world over, but learning how to read or write each
individual word takes many years. And there's only one way, unfortunately
for children, and that's by rote learning. And thousands of hours of rote
learning over many years under the strict discipline of slave-masters in
the schoolroom doesn't do anything for the creativity of young minds --
or for older minds for that matter because the basic mental skills are
aptitudes are thoroughly laid down before puberty.
The Chinese and Japanese governments are well aware of the damage that
rote learning is doing to them -- and say so quite frequently. Although
both countries can churn out ten of thousands of science and engineering
graduates every year, there's scarcely an independent mind among them.
Independent 'garage inventors', as we have in the West, are as rare as
hen's teeth in China and Japan. For example, Japan has been
industrialized for over a century -- only a decade or two less than other
Western countries -- yet it has only won 15 Nobel prizes in the science
subjects. Compare this figure with those of America (261), the UK (91)
and Germany (88). China has only won 10! However, this comparison is
unfair because China's have only been won since it woke up in the 1970s.
America's number also needs to be modified because about a third of its
prizes have been won by foreign-born scientists who became American
citizens after migrating there.
It's all Emperor Qin Shi Huang's fault (yes, the same as is famed for his
terracotta army). Once Qin had conquered several countries and unified
China in 221BC, he standardized as many things as possible from weights
and measures and currency through to the written language. All the
various scholars throughout his empire, speaking scores of different
languages (some with and some without a written form) were forced -- on
pain of death -- to produce a composite, but common, written language.
And this could only be non-phonetic, of course. Even the mighty power of
Emperor Qin couldn't force millions of his subjects to learn a new common
spoken language but he could certainly force his relatively few scholars
to produce a new common written one. One popular penalty in those days
was to cut someone through his midriff, mount him on a platter of hot tar
and take him around the town, gesticulating and shouting before he expired.
And herein lies a paradox, because the industrial revolution in Europe
would never have happened without starting from a basic stock of scores
of innovations -- such as canal locks, differential gears, sowing grain
in rows and so forth -- that had drifted in from China along the Great
Silk Road over a period of centuries. However, this doesn't signify that
the Chinese had been more inventive than Europeans. But its common
written language had meant that when one innovation -- say a wheelbarrow
(very important indeed for both China and Europe) -- had been invented by
a genius in one tucked-away corner of China, then the local mandarin
could write and tell hundreds more all about this wonderful new device.
But what once had been an accelerator for both Chinese and European
civilizations actually became a retardant for China when the Western
Enlightenment and scientific revolution stirred into life in the 1600s
and 1700s. The Chinese had no way of encapsulating these new ideas. A
Chinese mandarin visiting Europe in, say, the 1700s or 1800s, and
learning about the new exciting scientific ideas (if he'd learned Latin
or another European language of course) had no way of disseminating them
widely in China because there he had no method of writing them down in
Chinese words that would have been instantly recognizable by fellow
Chinese scholars or engineers. He could only convey the new ideas vaguely
by speaking of them face-to-face when he returned home.
Thus Japan (which had inherited thousands of Chinese words) and China
were left behind by the industrial revolution in England, Germany and
America. They didn't begin to catch up in earnest until the the 1870s
(the Meiji Revolution) and the 1970s (the Deng Xiaoping Revolution)
respectively. And this is still -- largely -- where they are today. Both
the Chinese and Japanese governments are trying to phoneticize their
written languages but only very slowly, such is the cultural conservatism
of two thousands years to contend with.
What might be significant in China (though not yet happening in Japan),
is that all their college and university entrants have to learn spoken
and written English these days. All their top government officials speak
English and most business and science faculties in their universities use
English widely in their seminars. Also, thousands of their brightest
young post-grad scientists go to America or England for research
experience and qualifications. Indeed, once they are here for a few years
they become quite as inventive as Western scientists (if not more so when
you look at the authorship of many papers in heavyweight subject, say
genetics or particle physics). Unfortunately for the Chinese and Japanese
governments many, if not most, of the most innovative scientific minds
elect to stay in their adoptive countries rather than to return.
But the problem is even more serious for China and Japan. Almost as
important as are the original ideas of innovative individuals is the
necessity of other individuals who will give a welcome to new ideas and
help to develop them. And it's this open-minded hinterland which is still
limited because of their deep, conservative, authoritative cultures.
Goodness knows, new ideas often have a hard time being accepted in the
West. Even here, the crazy ideas of yesteryear sometimes have to wait
until its die-hard opponents are dead and buried and a brand new
generation appears. Only then are the ideas seen to be not so crazy after all.
There we are then. Japan came close to hollowing out America and Western
Europe 30 years ago with its superbly made (Western-invented) products.
China is threatening to do the same in the coming years. But the
innovative momentum is still with the West and this sort of cultural
momentum takes a century or two to die down -- if it ever does -- or a
century to acquire -- if it ever does in China and Japan.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01/
----------
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01/
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