What is/are the greatest Chinese contribution(s) to the world ?

[Maciamo]

I have added a poll, combining similar inventions together. I hope I didn't forget anything important. Please vote for those which you think had the biggest impact on the world and on your modern lifestyle.

The Chinese are credited with hundreds of inventions, but most were cultural, specifically Chinese things, and few have had an actual impact on the rest of the world, except inevitably immediate neighbours like Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The world could continue to evolve without chopsticks, kites or the abacus, and without caring about Feng Shui or Chinese zither tunes.

In some case we can only presume that the Chinese were the first to come up with some inventions, because no written evidence survived (or was ever written) elsewhere. The fact that they invented paper and made such conscientious use of it for official records, and that China suffered considerably less ravage and destruction from outside invasions and wars with neighbours than Europe or the Middle East certainly played a role in preserving the evidence for early technologies. But the absence of evidence elsewhere does not necessarily mean that these things didn't originate outside China.

Many technologies were invented independently in Europe and therefore cannot be credited to have come from China. Modern toothbrushes, rotary fans and restaurant menus are not an evolution from the ancient Chinese ones. Westerners who developed them were unaware that these things had existed before in China.