5000 years of chinese civilization ? Really ?

[Maciamo]

On page 188 of the aforementioned book, Simon Winchester writes : "Needham pointed out that in every century the Chinese dreamed up nearly fifteen new scientific ideas - a pace of inventiveness unmatched by the world's other great civilizations, including the Greeks."

Doesn't it strike you as unbalanced and unfair to compare ancient Greece to China ? Coming from a Westerner it may even sound pretentious to think that the tiny confederation of rocky islands that was Greece was great enough as a civilization to play in the same weight category as the subcontinent that is China. It would be as if an Irish person was telling an Indian "Wow it's amazing, India has contributed more to world science and culture than Ireland ! How did you do it ?" Not just pretentious but also sarcastically provocative and disdainful. And that's exactly the way I feel Needham or Winchester are saying it when they mention that China came up with more scientific ideas per century even than the Greeks ! Ancient Greece was stupendous, but not enough for each Greek person to be worth 10 or 20 Chinese individuals. How condescending does that sound ?

Ancient Greece with all its colonies, although never politically unified, had a land area of approximately 350,000 square km. That's a bit smaller than the province of Yunnan. That's about 30x smaller than the People's Republic of China.

The Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, or Egyptians lived on territories that were all comparable to Chinese provinces. The Roman Empire at its maximum extent under Trajan reached a size of approximately 5,000,000 km2, about the same as the contemporary Han Empire. That would make for a better comparison except that China was about twice more populous than the Roman Empire, and so had twice the workforce, twice as many intellectuals, and so on.

The only way to compare fairly China's massive historical population with the West would be to take all Europe as far as the Urals and all the Middle East including Persia. By doing so I doubt that the Chinese would still be unmatched by their inventiveness. It's always important to look at the per capita figure. Two minds always produce more than one.

[yoruba]

On page 188 of the aforementioned book, Simon Winchester writes : "Needham pointed out that in every century the Chinese dreamed up nearly fifteen new scientific ideas - a pace of inventiveness unmatched by the world's other great civilizations, including the Greeks."
Doesn't it strike you as unbalanced and unfair to compare ancient Greece to China ? Coming from a Westerner it may even sound pretentious to think that the tiny confederation of rocky islands that was Greece was great enough as a civilization to play in the same weight category as the subcontinent that is China. It would be as if an Irish person was telling an Indian "Wow it's amazing, India has contributed more to world science and culture than Ireland ! How did you do it ?" Not just pretentious but also sarcastically provocative and disdainful. And that's exactly the way I feel Needham or Winchester are saying it when they mention that China came up with more scientific ideas per century even than the Greeks ! Ancient Greece was stupendous, but not enough for each Greek person to be worth 10 or 20 Chinese individuals. How condescending does that sound ?
Ancient Greece with all its colonies, although never politically unified, had a land area of approximately 350,000 square km. That's a bit smaller than the province of Yunnan. That's about 30x smaller than the People's Republic of China.
The Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, or Egyptians lived on territories that were all comparable to Chinese provinces. The Roman Empire at its maximum extent under Trajan reached a size of approximately 5,000,000 km2, about the same as the contemporary Han Empire. That would make for a better comparison except that China was about twice more populous than the Roman Empire, and so had twice the workforce, twice as many intellectuals, and so on.
The only way to compare fairly China's massive historical population with the West would be to take all Europe as far as the Urals and all the Middle East including Persia. By doing so I doubt that the Chinese would still be unmatched by their inventiveness. It's always important to look at the per capita figure. Two minds always produce more than one.

I don't agree with you here. The population trend during the peak of the Roman Empire was comparable and even higher than that of its contemporary Chinese counterpart. I don't know where you are getting your numbers from but here are mine.

I can't add links yet because I don't have enough posts yet, but you can find these quotes form Wikipedia by typing in "Classical demography" and "Han Dynasty"

"There are many estimates of the population for the Roman Empire, that range from 45 million to 120 million. Most modern estimates range from 55 to 65 million."

These figures include Greece of course.

"In China's first known nationwide census taken in 2 CE, the population was registered as having 57,671,400 individuals in 12,366,470 households."

Though Wikipedia has a dubious reputation as a source, the figures presented are backed up with citations to scholarly works. If Roman Empire's peak population figure is 120,000,000; doesn't that turn the table on your argument? If you want to include the population of Parthia, the rest of the Middle East, and Europe (I don't see why, however, because most not under Roman control were unsophisticated barbarians [relative to contemporary civilizations of course]), that's at least another 50-100 million, and therefore more than quadruple the population of Han China.

You made good points about the misconceptions of China as the most ancient civilization--it was something I was dubious was about ever since I became interested in Chinese history and I'm sure we aren't the only ones--but you cannot deny that China was the world's leader in science from at least the first century up until the Renaissance in Europe. Ironically, it was three crucial Chinese inventions that led to their humiliation by the west. Without the invention of paper and block printing, Europe would not have been able to disseminate its ideas so quickly; and without the compass and gunpowder, Europe would not have been able to navigate the world and defeat every people it encountered.

[Maciamo]

I don't agree with you here. The population trend during the peak of the Roman Empire was comparable and even higher than that of its contemporary Chinese counterpart. I don't know where you are getting your numbers from but here are mine.

I can't add links yet because I don't have enough posts yet, but you can find these quotes form Wikipedia by typing in "Classical demography" and "Han Dynasty"

"There are many estimates of the population for the Roman Empire, that range from 45 million to 120 million. Most modern estimates range from 55 to 65 million."

These figures include Greece of course.

"In China's first known nationwide census taken in 2 CE, the population was registered as having 57,671,400 individuals in 12,366,470 households."

My numbers were based on a different estimate (from a history book, not the Internet). If there is one thing certain it's that historical population estimates, especially for a period some remote in time as the Antiquity, are very approximate. Besides, ancient and medieval populations experienced dramatic falls during wars and epidemics. The total head count could be very different from one century to the next. Some estimates show that the population of China dropped from 60 to 10 million in the few decades between the late Han and Three Kingdom period. This is hardly believable. Even the Black Death didn't make so much ravage as a percentage of the population. The late Roman period was a period of demographic decline, due to the numerous wars, invasions, political upheavals and crop destruction. With borders changing over the centuries too, it's very difficult to compare two empires, even if the population census did already exist.

More reliable demographic statistics only start from the 18th century. According to this site, in 1700 China already had a population exceeding 200 million. In 1800, it had reached 300 million, and crossed for the first time the bar of 400 million in 1834. Europe (without Russia), had 150 million people in 1800 and 200 million in 1850, half of China at the time. China still has twice more citizens than Europe (Russia included this time). The overall trend is that China has been roughly twice more populous than Europe over the last 300 years. I don't think it was so different before.

[yoruba]

My numbers were based on a different estimate (from a history book, not the Internet).

Which book might that be? And again, the "internet" statistics I reference do cite scholarly works.

More reliable demographic statistics only start from the 18th century. According to this site, in 1700 China already had a population exceeding 200 million. In 1800, it had reached 300 million, and crossed for the first time the bar of 400 million in 1834. Europe (without Russia), had 150 million people in 1800 and 200 million in 1850, half of China at the time. China still has twice more citizens than Europe (Russia included this time). The overall trend is that China has been roughly twice more populous than Europe over the last 300 years. I don't think it was so different before.

Because China's population trend has been roughly double that of Europe's the last 300 years doesn't necessarily mean this ratio was about the same before. Extrapolating conclusions this way is too narrow and simplistic. I mean, if what you say is true, shouldn't ratio trends be consistent elsewhere too?

According to the link you provided, in 1800, Africa had 90 million people and Europe had 163 million. Today, Europe should be at least more populated than Africa right? But this isn't so. Africa has over a billion people while Europe, including Russia, has only about 830 million.

Let's compare countries

Germany and France:

Germany in 1800 had 21 million people; today, 78 million
France in 1800 had 29 million people; today, 60 million

Korea and Japan:

Korea in 1900 had 12 million; today, 73 million (if unified)
Japan in 1900 had 43 million; today, 127 million

Turkey and Iran:

Turkey in 1855 had 7.5 million; today, 74 million
Iran in 1857 had 4 million; today, 86 million

In other words, shouldn't we expect France and Turkey to be more populated than Germany and Iran respectively? Shouldn't the population ratio of Japan and Korea be the same today as a century ago? What makes China so inextricably link with Europe that, in the last 300 years, the population trend of China has stayed roughly double that of Europe's? Nothing. It's a coincidence. And should this coincidence be expected to be true one thousand or two thousand years ago? I don't think so--not according to estimates by historians and demographers anyway.

One more thing. For the sake of clarifying this argument, does Winchester mention the output of "new scientific ideas" every century for other "great civilizations"?