Chinese long pre-dated European civilisation. From this perspective, there is nothing startling about China's present rise; it merely corrects the course of recent history.How many times do I have to hear this canard? I can't even count the number of commentators and writers whom I've heard say that "China was the world's leading civilization" before Europe's expansionist period, or that "China's rise is simply restoring China to the position of world dominance it once enjoyed," etc.
It's just not true. A quick read of the historical high points of Chinese power and influence will dispel notions of long-standing Chinese preeminence:
* The Han Dynasty, which peaked in the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C., was undoubtedly the most advanced and powerful nation during that time. But by the start of A.D., the Han had waned in power due to internal conflicts, and was eclipsed by Rome as the world's top empire. Nevertheless the Han dynasty was China's all-time high in relative power. Four centuries of civil war (including the famous "Three Kingdoms" period) followed its breakup.
* The Tang Dynasty was a different kind of empire - expansionist, multi-ethnic, and aggressively Buddhist. The Tang had the potential for all-time greatness, but their expansion into Central Asia was halted by a catastrophic military defeat by the Arab Caliphate at the Battle of Talas. Shortly after, a top Tang general started a rebellion that devastated the country. A shrunken Tang state managed to hang on for another century and a half, but the dynasty was never the same, and another period of chaos followed.
* The Song Dynasty (960 - 1279) gets my vote for the best Chinese dynasty of all time. This proto-modern state instituted national science tests, created the first joint stock companies, and invented paper money, movable type, and lots of other things that Europe didn't get for another 500 years. They were on the verge of a real industrial revolution. And yet this dynasty is often given short shrift in official Chinese histories, because it was militarily weak, getting driven south by the Manchurian Jin nomads, and later conquered by the Mongols. Still, the Song is, in my mind, the one and only time when China was out in front of the rest of the world.
* After the Mongols were sent packing in 1368, the Ming Dynasty took over. Lots of Chinese histories sing the praises of the Ming, which to me seems pretty dumb, as the Ming period was pretty obviously an unmitigated disaster. After an initially promising period, during which China set out some big naval expeditions, the country turned inward and proceeded to stagnate for three centuries. Science was removed from the national exams and replaced with official "Confucianist" ideology (i.e. write "I will obey my boss" on the board 10000 times). Naval exploration was banned. Progressive philosophers were imprisoned and killed by the state. Commerce was stifled by massive regulation and corrupt local officials. Science and art were forcibly limited to a small number of circumscribed forms. Relations with foreign countries were discouraged. At this point, China really started to really fall behind Western powers like Spain and the Ottoman Empire - they just didn't realize it yet.
The Ming were overthrown by the Manchurian Qing in the 1600s, which pretty much continued China's slide into poverty and weakness until it disintegrated in the early 1900s. The rest is modern history.
But what this cursory reading of history basically shows is that China, although certainly the most consistent world civilization, has rarely been on top. Its ancient incarnations were economic peers of Western powers like Rome, Persia, and the Caliphate, but probably militarily weaker. If the brief Renaissance of the Song period hadn't ended so violently, China might have indeed gone on to lead he world into the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment in the second millennium A.D.; instead it settled into a long sad decline.
Which is not to say China isn't a great civilization, or a historical marvel - it certainly is. But the idea that China was the world's leading light until recent times is just backward-looking propaganda. And if Chinese leaders think that the purpose their country's current economic expansion is simply to restore the country's past glory, they're setting the bar way too low. To truly succeed, a nation has to look forward, not back. It has to dream of becoming better than anything that has gone before, not simply restoring the faded glory of a past empire.
But whichever path China chooses, I'd really like to stop reading syrupy sops from Western writers about ow "China is just returning to its rightful place as the world's top civilization." That point of view is both irritating and wrong.
(P.S. - I've been a Chinese history buff for quite some time now, and I feel like I've noticed a pattern in China's dynastic rises and falls. First an authoritarian conqueror unites the country by force of arms, slaughtering everyone who disagrees with him and gobbling up neighboring lands. Then he dies, and a bunch of competent bureaucrats - either his kids or another clan - takes the reins, and uses the unity that the conqueror established to implement all kinds of economic reform projects. But prosperity eventually leads to the strengthening of regional players - businessmen, local governments, independent thinkers, etc. In order to maintain control, the central bureaucracy slowly stifles the dynamism of the regions, often by sending party hacks (formerly known as "Confucian scholar-gentry") to exert massive regulatory control. This keeps the country stable, but gradually sucks the life out of the economy, until there's a big split, a bloody civil war, and a period of chaos. Maybe I'm just seeing patterns where I want to see them, who knows. For what it's worth, Jared Diamond seems to agree with this story in Guns, Germs, and Steel. But in any case, the transition from conqueror Mao to Deng's reformers seems to fit the first part of the story...I guess we'll now see if China's government lets progress continue or stifles the economy to maintain control...)
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