aptsvet

Sorry, responding late because I am traveling. The race is too complicated a question to discuss here. But if we narrow down on the problem of China vs. Europe, this discussion would be beyond the point. China was good enough to report tremendous progress at the time Europe had little if any. Sure, China hade it's periods of disunion, but those were usually the times of bloody internecine conflict. Wherever it was prosperous, it was usually united and tightly centralized, there was never a question of a Portugal emerging there. So, once the emperor pronounced the policy of closed doors, it was established for centuries. In Europe, by contrast, a stagnant France or Spain was always compensated by Netherlands or Britain.