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Reading Response
Why the Industrial Revolution did not originate in China in the fourteenth century is one of the most controversial questions many ask. Despite the fact that the Industrial Revolution did not occur in China, there was a chain of contributing factors that can be considered crucial to the economic development of Europe and the East.
As one of the contributing factors, the improvements in the Chinese agriculture during the Han dynasty brought faster ripening and better drought resistance in crops, which enabled local farmers to broaden the agricultural sphere and allowed to grow up to three crops a year. Apart from agricultural innovations, China was a leader in technology with inventions such as gunpowder, the compass, and paper printing the three innovations that majorly impacted the development of Western civilizations (Lin 270).
While China had been rapidly developing regarding technology up to the fourteenth century, it reached its threshold and did not go further. When the West accelerated its growth, China slowed down and distanced itself from innovation. Needham formulated such a turn of events into a paradox: Why had China been so far in advance of other civilizations? [&] Why isnt China now ahead of the rest of the world? (qtd. in Lin 271).
There are many explanations for this paradox; for example, the various ways in which technology was invented. While in China the technologies were developed from experience, the Western world started experimenting to facilitate new inventions. Since the majority of scientific knowledge stemmed from experiments, China fell behind on its way and remained still for decades. Therefore, there was a need for equipping the nation with the required human capital for facilitating research. While nowadays China leads the market of innovation, it had to go through a long way of trial and error to acquire its position.
Work Cited
Lin, Justin Yifu. The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China. Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. 43, no. 2, 1995, pp. 269-292.
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