Why China Missed Its Big Chance

When Father Matteo Ricci and his fellow Jesuit missionaries visited Beijing in 1601, they brought two clocks of Italian design as gifts for the Emperor Wan Li. The larger of the two astounded his courtiers, Ricci later wrote, because it was "a work the like of which had never been seen, nor heard in Chinese history."

In fact, as historian Daniel J. Boorstin recounted in The Discoverers, 500 years earlier a civil servant named Su Sung had built a remarkably accurate astronomical clock for his Emperor. But when a new ruler was crowned in 1094, officials, according to custom, decreed that his predecessor's calendar had been faulty. Su Sung's 30-ft.-tall "heavenly clockwork" was abandoned. By the 17th century, it was a legend known to only a few scholars.

Su Sung's clock points to a great historical puzzle. Why did China, where so many things were invented, exploit its creativity so poorly? The Chinese discovered paper and movable type, yet the country was virtually illiterate until the 20th century. Gunpowder was also invented in China, yet its cannons were inferior to those made by Europeans. China's bustling cities, despite their vitality, never stimulated the intellectual ferment that in Europe led to innovation.

Part of the explanation is the dominant role in China's history played by the bureaucracy, which was intensely conservative, and by Confucian philosophy, which emphasized order, continuity and stability. Ricci noted that the Chinese word for their country, Thienhia, meant "everything under the heavens." Believing that China was superior to other nations, officials of the imperial court were leery of innovation and humiliated to learn that something had been done better elsewhere. Like its artists, historian J.M. Roberts notes, China's governing elite "strove to imitate and emulate the best, but the best was always past."