China Lag Behind Europe

For thousands of years, China was more developed than the West. By fourteenth century, the inventions of China in science and technology were remarkable. These inventions such as seed drill, gunpowder, magnetic compass, paper and printing allowed China to achieve a much higher living standard, than anywhere else at the time in the World. However despite its early advances in science and technology, China did not go further. Therefore, when progress in the West accelerated after the seventeenth century, China made no progress. Well, why did the Industrial Revolution take place in eighteenth century United Kingdom and not in China in fourteenth century? There are numerous theses to answer this question. however, it is still not clear among historians why the Industrial Revolution actually occured in 18th century UK. With this essay, i would like to explain in what circumstances the Industrial Revolution took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in UK instead of occuring in China in fourteenth century. I think it would be that a complex process like industrialisation could not be explained by one factor. My explanations to this question have ranged from demographical to politics, culture and education system.

Firstly, it is important to point out that China was much more densely populated than Europe. In China, people had more and more children and the population continued to grow Because of a larger labor supply, labor was cheap. Therefore, to purchase manual labor to produce product made much more sense than investing in expensive machinery. This is what Chinese frequently did. Therefore, there was no pressing need for an industrial revolution comparable to that of the West, where labor was a lot more expensive because the population was a lot smaller. Due to the abundance of labour, China have had lower wages than Europe and therefore did not have the same need to develop labour saving devices.

Secondly, i will mention about the governments of China and UK. China had a bureaucratic system, while Europe had an aristocratic feudalism which was relatively more favorable to the emergence of a mercantile class. European countries recognized the importance of the merchant class, as they were the vital force of the industrial revolution. Thus, the industrial revolution was started mainly by the merchant class. At this point, it is needed to focus on the market economy of Europe in sixteenth-seventeenth centuries. There was a big competition between the states in Europe. In Europe, there was the age of enlightenment, competition between governments, more advanced trade. UK was trading even India. Technological development was important for being a step ahead within Europe. Merchants was playing the crucial role on intercontinental trading. I think the aim of merchant class was to make much more money by using most profitable way. This created a greater need of mechanisation for mass production. Manufacturing increased the demand for labour with the result that British wages and living standards were the highest in the world. Under this circumstances, the resistance to new basic ideas would be less effective.

On the other hand, in China the state was ruled by bureaucrats. All bureaucrats were selected through competitive