China's Failings

In a previous post, I showed how China was able to rise and become a major power in the east of the world, and even arguably just as powerful as the Europeans to the west, but they quickly became beaten by the Europeans and fell behind in technology. How could this be, especially because they were so powerful before? It turns out that China's tight grip on the peasants and its excessive micromanaging of every detail of its citizens' life heavily suppressed innovation, and it was never really able to progress very quickly after some time. On the other hand, the Reformation along with several other events and movements broke the hold of the Church and government on its citizens, and it became stronger and quickly exceeded the east in innovation and technology.