Civilization #38: Twilight of the Middle Kingdom

For the longest time, China was the civilized civilization par excellence in the world. It gave us all the great inventions that would make modernity possible, including the compass, paper, printmaking, and gunpowder. But after the Song Dynasty, which is about the year 1200, China seemed to stop being creative.

Why did this happen? That is the fundamental question we will explore.

This is an opportunity for us to look back on the theories we've developed and think about how they apply to the Chinese context. It's a chance for us to see if our models work—if they do, they should be true in the Western context and also in the Chinese context. It's also a chance for us to deeply interrogate our theories and see where flaws might arise.

I will be going through some Chinese history, but I will do so by applying the theories we've learned so far, mainly the oceanic currents of history.

The Crucible of Chinese Civilization

Chinese civilization, as you know, developed along the Yellow River. The Yellow River is perfect for agriculture, and as a result, the population expanded very quickly. When that happens, conflict and war will ensue, which will give rise to settlements and fortified cities that drive the development of the state, civilization, and technology.

The hallmark of Chinese civilization is what we call the Warring States period. At this time, the foundations of Chinese civilization came into being. You had something called the Hundred Schools of Thought, where Confucianism developed, as well as Taoism and Legalism. These ideas would form the foundation of Chinese civilization.

As you can see, all these Hundred Schools of Thought developed because of a process we call open cooperative competition, which, as we have discussed, is a main driver of innovation in human civilization.

• Openness means that there is no centralized authority.
• Cooperation means that even though there's no centralized authority, the different states are trading, communicating, and intermarrying with each other.
• Competition means that there is a lot of conflict between them; they are warring against each other for dominance in their region.

In this process, the ideas, technology, values, and culture that would underpin Chinese civilization for the next 2,000 years arose. Confucius is obviously who is best remembered from this era, but you also have Laozi, who is the founder of Taoism, as well as Zhuangzi and Mozi. Sun Tzu would, at this time, write his book, The Art of War.

The Rise of the Qin: An Unlikely Unifier

In a process that is open, cooperative, and competitive, eventually one state will emerge to conquer the rest. As we discussed, the state that emerges does so because of three things:

1. Energy: They're much more energetic and ambitious.
2. Openness: They're much more willing to adopt innovation in the ruthless pursuit of military conquest.
3. Opportunism: They will do whatever it takes to win.

In this period, the state that would eventually conquer all of China and create the first empire is the Qin.

If you think about it, in the year 500 BC, we could not possibly have predicted that the Qin would conquer and unite all of China. Of all these states, the Qin was the poorest. It was situated in the mountains, whereas the other states were situated in fertile valleys. Its culture was not as developed as the rest, and its population was smaller.

But at the same time, near 500 BC, we could not have predicted that Rome would unite the Mediterranean, and we could not have predicted that Macedonia would have united the Greek world.

So let's discuss very quickly why the Qin was able to succeed. Even though this was the Warring States period with a lot of warfare, we need to remember that this warfare was heavily regulated. War in this period was almost like an aristocratic game.

There are stories where a general was laying siege to a city, and the people inside were starving to death—which is what you do in a siege. But the general felt tremendous regret and guilt for putting the population under such misery, so he retreated and withdrew to give time for the population to recover. That was considered gentlemanly and civilized back then. Another story is that an army was crossing a river, which is a great time to attack, but the opposing army let them cross because that is what is civilized and gentlemanly.

This period was heavily regulated by a gentleman's code of conduct. Why is that the case? Remember, this is an open, cooperative, competitive environment in which, even though these states are at war, there's still a lot of intermarriage, trade, and communication between them. These states were not trying to use warfare to overturn the social order because they benefited from the status quo. They were using warfare as a means to maintain the social order.

Let's think about the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. We know that the war was extremely bloody and deadly, but at the same time, it was extremely regulated. A lot of their strategies didn't really make any sense beyond defeating the enemy. For example, in Sparta, there were people called the helots, who were basically slaves to the Spartan people, and the helots outnumbered the Spartans 10 to one. All Athens had to do was say, "Helots, if you fight for us, if you revolt against your masters, we will grant you freedom." But Athens never did that. By doing so, you would disrupt the social order from which Athens benefited and unleash a revolution that could possibly engulf the entire Greek world. Also, even though Sparta and Athens were enemies, they were united by intermarriage among their elites, they had a similar culture, and they were historically allies, especially against the Persians.

Warfare at this time was about maintaining the status quo rather than overturning it. This presented an opportunity for the Qin Dynasty, which was on the margins of the status quo. The Qin started to implement warfare in a way that opportunistically took advantage of the situation. They committed themselves to total warfare, meaning their entire society was engineered to allow them to win against their enemies.

Certain characteristics defined the Qin Dynasty at this time:

• Legalism: Draconian laws forced the population to behave in a certain way. A fundamental idea of legalism is collective responsibility. If you commit a crime, you will be punished, but so will your entire family. The idea of collective responsibility was pioneered at this time to maintain a very strict society that could be purposed for war.
• Centralization: The Qin had a bureaucracy and standardization, which allowed them to expand very quickly and govern new territories that they conquered.
• Total War: They devoted all their resources to warfare in order to conquer their enemies.
• Openness: The Qin Dynasty was also known for its openness. If you were a man of talent and could contribute to their military and bureaucracy, they would welcome you.

Think of the Qin as a revolutionary system that sought to overturn the status quo. The other states, like Wei, Zhao, and especially Chu, were trying to maintain the status quo and were therefore not well-equipped to deal with the challenge from the Qin.

From Han to Tang: The Rise of a Multicultural Empire

We know that the Qin would unite all of China, but because their system was so draconian, the other states would eventually rebel against them. This would lead to the Han Dynasty.

Even though the Han Dynasty disparages the Qin—our very conception of the Qin comes from Han historians who tell us that the Qin buried scholars and burned books, which in our eyes is barbaric—the Han Dynasty continued the system first introduced by the Qin. We don't know if it's true that they buried scholars. We know that the Qin practiced heavy censorship, and a lot of books from the Hundred Schools of Thought were censored and destroyed during this period, but we don't know for a fact that they buried scholars.

The Han is really the height of Chinese civilization. There's a confidence, an arrogance to the Han. One of their top priorities, now that they've united China, was to deal with the northern steppe peoples. Remember that throughout history, the steppe peoples have proven to be the most daunting challenge for civilizations. They are ferocious warriors, and the steppe people would eventually give rise to the Mongols.

At this point, the main adversary of the Han were the Xiongnu people. The Han Dynasty was committed to a policy of eradication against the Xiongnu. This policy would force the Xiongnu to migrate westwards, and eventually, these people would start to threaten Rome itself. Attila the Hun's people are descendants of the Xiongnu.

Over time, because of this conflict, tremendous strain was created on the Han. The policy eventually evolved to one of cooperation and dependency. There would be a lot of trade and intermarriage, and the steppe people would be hired as mercenaries for internal conflicts within China.

Open cooperative competition now switched from the Han, which had become a centralized power, to the steppe people. Within these people—and there were quite a lot of different tribes—there was now tremendous competition. One group that would eventually triumph was called the Xianbei. And the Xianbei would give rise to which major Chinese dynasty? The Tang Dynasty.

This is one thing that is misunderstood. The Han Dynasty is really the last ethnically Chinese dynasty committed to the protection and propagation of Chinese culture. The Tang Dynasty's founders, the Li family, were actually of the Xianbei tribe. As a result, they would switch China into a universal, multicultural empire. The Tang Dynasty is famous for being extremely open, tolerant, and inclusive.

The Tang Dynasty is considered the height of Chinese power in the world. It would try to expand westwards into Central Asia and start the Silk Road and trade networks all around the world. Buddhism at this point would come into China and, at certain points, become a state religion.

But there were many problems with the Tang Dynasty. There was a heavy reliance on generals to fight wars, and this would eventually lead to the An Lushan Rebellion, which lasted for almost 10 years. An Lushan was the top general of the Tang Dynasty, and because he was given too much power and independence, he was much too trusted by the emperor. He eventually rebelled and seized the throne for himself. This rebellion would kill anywhere between a third to half of the Tang population—from 60 million to 30 million people. This was devastating and traumatic for the Tang Dynasty.

Somehow it recovered, but then you had another rebellion called the Huang Chao Rebellion, which would end the Tang Dynasty.

The Tang Dynasty would give rise to the Song Dynasty. The Song would adopt a policy of diplomacy, tribute, and assimilation with the northern tribes. They were trying to avoid the trap of the Tang, where you give too much power to a general and the general rebels. So, in the Song Dynasty, a lot of power would be invested in the imperial bureaucracy.

Eventually, the Song Empire would be carved up and conquered. The ultimate winners of this war would be the Mongols, who in the year 1279 conquered the entirety of the Song Empire and united China. But the Yuan, the Mongols, are considered a foreign dynasty. I mentioned that the Tang Dynasty was non-Chinese, but the Mongols understood themselves to be non-Chinese. As a result, they discriminated against Chinese people, which ultimately led to a rebellion that would establish the Ming Empire. Eventually, the Ming Empire would give way to the Qing Empire. The Manchus are just another iteration of the Mongol people. They would rule China until 1911, when the empire was overthrown, a republic was established, and this gave way to, of course, the People's Republic of China.

The End of Open Competition

So, the big question again we're looking at is: why is it that the Song Dynasty is the last creative dynasty? If we use the idea of open cooperative competition, then we know the answer.

Previous dynasties were not able to exert national control. They were always competing against other states within China proper. The Han Dynasty would give way to dozens of other states that would compete against each other. So, in theory, the Qin and the Han united China, but not for long. The same is true for the Tang as well. China, for the longest time, was just too large and too diverse to be unified centrally. As a result, the idea of open cooperative competition would still give rise to innovation.

But starting at the time of the Song, we see a radical change. The Song is pretty united, and the Yuan is extremely united. The Yuan Dynasty was able to unite all of China. After the Yuan, the Ming is also pretty united, and the Qing is extremely united.

In other words, the answer is this: after the Song and starting with the Yuan, China became nationally unified. The center was able to exert control over the provinces in a way that was not true before in Chinese history. The idea of open cooperative competition died with the Song Dynasty, and that's why after the Song, China stopped being creative.

This gives rise to another question: How was China able to create national unity?

The Emperor's Dilemma: A New Theory on Chinese Unity

To answer this question, I want to refer to the work of Professor Wang Yuhua, a professor of Chinese history at Harvard. He wrote a new book called The Rise and Fall of Imperial China, and it's a wonderful book. If you're interested in Chinese history, I strongly recommend that you look at it.

He begins the book by asking a central question. We know that the Tang dynasty was really the height of Chinese power. It had about a quarter of the world's GDP and influenced the cultures of Korea and Japan. It was an extremely diverse, inclusive, multicultural empire that introduced Buddhism to China. But the problem with the Tang is their emperors didn't really live that long. At least five emperors during the Tang Dynasty were deposed by the elite. The aristocrats got together and overthrew the emperor, usually by killing him.

But when you look at the Qing, it only had 5% of the world's GDP and was racked by internal rebellions like the Taiping Rebellion. It was far behind Europe in terms of science and technology. But the emperors, like Qianlong, could rule for 60 years peacefully. They transitioned into the throne peacefully and they died peacefully. So the Qing, even though it marked a low point in Chinese prosperity, had emperors who lived for a long time, which meant that the bureaucracy and the center were really stable.

This is a paradox. Why is it that when China is wealthy, the emperor is weak, but when the emperor is strong, China is poor?

That's the paradox that Professor Wang Yuhua is trying to answer. Using social science analysis, he first analyzes the probability of an emperor being deposed by the elite. It turns out the Tang was the height, but when you get to the Song, the probability decreases significantly.

At the same time, the state's ability to collect taxes and control the economy decreased over time. There's a downward slope starting from the year zero. There are peaks when a new dynasty starts, run by a very strong leader like Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty. These were extremely capable leaders supported by talented bureaucrats, and at this point, they were able to collect a lot of taxes, which strengthened the center. But over time, the trend is fairly clear. Starting at the time of the Song, you see a steep decline in the state's ability to collect taxes.

Professor Wang discovered that the reason for this transition is that the emperor, starting around the time of the Song, figured out a way to divide and conquer the elite.

When the elite are united, they are able to promote strong, centralized policies that promote national growth. But the centralized elite can always threaten the emperor, who is dependent on them for support in the military and government. Starting around the Song, the centralized elite was broken down into a localized elite. The trick that China discovered in maintaining a strong center was localizing the elites.

The idea is, you localize the elites. When you do that, you can implement a policy of divide and conquer. You get the elites in one province to fight amongst themselves. If they're too busy fighting amongst themselves, they're not going to rebel against you, and they're not going to build alliances with other provinces to challenge you. Their priorities and focus are in the provinces, and they really don't care what you do in the capital.

That's the thesis. And what Professor Wang says is the main mechanism the emperor used to achieve this radical cultural shift is the keju, the civil service examination that promoted bureaucrats into positions of power.

The history of the keju is that it was introduced briefly in the Sui and then the Tang Dynasty started to use it. But it was really the Song Dynasty that systemized and promoted it—they institutionalized the keju. Before the keju, it was an aristocratic system where you had to be of noble birth to become a high official in government, which is true for most cultures.

The Huang Chao Rebellion was a key turning point. It lasted for 10 years when a salt merchant named Huang Chao led an uprising that would overwhelm and destroy the Tang Dynasty. The important thing for us to remember is that he would go all the way to Chang'an, which is where all the elite lived. There were about 200 aristocratic families in the Tang Dynasty, and they were all killed in this rebellion. When you remove the aristocracy, this gives the Song Dynasty room to implement a new policy and ensure that a nobility cannot arise again. That is the significance of the Huang Chao Rebellion: it eliminated the idea of aristocracy in China.

Professor Wang shows how networks worked in China. During the Tang Dynasty, there were centers that then moved to the provinces. These families were all interconnected because there were only 200 aristocratic families. If you were a wealthy family in a province, you wanted to intermarry into one of these aristocratic families because that was the best way to ensure your advantage and privilege. This is during the Tang, when families were united nationally.

But when you get to the Song Dynasty, the center has been localized, meaning it's been spread out. You also see that these networks are localized; they're not connected together nationally. This again allows the emperor to divide and conquer. Over time, the networks become more and more localized. It was the deliberate policy of the imperial bureaucracy to localize elite networks so that they could never unite and challenge the center.

The main benefit of this system is, of course, national unity. During the Han, you had all these different provinces that formed their own dynasties and challenged the center. China was in a constant process of war. The Tang was a bit better, but when you get to the Song, the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing, it's all pretty unified nationally. By localizing elites, you ensure the center can't be challenged, and as a result, you give a semblance of national unity.

But the problem with this, as we know, is it comes at the cost of innovation, which would make China insular, poor, and divided in the long term. It's not a sustainable system, but that's the system that China chose to adopt for the past thousand years: a divide and conquer policy against the local elites.

Closing the Borders, Closing the Mind

Let's look at another example of how China became insular, poor, and divided over time. This is a map of the top 30 cities by population throughout Chinese history. During the Western Han Dynasty, most of these cities are centered around the Huang He, the Yellow River. That makes sense because that's where Chinese civilization began. But by the time of the Tang, they're starting to spread out more, and by the time of the Song, they're actually congregating on the coast.

Why is this happening? It's happening because of maritime trade initiated by the Abbasid Caliphate. We learned about the Islamic Golden Age and how the Abbasid Caliphate became so wealthy that it established trade networks all around the world. These networks were so powerful that they could influence the national economic development of China. We can expect that because of maritime trade, over time, all the major cities of China would shift to the coast.

That's why when Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, came into power, he initiated a policy of closed borders. He shut down maritime trade because he was afraid that if this continued, all the power would be located in the coastal areas. Therefore, the north, the west, and the south would become much poorer and more incentivized to rebel. Also, the coastal areas would have so much power that they could ultimately depose him. That's why Zhu Yuanzhang would impose a policy of a maritime trade ban. This would make China much more insular, weak, and poor.

The Islamic world had united the entire world and tried to pull China into its system, but because of that, it was causing wealth inequality in China. That's why the Ming Dynasty shut down this trade network—not completely, but mostly. This is why you see a massive Chinese immigration to Southeast Asia; they wanted to maintain these trade networks, and there was a trade ban enforced in the Ming Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty would continue this policy as well. For China, the priority was internal stability rather than wealth and prosperity.

The Imperial Bureaucracy: A Tool of Control

To better understand the rise of the imperial bureaucracy, let's first reexamine the history of Rome. In 509 BC, Rome became a republic, which would become the model for the British Empire as well as the American Republic. A republic is a society governed by laws, tradition, and history, and these three things are manifested in the nobility, what the Romans called patricians. The patricians exercised power through the Senate. It's this very idea that Rome is ultimately a culture governed by laws, tradition, and history that allowed it to expand very quickly until it dominated the entire Mediterranean.

These patricians were the ones who established the international networks that made the Roman Republic coherent, and they did so through the idea of a patron-client relationship. The emperor was just one among equals. The emperor had his empire, but these patriarchs had their own empires within the empire. This gave Rome, even though it was very spread out, a coherence and a unity that most empires don't have. This is important for us because the British would copy this model when they built their empire, as would the Americans.

The problem with this system, though, is that if the patriarchs don't like the emperor, they can get together and depose him, which happened a lot. Think of Julius Caesar. He wanted more power for himself, so the patriarchs got together and killed him. But Julius Caesar was just one of many; there was also Sulla, Nero, and many more.

Because of this, new emperors, especially people like Diocletian—a military general who won the Roman Civil War and became emperor—had to fix this problem. If you're an emperor, your biggest problem is how to stay alive, and in the Roman Republic, the chances weren't very high. Starting with Diocletian, they started to develop an imperial bureaucracy to counter the power of the nobility.

The problem, though, is that the nobility solves three problems for you that the bureaucracy cannot:

1. The will to fight: In a war, the nobility are those who have the most to lose and are therefore the most willing to die. Think about the year 216 BC when Hannibal invaded the Italian Peninsula and destroyed all the Roman armies. At this point, Rome should have surrendered, but the nobility refused. If they surrendered, Hannibal would have instituted changes to their culture that would have destroyed their prestige, power, and wealth. That's why the nobility fought to the very bitter end and were eventually able to triumph over Carthage.
2. Unity: The nobility provides national unity.
3. Culture: The people who wrote the history of Rome were the nobility, the senators, the aristocrats.

When you get rid of the nobility, you lose these three things. You lose the idea of a national identity, you lose culture, and you lose the will to fight. That's why for the longest time, the system stayed in place. To reject the nobility would be to destroy the tradition, culture, and history of Rome.

Diocletian would try to solve this problem by implementing an imperial bureaucracy, but it could not challenge the authority, power, and legitimacy of the nobility. That's why Constantine would, in 330 AD, move the capital to Byzantium and create the Byzantine Empire. As we discussed previously, the Byzantine Empire had an imperial bureaucracy as its dominant power. The Byzantine Empire was not a continuation of the Roman Empire; it was a rejection of the Roman Republic.

The same thing happened in China. After the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty looked at the mistakes of the Tang and started to implement the keju system, creating an imperial bureaucracy that would rule China for the next thousand years.

Was the Keju a Meritocracy?

There is a great misconception in China that the keju is a meritocracy. It is not a meritocracy; it was never designed to be one. I know that in school you are taught that they had the keju for the emperor to select the best and brightest in China, and because of the best and brightest, they would rule China virtuously. That is not correct. The keju was designed for the emperor to localize the elites and to divide and conquer them.

Let me explain why it's not a meritocracy.

1. There was a quota system in place. If it was just a meritocracy, then the very best and brightest would win out. But think about the gaokao (China's college entrance exam). If it was just a meritocracy, who would get into the top universities? I assure you that 90% of all the top students would come from two cities: Beijing and Shanghai. But that's not how the system works. There is a quota system in place with geographic distribution. Only a certain number of students from Beijing and Shanghai can get into Peking and Tsinghua; the rest come from the provinces. The keju was the same system. This creates competition among the local elites to win these positions, and therefore they will fight amongst themselves.
2. It was unfair. To do well on the keju, you had to master something called wenyanwen, or classical literary Chinese. This is a very hard skill to learn. It would take you decades. You would need private tutoring, your family needed to have a lot of money, and you needed to spend decades on this project, which means you had a lot of leisure time and didn't have to work. In other words, only the elite families of China could compete in this system, and that's the point. The point was to concentrate the ambition and energy of the elite families into the keju. Otherwise, they might come up with ideas like rebellion. They also might come up with new inventions and amazing literature, but they'll also probably think of ways to rebel.
3. The system was discretionary. Just because you finished first on the keju does not mean you become a government official. Success on the keju does not translate into success in politics. It was discretionary, meaning the emperor got to decide who became an official and who got promoted. Often, the emperor would promote someone from a lower-noble family. The reason you want to do that is to create a precarious situation in the provinces where no family feels secure enough to feel as though they're the nobility. You want to create conflict and precariousness in the provinces so you can divide and conquer and exert greater control. But by doing that, you limit economic growth and cultural innovation.

The Bureaucracy's Three Monopolies

The bureaucracy was able to control China because of its monopoly over three aspects:

1. Status: If you wanted to be admired and respected in China, you did well on the keju and became an official. That's the dream of every family in China, and it's still true today. The idea of status is still associated with the keju, even though we know that success on the keju or the gaokao does not necessarily translate into success in school or in life.
2. Literacy: In most cultures, the goal is to make literacy more widespread because that allows for faster economic development. Throughout history, cultures have tried to figure out how to make literacy more prevalent. For example, the Egyptians started with hieroglyphs (pictograms), then made the symbols shorter, then made them phonological (representing sounds), and eventually took the sound and made it into just one consonant. This is how we got the alphabet. Most cultures follow this pattern. China is the only culture in human history that has made literacy more difficult over time. China took the pictograms, made them even more complex, added very complex grammatical rules, and created literary Chinese. It's really "bureaucratese"—a language that only bureaucrats can understand. Think of legal contracts. You can't read them because the language and grammar are designed so that only a specialized lawyer can understand them. This is what we call rent-seeking behavior: you create something that only you can use, and people have to pay rent to access your knowledge.
3. Culture (Confucianism): Confucianism is really a bureaucratic philosophy system designed to maintain the status quo and control how people think about the world. I would say that Confucianism is ultimately bureaucratism. It is something designed to make everyone believe that a bureaucratic society is the best and most sophisticated society. It's designed to maintain the status quo where bureaucrats are at the top. In the Confucian religion, what matters first and foremost is balance and harmony. There's also the concept of ancestor worship. You can't leave your village because if you do, you can no longer worship your ancestors. People are stuck in place, which limits trade and innovation.

How did Confucianism become the dominant culture?

The question is, is Confucianism a religion or a culture? No one thinks Confucianism is a religion. At most, people say that Confucianism is a civic religion or a philosophy. I would say that Confucianism is ultimately "bureaucratism." It is something that's designed to make everyone believe that a bureaucratic society is the best society. It is one that is the most sophisticated, and it's designed to maintain the status quo where bureaucrats are at the top. That's what Confucianism really is. The example is that if you read Chinese history, the most virtuous people are always bureaucrats, the scholar-officials. This propaganda is so effective that eventually, Europeans will start to mimic it. Voltaire, the French Enlightenment thinker, said that the Chinese have the best system because they allow only the educated to rule—not soldiers, not priests, but scholar-officials, the mandarins. The idea of Confucianism is that it's bureaucratism, designed to legitimize and give authority to the bureaucratic elite.

In most societies, there are different ways to seek success and status: the bureaucracy, the military, the nobility, religion (the church), commerce (merchants), and artistic endeavors. What is unique about China is the dominance of the bureaucracy.

• The nobility was wiped out, and the keju ensured that no nobility could arise again.
• Religion was outlawed for most of Chinese history.
• Merchants and artists were low status. In the Confucian system, the scholar is at the top, then the farmer, then the merchant, and then the artist. This is intentional. Artists can promote new ideas, but merchants are even more problematic because they trade and can accumulate wealth that can challenge the authority of the empire.
• The military, as we know, was heavily suppressed throughout Chinese history.

Because you have too much power within the bureaucracy, this will stunt development in China.

The Four Great Inventions That Changed Nothing

By the time of the Song, China had four major inventions: paper, printmaking, the compass, and gunpowder. These four inventions would revolutionize the world.

• Paper gave rise to banknotes. The Song had banknotes, and this would give rise to capitalism in the West.
• Printmaking is important because in the 15th century, Gutenberg created the printing press in Europe. Because of the printing press, you were able to manufacture books at scale, and people became more literate. This gave rise to the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution.
• The compass allowed for the Age of Exploration. Europeans were able to discover, conquer, and colonize new lands.
• Gunpowder was a revolution in warfare. From gunpowder, you get the cannon and eventually the musket. This marked a revolution not only in warfare but also in human affairs because with the musket, individual soldiers now matter. This would allow for things like the American Revolution, where farmers with muskets were able to overthrow the British Empire.

China, by the Song Dynasty (1200 CE), had all four inventions. But because of the bureaucratic culture in place, none of these inventions had an impact on Chinese society. China did nothing whatsoever with all four inventions.

The key lesson here is really important: Technology does not matter. You can steal the technology. What matters is the culture.

Another example is the Yuan Dynasty. During the Yuan, China was importing a lot of foreign experts—Christians, Muslims, Jews—and a lot of foreign technology. Then, when the Ming Empire came into place, they got rid of all this stuff. They got rid of the foreigners, they got rid of the technology, and China became much more insular and backward.

This explains why after the Song Dynasty, China did not innovate anymore. The empire did not want to innovate. Innovation is a threat to the status quo, and what's important is to maintain the status quo, even though by doing so, you ultimately make China poor, weak, and divided.

A Final Story: The Emperor's True Intent

I'll end with a story about the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang. He is now emperor, and he reinstituted the keju. The Mongols had gotten rid of it because they had a nobility, but Zhu Yuanzhang restored it, and everyone was excited. Everyone came and took the examination.

When the results came out, the test-takers from the south did a lot better than those from the north. These northern test-takers felt there must be corruption, so they filed a petition to the emperor. The emperor looked at the petition and agreed. How is it that no northerner was able to pass the keju? He called in his chief minister and said, "This is a huge scandal. I want you to resolve this issue. Figure out who is responsible for this corruption and kill them."

The chief minister really wanted to impress the emperor, so he spent months painstakingly and rigorously investigating the issue. He had a commission with hundreds of staff, and he personally looked at every single keju exam. Then he wrote his report and presented it to the emperor.

He said, "Your Majesty, I personally have done this investigation, and we have written thousands of pages of reports directly to you. I can guarantee you the keju, when implemented, was a fair, open, and transparent process. The fact of the matter is that people in the south are more civilized, more cultured, and more educated, and therefore they just did better. They're better than the northerners. I'm really sorry this happened, but I guarantee you the keju is a fair, open, and transparent process. You have nothing to worry about. It's all been taken care of."

What do you think the emperor did?

He killed them all. He killed the high official, he killed the high official's commissioners, he killed the test makers, and he killed those who got the very best scores on the keju.

The reason why is that the emperor does not want a fair, open, and transparent system. He wants a system in which the localities will not rebel against the center. And that's what the keju is.