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Why Did China Fall Behind Europe in the 15th Century?

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Submitted By changtsing
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Why did China fall behind Europe in the 15th century?
In my opinion, the main reason that China fell behind Europe in the 15th century is the closing down of itself with other civilizations and the banned international trades strategies which severed the communication and connection of the Chinese people with the outside world. And in the same time the rapid growth of the European countries had boosted those civilizations in the other direction thanks to the newly discovered resources on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I would like to explain these ideas from the following aspects:

The early developments of China:
China has gone through a period of rapid technological advances in the first centuries of human history thanks to its particular geographical location and the early coming together of the nations within its boundary. Although there were lots of nations fighting wars against each other, aiming to control all the territory on the land of the so-called East Asia nowadays, the Chinese empire was finally founded by the Qin and the united nation has adopted lots of governing strategies to develop the livelihood of its people not only in literature but also in science. Because of these factors, the Chinese people have invented ways to preserve the cultural and technological achievements and also have developed ways to explore the
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outside world. Such decisions have been made since the Han dynasty when the empire opened up the Silk Road to the west, connecting Rome in the west and Chang’an in the east; this drastically facilitated communications between the early civilizations. Spices as well as silk products made the countries involved in the commercial trades prosperous and more civilized. These explorations towards the west had reached a peak during the early 15th century when the so-called Maritime Silk Road was developed in the Ming Dynasty.

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