how your society is set up changes what it does with tech, and which tech gets created
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it's not that China's culture was "worse" or something, it just didn't have the same potentials as Europe at the time
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& like the change in Europe is wrapped up with religious and state changes + rise of burghers, hard to untangle it all
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sure, I didn't mean to say that China's was worse, only that China's failure to develop firearms wasn't a cultural thing
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and even then, I'm saying it tentatively--because maybe it WAS a cultural thing. But I think you already got the cause...
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...which is that China was a (mostly) stable, unified, empire--whereas Europe was in the middle of cultural/political turmoil
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man it really is amazing the kind of development you can get from an anarchic mass of fairly small states
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not too small though, and not too anarchic, plus accumulation by a "middle" class is very helpful
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a middle class is a prerequisite; they're the ones who are doing the trading
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