How Has the State Driven Innovation in China?

How Has the State Driven Innovation in China?

Today, the Chinese people are convinced they are on the verge of a renaissance not witnessed since their nation’s greatest eras in history, a period of inventiveness and openness that stretched from the first century to roughly 1600 CE. The Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) in particular was a period of remarkable socioeconomic change and innovation in China that ushered in the invention of printing, gunpowder, the compass, civil service, paper money, tea cultivation, and restaurants. Some of these breakthroughs made their way to Muslim lands through the Silk Road or via the Indian Ocean, which served as the primary conduits for the transmission of new Chinese ideas across the continent to Europe.

Today, Chinese leaders are reinventing the Silk Road through the Belt and Road Initiative. President Xi launched this grand infrastructure plan in 2013 to expand China’s economic and geopolitical muscle by building dams, industrial corridors, as well as roads, ports, and railways that will link the nation with Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. One of the most innovative aspects of the Belt and Road effort is that China is financing these developments within its own borders and in other nations to facilitate its entry into foreign markets. “The Chinese people are very proud of the Silk Road and its role as a global trade route when China was at its most powerful,” explains Diane Wang, founder of DH.gate, which links buyers from around the world to Chinese businesses. “We think China again has a chance of regaining a similar glory.”

This link to the past recalls China’s golden era when it awed the world with its vibrant culture, superior technology, bountiful harvests, and a growing population, along with its openness to other nations. In fact, prior to 1400, China had no “dark ages” like Europe and was much in advance of that region in many ways.

In the past as today, the state played a leading role in China’s flourishing. In ancient and medieval China, artisans and engineers were under the direct control of the state bureaucracy, where they conducted experiments and devised naturalistic theories to understand the material world. They participated in the nationwide administrative network through elaborate imperial workshops and arsenals that were located at the capitals of each successive dynasty as well as in key provincial cities.

During certain periods, activities with some of the most advanced technologies were nationalized, as occurred with the Salt and Iron Authority under the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 277 CE). Localities rich in valuable natural resources also served as major centers of specific types of production, like the lacquer makers of Fuchow, the ceramic artists of Ching-te-chen, and brine and natural gas drillers in Szechuan. Major civil engineering projects were conducted through imperial workshops or under the careful supervision of key government officials. Under imperial command, these workshops closely guarded their manufacturing secrets, which bears similarity to today’s heated debates over ownership of intellectual property.

The process for manufacturing porcelain with clay bodies rich in kaolin, for example, was a highly guarded state secret that no other country could duplicate for millennia. Manufacturing of porcelain in China started around 600 BCE, and it was heavily exported during the Song dynasty. Dutch traders introduced this highly prized commodity to Europe in the seventeenth century, but it took quite a while before Europeans could replicate what the Chinese had invented some 2,300 years earlier!

Before 1400, the Chinese government oversaw the minting of coins and hydraulic projects crucial to agriculture. Government officials wrote and disseminated treatises explaining and elaborating on agricultural breakthroughs, like a superior new strain of drought-resistant and faster-ripening rice introduced from Southeast Asia during the eleventh century.

Even as early as the third century BCE, government authorities provided peasants with funding for agricultural improvements and promoted the widespread use of better-quality plows. The state also played a key role in the development of transport technology, with huge investments in canals, roads, bridges, couriers, and a postal system, as well as in the dissemination of medical knowledge. Top-down intervention in the economy included the stabilization of food supplies through the state granary system, the monopolization of the national trade in critical commodities, as well as international trade when it existed during certain dynasties.

Some high government officials themselves achieved major scientific and technological feats. Chang Heng, President of the Imperial Chancellery, was an outstanding mathematician, the inventor of the first seismograph, and is believed to be the first to apply the power of motion to the rotation of astronomical instruments. Prefect of Nanyang in 31 CE, Tu Shih introduced the water-powered metallurgical blowing-engine.

Chinese princes and other imperial relatives also formed networks of scientific investigation and dedicated time and resources to the pursuit of science, like Prince Li Kao of Tshao who studied physics and acoustics and invented paddle-wheel warships. The Prince of Huai-Nan, Liu An, surrounded himself with an informal entourage of astronomers, naturalists, and alchemists. While the state bureaucracy helped drive the nation’s technological momentum, innovation also arose through independent innovators like the alchemists who were not officially sanctioned by the state.

Minor imperial officials in the Ministry of Works were the most numerous groups of technicians and were well-educated. Many of the artisans and master craftsmen, however, were illiterate and never able to reach the higher levels of imperial administration.

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics