China, Still a Pre-Scientific Society

China was one of the most advanced nations in the world, when most of them were agricultural. Actually, China was one of the only handful of regions that independently developed agriculture on earth, at around 10 to 8 thousand years ago.

The earliest agriculture was invented about 12-1o thousand years ago, in nowaday Middle East. The agricultural expanded outward following population growth as an outcome of agriculture, into most of Europe and the rest of West Asia. Farmers and agriculture spread much slower than industry and were stopped by high mountains in central Asia. About 2 thousand years later, China independently invented the agriculture. Farmers in China also spreaded outward, to as far as Tibet and Southeast Asia.

At its core region, the Yellow River and Yangtze River regions, the advantage of inventing agriculture persisted even after thousands of years of agriculture development. That's why China, not other countries dominated East Asia and South East Asia for so long. That's also why Arab civilization dominated Middle East for centuries.

Things changed only after human being invented another completely new way of living - industry, backed by modern science, a new way of thinking. West Europe and its decendent - North America, has dominated human civilizations ever since then. Although Arab and China seemed have implemented lots of things invented by West Europe, such as industrial infra-structures, "laws", and modern universities, they are still, deep in their hearts, pre-scientific societies.