I don’t disagree with anything you said. I do think, however, that we would find that the traditional Chinese economy, as whole, was far more interdependent than that found in Europe during the same relative period of development. For example, a far higher percentage of the population of Europe lives in proximity to the sea which provides both food and transport. By contrast, a higher percentage of the population of China lives far inland. People by the sea can live in isolated pockets longer than people inland. If they piss off the neighbors and lose cooperation, the consequences are less dire. People in inland China must have the cooperation of their neighbors in order to receive trade by land or river.

I would also point out that a lot of socialist and populist thinking in the West closely parallels traditional Chinese thought. Socialist dislike a competitive, innovative environment that produces disruptions and displacements ever bit as much a traditional Chinese. Perhaps our current cultural millieu in the West is just a flash in the pan. After all, you could drop the last 300 years of Western history into that of China without hardly raising a ripple.

Perhaps we to will return to ethos of “good enough” and “not rocking the boat.”

I first heard the irrigation / rice explanation from James Burke of Connecitons fame. It made sense at the time. Then I married a Northerner and found out how much wheat (and now potatoes)Northern Chinese cuisine uses. The original inhabitants of the Kingdom of Chin probably ate sorghum and wheat. In the dominant cultural group throughout Chinese history, rice always was an imported food. Therefore, I don’t buy irrigation as the only, or even main explanation, for Chinese conformism, although it is a contributing factor, especially in holding Canton to the Center.

I don’t forget that China was way ahead of the West for millenia. The thing to consider is that it may be the optimal social environment for certain levels of technology, but won’t support the development of really advanced technology without some fundamental social tinkering. Sort of like they way you need to destroy some of the pattern you’ve built up if you want to take a Rubic’s cube from a two-sided to a six-sided solution.

Rice based societies most likely feel this effect more strongly than those based on dry grains. Wet rice cultivation requires a significantly higher degree of organization than any other form of agriculture. It takes more people working together to produce that first grain of rice than it takes to produce that first kernel of grain. Smaller degrees of social discord present a much larger threat in rice as compared to grain based societies.

We shouldn’t forget that China was the exemplar for human civilization for many centuries. Their emphasis on harmony allowed them organize on a scale that dwarfed any other civilization. Yet to so they had to create a deeply ingrained culture of avoiding social conflict. When a new system emerged in the West, the testing of ideas by non-violent competition, they found themselves unable to adapt quickly. Americans would face the same problem if some other culture developed a new form of organization that did not employ individualism, democracy, rule of law etc.