Of all the societies in the world the Chinese should be most conscious of the failures of centralization but that is not the case. In ancient times, say 500 BCE, the Chinese civilization of the Yellow River Valley was technologically more than one thousand years ahead Europe and the Middle East. For example, at a time when no one in Europe or the Middle East could melt and cast even an ounce of iron the Chinese were casting multi-ton objects of iron. Europe and the Middle East used iron at the time but it was obtained by taking the mixed mass of iron and rocky slag that came out of the blast furnace and tediously hammering the slag out of the iron. The Chinese, thanks to a special bellows, were able to achieve high enough temperatures that the iron melted and ran freely out of the blast furnace where it could be cast into molds. Europeans were not able to achieve this feat until the 17th century. Thus in the matter of iron technology the CHinese were more than two thousand years ahead of the Europeans.

In other technical fields the Chinese civilization was similarly precocious. The magnetic compass, paper, gunpowder and the mechanical clock among other things were invented in ancient China. The Chinese at that time were able to drive bamboo tubes down into the earth one half of a kilometer and tap into natural gas deposits which they used to evaporate water from salty water to produce salt.

The most important question in human history is why did the technology of the Chinese civilization stagnate and declined so that by the 19th century China was poor and backward and people had forgotten that China was ever technically advanced. The source of the problem was the creation of the Chinese Empire and a bureaucratic class of Mandarins to rule the society. The Mandarins were chosen on the basis of a competitive academic examination. Perhaps at first the Mandarins may have made some positive contribution to Chinese civilization but over time the Mandarins became more and more bureaucratic and only interested in preserving their status and privilege. They were primarily trained in the humanities and not interested in technology, particularly they did not want to risk technology which might rock the boat.

For more on the advanced technology of ancient China see Ancient China and Treasure Fleets