Çin Mucizesi ve Gerilemesi: Neden Çin Teknolojik Yaratıcılığını Sürdüremedi?

Antik Çin, hızlı bir teknolojik gelişme yaşayarak insanlığa dünya tarihini değiştiren çok sayıda yeni teknik ve araç sunmuştur. Çin’in hızlı teknolojik gelişme dönemi Sung hanedanının düşüşü ile ani bir şekilde durmuştur. Bu durum Çin’in neden gelişmesine devam edemediği ve ilk sanayi ulusu haline gelemediği sorularını beraberinde getirmiştir. Batıyı merkeze koyan bir karşılaştırma bakışı ile bu sorun bazı yazarlar tarafından Çin halkının kültürel özellikleriyle açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Ancak Çin kültürünün farklılıklarını gerilemenin nedeni olarak sunmak Çin’in hızlı gelişmeyi da aynı kültür içinde başardığı düşünülecek olursa tutarlı olmayacaktır. Bu makale, Çin’in 14. Yüzyıl sonrası gerilemesini Çin’in teknolojik gelişimi ve şehirleşmesi arasındaki paralelliği açıklamanın merkezine koyan bir tarihsel araştırma sunmaktadır.

The Chinese Miracle and Its Retrogression: Why could China not have pursued her technological ingenuity?

Ancient China achieved a very rapid technological progress and introduced many new techniques and instruments which fundamentally changed the world history. Despite that progress period, the technological pace of China was abruptly halted just after the fall of the Song dynasty. This situation raised the question why China could not pursue its development and become the first industrial nation. Within a comparative perspective which puts the West in the center, that failure was explained by several authors as a result of the unique cultural properties of the Chinese people. However, introduction of diversities of the Chinese culture as the reason of retrogression would not be coherent with the course of history as the Chinese people achieved those technological advancements with the same culture. The paper introduces an historical investigation for the retrogression of China after fourteenth century through employing parallelism between the Chinese technological progress and urbanization at the core of the elucidation. 

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