Ancient Chinese Inventions

At the beginning of the 19^th Century due to the outstanding development of the Industrial Revolution, Europe’s economic, technological and military power was much more superior to   that one of China. Due to this superiority, Great Britain was able to easily defeat the Chinese Empire in the Opium Wars and imposed her political and economic terms. From then on, China suffered one of the worst periods of economical and political convulsion in its long history, it was humiliated and plundered by the main Western powers and also by their Japanese neighbors.

However, in other times prior to the Industrial Revolution, China had always been superior to Western countries. In fact, many of the inventions that allowed Europeans to conquer and colonized different parts of the world had indeed been invented in China many centuries before: the compass, the rudder, the powder, the printing press, money paper and many others.