What advantages did ancient china have thatallowed them to become very advanced for its time?

Did the mongols play a part in this bywiping out many other kingdoms in the area?

古代中國有什麼優勢，能使他們領先於同時代的其它國家?

蒙古人在這其中有沒有起到一定的作用呢？比如說，消滅的許多其他王國？

美國紅迪網友評論翻譯

Bear1375

High Population, good farming lands, bigrivers for good transport, little to no war from foreign countries, Access tosea.

人口衆多，耕地優良，大江大河帶來的便利交通，與外國幾乎沒有發生過戰爭，臨海。

piisfour

I suppose the huge river basin of theYellow River, which is able to sustain millions of people, has had aninfluence.

我想是廣袤的黃河流域對此有深遠影響，因爲黃河能夠供養數百萬人。

gaiusmariusj

> good farming lands

Chinese farmland were not as fertile untilwe hit the Yangtz river and the import of Thai/Vietnam rice. Some regions thatwere once consider as fertile were severely damaged during war &deforestation that led to a population shift towards south.

>big rivers for good transport,

The water way were mostly east-west, theyhad to dug a huge canal, the Grand Canal, to function as waterway from north tosouth.

> little to no war from foreigncountries

Technically true in the sense that tribesaren't countries. But China consistently had to deal with nomads.

> Access to sea.

Problem with ocean without refrigeration isthat they aren't that useful in terms of providing proteins. And navaltraveling didn't reach their height till Song dynasty. It was only in Qingperiod I believe in order to protect the local water travel from rising maritimetrade did the government issue edict to ensure goods were traveling on thewater.

1. 耕地優良

直到我們到達長江，進口泰國/越南大米，中國的農田才變得肥沃。一些曾經被認爲是富饒的地區在戰爭和森林砍伐期間遭到嚴重破壞，導致人口向南方轉移。

2. 大江大河帶來的便利交通

水路大多是東西走向的，他們必須挖一條大運河，即京杭大運河，作爲南北互通的水路。

3. 與外國幾乎沒有發生過戰爭

也沒有錯，但準確來說，是部落不是國家。但是中國一直不得不與遊牧民打交道。

4. 臨海

在沒有冰箱時代，即使臨海也要面對一個問題：在提供蛋白質方面沒那麼有用。直到宋代，海上旅行才達到了頂峯。我堅信，爲了保護當地的水運不受新興的海上貿易的影響，清政府頒佈了一項法令，保證水運暢通。

Ragni

good farming lands and vast foodvariations(rice, jujubes, noodle shops, etc) to support a very high population

climate zones ranging from the tropical tothe subarctic

developing traditional medicine which sawfood as the basis of good health

cooking methods/recipes from nomads,missionaries and traders

China in general (even to this day) has avast history of improving on things that already exist.

良好的耕地和豐富的食物種類(大米、棗、麪條等)支撐着衆多的人口。

從熱帶到亞北極的氣候區。

傳統中醫藥的發展，中醫認爲食物是健康的基礎。

來自牧民、傳教士和商人的烹飪方法和食譜

總的來說，（甚至直到今天）中國在改進現有事物方面有很長的歷史。

Atharaphelun

Mongols didn't even exist during the periodof Ancient China (Shang and Zhou Dynasties, not to be confused with the periodof Imperial China). The main barbarians to the north at the time were theNorthern Di tribes. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were pretty much the onlydominant sovereign entities in that part of the world.

在古代中國(商周時期，不要與中國朝代混淆)，蒙古都不存在。當時北方主要的野蠻人是北方的羝族部落。商朝和周朝很可能是這個地區唯一的主權實體。

gaiusmariusj

The King of Zhou switched his capitalbecause the Di was harassing him. So I don't know if they are that dominant.

周王改都城，就是因爲羝族部落一直騷擾他。所以我可不敢確定他們是否真的佔主導地位。

Rosenthalferdinand

The Chinese themselves wiped out thecompetition. 'China' as we imagine it started around the Yellow River at afraction of the size of even modern China Proper. They expanded in alldirections, though most successfully to the East and South, where in the latterthey pushed out both proto-Thai and proto-Austronesian populations.

The main advantage that sparked this stemsfrom the cultivation of millet and rice and agriculture in general whichallowed the same social complexity and population to arise as in Egypt,Mesopotamia, and the Indus river valley, and even then there's a span ofroughly four millennia from 6,000bc to the rise of Xia in 2000bc.

中國人自己就掃清了競爭對手。“中國”，正如我們所想，它的發源地是黃河，它的規模只有現代中國的一小部分。他們向四面八方擴張，但是最成功的是東、南兩個方面，在那裏，他們把原來的泰國人和原來的南島人都趕了出來。

總的來說，讓這支血統發出耀眼光芒的主要原因是：粟、稷、黍、水稻的耕種和農業文明，這確保了社會複雜性和人口的出現，如埃及、美索不達米亞、印度河流域一樣，即使如此，從公元前6000年到夏朝的出現（公元前2000年），中間大約有四千年的時間間隔。

RATMpatta

The most important advantage lies in theEurasian continent. The climate is very well suited for farming and theeast-west axis of the continent made diffusion of plants, animals andtechnology way more effective than in Africa and the Americas. For the mostpart their dominance here was because of their size in this already favorablecontinent.

The reason they eventually lost the leadwas disinterest in overseas trade and a stagnation in their once so flourishingtechnological development.

最重要的優勢在於中國位於歐亞大陸。這裏的氣候非常適合農業發展，而歐亞大陸的東西軸線心使植物、動物和技術的傳播比非洲和美洲更爲有效。很大程度上來說，他們對該地區的統治取決於他們在這塊本就利好的大陸上所佔有的面積。

他們最終失去領導地位的原因是他們對海外貿易不感興趣，以及一度繁榮的技術發展停滯不前。

OB1_kenobi

One way to answer this would be to look atfactors shared by China with other civilizations that were advanced andinnovative for their time.

So China, Egypt, Minoans and Sumeria?

One common factor ispictographic/hieroglyphic writing. Symbolic writing communicates abstractmeaning effectively and trains the reader to think more effectively.

If you look at civilizations withpictogram/hieroglyphic writing vs the ones with phonetic writing systems,there's a strong positive correlation between hieroglyphs and level ofadvancement and innovation.

Spoken language has a built in ambiguitythat leads to misunderstanding. Phonetic based writing is basically spokenlanguage in visual form, so it has the same built in potential formistranslation and misunderstanding. The meta irony here is that I'm limited tousing a phonetic form of writing to try and communicate how hieroglyphicwriting can be superior in many ways.

解決這個問題的一種方法是從另一個角度觀察，找出中國與其他先進的、創新性的文明所存在的共同點。

那麼我們來對比一下中國，埃及，米諾斯和蘇美爾?

一個共同點是象形文字。符號化寫作有效地傳達抽象的意義，訓練讀者更有效地思考。

如果你觀察一下使用象形文字和使用拼音文字的文明，你會發現，象形文字與進步和創新水平之間存在着很強的正相關關係。

口頭語言中的歧義會導致誤解。以語音爲基礎的書寫基本上來說是一種視覺形式的口語，因此它有很大可能出現誤譯和誤解。這裏的元反諷是，我現在只能用一種語音形式來嘗試和表達象形文字在許多方面是如何優越的。

rndmnmnvwls

If it wasn't for the Mongols we would allbe speaking Chinese right now. They wiped China out when it was at it's peakand the most advanced country in the world. The bridle, stirrups and therecurve bow gave plains horsemen a good run from roughly 500 ad to 1500 ad andthen technology reduced them to where they belong in the big picture.

如果不是蒙古人，我們所有人現在可能都要說中文。當中國處於鼎盛時期，也作爲世界上最先進的國家時，他們就把中國消滅了。大約公元500年到1500年間，繮繩、馬鐙和反曲弓讓平原騎兵有了很大的發展，然後科技迫使他們只能呆在廣闊藍圖中本屬於他們的地方。

RyuNoKami

The Chinese were terrible at the time ofthe Mongols. by terrible, i don't necessary mean they don't have the means tofight them off but rather incompetence and corruption made them unable to win.

and peak is laughable seeing as the Songdynasty at the time was relegated to the south of the Huai River and they havenot been able to beat the Jin and Liao Dynasty to take back the northernterritories.

在蒙古人統治時期，中國人很糟糕。說到糟糕，我並不是說他們沒有辦法打敗他們，而是說無能和腐敗讓他們無法獲勝。

而鼎盛則是可笑的，因爲宋朝被迫後退到淮河以南，他們沒能打敗金和遼，奪回北方的領土。

Gaiusmariusj

Even without the corruption orincompetence, it's hard to argue that Song could have stopped the Mongols afterthey took out the Jin.

The large population center under Jin wouldhave provided the Mongols with basically everything they need, engineers, footsoldiers, tax bases, etc.

Also one could argue that Song dynasty waspeak in terms of culture and economic sense. And that Song military suffer duenot to their armies been bad, but rather they lack natural defenses. One SongEmperor, worried about northern horses, issue decrees to plant large forests intheir passage. Although the Khitan invasion I believe cut them down later. ButI guess it did slow them down.

即使沒有腐敗和無能，宋朝在滅金後，能不能阻止蒙古人也是難說。

金時期龐大的人口中心本來可以爲蒙古人提供他們所需的一切，包括工程師、步兵、稅基，等等。

也可以說宋代是文化和經濟意義上的巔峯。而宋的軍隊之所以遭殃，不是因爲他們的軍隊不好，而是因爲他們缺乏天然的防禦。一位宋朝皇帝擔心北方的鐵騎，頒佈法令在他們必經之地種植大片的森林。儘管契丹人入侵了，但我相信他們後來被消滅了。但我想森林確實讓他們放慢了腳步。

RyuNoKami

their natural defense is the Huai River.

他們的天然屏障是淮河

rndmnmnvwls

I've never heard of an academic expert onChina who doesn't consider either the Tang or the Southern Sung the peak ofChina's advancement. China was the most advanced country in the world on theday Genghis Khan was born. His Mongol empire set the Chinese back centuries.

Modern technology is so advanced that it isinconceivable at this point for the more advanced country to be military weakerthan the less advanced. It was not always so. Technology did not always havesuch a determining factor. Horses naturally have a gap between the front andback teeth for the bit to go in, it took thousands of years for this to betaken advantage of. It took thousands of years to invent stirrups which makecombat from horseback practical. Horses were domesticated over 5K years ago butthe proper means of harnessing them to a plow was only invented around 800 ad.The recurve bow can be made short enough for the rider to easily move the aimpoint from one side of the horses neck to the other. Despite the antiquity ofthe domesticated horse the three key inventions were late in coming. Once theydid the plains horsemen of the Eurasia used them to good effect and conqueredmany cultures more advanced then they. This didn't last forever.

我從未聽說過有哪位中國問題的學術專家不把唐宋或南宋視爲中國發展的頂峯。成吉思汗出生的時候，中國是世界上最先進的國家。他的蒙古帝國使中國倒退了幾個世紀。

現代技術是如此先進，以致於在這個時候，較先進的國家軍事力量弱於不先進的國家是不可想象的。事實並非總是如此。技術並不總是一個決定性因素。前者和後者之間在馬匹放滿有着天然的差距，利用這點需要上千年的時間。發明馬鐙花費了數千年時間，而後才使得馬背上的戰鬥成爲現實。馬在5千多年前就被馴化了，但直到公元800年左右，人們才發明瞭一種合適的方法來駕馭它們去犁地。後彎弓可以做得足夠短，讓騎手可以輕鬆地將瞄準點從馬脖子的一邊移動到另一邊。儘管馴養馬的歷史悠久，但這三項關鍵發明來得太晚了。一旦他們做到了，歐亞大陸的平原騎兵們就利用他們的成果征服了許多比他們先進的文化。這並沒有持續下去。

Atharaphelun

They wiped China out when it was at it'speak

No it wasn't. The Song Dynasty was alreadydrastically weakened due to the conquest of the North China Plain by the JurchenJin Dynasty, which forced it to become purely defensive. It was furtherweakened by the corruption that was progressively permeating the imperialgovernment. The Mongols conquered China during a period of division andweakness.

在中國的鼎盛時期，他們將其徹底摧毀。

不,它不是。由於女真金朝對華北平原的征服，宋朝已經被徹底削弱，這迫使它只能單純的防禦。它被逐漸滲透到宋朝政府的腐敗進一步削弱。蒙古人在這個分裂和軟弱的時期征服了中國。

rndmnmnvwls

I meant when it was at the peak of itsadvancement in comparison to the rest of the world.

我想表達的是，與世界其他地方相比，中國當時處於發展的頂峯。

expunishment

I wouldn't say the conquest of China by theMongols by any means easy. After all, Southern Song was one of the lastterritories added to the empire despite it being in their proverbial backyard.

從任何一個方面來說，我都不認爲蒙古人征服中國是件容易的事。畢竟，南宋是最後併入帝國的最後一塊領地之一，雖然是在他們的後院。

rdayt

A lack of religious doctrine holding themback.

缺乏宗教信仰阻礙了他們前進。

SanderCohen45

This looks like BadHistory material.

這看起來像是不良的史料。

rndmnmnvwls

Confucianism is a religion though bookswritten for the general public often denote it as ancient China's philosophyand Taoism as its ancient religion. But in fact both were simply twointerpretations of the same religion. The difference between Taoism andConfucianism is smaller than the difference between Catholicism andProtestantism.

儒學是一種宗教，儘管爲大衆所寫的書籍常常把它稱爲中國古代的哲學，而道教則是中國古老的宗教。但事實上，這兩者都是對同一宗教的兩種解釋。道教和儒家的區別比天主教和新教的區別要小。

Atharaphelun

Confucianism isn't a religion. There's zeroworship involved in Confucianism, since it's just a set of philosophical viewsand societal norms codified, much like its counterpart, Legalism.

儒學不是宗教。儒家思想中沒有涉及到宗教信仰，因爲它只是一套哲學觀點和社會規範，就像它的對應，法律主義一樣。