"If China had not been ruled by the Manchu people..." This sounds childish to me. Everything comes for a reason no matter how random its occurrence seems to be. There's no "what-if" in history. Everything happened in history is a clip in a long effect-cause chain. It is meaningless that some people wish one clip can be replaced as they please and the following will bend toward what they'd like to see.

The Ming were just as weak as a government and social structure when the Manchus invaded, and Ming officials helped the Manchurians to boot. Just as Qing officials looked the other way or helped the French and English.

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It is good to see another oppressed Chinese minority united.

[joined multiple posts --JM]

The first image is 郑藻如, not 郭嵩焘

[Fixed. Thanks. --JM]

I know several Manchus. If they still ruled China then I would have know one princess, and several wang ye's. Actually I probably would not know them lol.

As for history I agree "history is history man." It's a long chain of cause and effect. There is a reason that China didn't develop the whole scientific revolution, and definitely the Manchus was not the cause of it. Although China had several "scientific" discoveries, but never the ONE science advance, the scientific method.

But I think I'm just talking out my butt here, I'm not an expert with respect to the topic.

Ah, but science is still not completed. There are still a lot of things in science to be discovered. And while the west have discovered a lot of useful things like electricity, space travel, computers, flight, etc., I believe that the Chinese will discover new things in science. Before the west invented things, the Chinese did their fair share. Things that still need to be invented: Transportation (like in Star Trek), faster than light travel, viable alternative energy sources. Cure for Cancer, AIDS, etc. Who's to say that Asians and the Chinese in particular won't invent/discover these things?

That's not what I'm saying. I was talking about history. Actually with the amount of anti intellectualism in the West today I wouldn't be supprised. But who knows about these things, especially with the amount of problems China faces today. However, perhaps it is these kinds of problems that will drive the new discoveries. Necessity is the mother of inventions. I would not count the West out of the game tho. A lot of smart and passionate people out here man. But really I'm all for the advancement of the human race. Who cares about what one nation does. But I don't see anything wrong with feeling some national pride, as long as it doesn't turn into pure nationalistic bullshit. Crap that drives people to all kinds of foolish bullshit.

Before we can talk about faster than light travel (which is impossible with CURRENT physics understanding, not talking about worm holes etc, the energy required is ridiculous) we need to solve the energy problem. We are a type 0 civilization. Before we can advance to a type 1 civilization we need to solve our CURRENT energy problems. All this under the ever present danger of civilization entropy. Waiting for this shit hole to explode into the chaos of a billion fractal any day now. WHAT?

What I mean is it seems the whole Confucian feudal system limited the amount of free thinking in the past (although I'm sure it had it's merits being a meritocracy and all that). Plus many other factors I'm sure. Like the closing the doors to the outside world during the Mings on the cusp of discovering what is out there...

Many of these factors, gave West an edge.

People need to feel passionate about these things man. Study the hard shit! Fuck t.vs and celebrities and all that trivial bullshit.

Philip: You mean transportation as in teleportation?

They can do something like this called quantum teleportation:

link
link

Well, the manchus killed off about 67 percent of the chinese population in their attack run, so you could make a decent argument that the manchurians set china back by a huge margin.

I'd venture that the biggest reason china is so backwards right now is because the qing dynasty took too long to collapse. Japan got ahead because tokugawa failed around 1880, whereas the qing took another 30 years to pop, and the resulting government was highly unstable. It took 40 years to set up a real government, and it was nothing but a huge waste of time after 1958.

Right...

Anyway I don't mean that life should be all about the sciences. The humanities and the arts makes life worth living. As long as you are passionate about what you do.

My point is go out and do something you feel passionate about!

The new perspective is that the Machurians had taken the task looking after the Han people in poverty during Ming time. More visible is that the Machurians coming to Beijing to settle since a thousand years ago had turned Beijing into to a distinctive place and unprecedented culture. By now, almost all the glory of China lingering around are associated with Manchurian time.

The so called Father of Modern China, Dr. Sun Yet-Sen, was preaching that ...kicking out the Barbarians and to resume the Chinese... His mind was even occupied with the dream returning to the Ming orthodoxy under Han people's hand. The result of his revolution could also be seen in another way that creating a chaos immediately and probably till now.

The history of China has to be seriously re-written from to a fresh view. Meanwhile, the history of Machu has to be seriously developed in the coming years.