East Asia & Imperialism

Peter Frost attempted to answer this objection. His essay had some interesting historical information, but it also omitted a lot of important details and analysis, so Frost’s analysis is mediocre. This essay is not just a response to S. R. Kanobana and Peter Frost, but also a superior analysis.

We must first consider what countries make up East Asia:

• China
• Japan
• Korea
• Taiwan
• Mongolia – Not part of the Sinosphere, but is part of East Asia, geographically and genetically.
• Vietnam – Not part of East Asia, but is part of the Sinosphere, culturally and historically.

Both Mongolia and Vietnam could be excluded from our analysis depending on how East Asia is defined. However, their national average IQs aren’t too far behind the East Asia core, so it’s worth considering them anyway.

It’s easy to see why Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam never created empires that were comparable in size to the European powers. Their populations were simply too small and they were surrounded by much more powerful neighbors like China and Japan, which both controlled all three countries at some point. It’s doubtful that Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam ever could’ve created large empires, even if they tried. If anything, the territories that Korea and Vietnam had both managed to expand to at their greatest extents were appropriate accomplishments, given their population sizes and geopolitical environments.

The remaining countries to analyze are China, Japan, and Mongolia.

Neither Kanobana nor Frost mentioned the Mongol Empire. It was the second largest empire in history by land area, behind only the British. Culturally and historically, Mongolia could be considered closer to Central Asia and external to East Asia, since Mongolia is not part of the Sinosphere. However, Mongolian ancestry is placed within the broader Northeast Asian genetic cluster, so I still think the Mongol Empire is worth noting.

Frost acknowledged the Japanese Empire. Unlike most other countries in 1800s East Asia, Japan had industrial technology, scarce resources, and the right society and mindset to establish overseas colonies and many puppet states. Japan was the only East Asian country which colonized overseas, even if its puppet states beyond Korea and Taiwan were relatively short-lived.

Since Japan and Mongolia both created sizable empires at one point, and the smaller East Asian countries were too small to create great empires of their own, a more thoughtful historical analysis would rephrase the question as: Why didn’t China specifically create a great empire?

To some extent, the premise in that question is wrong. China did colonize many neighboring nations from their initial Yellow River Valley, just not overseas like the Europeans did from the 1500s and onwards. China has nearly 3000 years of imperial history. And unlike Europe, China mostly kept its “colonies” in the end. The territory of modern China is 1.5 times the size of Europe. Even the Mongols and Manchus ended up assimilating into China among the Han Chinese.

Generally speaking, all organized political entities will expand their territories and absorb other disorganized populations to the extent that the environments let them in the long term. That’s probably true among all humans, regardless of their psychological differences. There were many empires and migrations across the Earth throughout its history.

In this essay however, we’re mainly focused on empires during the Age of Imperialism. China typically isn’t considered to be a colonial power (alongside the European empires) because China faced a century of humiliation from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. China was subjected to multiple unequal treaties by the countries of the Eight-Nation Alliance. The Japanese Empire also invaded China and created Manchukuo, Mengjiang, and the Wang Jingwei regime as Japanese puppet states within China’s territory. These events raise the question: Why was China dominated by Europeans powers, if the Han Chinese have higher IQs than Europeans?

Peter Frost wrote that Christianity helped build European institutions. I dislike some of the descriptions made by Frost in that section of the essay. It initially wasn’t clear to me what Frost meant by saying that Christianity made European empires “more sustainable” or how “religion acted as a check on state overreach”. I thought these descriptions were confusing or ambiguous. To convey the most important points, I simply would’ve said that Christianity advanced European civilization, which enabled earlier industrialization, and thus earlier (and more robust) colonization.

Christianity also motivated imperialism. Missionaries believed that they had a theological imperative to proselytize all the non-Christians of the world. East Asia didn’t have anything comparable to the religious rationale that Europe had for colonization and imperialism, so that is another factor.

Peter Frost argued that isolationism was the main reason why most of East Asia did not establish overseas colonies. East Asia’s isolationism was attributed to a fear of foreign religions. I won’t rehash why East Asia feared foreign religions, but I will say that it wasn’t sufficient for motivating isolationism. Isolationism was also motivated by a lack of desire for foreign goods.

Isolationism doesn’t explain everything either. Even though Japan was isolationist for centuries, Japan still managed to build an empire on par with the European empires, whereas China did not. So, isolationism cannot fully explain why China failed to rival Western and Japanese imperialism during the 1800s and 1900s.

The Chinese were definitely capable of naval navigation and exploring distant lands:

• The Chinese sailed around and traded the Philippines from the 800s and onward.
• Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages from 1405 to 1433.
• Many Chinese had settled Malaysia in 1400s and onwards and Thailand during the 1700s and 1800s.

The Chinese probably could’ve conquered these lands and more if they tried. So why didn’t they?

The answer is that China simply didn’t need nor want to. The Chinese already had all the resources that they wanted in their homeland, so there was little reason from them to leave it. China didn’t have the same scarcity of resources as Europe, Japan, or Mongolia.

This was important for causing the First Opium War from 1839-1842. The British tried and tried to find things to sell and countertrade with the Chinese so that they could reduce their trade deficit and bring more valuable Chinese goods back home. But even with a global empire, the British still didn’t have anything that was sufficiently profitable, besides opium. So, the British resorted to forcing China to buy the opium that they were growing in British India, because that was essentially all they had to reduce their trade deficit.

Japan was isolationist for over 200 years (aside from its contact with the Dutch), until the Perry Expedition forced Japan to open trade and relations with the outside world. When Japan was isolationist, the Japanese didn’t need resources from the outside world either. That changed when Japan started industrializing. Suddenly, the Japanese needed resources from foreign lands in order to supply their rapidly industrializing economy.

Similarly, China probably would’ve been more keen on colonization if they had more modern technology that would’ve caused them to demand resources that aren’t found in abundance in China. Europe and Japan managed to industrialize about a whole century before China did. In both cases, Europe and Japan’s industrialization increased their demands for resources, which motivated them to create empires. Conceivably, Qing China also would’ve created an empire for meeting the resource demands of industrialization, if they had the technology and infrastructure that needed it. Humans never stay isolationist when they need to get resources from other lands. Throughout history, resource scarcity has always been the prime motivator for human migrations, foreign invasions, and war. Life itself is driven by a competition for scarce resources.

If industrialization increases the demand for resources, which in turn motivates colonialism, then this raises the question: Why didn’t China industrialize earlier?

Isolationism definitely inhibited East Asian industrialization, not just imperial ambitions. The more isolationist a society is, then harder it is to make technological progress. It was inevitable that isolation was going to end eventually, but East Asia didn’t realize that at the time. It also could’ve been undesirable to end isolationism earlier. East Asia did have some legitimate reasons to fear foreign religions, and East Asian statesmen feared that foreigners could’ve threatened their political power.

If China and Japan had ended their isolationist eras decades earlier, they could’ve potentially acquired new technologies in the early 1800s, thus enabling them to industrialize faster and earlier. If China industrialized a century earlier like Japan had done, then China probably could’ve and would’ve built an imperial overseas empire too. If China had industrialized as the same pace as Europe, then the Western powers and Japan would’ve been less likely to have subjugated China, especially if China also remained politically unified and built a more capable military. Under these three conditions, China could’ve been an imperial power in its own right.

In fact, if China gained imperial ambitions around the same time as Japan, China could’ve been competing or fighting against Japan, more similarly to how the European imperial powers competed and fought against each other for territory. China has a much larger population than Japan, so Japan would be no match against a unified China, whenever they have similar levels of technology. In such a scenario, perhaps China would’ve subjugated Japan, unlike in our timeline.

I suspect that Japan’s relatively fewer resources and goods compared to China may have been a factor for protecting them against European imperialism and unequal treaties. The Europeans were more focused on obtaining Chinese goods, rather than Japanese goods. If so, then this gave Japan, an advantage of China when it came to the age of imperialism.

Modern civilization emerged over the last 500 years or so, by a virtuous cycle. This process involved the following:

• An increase in the human population.
• An increase in economic production.
• An increase in scientific knowledge.
• An increase in technological complexity and power.
• An increase in energy extraction.
• An increase in social complexity and scale.

These things increased together, because each enables the others.

– T. K. Van Allen, “How Modern Civilization Emerged” from Lucifer’s Question

Could East Asia have industrialized before Europe while remaining isolationist? – Perhaps. The way how Europe industrialized before the East Asia could have boiled down to just luck or random chance. By “random chance”, I’m thinking of a similar process to how new technologies are invented. In the grand scheme of history, the Europeans industrialized before the East Asians by only 100 to 200 years. That’s actually not a big gap when you think about it. It seems like a big gap to a lot of people living today because the past 200 years is recent history. If history is viewed by millennia instead of centuries, then the East Asians industrialized not too far after the Europeans did. As the years and centuries pass, the industrialization gap will seem smaller and smaller. In the modern day, China has caught up technologically, economically, and militarily. China may even pass the West in technological innovation, if they have not already done so.

By contrast, the rest of the world has not caught up to Europe and East Asia. Some countries may never will, which signifies a truly big gap away from the Europeans and East Asians.

The “bad emperor” problem mentioned by Francis Fukuyama is interesting. It could partially explain why Qing civilization fell behind European civilization.

To a great extent, a nation’s ability to industrialize is influenced by the population’s intelligence. I wrote a series of possible explanations to the IQ gap between Europeans and East Asians on a different page.

China probably could’ve and would’ve become a colonial power alongside Japan and the Western Powers in the 1800s if they had industrialized by 150 years earlier or more. The Chinese could’ve done this by ending isolationism earlier, and/or by industrializing faster.

East Asians are just as capable at building colonial empires as Europeans. Sure China may have faced a century of humiliation where they were taken advantage of by the Europeans in Japanese, but not everybody can always be a victor. Spain lost the Spanish American war to the United States. Russia lost to Japan. France lost to Franco Prussian war to Prussia. Germany lost World War I and II to France, Great Britain, and the United States. My point is that if there were several occasions where the European powers were defeated by other powers (each other), I don’t think the defeat of China by the European powers necessarily implies that China was definitively incapable of billing colonial empire.

I know we should recall is that China was collectively humiliated by the European powers teaming up with the United States in Japan against China. Is it any surprise that China was forced to as many concessions as they were when they faced such a lopsided amount of power from their opponents?

Each time China had to give over more concessions with each new unequal treaty, it only became harder and harder for China to stand up for itself and move forward. The opium epidemic in China also surely weakened China’s ability to defend itself and fight for its interests in the 1800s to at least some extent.

China had been the most powerful, most technologically advanced society for most of human history. European world dominance from 1800 to 2000 is largely exceptional to the greater overarching historical pattern. It’s reasonable to suspect that East Asia will overtake Europe in the coming decades, thus reclaiming its historical status as the world’s most advanced civilization. If the United States hadn’t been brain-draining the rest of the world, China probably may have already surpassed the US.