Discrimination and Disparities

by Thomas Sowell

Conversely, China was for centuries the most technologically advanced nation in the world, especially during what were called the Middle Ages in Europe. The Chinese had cast iron a thousand years before the Europeans.37 A Chinese admiral led a voyage of discovery that was longer than Columbus’ voyage, generations before Columbus’ voyage,38 and in ships far larger and technologically more advanced than Columbus’ ships.39 One crucial decision in fifteenth-century China, however, set in motion a radical change in the relative positions of the Chinese and the Europeans. Like other nations demonstrably more advanced than others, the Chinese regarded those others as innately inferior—as “barbarians,” just as the Romans likewise regarded peoples beyond the domain of the Roman Empire. Convinced by the exploratory voyages of its ships that there was nothing to be learned from other peoples in other places, the government of China decided in 1433 to not only discontinue such voyages, but to forbid such voyages, or the building of ships capable of making such voyages, and to greatly reduce the influence of the outside world on Chinese society.