他们都在制造Nike的鞋，太忙了。

　　

　　I know this thread is two months old, but I do suggest you take a look at a map showing the size of China and ask yourself whether or not Chinese and ethnicity has been spread over that area since humans first move there or whether it had expanded to encompass such a vast area.

　　It’’s bigger then India and that’’s a sub-continent!

　　Take a closer look at the map and in almost all directions you will see that Chinese expansionism halted at the first significant environmental barriers. Deserts to the west, Siberia north, Himalayas etc

　　

　　我知道这种想法已经有两个月了，但是我建议你好好看下地图上中国的大小。然后自己再好好想想，中国和种族是否已经繁殖到那些地方了，或者已经扩张到可以包围这些广阔的地方了。

　　中国比印度还大，它是大陆的一支！

　　好好自己看下地图，基本上在每个方向都可以发现中国的扩张主义都是被扼杀在环境这个首要因素上面。西方的沙漠，北方的西伯利亚，喜马拉雅山等。

　　

　　Colonies and territories like that were not possible for a long time, when shipbuilding developed more. China did have a brief opportunity to join in, but their despotic government regarded shipping as a threat and largely banned it. China was simply too despotic, xenophobic and isolationist for its own good, while Europe had a lot of divided, liberal-ish governments that were much less stultifying. Of course, at the time it wasn’’t known there would be great trading empires, so maybe they would have acted differently if they could have seen the future.

　　

　　殖民主义和领土扩张在很长一段时间里是不可能的事，但后来造船技术发展之后就可以实现了。当时中国有一个主要的机会可以加入的，但是他们专横的政府认为航运是一种威胁，并且大面积的禁止了它。中国确实是太专横，排外和孤立，闭关锁国，而欧洲有很多分派，自由主义者政府，不会那么专横。当然当时还没有预言到会有伟大的贸易王国的诞生，所以如果他们看到了未来，那么他们就可以有不同的发展道路。

　　

　　Perhaps it’’s because up until a few hundred years ago or so, a lot of China was still broken up into different kingdoms and territories.

　　For hundreds of years, each province had it’’s own army, it’’s own king. To go off and invade and then occupy another country would have meant unity and that wasn’’t something many of the warlords were ready to do.

　　

　　也许是因为直到大约几百年前，大部分中国还是被分割成不同国家和主权。

　　几百年前，每个省市都有自己的军队，自己的国王。离开自己的国家，入侵其它国家，占领其它国家就意味着团结，而这在当时军阀根本不乐意这样做。

　　My Dad often mentions this, saying they built all these ships way before Europe/etc and could have ruled the world, but the emperor told them not to for some reason, and it all stopped.

　　

　　我父亲经常提到这个，说当时他们比欧洲更早制造了各种船只，可以占领世界，但是皇帝告诉他们一些不要去的原因，然后就被停下来了。

　　

　　I think much of it has to do with the fact that China was one single country. European was a cluster of competing, warring nations, which meant that they were undergoing a continuous battle to get the edge in technology and tactics to outdo their opponents. Consider how the Chinese invented gunpowder but the Europeans took the gun and turned it into a major weapon of war, then into siege artillery - which in turn led to the development of ever more advance defensive and fortress technology.

　　Wars prevented the state from having an unbreakable hold on the individual as it needed the cooperation of the home front to fight wars - unlike in China where a huge army could just move in and crush opposition more or less at will. This meant the state in europe could not have such un-trammelled control over the individual as in China, allowing for explorers and commerce to develop, in search of riches and resources with which to develop new ways to fight wars.

　　

　　我认为大部分原因是因为中国是一个国家。欧洲是竞争群居，好战国家，这就意味着他们一直都面临着不断的战争，获取新的科技技术和战术以战胜自己的对手。关于中国发明火药但欧洲发明了枪并将它作为一个主要的战争武器，后来又发明了攻城大炮—这在当时将防卫和堡垒技术带入一个前所未有的发展阶段。

　　战争将保护一个国家免于遭受个人侵犯，因为它需要国家大后方的全力支持—不像中国的广大军队只会进来，然后粉碎那些反对者这类的。我就意味着欧洲国家不会像中国有这种个人控制的不自由，而是允许探险者和贸易自由发展，寻找财富和资源，发展想新的战斗方式。

水木然认为：中国作为另外一种经济增长模式，正在破坏正统的西方经济制度；而这一轮全球金融危机后，中国将引领下一轮全球经济增长！