China as the main mover during the "Era of Accelerating Connections"

           I found the chapter 9 on China, to be the most interesting.  China seemed to be a very advanced society at this time, developing many technologies that would help advance other society’s.  From creating larger ships that influenced the development of ships in the Indian Ocean basin to the magnetic compass, to developing a thriving economy that inspired other civilizations with its wealth and diversity.  China was a dominant figure in this third wave of civilization, through technology, agriculture, and markets it was able to help other civilizations get a start.

           China provided lots of technologies to these thriving trade lanes, helping them grow by providing an open trading partner and the largest markets with the wealthiest residents in the known world. Some of the technology that China was able to pass to other societies was gunpowder, the magnetic compass, paper-making and printing.  China also improved upon technologies that would be found in other societies, rice from Vietnam that was drought resistant, borrowed the idea of a windmill from the Persians, and developed papermaking and printing as a response to Buddhism growing influence in China.  China was a flexible dynamic empire that was producing the best technologies, and incorporating others. 

           China, with the help of the new rice, was able to create agriculture “package.”  This package helped Chinese culture to spread out, amongst the Northern and Southern “Barbarians.”  This package would mainly work in the south were the cultures there were able to successfully establish and cultivate this package.  The groups living in the areas north of China did not have land appropriate for these plants and were never acculturated into the Chinese sphere of influence.  The South was acculturated into China for about 1,000 years, and would eventually leave to form Vietnam. 

           The final piece of the straw for China’s dominance was its markets.  China had so much wealth that they were able to spend money on goods that was for wealth comparison.  These markets had developed into a modern market with goods from all over the world that demanded high prices.  These traders would then purchase exotic goods and deliver then all over the world demanding the price they could fetch.  Sounding very much like the begins of market capitalism.