First off, there are different sources of income to just GDP- taxes which change acording to population mainly
mmh that GDP trend, this has been made by a serious economist which have done many researches, something I think you are not.
military is important when judging a countries strength. Sure, Spain might be the richest in the 1600 but without the military,
I agree with you military is important and China was far above Europe until the 18th century.
Btw it is true that China was not really improving in the 1800s, but not declining either, the Chinese empire was in his biggest expansion ever, gathering lands from east Kazakhstan, Mongolia, nowadays parts of east siberia, some islands which are currently Japanese, plus many vassal states such as Korea, Vietnam, Siam, Japan, etc.
China had also tributes from many countries under the Qing, most of Asia actually, even the Portuguese, the Dutch and later the British in the 18th century, the British paid tribute as late as 1886 and the Burmah convention, putting themselves in a lower status.
China was behind in the 1500s.
Again wrong, China in the 1500s was still more advanced than Europe in many fileds, some examples: I remind you that Gutenberg developped the printing press in the 15th century but it became really common in the 16th century, whereas in China block printing was already common in 1300 and invented in 1040, do not also forget the invention of paper already known in China one millenia before Europe... The gunpowder and modern artillery was developped first in China in the 7th century long before the European ever knew how to use an arquebus or cannons (in the 14th century). Other major inventions: the compass, chemical warfare, mathematics such as the negative numbers (not used in Europe before 1545 by Girolamo Cardano...).
Contrary to most of the European states (until the 18th century), China was a very efficient state, the government maintained a complex network of officials, and civil exams. Hence, the merit system existed millenias before than in Europe, and the Chinese were overally more literate than Europeans. These civil exams spread to British India in the 17th century and to Europe then. Not also forgetting other innovations in medicine, architecture, culture, philosophy, cuisine, etc etc.
Even in the 19th century when China was too weak to defend its borders against the Europeans, they could not entirely invade it, during the opium wars some cities (SHanghai, Hong Kong, Port Arthur, etc) were taken but not the country. It is not before the industrial revolution that China was clearly behind the Europeans.
I would say finally that what changed everything in the world balance of powers is the discovery of America by Europeans, if China discovered it (some scholars even say that China may have discovered the western coast of America in the 1400s during Zheng He big expeditions and explorations) and colonized it before, then it would have been still continiously the first world super power, but the Pacific Ocean is way more larger than the Atlantic one, and after Yongle the great Ming emperor, following emperors unfortunately closed China and stopped any further explorations (that's partly due to the fact that the ancient chinese believed that China was the center of the world, and surroundding regions were not interesting, underdeveloped and populated by uncivilized barbarians, which is not really untrue during that period if you just look at the Mongols, Turks etc). So the Europeans got lucky on that.
Edited 4/10/2015 10:26:35
