http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/26/60minutes/main595875.shtml
The World's Greatest Fakes
Chinese Copies Are Making Their Way Back To U.S.
IMHO, that title say it all. You would think that China would have been able to come up with something original in the last few centuries to influence and enhance society. No, the greatest art, architecture, engineering, scientific advances, yada, yada, yada, have come from Western society. The industrial revolution (which has enabled everything from flight to the internet) is a product of the West.
I have to agree. However, some of the foundations of Western technology and sciences have come from the East.* But you're missing the point. It doesn't matter who claims credit. The wheel turns. The complacent are routed. People who think they have a monopoly on good ideas are eventually disabused of that notion by reality. Did anyone think the British empire would be reduced to its current shell two centuries ago? But here we are. Did anyone think the non-Communist East Asian economies would eclipse Latin America and Africa and catch up to Europe, just a few short decades ago? No. But here we are.
* I don't see how you get to computers without the Indian numbering system. I don't see how you develop an advanced financial system without first getting to paper money. The West has imported a large number of game-changing technologies and concepts from the East. Without them, the West would not be where it is today.
The moral is that whatever you develop, you'd better continue coming up with new stuff. The minute somebody else figures out how to do the same thing, your advantage is gone. You may think only you have the right to your inventions, and that it's a disgrace that somebody copied your invention, but the reality is that once the secret is out, you have lost your edge. The Chinese tried to hoard their paper-, porcelain- and silk-making techniques, but it was all ripped off by foreigners. It's in the nature of things for inventions to be ripped off. Don't be deluded by the illusion that everything good in the world originated in the West. That is not only absurd on its face - it is false.