Until Japan did it in the late 1800s, no Asian power has ever, in history, been able to exploit technology, commercialize and mass produce it, the way the West has done. We now see a few imitators of the Japanese success but that’s all they really are. This flaw has been the demise of the long term power of would be Asian hegemons. This is what makes the current era so troubling. Now, would be Asian hegemons seem to have, in a Germany or Stalinist Russia like manner, treated both military and non military technology. We face things never before experienced, the outcome of which is not likely to be good.
I have read that some of the reasons that China stagnated are:
1) Their curtailment of China’s naval exploration centuries ago;
2) Confucius-ism is a positive and a negative for Chinese culture. The negative side of it was that Confucius-ism created a kind of tunnel vision. Education was focused on memorization, contrary to Western Enlightenment and the Socratic and Scientific methods. 3) The Chinese language is written with pictograms, and requires an enormous effort to learn (Western languages are phonetic based). 4) Contrary to European civilization, China became more isolated and failed to adapt by absorbing the best of foreign cultures, as did the West.