Your comment that Asians are catching up with us is amusing. China was more advanced than Europe all the way up until the Qing Dynasty, as well as being the world's largest economy. Most of the rest of Asia was kind of backwards then, and with the exception of Japan and South Korea, still is.
When I use the term "Oriental" or "East Asian" for China, Korea, and Japan.
What you say about China was pointed out by Professor J. Philippe Rushton in his essay
Race, Evolution and Bahavior.
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RACE, EVOLUTION AND BEHAVIOR: A Life History Perspective
2nd Special Abridged Edition
byProfessor J. Philippe Rushton
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2
The Whites who explored China were just as racist as those who explored Africa, but their descriptions were different from what they and the Arabs had written about Africans. In 1275 Marco Polo arrived in China from his native Italy to open trade with the Mongol Empire. He found that the Chinese had well built roads, bridges, cities connected by canals, census takers, markets, standardized weights and measures, and not only coins, but paper money as well. Even a postal system was in existence. All of these made him marvel when he compared the Chinese to what he saw in Europe and the Middle East. Even though he was an Italian, proud of his people and well aware of the greatness of Ancient Rome, Marco Polo wrote: "Surely there is no more intelligentrace on earth than the Chinese."
Historical research bears out Marco Polo's impressions. As early as 360 B.C., the Chinese used the cross bow and changed the face of warfare. Around 200-100 B.C., the Chinese used written exams to choose people for the civil service, two thousand years before Britain. The Chinese used printing about 800 A.D., some 600 years before Europe saw Gutenberg's first Bible. Paper money was used in China in 1300, but not in Europe until the 19th and 20th centuries. By 1050 Chinese chemists had made gunpowder, hand grenades, fire arrows, and rockets of oil and poison gas. By 1100, factories in China with 40,000 workers were making rockets. Flame throwers, guns, and cannons were used in China by the 13th century, about 100 years before Europe.
The Chinese used the magnetic compass as early as the 1st century. It is not found in European records until 1190. In 1422, seventy years before Columbus's three small ships crossed the Atlantic, the Chinese reached the east coast of Africa. They came in a great fleet of 65 ocean going ships filled with 27,000 soldiers and their horses, and a year's supply of grain, meat, and wine. With their gunpowder weapons, navigation, accurate maps and magnetic compasses, the Chinese could easily have gone around the tip of Africa and "discovered" Europe!
In the last five centuries, the European nations leapfrogged over the Chinese in science and technology. Since 1950, however, Japan has beaten the West in the production of many high-tech products. Other Pacific Rim countries (China, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea) now follow Japan's path. Africa, on the other hand, has fallen further behind. The poor conditions of African countries and Black America have become a concern to many. Much of the optimism of the U.S. Civil Rights movement of the 1960s is gone, along with the high hopes for independent African nations. Trillions of dollars of foreign aid have poured into Africa. Yet African economies have declined since the Europeans left.
Neglect and decay are seen everywhere in Africa and much of the West Indies. International corporations often have to provide their own power, their own water, and their own phones. In the age of computers, fax machines, and the world wide web, getting a dial tone in many African cities is difficult.
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