Chen Zhiwu: Why did scientific and technological innovation not succeed in ancient times and flourish today?

Rethinking the "Needham Mystery" can help us avoid repeating our mistakes in the future and make China go further on the road of scientific and technological development as much as possible

Text | Chen Zhiwu

Invention and innovation economy are hot topics today. Part of the reason comes from China's growing scientific and technological power, which has triggered the threat of supply cuts in developed countries such as the United States. This has further stimulated the thinking and discussion of many people with lofty ideals, why China has not been able to become an innovative power before, but today it is getting closer and closer.

From the Warring States period to the Song Dynasty, There were many inventions in China, reflecting the wisdom of our ancestors. But it also raises some questions.

First, there were many previous inventions, but they were not converted into productive forces and production technologies or living technologies that improved people's lives, nor did they bring to China a technological revolution, an industrial revolution, and although printing and gunpowder and artillery were invented in China, they waited until they were transmitted to Europe in the second half of the Middle Ages, and they were carried forward by Europeans and became the technology that changed the world, which is the so-called "Needham Mystery".

The second is why after the Song Dynasty, even invention and creation have stopped, no longer producing as many inventions as previous dynasties, and even the "four major inventions" we often talk about occurred in the Song Dynasty or earlier?

Third, why has the reform and opening up in the past 40 years finally brought china a scientific and technological take-off, so that China has also joined the queue of a small number of countries leading the development of science and technology in the world?

Finding answers to these questions is undoubtedly crucial to continued development today and in the future. Once the experience and lessons behind it are clear, it can help us avoid repeating mistakes in the future and make China go further on the road of scientific and technological development as much as possible.

The profound influence of Confucianism on scientific and technological innovation

The first question mentioned above, we should see that the reason why the inventions and creations of ancient China have not been transformed into specific technologies to enhance production capacity and have not been opened up to the product market is because there is a lack of entrepreneurs or businessmen who transform inventions into products. Entrepreneurs and businessmen are profit-seeking, and it is reasonable to say that as long as new inventions can bring huge commercial applications, generate huge commercial profits, and have money to make, there should be smart businessmen who seize the opportunity and make full use of it. However, this raises the question of whether the social environment, socio-cultural, institutional and policy arrangements allow private individuals to start businesses to make money, and whether businessmen are encouraged and protected to start businesses. If society considers commercial profits to be immoral, that the profit demands of businessmen are evil, and excludes businessmen, then no one dares to turn inventions into opportunities to get rich, or they can only do it secretly.

Over the years, the reason why I have looked at the development of science and technology and other aspects of China's social changes from the perspective of Confucian culture is because Confucian culture is not only a cultural system, but also an economic system, and the economic system of historical China is neither capitalist nor socialist, but a Clan-centered Confucian economy. One of the characteristics of the Confucian system is that it advocates the use of "righteousness" and "etiquette" to regulate interpersonal relations, realize interpersonal resource sharing and risk mutual assistance, rather than market transactions based on monetization, not dominated by businessmen who pursue profits and realize interpersonal resource sharing and risk sharing, and unwilling to achieve mutual communication through cold market transactions that hand over money and deliver goods with one hand, which also extends the exclusion and even hostility to businessmen and businesses, that is, the so-called "business suppression culture". Confucius himself refused to touch money all his life, he felt that money was so dirty, and making money was a very despicable thing. The Confucian property rights system extended from the "righteous ceremony" is very simple, the property is not owned by individuals, but by the family (collectively owned), the oldest male elder in the family is the person who actually controls the family or family assets, and the income of all family members is shared by all family members, and the male elders specifically arrange and distribute income; these property relations, income distribution relations, and responsibilities and obligations between members are determined by the "three principles and five constants" hierarchical order and related Confucian ethical rules. It cannot be determined at all by market trading relationships based on free choice.

Therefore, the Confucian economic system does not recognize the moral positivity of merchants and businessmen, and it does not encourage merchants to start a business, to transform inventions into technologies that can bring high profits, and the moral illegitimate nature of commercial profits certainly makes private individuals lack incentives to do such things. At the same time, the income of individual entrepreneurship can only be shared and evenly distributed among the family members of the same family in the same family as the four generations, which also causes a lot of free-riding, so that individuals lack the incentive to do big things, and there is no interest in hard work under the "big pot of rice". This is an important reason behind the "Needham Mystery".

The second characteristic of the Confucian system is that Confucianism has chosen to pursue stability and risk resistance, rather than pursuing "growth" or maximizing productivity. During the Spring and Autumn Period of Confucius's life, China had more than 100 kingdoms at most, constantly fighting each other, and the people faced the threat of violence all day long, and it was difficult to feel safe under the risk of violence. In this context, Confucius chose "stability first" rather than "growth priority"; first pursued stability in life, rather than emphasizing increasing productivity and income. Confucius said, "Do not suffer from widowhood but inequality, do not suffer from poverty and suffer from uneasiness", his core logic is here, material output is less, it does not matter, but lack of security, worry about the risk of war and disasters all day, worry about life, old age, illness and death, that is the problem.

In modern financial investment theory, we emphasize the use of "return" and "risk" two dimensions to evaluate investment choices, some people are not afraid of risk, only value returns, so they will choose high returns and high risk investments; while others hate risk, do not want to take risks, do not care about the level of returns, so they take stability first, choose high security but low return investment. According to this framework understanding, Confucius chose the latter one, not caring about return (that is, growth), only about fixing everyone in the hierarchical order of fame, so that there is no uncertainty in interpersonal mutual aid exchange, and everyone only has to obey obligations, bringing an overall sense of security to society.

Deng Xiaoping's saying that "development is the last word" is the same as the Western society's preference for pursuing "growth" brought about by the commercial revolution in the late Middle Ages, of course, the West pursued "growth" early on, so that the industrial revolution occurred there. However, this is the opposite of Kong Meng's pursuit of "stability" and abandonment of "growth". These are two completely different philosophies of life, and they are also two completely different economic system positioning. In Kong Meng's view, development is not important, let alone the last word; the pursuit of stability and the improvement of everyone's ability to cope with risks are more important or the only important things. Therefore, even if there is an invention, there may not be someone to use the invention to increase productivity and increase income.

"The Needham Mystery" is about Chinese why not turn these inventions into technologies that increase the productivity of matter? In the Confucian view, the problem itself is wrong, because Confucius and Confucians do not care at all about whether income increases, but more about reducing risk. In this sense, the index for evaluating the contribution of Confucian culture should not be "whether there has been growth" or "whether the productivity has increased", that is, when Needham evaluates the contribution of Confucianism in terms of "whether it has brought about the industrial revolution", it is not good for Confucianism from the beginning, and the answer must be negative, because Confucianism does not take this as a starting point from the beginning; but whether Confucianism really "makes people more able to cope with risks, live safer, and society more stable" to judge Confucianism's contribution, which is fair.

From an empirical point of view, from the beginning of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty to confucianism, the focus of Chinese intellectuals gradually departed from science and technology and turned to cultural philosophies such as Confucianism. For example, Professor Xiong Bingyuan and his two collaborators expressed their views on the Book of Han. The Yiwen Zhi (art and literature chronicles), that is, the general catalog of Chinese books summarized in the official history books, made detailed statistics and found that in the Han Dynasty art and literature, science and technology books accounted for about 23.6%, which was still very high; in the Sui Dynasty, science and technology books accounted for 14.9%; in the Tang Dynasty, it dropped to a little more than 10%; and by the Song Dynasty, it was reduced to 2.6%, and the Ming and Qing dynasties did not exceed 5%. It can be seen that after the Confucianism, especially in the Song Dynasty, the interest and writings of ancient scholars in scientific and technological topics were reduced by almost zero. It can be seen that after Confucianism dominated Chinese society, science and technology really deteriorated.

The Song Dynasty even reversed the car

For the creation of inventions, the openness and freedom of society are very important. For example, the Warring States period, the Three Kingdoms period, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms periods were all chaotic, and the imperial court was too busy to take care of the war and control society and give more freedom to the people, but according to the statistics of Professor Huang Yasheng and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, those periods were precisely the periods when Chinese created a record number of inventions.

In addition, the imperial examination is also a key factor in the epoch-making era. The Sui Dynasty created the imperial examination, and the Tang Dynasty continued to develop, but during the Sui Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty, only the descendants of the aristocratic family were eligible to take the examination, and the descendants of the common people were not eligible, so the imperial examination system in those periods had little impact on the grassroots, and ordinary descendants still had the heart to think about science and technology and think about original knowledge.

However, in the Song Dynasty, the situation changed radically. Emperor Taizong of Song expanded the imperial examination from aristocratic families to the descendants of ordinary people, causing readers in all corners of the country to pay attention only to the core content of the imperial examination, the Four Books and Five Classics, and only to what the Confucian classics say and say. Once the Confucian classics become almost the sole concern of readers, this has several consequences.

First, the whole society intellectuals have less interest in scientific and technological research and development, no interest in the laws of the natural world and the physical world, and no interest in how to increase the yield per mu, which is why scientific books in the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties accounted for less than 5%. Second, even in non-scientific and technological books, not all kinds of history books, philosophy, and art are valued, but everyone focuses on Confucianism, such as Professor Xiong Bingyuan and his colleagues on the "Book of Han" since the Han Dynasty. According to the statistics done by Yiwen zhi, Confucian books accounted for 39% in the Han Dynasty, and about 40% in the Tang Dynasty, which was lower than Taoist works (Taoist books accounted for about 50%), indicating that by the Tang Dynasty, Confucianism was not yet a "dominant force" in society, and there was still some atmosphere of contention among various schools; however, by the Song Dynasty, Confucian books rose sharply, accounting for 71% of all books, and the Ming Dynasty rose to 82%, and the Qing Dynasty was similar. It can be seen that after the Song Dynasty made the Four Books and Five Classics the core of the imperial examination, Confucianism became almost the only concern of scholars in the whole society, from the elite to the readers of grassroots families, almost everyone was immersed in Confucian writings. Third, the content of books has been greatly changed, and the previous books were mostly based on original knowledge, but since the Song Dynasty, most of them have been converted to books that interpret Confucian classics and annotate Confucian classics, which has led to a certain degree of knowledge aging and static, so that ideological culture is no longer innovative, but rigid.

Therefore, after the Song Dynasty, Chinese society did not even invent and innovate, and became a comprehensively conservative society. The changes experienced by the Song Dynasty are in fact almost identical to those of Islamic societies in the Middle East since the 12th century. Before the Sunni Revival reforms of the late 11th century, Islamic science was brilliant and its commerce flourished. However, after the Sunni Revival Reform deepened in the 12th century, the secular government of Islamic society was gradually controlled by religion, and the lives and secular activities of believers were highly religious, resulting in the publication of Islamic books turning more to the interpretation of religious classics, no longer pursuing the discovery and publication of new knowledge, but staying on the interpretation of past religious classics.

According to the research of Harvard Professor Eric Chaney, in the early seventh and eighth centuries of Islam, scientific and technological works accounted for 3% of Islamic publications, reaching 11% in the 11th century, but the original knowledge books of science and technology in the 12th century fell to 5%, and continued to decline to 3% in the 14th century, ending the glory of Islamic science. In particular, once the scholar's pursuit is no longer to discover new knowledge, and even books no longer emphasize original knowledge, but pay more attention to the interpretation of previous classics, the development vitality of all aspects of this society will naturally stop, and the recognition of nature and human nature will become a backwater.

The imperial examinations of the Song Dynasty changed the incentive framework of the grassroots, including the formation of the so-called "test-taking culture", reading is only rote memorization in order to cope with the examination, the impact has continued to this day, so that many parents have not yet come out of this realm, many domestic universities and research institutions have not taken the discovery of new knowledge and the production of new knowledge as their most important appeal, but only regard themselves as teachers who read according to the script, only talk about other people's research findings, and only read out other people's ideological cognition. This is why the domestic humanities and social sciences have deteriorated over the years and are farther and farther away from the world. Of course, the technology field is still much better.

Changes since the late Qing Dynasty

Before the late 19th-century Qing Dynasty movement, there was little interest in turning inventions into useful technologies. However, the impact of the defeat in the Opium War, including the foreign guns and cannons experienced during the TaipingTian Civil War, the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War, etc., forced the Chinese elite to reflect on all aspects. Forced to start the Western affairs movement, the introduction of Western industrial technology. Of course, the introduction of science and technology is of historical significance, but it is also important to revise the confucian value positioning of "stability first" and "risk resistance first", rather than "development first", and change to "development first" and "growth first", that is, to change to the pursuit of productivity growth, no longer conservative self-style. This, of course, is a fundamental revision of Confucianism, or a betrayal. This shift in values fundamentally paved the way for the subsequent pursuit of scientific and technological innovation, including providing moral and legal support for private entrepreneurs to start new types of enterprises in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, that conceptual transformation cannot be completed in a day or two, and it is not possible to change the Confucian value system established over the past two thousand years overnight, for example, the attitude towards merchants, the commercial market, and commercial profits, it is difficult to say that after the Western affairs movement, it has changed from negative to positive. Later, in the 20th century, there were warlord wars, civil wars, and political movements, which made the transformation process initiated by the foreign affairs movement constantly stopped.

By 1978, Deng Xiaoping had embarked on reform and opening up, no longer overthrowing "speculation and reversing the situation," recognizing the status of the market economy, private enterprises, and private property, "getting rich is glorious," "letting some people get rich first," and so on, which was tantamount to acknowledging the legitimacy and morality of private enterprises and commercial profits. Coupled with Deng Xiaoping's famous saying that "development is the last word", he unequivocally puts "growth" in the first place, rather than pursuing Confucian "stability" and "risk resistance"; Deng Xiaoping's "poverty is not socialism", but also a denial of the Confucian "do not suffer from widowhood" and "do not suffer from poverty but suffer from uneasiness" – these changes completely liberate entrepreneurs from the moral and policy level to innovate incentives, so that they no longer morally face the obstacles to transforming inventions into technologies that increase productivity. Even their own companies have incentives to participate in the wave of scientific and technological research and development. These are historic changes that have put an end to more than two thousand years of Confucian inhibition of innovation and invention, leaving Chinese society with no historical baggage and being able to embark on the road of scientific and technological development lightly.

Of course, with moral and policy recognition and even encouragement of private enterprises and businessmen and entrepreneurs, this is not enough, but also needs such an "incentive accelerator" as the capital market, otherwise, China cannot quickly become a science and technology power in the past two or three decades, so that other countries in the world feel the competitive pressure from China's science and technology.

In February 2021, Kuaishou Technology was listed in Hong Kong, China, with a market value of HK$1.4 trillion, and its founder Suhua was worth more than US$22 billion and more than RMB140 billion. Su Hua was born in the countryside of Xiangxi, Hunan Province, and is a real grassroots background, but none of this prevented him from quickly receiving venture capital support after founding Kuaishou in 2015, allowing him to innovate and grow rapidly in just 5 years, suddenly becoming a company with such a large astronomical market value. Various technological innovation companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, JD.com, and DJI are also roughly like this. The reason why this can be done is completely inseparable from the incentive role of the stock market, because on the one hand, the domestic A-share market was launched in 1990, and later the ChiNext board and the science and technology board were launched for the listing of technology startups; on the other hand, private enterprises can go to the United States and list in Hong Kong, China, so that with the investment exit mechanism of innovative companies, venture capital is willing to come to China and provide a lot of capital support to capable and innovative young people, so there are many exciting wealth stories like Suhua.

With these innovative wealth stories, the passion of young people and middle-aged people in the whole society to become rich in entrepreneurship and science and technology has been truly mobilized, forming an innovative ecology that Chinese society has never had in history, not only moral and legal obstacles no longer exist, but also in the positive incentive of scientific and technological innovation has also played the ultimate in the ultimate.

Living in 2021, it must be admitted that in the 160 years from the Western affairs movement to the present, The changes that Chinese society has experienced are really great and fundamental changes: from the original "stability first" to "development priority" and "growth priority", from conceptually devaluing commercial profits to "getting rich and glorious".

From the perspective of publishing alone, science and technology books now account for about 30% of annual publications, and this structure is similar to that of European and American societies, which has completely changed the situation that science and technology books account for only 2% and less than 5% since the Song Dynasty. Now, the Ministry of Education and other ministries and commissions also require universities and research institutions to publish papers in world-class journals, although this pursuit is too rigid, but from another point of view, because international journals will not publish interpretive and annotated papers and books, but will only publish works full of new discoveries and new knowledge, so this pursuit forces domestic universities and research institutions to be oriented by new discoveries and new knowledge, which is completely different from the academic orientation of the Song Dynasty that only focuses on the interpretation of classics. In other words, in the pursuit of productivity, the pursuit of growth and scientific and technological innovation, the goals envisaged by the Western affairs movement have finally been realized.

Therefore, in order to better understand today's scientific and technological situation and recognize the line that must be adhered to in the future, we should have a good understanding and cherish the transformation and progress achieved since the Western Affairs Movement, and must not destroy these achievements, especially not these innovative ecology, otherwise, it will be difficult for China to consolidate and maintain its long-term status as an innovative country.

The author is a well-known Chinese economist, tenured professor of finance at Yale University, chair professor of economics at the University of Hong Kong, and editor: Wang Yanchun