The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)

Paper is written in 1944. None of that was true for that time and does not apply to modern days at all. It seems to be influenced by pre-war mystical New Ageish movements in Europe, that claimed many things... like, that Europeans came from Tibet...

I'm really confused about definitions here. What we define as Western, Chinese, Indian civilization and what we define as civilization at all.

You can like it or hate it, but modern Chinese nowadays belong to Western civilization - they use Western inventions(and they still steal them - no offense, but I think, it is a right thing to do for them to get into better economical position and you should do the same) - phones, computers, mechanisms, medicine, sanitation, building, use western clothing and even Mao spread western ideas... At this point Chinese civilization as such certainly does not exist and it is a myth. Same applies to others.

Let's clarify some things about Western civilization: Western civilization does not apply exclusively to Western Europe. Roman Empire, that was melting pot of nations and cultures was spread in northern Africa and for most of what is considered world of Islam. Not bothering with colonies, core lands of ancient Greeks were in what is now called west of modern Turkey. Most of the world still does not know about great Chinese works, but they too don't predate works of ancient Greeks(as they were written more recently). There certainly existed even more ancient literature works in ancient China, but so did in civilization, what we consider western.

What you are talking about continuity of Chinese applies the same to Europeans as well, as they stem from steppe people, that were initially located in Eastern Europe and they even more efficiently than Chinese replaced local population. Heck, those steppe people even invaded civilization of Indus valley, eventually destroying it and replacing male population for most of northern India. Talk about continuity of ancient India - did you meant Tamil people or Harappans? Because if Harappans(Indus valley civilization) is considered Indian, then Tamil ancestors are thought to come from somewhere west of India and are not really native to India... unlike Veddas in Sri Lanka or Sentinelese of Andaman islands.

Now some nitpicks: Goths did not left any traces of Gothic civilization in Italy - besides, how do you even dear to consider Goths not belonging to Roman Empire, as they were employed by Romans! As far as I know, Goths did not invade only Italy, but also invaded Spain and settled in most fertile part of Roman Empire - Africa, so they walked over whole Roman Empire. There was no specific civilization of Britain during Saxon invasions. What did they even replace? And how do you differ them from Normans, Angles or even earlier Viking invasions? For all I know - all of them might belong to the same culture. Because of Spanish conquest, Americas are now considered part of Western civilization. Aztecs came from deserts of modern USA and were rulers over natives, so what's your point? And even then Aztecs were not unique civilization, but only part of civilization region of what we call Mesoamerica. Isn't is a hypocrisy to consider multiple states of China, that fought among themselves as continuous civilization(even today there are 2 Chinese states)... while looking on different European countries, who share the same civilization not consider them as continuous...

1. The Greek alphabet, a bit younger than Chinese characters (just 2900 years old, unless you want to claim the Phoenician alphabet, father of both the Greek and Latin one) is almost identical to modern Greek alphabet. Until recently, being literate in ancient Greek was seen as a mark of erudition and very common in the scientific community.

2. Around the time when Confucius was describing his system, Plato was writing "The Republic".

3. Dynastic rule a political invention? It is the natural system that emerges everywhere! There has been dynasties in Egypt for more than 5000 years!

Ironically given the book-burning context, our youthful protagonists in the latter are equipped with magic library cards.

Knowing Chinese character however, you would be able to at least make sense of ancient texts, knowing what roughly the underlying text is talking about.

I think you have confused with my claim. It is about continuity. Chinese culture's strong consistency makes it very easy to create a narrative around its histories that it is episodic in nature.

After all, your identity is a collective imagination, it is your belief. It is not an easy sale to German/French people that are bounded by blood because they share some ancient Rome heritage.

In China's case it is an easy sale. The history is written in this way already

You pic a time frame, were China was indeed ahead. But I mentioned this time frame myself and it was the only time.

>> The reason why Europe explored more during that time says more about China than Europe. > No. It says more about Europe than China.

Yes. It basically tells us, that while China was ahead, the culture had big weaknesses. So big, that they left the world for Europe. What happened to Zheng He?

"Yes. China has superior products that europe desired and ran a deficit..."

You are right with the deficit. They did not have superior products, they had unique products (silk, tea, porcelain) and only wanted to export but never buy anything. Not so different from today. They always said, in the arrogance "we don't need anything!". After the military trouble with the west, they realized there was something they should have bought. Technology.