古代中国有什么优势，能使他们领先于同时代的其它国家? [美国媒体]

What advantages did ancient china have thatallowed them to become very advanced for its time?
Did the mongols play a part in this bywiping out many other kingdoms in the area?

古代中国有什么优势，能使他们领先于同时代的其它国家?
蒙古人在这其中有没有起到一定的作用呢？比如说，消灭的许多其他王国？

Bear1375
High Population, good farming lands, bigrivers for good transport, little to no war from foreign countries, Access tosea.

人口众多，耕地优良，大江大河带来的便利交通，与外国几乎没有发生过战争，临海。

piisfour
I suppose the huge river basin of theYellow River, which is able to sustain millions of people, has had aninfluence.

我想是广袤的黄河流域对此有深远影响，因为黄河能够供养数百万人。

gaiusmariusj
> good farming lands
Chinese farmland were not as fertile untilwe hit the Yangtz river and the import of Thai/Vietnam rice. Some regions thatwere once consider as fertile were severely damaged during war &deforestation that led to a population shift towards south.
>big rivers for good transport,
The water way were mostly east-west, theyhad to dug a huge canal, the Grand Canal, to function as waterway from north tosouth.
> little to no war from foreigncountries
Technically true in the sense that tribesaren't countries. But China consistently had to deal with nomads.
> Access to sea.
Problem with ocean without refrigeration isthat they aren't that useful in terms of providing proteins. And navaltraveling didn't reach their height till Song dynasty. It was only in Qingperiod I believe in order to protect the local water travel from rising maritimetrade did the government issue edict to ensure goods were traveling on thewater.

1. 耕地优良
直到我们到达长江，进口泰国/越南大米，中国的农田才变得肥沃。一些曾经被认为是富饶的地区在战争和森林砍伐期间遭到严重破坏，导致人口向南方转移。
2. 大江大河带来的便利交通
水路大多是东西走向的，他们必须挖一条大运河，即京杭大运河，作为南北互通的水路。
3. 与外国几乎没有发生过战争
也没有错，但准确来说，是部落不是国家。但是中国一直不得不与游牧民打交道。
4. 临海
在没有冰箱时代，即使临海也要面对一个问题：在提供蛋白质方面没那么有用。直到宋代，海上旅行才达到了顶峰。我坚信，为了保护当地的水运不受新兴的海上贸易的影响，清政府颁布了一项法令，保证水运畅通。

Ragni
good farming lands and vast foodvariations(rice, jujubes, noodle shops, etc) to support a very high population
climate zones ranging from the tropical tothe subarctic
developing traditional medicine which sawfood as the basis of good health
cooking methods/recipes from nomads,missionaries and traders
China in general (even to this day) has avast history of improving on things that already exist.

良好的耕地和丰富的食物种类(大米、枣、面条等)支撑着众多的人口。
从热带到亚北极的气候区。
传统中医药的发展，中医认为食物是健康的基础。
来自牧民、传教士和商人的烹饪方法和食谱
总的来说，（甚至直到今天）中国在改进现有事物方面有很长的历史。

Atharaphelun
Mongols didn't even exist during the periodof Ancient China (Shang and Zhou Dynasties, not to be confused with the periodof Imperial China). The main barbarians to the north at the time were theNorthern Di tribes. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were pretty much the onlydominant sovereign entities in that part of the world.

在古代中国(商周时期，不要与中国朝代混淆)，蒙古都不存在。当时北方主要的野蛮人是北方的羝族部落。商朝和周朝很可能是这个地区唯一的主权实体。

gaiusmariusj
The King of Zhou switched his capitalbecause the Di was harassing him. So I don't know if they are that dominant.

周王改都城，就是因为羝族部落一直骚扰他。所以我可不敢确定他们是否真的占主导地位。

Rosenthalferdinand
The Chinese themselves wiped out thecompetition. 'China' as we imagine it started around the Yellow River at afraction of the size of even modern China Proper. They expanded in alldirections, though most successfully to the East and South, where in the latterthey pushed out both proto-Thai and proto-Austronesian populations.
The main advantage that sparked this stemsfrom the cultivation of millet and rice and agriculture in general whichallowed the same social complexity and population to arise as in Egypt,Mesopotamia, and the Indus river valley, and even then there's a span ofroughly four millennia from 6,000bc to the rise of Xia in 2000bc.

中国人自己就扫清了竞争对手。“中国”，正如我们所想，它的发源地是黄河，它的规模只有现代中国的一小部分。他们向四面八方扩张，但是最成功的是东、南两个方面，在那里，他们把原来的泰国人和原来的南岛人都赶了出来。
总的来说，让这支血统发出耀眼光芒的主要原因是：粟、稷、黍、水稻的耕种和农业文明，这确保了社会复杂性和人口的出现，如埃及、美索不达米亚、印度河流域一样，即使如此，从公元前6000年到夏朝的出现（公元前2000年），中间大约有四千年的时间间隔。

RATMpatta
The most important advantage lies in theEurasian continent. The climate is very well suited for farming and theeast-west axis of the continent made diffusion of plants, animals andtechnology way more effective than in Africa and the Americas. For the mostpart their dominance here was because of their size in this already favorablecontinent.
The reason they eventually lost the leadwas disinterest in overseas trade and a stagnation in their once so flourishingtechnological development.

最重要的优势在于中国位于欧亚大陆。这里的气候非常适合农业发展，而欧亚大陆的东西轴线心使植物、动物和技术的传播比非洲和美洲更为有效。很大程度上来说，他们对该地区的统治取决于他们在这块本就利好的大陆上所占有的面积。
他们最终失去领导地位的原因是他们对海外贸易不感兴趣，以及一度繁荣的技术发展停滞不前。

OB1_kenobi
One way to answer this would be to look atfactors shared by China with other civilizations that were advanced andinnovative for their time.
So China, Egypt, Minoans and Sumeria?
One common factor ispictographic/hieroglyphic writing. Symbolic writing communicates abstractmeaning effectively and trains the reader to think more effectively.
If you look at civilizations withpictogram/hieroglyphic writing vs the ones with phonetic writing systems,there's a strong positive correlation between hieroglyphs and level ofadvancement and innovation.
Spoken language has a built in ambiguitythat leads to misunderstanding. Phonetic based writing is basically spokenlanguage in visual form, so it has the same built in potential formistranslation and misunderstanding. The meta irony here is that I'm limited tousing a phonetic form of writing to try and communicate how hieroglyphicwriting can be superior in many ways.

解决这个问题的一种方法是从另一个角度观察，找出中国与其他先进的、创新性的文明所存在的共同点。
那么我们来对比一下中国，埃及，米诺斯和苏美尔?
一个共同点是象形文字。符号化写作有效地传达抽象的意义，训练读者更有效地思考。
如果你观察一下使用象形文字和使用拼音文字的文明，你会发现，象形文字与进步和创新水平之间存在着很强的正相关关系。
口头语言中的歧义会导致误解。以语音为基础的书写基本上来说是一种视觉形式的口语，因此它有很大可能出现误译和误解。这里的元反讽是，我现在只能用一种语音形式来尝试和表达象形文字在许多方面是如何优越的。

rndmnmnvwls
If it wasn't for the Mongols we would allbe speaking Chinese right now. They wiped China out when it was at it's peakand the most advanced country in the world. The bridle, stirrups and therecurve bow gave plains horsemen a good run from roughly 500 ad to 1500 ad andthen technology reduced them to where they belong in the big picture.

如果不是蒙古人，我们所有人现在可能都要说中文。当中国处于鼎盛时期，也作为世界上最先进的国家时，他们就把中国消灭了。大约公元500年到1500年间，缰绳、马镫和反曲弓让平原骑兵有了很大的发展，然后科技迫使他们只能呆在广阔蓝图中本属于他们的地方。

RyuNoKami
The Chinese were terrible at the time ofthe Mongols. by terrible, i don't necessary mean they don't have the means tofight them off but rather incompetence and corruption made them unable to win.
and peak is laughable seeing as the Songdynasty at the time was relegated to the south of the Huai River and they havenot been able to beat the Jin and Liao Dynasty to take back the northernterritories.

在蒙古人统治时期，中国人很糟糕。说到糟糕，我并不是说他们没有办法打败他们，而是说无能和腐败让他们无法获胜。
而鼎盛则是可笑的，因为宋朝被迫后退到淮河以南，他们没能打败金和辽，夺回北方的领土。

Gaiusmariusj
Even without the corruption orincompetence, it's hard to argue that Song could have stopped the Mongols afterthey took out the Jin.
The large population center under Jin wouldhave provided the Mongols with basically everything they need, engineers, footsoldiers, tax bases, etc.
Also one could argue that Song dynasty waspeak in terms of culture and economic sense. And that Song military suffer duenot to their armies been bad, but rather they lack natural defenses. One SongEmperor, worried about northern horses, issue decrees to plant large forests intheir passage. Although the Khitan invasion I believe cut them down later. ButI guess it did slow them down.

即使没有腐败和无能，宋朝在灭金后，能不能阻止蒙古人也是难说。
金时期庞大的人口中心本来可以为蒙古人提供他们所需的一切，包括工程师、步兵、税基，等等。
也可以说宋代是文化和经济意义上的巅峰。而宋的军队之所以遭殃，不是因为他们的军队不好，而是因为他们缺乏天然的防御。一位宋朝皇帝担心北方的铁骑，颁布法令在他们必经之地种植大片的森林。尽管契丹人入侵了，但我相信他们后来被消灭了。但我想森林确实让他们放慢了脚步。

RyuNoKami
their natural defense is the Huai River.

他们的天然屏障是淮河

rndmnmnvwls
I've never heard of an academic expert onChina who doesn't consider either the Tang or the Southern Sung the peak ofChina's advancement. China was the most advanced country in the world on theday Genghis Khan was born. His Mongol empire set the Chinese back centuries.
Modern technology is so advanced that it isinconceivable at this point for the more advanced country to be military weakerthan the less advanced. It was not always so. Technology did not always havesuch a determining factor. Horses naturally have a gap between the front andback teeth for the bit to go in, it took thousands of years for this to betaken advantage of. It took thousands of years to invent stirrups which makecombat from horseback practical. Horses were domesticated over 5K years ago butthe proper means of harnessing them to a plow was only invented around 800 ad.The recurve bow can be made short enough for the rider to easily move the aimpoint from one side of the horses neck to the other. Despite the antiquity ofthe domesticated horse the three key inventions were late in coming. Once theydid the plains horsemen of the Eurasia used them to good effect and conqueredmany cultures more advanced then they. This didn't last forever.

我从未听说过有哪位中国问题的学术专家不把唐宋或南宋视为中国发展的顶峰。成吉思汗出生的时候，中国是世界上最先进的国家。他的蒙古帝国使中国倒退了几个世纪。
现代技术是如此先进，以致于在这个时候，较先进的国家军事力量弱于不先进的国家是不可想象的。事实并非总是如此。技术并不总是一个决定性因素。前者和后者之间在马匹放满有着天然的差距，利用这点需要上千年的时间。发明马镫花费了数千年时间，而后才使得马背上的战斗成为现实。马在5千多年前就被驯化了，但直到公元800年左右，人们才发明了一种合适的方法来驾驭它们去犁地。后弯弓可以做得足够短，让骑手可以轻松地将瞄准点从马脖子的一边移动到另一边。尽管驯养马的历史悠久，但这三项关键发明来得太晚了。一旦他们做到了，欧亚大陆的平原骑兵们就利用他们的成果征服了许多比他们先进的文化。这并没有持续下去。

Atharaphelun
They wiped China out when it was at it'speak
No it wasn't. The Song Dynasty was alreadydrastically weakened due to the conquest of the North China Plain by the JurchenJin Dynasty, which forced it to become purely defensive. It was furtherweakened by the corruption that was progressively permeating the imperialgovernment. The Mongols conquered China during a period of division andweakness.

在中国的鼎盛时期，他们将其彻底摧毁。
不,它不是。由于女真金朝对华北平原的征服，宋朝已经被彻底削弱，这迫使它只能单纯的防御。它被逐渐渗透到宋朝政府的腐败进一步削弱。蒙古人在这个分裂和软弱的时期征服了中国。

rndmnmnvwls
I meant when it was at the peak of itsadvancement in comparison to the rest of the world.

我想表达的是，与世界其他地方相比，中国当时处于发展的顶峰。

expunishment
I wouldn't say the conquest of China by theMongols by any means easy. After all, Southern Song was one of the lastterritories added to the empire despite it being in their proverbial backyard.

从任何一个方面来说，我都不认为蒙古人征服中国是件容易的事。毕竟，南宋是最后并入帝国的最后一块领地之一，虽然是在他们的后院。

rdayt
A lack of religious doctrine holding themback.

缺乏宗教信仰阻碍了他们前进。

SanderCohen45
This looks like BadHistory material.

这看起来像是不良的史料。

rndmnmnvwls
Confucianism is a religion though bookswritten for the general public often denote it as ancient China's philosophyand Taoism as its ancient religion. But in fact both were simply twointerpretations of the same religion. The difference between Taoism andConfucianism is smaller than the difference between Catholicism andProtestantism.

儒学是一种宗教，尽管为大众所写的书籍常常把它称为中国古代的哲学，而道教则是中国古老的宗教。但事实上，这两者都是对同一宗教的两种解释。道教和儒家的区别比天主教和新教的区别要小。

Atharaphelun
Confucianism isn't a religion. There's zeroworship involved in Confucianism, since it's just a set of philosophical viewsand societal norms codified, much like its counterpart, Legalism.

儒学不是宗教。儒家思想中没有涉及到宗教信仰，因为它只是一套哲学观点和社会规范，就像它的对应，法律主义一样。