CIVILIZATION

TWO RIVERS

The Forbidden City (Gugong) was built in the heart of Beijing by more than a million workers, using materials from all over the Chin- ese Empire. With nearly a thousand buildings arranged, constructed and decorated to symbolize the might of the Ming dynasty, the For- bidden City is not only a relic of what was once the greatest civilization in the world; it is also a reminder that no civilization lasts for ever. As late as 1776 Adam Smith could still refer to China as 'one of the rich- est, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world... a much richer country than any part of Europe'. Yet Smith also identified China as 'long sta- tionary' or 'standing still'.1 In this he was surely right. Within less than a century of the Forbidden City's construction between 1406 and 1420, the relative decline of the East may be said to have begun. The impoverished, strife-torn petty states of Western Europe embarked on half a millennium of almost unstoppable expansion. The great empires of the Orient meanwhile stagnated and latterly succumbed to Western dominance.
Why did China founder while Europe forged ahead? Smith's main answer was that the Chinese had failed to 'encourage foreign com- merce', and had therefore missed out on the benefits of comparative advantage and the international division of labour. But other explana- tions were possible. Writing in the 1740s, Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, blamed the 'settled plan of tyranny', which he traced back to China's exceptionally large population, which in turn was due to the East Asian weather:
I reason thus: Asia has properly no temperate zone, as the places situ- ated in a very cold climate immediately touch upon those which are exceedingly hot, that is, Turkey, Persia, India, China, Korea, and Japan. In Europe, on the contrary, the temperate zone is very extensive ... it thence follows that each [country] resembles the country joining it; that there is no very extraordinary difference between them...