The Comparison Of Chinese And Japanese Views Of Science And Technology In Early Modern Times

In early modern history, China and Japan chose to learn from the west. As a result, the China’swesternization movement and the Japan’s Meiji Restoration happened in two countries. However, theending of these two movements are completely different. This thesis will try to analyze andsummarize the reasons of different endings through the combination of logic and history. First of all,from the attitude toward foreign culture, Japan was more active and emphasized the Combination ofpolitics and economy. However, China was relatively more passive and only leaned westerntechnology with the aim of maintaining the feudal rule. Moreover, both the two countries hadorganized an abroad inspection tour. China mainly asked the officers out and ended with failurebecause of pullback of the diehards. Japan government sent a diplomatic group to have an inspectionof12western countries where they had learned the western regime, administration and technologyaccording to their needs. Secondly, in the way of developing technology, China’s policies, like“westernized Chinese style”, aimed at maintaining the feudal rule with the use of western technology.As a result, China’s modern military and civilian industry had a lot of drawbacks and the policy didn’tled early China to the road of prosperity. Japan’s policies, like "Japanese spirit, but Western material",advocated not only learn western technology but also western regime and thought, which led Japan tothe road of capitalism. Thirdly, at the process of developing economy and military, both of the twocountries had realized the importance of talents. Talent training relies on education. Thus both earlyChina and Japan government established new schools and sent students abroad. However, beingconstrained by traditional Chinese thought, Chinese modernization of educational renovation failed,in a contrary, Japan cultivated a lot of technological talents, who helped promote the development oftechnology and made great achievement for the development of Japan. Through the comparing of twocountries’ view of science and technology, this thesis aims to ask modern people to learn form Japan’sexample and establish more complete and perfect scientific and technological view, which will helpour country to achieve the four modernizations in a better way.