Not all asian countries are the same. China as a country (in the past, up until the last 200-300 yrs or so...before communism took over) has been extraordinarily good at coming up with ideas that everyone else wanted to copy and improve. Gunpowder, Cannons, Ceramics, the compass, printmaking, paper...the list is unbelievably long. The interesting (ironical?) thing about ancient china is that they maintained their technical dominance by very strong intellectual property control. Just one of many examples: the chinese were able to control sericulture (silkmaking) for thousands of years. They had a death penalty for trying to smuggle out the butterflies, caterpillars or eggs of the silkworm.http://www.advantour.com/silkroad/history-of-seric ...Offtopic: The reason i'm interested in the history of china is that ancient china was the america of its age. The superpower to rule all other superpowers. I'm always interested in how it was that a nation with that much power could fall so far in such a short amount of time. It boggles the mind.