Failure of China’s Nativistic Modernization:The Impacts of the Mongol Conquests on Global-Human Civilizations in the 13-14 Centuries

This article begins with an analysis of Mark Elvin’s critical review of the different theories about the difficulties confronting China’s modernization efforts in the modern and early modern ages. It points out that the increase of China’s population in the 11-12 centuries was a basic factor on the slow down of China’s indigenous early modern/proto-modern developments. It then discusses the total structural change of the Chinese cultural-social-political elite establishment (the Confucian gentry) and the accompanyingde-moralization,de-spiritualization of the Confucian intellectual culture as another basic and profound factor in China’s political,economic,moral,and intellectual-cultural stagnation after the Mongol conquest regime in the 13-14 centuries. The article presents a macro-perspective review of the impacts of the Mongol conquest on China in comparison with its impacts on the Arabic-Muslim peoples of the Middle East,the Kiev-centered and the Moscow-centered spheres of Russia,as well as the benevolent affects on feudal medieval Western Europe (and Japan) from the absence of the Mongol conquest and rule in those lands.