Some have argued that the reason Europe's industrial revolution took off is that there was no central authority to shut down industrial development and exploration over the whole continent.
> wrong kind of people were getting rich
In Europe, the nobility wasn't powerful enough to shut down the merchants.
By a number of measures China was more advanced than most of the West after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Why the West Rules for Now goes into this in a fair bit of detail. But Europe spiked up again and, once the industrial revolution hit, the growth essentially made everything that went before look like a flatline by comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_treasure_voyages - whole fleets reaching as far as the Red Sea and East Africa.
But then they turned inward.
Some have argued that the reason Europe's industrial revolution took off is that there was no central authority to shut down industrial development and exploration over the whole continent.
> wrong kind of people were getting rich
In Europe, the nobility wasn't powerful enough to shut down the merchants.