China's record of inventions (#168; Topic I)

Kevin Phillips's important book, American Theocracy (#167), understandably, discusses China only tangentially. Still, when covering China, he is both realistic and reverential -- using such phrases as "as China has reemerged in the world economy" (p 360)-- not emerging, but reemerging. He also acknowledges China's leading role in inventions, quoting, approvingly, an article in Fortune (10/4/04): "History shows that inventiveness is firmly planted in China's DNA: gunpowder, rocketry, wheel-barrows, cast iron, compasses, paddle-wheel boats, block-printing, stirrups, papermaking and mechancial clocks -- all came from China, often centuries before they appeared in the West." (p 381) They are indeed so. (Robert Temple's Genius of China: 3000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention (1986) has a fuller coverage of China's inventiveness.) Phillips also mentions a website with "impressive petroleum-related references from the eleventh-century Mengxi Bitan volumes." (p 386) Well said. Indeed, today's Washington Post reports that the first train that connects Beijing and Tibet, with the segment from Qinhai to Lhasa operating at the world's highest elevation, which left Beijing on July 1, has safely arrived in Lhasa. Well done.