China and the development of firearms

For informations on Ming firearms, look at these threads --

rhino123 said:

Whoever say anything about chinese not using firearms? You need to read the former posts more carefully. Both myself and the one before me, never state anything on Chinese not using firearms.

And as history had it, many of the firearms are actually invented by the Chinese, if they don't use firearms, why in the world they invented it. It is just that the Chinese did not use as much as we would have believe and many of their technology simply stop because the Chinese didn't further improvise in what their ancestors had began.

This had mainly to do with their culture and also in their position being the strongest nation at that time. There simply is no need for firearms (not that much anyway) and because they are already stronger than their opposition.

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Well, I think the Chinese used firearms extensively. A show on History channel (Ancient Discovery, Series 3 (2007), March 2, 2007) mentioned that, in early Qing dynasty, Qing army used 1000 multiple-launching rockets. Each set had about 100 rockets on it. That's 100,000 rockets launched at the same time. You can imagine the kind of fire power involved and the grand scale.



Land mine was invented in the Song dynasty. Guns using bamboo was also invented in China. Like one of posters mentioned, Qing dynasty feared Han people so much that they banned all the civilian invention of weapons. That pretty much stopped all the weapon development.

Chinese gunpowder weapons in the Song were leading,the Ming Dynasty were more widely used, due to geography, history, culture and political system of other reasons, Chinese gunpowder weapons to a standstill.
The late Ming Dynasty, the Chinese gunpowder weapons had behind the West, the West had created powerful cannon, the Ming Dynasty bought a batch of cannons from the Portuguese in Macao, these cannons deployed at Shanhaiguan. Ming Dynasty the generals Yuan Chonghuan in Shanhaiguan resistance Manchu army attack,He commanded the soldiers to use cannons counterattack, Manchu Emperor Nurhachi was killed by cannon.
This is called Hong Yi cannons.红夷大炮.
the Qing Dynasty, Chinese gunpowder weapons were even more behind.

sorry, that link is dead, here are some more links for Ming's Hong YI cannon.

xywdx said:

Traditional weapons were effective against all of Ming's enemies when combined with limited firearm support, they saw no need to improve.
The relationship between bows/crossbows and firearms is like the relationship between Battle Ships and Carriers, one does not see the need to change to the later unless under certain stress.

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I've always felt dissatisfied by such explanations. Medieval China lost as many battles as it won. In no way did it consistently hold a definitive advantage over its enemies. Obviously then, its military technology was NOT enough, and had plenty of room for improvement.

From what I can see, the Chinese emphasis alot in battle formation, tactics and strategies, but not so much in actual military technology developement.

rhino123 said:

From what I can see, the Chinese emphasis alot in battle formation, tactics and strategies, but not so much in actual military technology developement.

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Yes, that is true, but why? What kind of thinking led medieval China to eschew technology and focus on human factors (battle formation, tactics, and strategies)?

solarz said:

I've always felt dissatisfied by such explanations. Medieval China lost as many battles as it won. In no way did it consistently hold a definitive advantage over its enemies. Obviously then, its military technology was NOT enough, and had plenty of room for improvement.

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Yes China lost many battles, but would you really say technology was the reason?
I would personally put corruption way at the top, but that's just me.

also let not forget that after Tang Dynasty, China always had a deficiency in calvary due to loss of control in central Asian and present day inner Mongolia (in particular the Heitao area that breed most of horses in from Qin Dynasty to Tang Dynasty). Thus any advancement of firearms or firepower in these period is inhibited by lack of mobile and shock troops. More over in engagement with the northern nomads, China has to take a defensive position behind walls and forts. Since even as late as the Napoleonic war, infantry are getting chewed up by lance/sword armed calvary in a field battle.

edit: A example of this deficiency is the defense of Beijing in 1629 against Manchu invasion. The Ming empire could only muster around 5000 horses for this battle out of nearly 100k troops in these area. And the "battle" ended with race to occupy strategic forts and passes and essentially force Manchus into a siege it don't have the time for. Nearly all Chinese battles during this period has no Waterloo or Agincourt styly decisive engagements, and when China decisive to fight a field battle the end is usually disaster.

For what it's worth, Napoleon said "Artillery is more important to cavalry than infantry, because cavalry cannot bring any fire to bear on its own" or something like that.

I think that both the Ottomans and the Chinese fell into the same kind of trap of using firearms on the battlefield mainly in the form of bigger and bigger artillery/rockets for siege situations, rather than realizing that, as the Napoleon quote illustrates, the real tactical value of firearms is that they enable a cheap infantryman to kill with much greater efficiency and effectiveness.