The Civilisations That Did Not Bend

The Forgotten Gods — A Four-Part History · Part 4 of 4 · by Lovepreet Singh

To understand why China did not convert to Christianity, you have to understand something about how China thinks of itself. For over 3,000 years, Chinese civilisation has had an unbroken sense of itself as the Middle Kingdom. The word for China in Chinese is Z

In this part

• China: The Civilisation That Watched Empires Rise and Fall
• Why Christianity Could Not Convert China
• Japan: The Island That Closed Its Door
• Korea: The Great Exception, and What It Teaches Us
• The Real Lesson: Why Some Civilisations Did Not Bend
• Closing Thoughts and Acknowledgements

1 China: The Civilisation That Watched Empires Rise and Fall To understand why China did not convert to Christianity, you have to understand something about how China thinks of itself. For over 3,000 years, Chinese civilisation has had an unbroken sense of itself as the Middle Kingdom. The word for China in Chinese is Zhongguo, which literally means "the centre country". The Chinese saw their civilisation as the centre of the world, with barbarians and minor cultures arranged around them at the edges. This was not just arrogance. By most measures, for most of recorded history, China actually was the largest, richest, and most technologically advanced civilisation on Earth. A Quick Tour of Chinese History Let me give you the briefest possible tour of Chinese history, because the timescale is hard to grasp. In plain words What is a "dynasty"? A dynasty is a line of rulers from the same fam…

Read the full part