Imperial Bureaucracy: continuity since Qin. Too big to govern at last, contributed to decline of Song.

Civil Service Exam: Based on Confucian classics. Meritocracy. More upward mobility for the poor.

Transportation Developemnts: Grand Canal, magnetic compass, new ship-building techniques.

Gunpowder: spread across silkroad.

Champa Rice: from Vietnam. Boosted population.

"Black Earth" - coal: exploded iron and steel production.

Proto-industrialization: people in rural areas made more goods than they could sell. Homebased using simple equipments. Industrialization: factory based, complex machineries.

Taxes: increased money in circulation.

Tributary System

Hierarchical. Scholar Gentry: created by bureaucratic expansion. Outnumbered aristocracy. Educated in Confucian philosophy. --> farmers --> artisans --> merchants.

Role of Women: Patriarchal society. Foot binding as a symbol of eliteness.

Wooblock Printing

Reading: paper and printing expanded availability of books. The privileged class consumed an produced alot of literary works.

Buddhism: from India via Silk Roads. Believed in the Four Noble truths: suffering could be alleviated by eliminating carvings following steps of the Eight-Fold Path. Printing made Budhist scriptures popular among the scholar gentry.

Cofucianism

Separated from China by sea: more ability to control its interactions with China than Korea or Vietnam.

Promoted Buddhism and Confucianism. Woodblock printing.

Feudalism: no centralized government. Little social mobility. Hereditary hierarchies.

Emperor with little power unlike the Chinese emperor who oversaw a large bureaucracy.

More adversarial relationship with China.

Social Structure

Tributary relationship with China.

Centralized government in the Chinese style. Adopted Confucianism and Buddhism. Aopted the writing system.

Powerful landowning aristocrats unlike China.