Ancient land of inventions, discoveries

By BETTY WAKIA
IN PNG and other Pacific Island countries, China plays a significant role in providing both investments and development aid. More than 40 of its firms are established in PNG’s infrastructure development and property construction, while the Ramu Nickel and Cobalt mine leads China’s resource extraction.
Chinese firms contribute to PNG in investment and development helping make PNG the fastest growing economy in the Pacific region today. Currently China is trying to connect itself to the Pacific Island countries through the trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative by pushing more of their university students to study some of the Pacific Island languages.
Because of those investments between the two countries, every household in PNG has products ranging from store goods to material goods from China.
One thing that we in PNG don’t realise is that those products in one way or another have been invented or discovered in China.
As we all know China has changed faster in the last 20 years than any other country in the world. With its high speed economic growth, it has impacted the world, increased its global reach and participation in international organisations.
It created a worldwide unbeatable manufacturing and export empire and its products can be found in houeholds the world over today.
As the economy, science, technology, society and culture make rapid progress, people around the world fix their eyes on this great ancient nation that may provide clues to the driving forces behind the current rapid economic growth.
As time went by the skills and materials improved the quality and type of tools available at that time.
Chinese are known for several important inventions that later spread around the world.
Although China may currently export a large number of products, it once was exporting very valuable information, and without it, the rest of the world would have lost it.
China is known as the land of inventions and discoveries, which the whole world are eager to learn about its past that has led the world and given birth to a brilliant ancient science and technology.
The development of science and technology in those times was based on the concept of ‘integration of nature and man’ which was observing and studying of the human body, the objective world, the heavens and earth which nourished Chinese culture and civilisation and contributed greatly to mankind.
For centuries China stood as one of the world’s oldest and leading ancient civilisations, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences.
China can trace its culture back to a mixture of small primitive tribes that have expanded to become the great nation it is today.
For over 40 centuries, they have created a culture with a strong tradition, values, and philosophy that was included in the orthodox version of the traditional religion called the Confucianism.
This was taught in the academy, and tested in imperial civil service exams.
These values are widely used throughout Chinese society, and are characterised by a secular emphasis on society and administration.
The Ancient Chinese are known to be the pioneers in many fields and very clever civilisation, innovative and creative people and were able to utilise the materials they had available to make tools that they found useful. Many of the things that we take for granted today were first invented or created by the Chinese.
Prime examples of their creativity and inventiveness are printing technology, paper, compass, clock, gunpowder and small things like the tooth brush or tooth paste that everybody uses every single day.
The Chinese are also best known for their creative muscles in various forms of artistic practices ranging from literature to pottery and music to painting.
Today the Chinese have managed to preserve their traditions that have attracted worldwide attention.

•  Betty Wakia is a – freelance writer and blogger