Had the emperor not ordered him to stop, Zheng He could have gone to Europe and made us crap our pants with his huge fleet. The Chinese actually had the first two before us, but lacked the ambition to do the latter. Your analysis of history belongs in the early 20th century! Seriously, read a newer history book! China was developmentally ahead of the western world in many areas (statism, literature, economy) for centuries before the west figured out how to build guns and decent boats and subsequently conquer the world. and the myriad of failed systems that have existed in the countries (India, China, etc) you've cited over the past 5,000 years. Please read up on the history of India, China, etc. Indeed, entities and institutions that have existed for too long very frequently exhibit backwardness and retardation from centuries of inbreeding. Simply occupying the same bit of dirt on the planet for a length of time doesn't translate into some type of magical wisdom. Ask any of the younger generations in the countries you've cited, you'll find that they by in large eschew all of this glorious ancient tradition (if they're even aware of it), and are more interested in modern (read: Western) style living. however your reasons why are beyond silly. I agree with the notion that the US should not have an overly inflated estimate of our importance. To those folk a quarter millenium is still just a "noble experiment", and frankly looking at what we're doing with it, we might not make it to a half millennium so who are we to say they're not civilized? We've got some decent insight on human interaction to share, but others may be rightfully suspicious of new ideas when they have a system that's similar that is proven to work over a span of 5,000 years. Our inflated estimate of our importance is the cause of much misunderstanding in the wider world. We are not most people and we're never going to be.
Hell, the US is not even as old as most decent books. We forget sometimes in the US that our entire country is not as old as a decent British country house, nor a Taiwan temple, nor even a Chinese family land lease. None of them care about your list (Yes, I know Chinese patents are on your list - even the Chinese don't care about them - China has differring views on intellectual property that are difficult to describe here but can be summarized as: meh). They're actually more than half of all the people in the world.
Add India and Pakistan to China, and they're most of the civlized world.
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