New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

It occurs to me that this shattered China might be more culturally and economically vibrant than Qing China. The authority and cohesion of the Confucian Scholar Class would be greatly weakened. The Confucian Scholar Bureaucrats (CSB) deliberately disrupted many aspects of business, commerce, agriculture, and the popular arts, in order to have greater control over Chinese society.

In this shattered China setting the CSB couldn't assert the same control and might need to get the merchants and land owners onside to hold power. Also the traditional policy of the CSB to interfere with agriculture to force the people to work harder and keep them poor wouldn't be viable. Many factors that created vast poverty in China would be weakened dramatically.

This could be a much richer and more sophisticated China.