Compass, paper, gunpowder, and printing with movable type: that China knew and described the four great inventions before the Europeans has been known since well before the 2008 Olympic Games, says sinologist and Department III director Prof. Dagmar Schäfer. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, historians of science have researched how China adopted the natural sciences and thus established and asserted itself as a modern nation. This lecture presents the process of development in China's sciences, and how this development as a counter-model to European development became a research focus, to an identity builder and political theme that contemporary China exports as an alternative model worldwide, and especially to Asia and Africa (the Global South).

Moderation: Christof Schulz (CEO Volkshochschule SüdOst), Claus Luedenbach (CEO Volkshochschule Erding).