Another thing is, from my knowledge of Chinese civilization, especially Ming and Qing Dynasties, the "great thinkers" spent a lot of time concerned with ritual and their ancestors. They always talked about what the Han were doing, what the Qin did, what the Song did. They saw the world somewhat as circular and looked to perfect "the old" as to make better sense of the present and when something was "wrong" in society they thought there needed to be more balance by looking at the old "great dynasties and thinkers".
Europeans did this, but I do not believe nearly to the extent of Chinese. Europeans tend to be more short term future oriented and positive about that. They do reflect on the past but not nearly as much as the Chinese. The idea of ritual is important in all cultures but not in the West as compared to the Chinese. In fact during the Enlightenment many rituals that had been in affect, especially in regard to religion were see as backward and bad. Rejected. deism and atheism made its first appearance in Europe. People wanted the "new" people started to see science as superior to the "spirit world".
Chinese did not take this approach, not until much later.
I guess what I'm saying is that Japan and more so Western Europe were far more dynamic and future looking, which explains their ability to change fairly rapidly and deal with the chaos of that change...where as Chinese were focused on stability and reflection on the past or integration between the spirit world and the natural world. Chinese science was global in scope, not specific to immediate physical properties of the world specifically for the sake of measurement and improvement.
Maybe this ability to adapt and change and to focus on "the real world" application and the near future was in part to the historic instability in Europe, which is a very small area. As someone mentioned, that pressure due to competition will shape ones culture to be more responsive to immediate change and pragmatic about concrete measurable goals with tighter deadlines for results. The Scientific method is good for that, and China was not using that type of method to make discoveries.