You seem to be enamoured by anything Chinese/Asian luutzu, a civilisation that fails into poverty and misery more than than abundance of unicorns and candy canes.
Have you researched the Mongols of the 13th century and the mass destruction, genocidal crueity, etc of both the mongols and the Han chinese who defected to their cause.
As Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested in the Savage Mind.....primitives tend to avoid tribal genus and project the essential characteristics of man outside the group when convenient to do so, especially when explaining questionable traits.....lumping all of us into one congenital mess as it were. Only triumphs tend to be owned by the victors.
If you study any culture in any detail, they all have much to admire and also much to learn and abandon. Best to learn what is good and be objective about it.
All the books and lectures I learn from are by Western scholars so it's not just cultural bias at play.
In terms of poverty and the Third World, it is just factually false that Asia/Chinese and other non-Western civilisation are poorer or more miserable than Western ones.
We look at the slumps and the poverty we see today in these countries; we contrast that with the riches and technological marvels currently developed and enjoyed in the West, and sure, we project that back and think that other civilisations must have been like that for most of their existence. That's false.
I've heard from historians, Western scholars, that Europe's economic development and industrial achievements were at about the same level as that of Egypt, of various African kingdoms, on par with India, below China's... at the time of European expansion and colonialism.
Egypt's grain and agricultural exports were on par with that of the US when it was marching towards its West; India's cotton and manufacturing was on par with Britain's at colonisation.
So why has the West advanced as it did while others tend to fall as they do. The West tend to think it's all due to just hard work, ingenuity and whatever that is good... but colonialism and exploitation also play a major role. You can see this when you look at the non-Western countries that develop and prospered on par with Western ones - namely Japan and South Korea.
Some will say that it's because Japan and S.Korea follow the superior Western culture and democracy etc. That's not true when you look closer at it.
Korea was a colony of Japan; Japan managed to industrialised and develop, then take on Russia and the West, mainly because they managed to avoid Western colonisation.
All other countries and people that failed to stop Western colonialism either have their population wiped out or the population mainly in tact but reduced to poverty.
That's not a judgment on Western people or any such thing. Just facts and how empires tend to gain power.
This take to my original point, and one that Liddell Hart (a British historian and military officer), lessons that Machiavelli and others have also discussed - how are colonies to be pacified and kept; what are the ways in which wars can "profitably" be carried out.
I mean, Alexander's empire stretches from Greece all the way to Afghanistan; Genghis Khan's across the entire "civilised" world; Chi'n to today's China... how did they managed to keep their empire intact, or at least among their own elites, after the original empire fades away at the death of its founder.
What they did, well... what they did after the initial bloodbath, is they put themselves into power and adapt to the customs of the colonised. They work to enrich and develop the local economies, extracting tributes and riches, but not completely destroy it.
So Alexander's generals divvy up his vast empire and within the same generation married into the elite and become part of the colony they now rule over; The same with the Mongolian, with various Khanates, all adopting the model and practises of the conquered subject - such as Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China; or the Manchurian adopting Han Chinese practises (with minor dress code changes) once conquered.
Rome kind of achieve similar unification, but it's more through the accidental adoption of Christianity, which then split up into various kingdoms...
So move now to the more recent European imperialism. Contrast the general practise and with very little exception, European planners tend to either take it all (Aus., NZ, the Americas), or they put up an ethnic fascade using native puppets as head of state (Middle East, parts of north Africa, Asia, SE Asia).
But all through, European imperialism lean towards the gutting out of their subject rather than a "more sensible" approach of not killing the host. The Greeks under Alexander, the Mongolians, the Chinese, the Japanese... they tend to only cut off the head and assimilate to the natives or at least began to let the native thrive and develop and pay their taxes.
These are not to measure what kind of imperialism is better or whose "people" are "better warlords". It's to try and see where the kind of imperialism as currently practised will take the world.
The Eastern way of wars and empire tend to go with Sun Tzu's dictum of better to take the country whole; victory is more complete if it does not involve destruction or war. The Western ways tend to flatten cities and salt their earth with salt (as the Roman did) or daisy cutters.
Future historians may look back at this modern period of ours as a lost opportunity to build a more lasting peace with a more unified planet. It is just idiotic to keep fighting wars when you have so much arms, economic power and global influence. You could extract the riches of the world to yourself, your country, and does it without fighting or impoverishing the conquered.
The West could have complete victory, as defined by Sun Tzu, but it's throwing it away and go for broke.