I figured Vilage would articulate it better.

But going to the previous point of Hugs: even ancient China didn't have the metallurgy practice to fire off rockets like the V2 by the 16th century, and that sort of engineering wouldn't really come about for a while. And until that point they didn't really *need* it since they were one of the most sizable Empires in Asia and the most influential. And that also around that time the Ming were falling apart at the "heathen barbarians" of the Manchus were pulling them apart from the north; the Mandate of Heaven had demanded such.

And by the time it would have mattered for them, it was too late and the Qing dynasty was confident in being ass backwards while western-educated progressives were running around Southern China. They had the concepts to do it, but the later Emperors and Cixi were pretty intent in their ways. Maybe Puyi would have fixed it, maybe. But he came far too late for the Empire's days.

Could I have handled things differently in retrospect? Most likely. However Precipice is too far along and it's been agreed and sealed. I can explore things more since there's a lot of ground to cover and a whole era of the 60's to ponder over. But that's retrospective at this point.