Frostmarrow said:
That is really strange in the real world. I mean the Chinese were very wise and shows a remarkable level of inventivness and acceptance of new things. They had a paper currency early for example. Which btw Marco Polo was mocked in Europe for even bringing here. It strikes me as very strange that the Chinese didn't make the connection. When we (the Europeans) got hold of gunpowder we used it for weaponry almost right away. Perhaps new applications of old materials requires a new or at least different mind set. The answer to the original question might very well be; Middle Earth lacks innovators....
No, the reason the Chinese never developed gunpowder into advanced weaponry was due to their social hierarchy, not the lack of discovering the potential uses- think about it for a second-
Gunpowder destroyed Feudalism, the social order of Europe. Knights and Castles were reduced from bastions of defense (arguably, Knights had already lost their status with the battle of Agincourt, but that's neither here nor there) to outmoded hardware. Feudalism, without this support, collapsed into monarchal nation-state absolutism and early parliamentary proto-democracy. States that remained feudal deteriorated (such as Russia and the Holy Roman Empire), and were thus unable to partake of the massive economic growth and new freedoms ushered in by the combined technological developments of guns, cannons, and the printing press.
China, on the other hand, was ruled by Confucian sages- a combination of politician, priest, and professor. If anyone in China had developed gunpowder weaponry, it would have been them- and, in their great wisdom and foresight, they knew that the introduction of guns and cannons could destroy the Confucian order as easily as it did Feudalism in Europe.
The difference between the two? Europe was a ferment of different nations and cultures each attempting to get the better of the other through political manipulations and superior firepower- thus they developed guns. China, on the other hand, was a large, powerful nation that looked upon all others as little more than barbarian provinces- they had no reason to develop guns, therefore they did not.