page_title: List of Chinese inventions
section_title: B
hierarchical_section_title: List of Chinese inventions / Shang and later / B
caption_attribution_description: Close-up detail of a female figure from the right half of the Chinese artist Wang Juzheng's handscroll The Spinning Wheel. Deng Yingke and Wang Pingxing, on page 48 of their Ancient Chinese Inventions (2005, published by 五洲传播出版社, ISBN&#160;7508508378) suggest an alternative title for this painting as The Making of Silk Fabric by Wang Juzheng, Northern Song Dynasty.
context_page_description: China has been the source of many innovations, scientific discoveries and inventions. This includes the Four Great Inventions: papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and printing. The list below contains these and other inventions in China attested by archaeological or historical evidence.
  The historical region now known as China experienced a history involving mechanics, hydraulics and mathematics applied to horology, metallurgy, astronomy, agriculture, engineering, music theory, craftsmanship, naval architecture and warfare. By the Warring States period, inhabitants of the Warring States had advanced metallurgic technology, including the blast furnace and cupola furnace, while the finery forge and puddling process were known by the Han Dynasty. A sophisticated economic system in imperial China gave birth to inventions such as paper money during the Song Dynasty. The invention of gunpowder during the mid 9th century led to an array of inventions such as the fire lance, land mine, naval mine, hand cannon, exploding cannonballs, multistage rocket and rocket bombs with aerodynamic wings and explosive payloads.
context_section_description: Banknote: Paper currency was first developed in China. Its roots were in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), as merchants and wholesalers desired to avoid the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions. During the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the central government adopted this system for their monopolized salt industry, but a gradual reduction in copper production—due to closed mines and an enormous outflow of Song-minted copper currency into the Japanese, Southeast Asian, Western Xia and Liao Dynasty economies—encouraged the Song government in the early 12th century to issue government-printed paper currency alongside copper to ease the demand on their state mints and debase the value of copper. In the early 11th century, the Song Dynasty government authorised sixteen private banks to issue notes of exchange in Sichuan, but in 1023 the government commandeered this enterprise and set up an agency to supervise the manufacture of banknotes there. The earliest paper currency was limited to certain regions and could not be used outside specified bounds, but once paper was securely backed by gold and silver stores, the Song Dynasty government initiated a nationwide paper currency, between 1265 and 1274. The concurrent Jin Dynasty (1115–1234) also printed paper banknotes by at least 1214.
  Bellows, hydraulic-powered: Although it is unknown if metallurgic bellows (i.e. air-blowing device) in the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) were of the leather bag type or the wooden fan type found in the later Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), the Eastern Han dynasty mechanical engineer and politician Du Shi (d. 38 AD) applied the use of rotating waterwheels to power the bellows of his blast furnace smelting iron, a method which continued in use in China thereafter, as evidenced by subsequent records; it is a significant invention in that iron production yields were increased and it employed all the necessary components for converting rotary motion into reciprocating motion.
  Belt drive: The mechanical belt drive, using a pulley machine, was first mentioned in the text the Dictionary of Local Expressions by the Han Dynasty philosopher, poet, and politician Yang Xiong (53–18 BC) in 15 BC, used for a quilling machine that wound silk fibers on to bobbins for weavers' shuttles. The belt drive is an essential component to the invention of the spinning wheel. The belt drive was not only used in textile technologies, it was also applied to hydraulic powered bellows dated from the 1st century AD.
  Belt hook: The belt hook was a fastener used in China. Belt hooks date to the 7th century BC in China, and were made with bronze, iron, gold, and jade. Texts claim that the belt hook arrived in China from Central Asia during the Warring States period, but archaeological evidence of belt hooks in China predate the Warring States Period.
  Biological pest control:  The first report of the use of an insect species to control an insect pest comes from "Nan Fang Cao Mu Zhuang" (南方草木狀 Plants of the Southern Regions) (ca. 304 AD), attributed to Western Jin dynasty botanist Ji Han (嵇含, 263–307), in which it is mentioned that "Jiaozhi people sell ants and their nests attached to twigs looking like thin cotton envelopes, the reddish-yellow ant being larger than normal. Without such ants, southern citrus fruits will be severely insect-damaged". The ants used are known as huang gan (huang = yellow, gan = citrus) ants (Oecophylla smaragdina). The practice was later reported by Ling Biao Lu Yi (late Tang Dynasty or Early Five Dynasties), in Ji Le Pian by Zhuang Jisu (Southern Song Dynasty), in the Book of Tree Planting by Yu Zhen Mu (Ming Dynasty), in the book Guangdong Xing Yu (17th century), Lingnan by Wu Zhen Fang (Qing Dynasty), in Nanyue Miscellanies by Li Diao Yuan, and others.
  Blast furnace: Although cast iron tools and weapons have been found in China dating to the 5th century BC, the earliest discovered Chinese blast furnaces, which produced pig iron that could be remelted and refined as cast iron in the cupola furnace, date to the 
caption: The Spinning Wheel, by Northern Song (960–1127) artist Wang Juzheng. The Chinese invented the belt drive by the 1st century BC for silk quilling devices.[128]
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