Welcome to the forum! Nice post althoug a bit lengthy. Don't feel threatened by my response, I'm simply a nit-picker who can't let certain things stand.

Quote Originally Posted by qwertyu
History is a continuum, and the development in science/tech/philosophy/religion etc. is a long straight line.
A continuum yes, but no straight line. This is a very simplified view, which wrongly uses modern times as the root & follows the path backwards. If you look at it the other way round, you will find many branches with dead ends (some flourished for a while, others never grew very much), branches that grow parallel up to modernity & branches that after a while of parallel growth coalesced, a.s.o.

Without Chinese invention of type, books will not be as easily available during the age of European Enlightenment.
Pretty improbable. There is no evidence that Gutenberg copied a Chinese or Korean (which AFAIK had a greater influence than the Chinese one) invention.

Without Arabic numerals and their invention of Zero
Each culture its "due": the Western zero most probably originated in India (but other cultures had similar ideas).

It is important to give each culture its due because we start to see others more humanely, less racist and stereotypically.
I disagree. What about a culture where there is not much of a due? What have the Papuas given our modern culture? Are they less worth because it might be nothing?
It is interesting where certain things originate, but it is in no way important. Even less, if you consider that it doesn't make much sense to attribute an invention in the distant past to a modern nation.

The Chinese gave us all a fabulous start, with Math [eg.Pascal's Triangle], the compass for travel, astronomy, paper, paper money, culture, East Asian Buddhism [it is different from India's], etc.
The Chinese gave us culture? You're sitting on a quite high horse here (since you're half-German you may understand: Du sitzt auf dem hohen Ross). Other cultures developed earlier than the Chinese, hence I can't see how that could be "China's due." East Asian Buddhism takes on various forms & I doubt that all originated in China, mathematics & astronomy can also be found earlier in other cultures than in China.