"Chinese Science and Culture" was a sketch of a global history of science and technology which emphasized China as the source of many of the prerequisite technologies of modernity-- printing, the compass, gunpowder, cast iron, and so on-- and discussed the historical and intellectual contexts of Chinese empirical and theoretical knowledge of the physical world. It was basically an effort to dismantle the assumption that there is something essentially "Western" about science and technology.
A common stereotype is that the Chinese traditionally lack scientific and technological ability, although, somehow, they stumbled upon paper making, printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's compass. Modern Chinese, themselves, sometimes are surprised to realize that modern agriculture, shipping, astronomical observatories, decimal mathematics, paper money, umbrellas, wheelbarrows, multi-stage rockets, brandy and whiskey, the game of chess, and much more, all came from China.