Armchair philosopher - From my reading, it appears that the corporation structure really took stronghold in Europe, giving huge incentives to tinkers and risk takers.

That, and the collapse of Dutch East India outposts to British East India company opened up access to new trade. Resources from the new world also jumpstarted the process. It was the perfect combo of corporate incentives and unrestricted access to global resources that propelled people to wealthier lives and thus, higher level of productivity (you can spend years researching on steam engines if you don't have to spend your life farming). This is exactly the state of America since after WW2, if you were to compare.

In comparison, China was not handed any colonies, lacked the corporation structure and was caught up in dynastic infighting. There was no new world to extract resources from and almost certainly wasn't united the way it is today.

No systemic incentive structure and inability to access global resources left people in poverty or produced little in the way of innovation.

There's a very good book that goes into it (and other things) by Ian Morris - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_West_Rules%E2%80%94For...

I assume the intent of that item is to be thankful that the industrial revolution happened at all, not that it happened in England specifically.

Personal opinion: same reason why it didn't take off in ancient Greece (steam engine was invented back then) , no shortage of cheap labor.

There’s an argument to be made that the Black Death broke Europe (or especially Britain) out of a local minimum, by killing off labor. This reduced the necessary rate of return to physical capital and innovation. (Why invest in an iron plow, when you can just set more serfs to the task with wooden ones?) and ultimately this planted the seeds of the industrial revolution.

though Hero’s engine is a steam engine, it is practically useless as anything besides a curiosity and certainly could not have powered an industrial revolution

Yes, but I am confident if there would have been demand, they would have improved on it. It can open temple doors so I do not think it is too far away from a useful machine.

I'd recommend guns germs and steel by Diamond if you're interested in such thoughts. He doesn't cover china, but the book is basically about this topic. Nice easy read, recommended if you've got time to kill over the holidays.

Same reason it didn't happen in the Gupta Empire in India

This is clearly an idealistic approach. A materialistic view is better explained in Fernand Braudel's "Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century".