Difficulties: lack of funds and technology; Government officials are indifferent.
One is the backwardness of ideas. China's feudal society for thousands of years only attached importance to agriculture, ignoring industry and commerce, believing that agriculture was the foundation and other industries were the last. What's more, in philosophy, it is nothing to think that matter is as small as it is. The so-called Tai Chi gives birth to two instruments (yin and yang), two instruments give birth to four elephants, four elephants give birth to gossip, and gossip gives birth to everything. Tai Chi is unknowable and not worth exploring. Therefore, people's further exploration of nature is confined to the depths of their hearts. Almost nothing has been done in the research fields of atoms, electrons, optics, mechanics, mathematics, etc., which lags far behind the modern west.
The second is the backwardness of education. In modern China, people's education paid attention to reading the classics (four books and five classics) and moral cultivation, which meant self-cultivation, keeping the family in order, governing the country and leveling the world. The education of natural science is very shallow.
The third is the lack of talents. It is also based on the above two reasons that no talents with industrial vision have been cultivated. Zhang Jian and others only went to the United States and Western Europe and witnessed the development of western industries, which triggered the determination to set up industries in China. However, in such an environment at that time, it was difficult to run the industry well.
Lack of knowledge, lack of people, lack of funds and even government support.