Comment by LarsDu88

It wasn't universally due to lack of interest in guns (although in the Qing case, they actually did pull back on the use of firearms due to how poorly both the Ming Dynasty and Dzungar Mongols fared with the matchlock weapons of that era against strategic deployment of Qing horseback archery). India had an enormous arms manufacturing industry that included usage of rocket artillery, Timur absolutely loved using cannons, Ottoman matchlocks were considered the best in the world and even exported to China from the 1500s onward.

It wasn't the lack of arms or interest in arms, it was the lack of development of the sciences which had to flow through the patronage of those in authority. Britain had Newton and Newton co-invented calculus. The invention of the steam engine motivated creation of better machinery and higher precision manufacturing that by the Victorian Era could not be matched by Chinese or Indian workshops. The wealthy gentleman scientist and natural philosopher culture that developed the galvanic pile, the pressure cooker, astronomical telescopes, and the microscope was not something that could develop organically in these Eastern countries due to the political makeup of these empires (largely driven by descendants of nomadic warlords)