If they did everything right, what would China be like today?
>>18421981Zheng He voyage successful, there is now 2 billion Chinese in North America alone.We are well on our way to a thousand year Ming reich
>>18421981smaller, ming were mostly isolationists, also won't change the fact that westies will do to them what they did to qing
>>18421981Ming would still get stomped, like this anon said >>18422574 they were isolationist and without Manchu dominance the Han will not move to Manchuria as it didnt have the wealth and prestige of conquering China, so China would be more ethnically diverse if not fragmented. The Manchu owning China during the age of nationalism is what cemented China's borders
>>18422574>>18422584If you mean>isolationist Cause they didn't have a maritime empire keep in mind that China is a land power and the history of Chinese expansion is North, South and West- usually following the Silk Road routes. Under the Ming they finished ethnically cleansing Yunnan and making it Chinese. And if that one battle hadn't ended with the Emperor getting captured they'd have expanded into Mongolia, wiped out the Northern Yuan survivors and kept the Mongols on a tight leash.>>18422532Zheng He headed West. That said I've thought of a way to get them there. There was something the Chinese cared about a lot- Gold. So if someone told them 'there might be gold across the Eastern China Sea, that's where the barbarians came from,' managed to sail the North Pacific gyre, luck out and find gold in Alaska and California then boom. Population dump.
are we supposing they somehow survived to the present day or near present day?China would be much bigger, even if we assume they never resumed Maritime voyages they would've inevitably launched expansion wars after years of prosperity. so Mongolia and maybe portions of Siberia, Xinjiang and presumably deeper pushes into Central Asia, and I would imagine campaigns into SE Asia. modern Northern Vietnam for instance would be mostly subjugated by the mid 15th century and I see little reason why one day a Ming emperor wouldn't just replicate the Qing and set his sights on Burma, or the rest of the region eventually.
>>18421981Imagine bourbon France with 400 million people, the world wild stuck in 18th century forever
>>18421981Pretty much the same in the long run. The Qing dynasty was certainly unique but its uniqueness was not a core cause of "China's" 19th century fate. Zheng He's voyages were never going to amount to anything and you guys are insane if you think the Chinese would ever embark on maritime expeditions through the pacific, much less colonization. P.S: I really hate this map. It makes the Ming empire look much larger than it really was. In truth effective Ming control of Manchuria didn't go much father than Liaodong. And the only relationship between them and Tibet is that the Ming issued a title or something every time Tibet changed overlords.
>>18422869nope it very well could've happened, voyages were only stopped not because of "muh isolationism" like Japan but because it was deemed too expensivetowards the end of the Ming, I think they would've found it VERY useful to find some free land to put their excess peasantry>>18422584False, Ming was first destabilized by radical internal peasant rebellion (Li Zicheng), causing Ming elite defection to the ManchusNorth America would be speaking Chinese
>>18421981Way smaller, the Ming were keks.
>>18422935They didn't really have the technology for sustained deep water travel, iirc. Much less to actually transport great amounts of people.But the more pressing issue is that the chinese were discouraged by how costly financing expeditions was meanwhile at the same time Europeans were launching themselves into the Atlantic out of love of the fucking game.The Chinese had many virtues, but curiosity was not really one of them. If they were to discover the West coast of North America all it would amount to would have been a few jealously guarded trade secrets. A few communities in the coast.
>>18422850>>18422869ming China wasn't interested in conquest, they only cared about Han territory, Chinese dynasties preferred to avoid expanding outside of Han territorythe current Chinese borders were defined by the Manchu and their conquest, their philosophy was a good defense is a good offense, they didn't build a wall and tell the tribes and kingdoms in the west to go away, they subjected them and made their lands a buffer to protect Han and Manchu lands, modern China inherited those territories and want to keep them for security and wealth >>18422935now if the ming were a little serious they will establish some relationship with American kingdoms, China wasn't interested in colonizing lands, Taiwan was colonized by ming refugees for example they only moved there because they were forced to
>>18423014to add more to this Manchuria was colonized by Han because the Manchu allowed Han peasants to migrate there, they wanted to protect the land from Russian colonism
>>18421981The Ming were retarded. It's hard to picture them doing everything right.
>>18423001And the discovery itself would have involved some fisherman being blown offcourse by a storm or something,>>18423014That's my point.>by the Manchu and their conquest, their philosophy was a good defense is a good offense, [ ... ] they subjected them and made their lands a buffer to protect Han and Manchu landsI disagree, this is an overly sinocentric and flawed vision of the Manchu empire. They didn't expand their inner Asian holdings just to secure China, they did so to attain legitimacy, fulfill a few ideological objectives, etc.In fact iirc some of the Qing's Mongol holdings date to before most of their Chinese ones, back when the capital was in Mukden.
>>18423014>ming China wasn't interested in conquest, they only cared about Han territory, Chinese dynasties preferred to avoid expanding outside of Han territorythat's only true insofar as it varied emperor by emperorfor instance the Ming quit famously conquered and occupied Northern Vietnam only to lose it after about 30 years through rebellions. While Mongolia and modern day Xinjiang were very common regions that an ambitious expansionist emperor would set their sites on. if everything went perfectly in Ming China which is the preface to this whole thread there is zero reason to believe emperors wouldn't start trying to expand territory.>China wasn't interested in colonizing landsonly because they were too busy colonizing what they already owned. like gaitu guiliu was as process of bringing the mostly autonomous southwestern tribal tusi to heel
>>18423014based Manchus for expanding the Hanborg>>18423001nigga Zheng He's treasure fleet was 10x more advanced than any European shipbuilding at the time, I think they would've managed. Southern China especially at the time, had a long naval tradition, and history of mercantilism and Chinese settlers in southeast AsiaColonization of North America would've been like colonization of Taiwan from Dutch and Aboriginals (today 99% Han, literally higher than mainland)half of humanity could be Chinese, and best believe those Chinese peasants are picking the cotton in North America themselves, not importing homo erectusWhat could've been...
>>18423616They couldn'y sail against the wind.
>>18423616>half of humanity could be Chinese>rats end up the largest wild mammal after 1800 after everything else gets ground into dick pills
I can't really answer your question as it's Alt-his but the one thing I can be sure of is trad Chinese fashion not turning into shit if the Qings & their mumu clothes did not happen.>>18423014>ming China wasn't interested in conquest, they only cared about Han territory,Yunnan and much of Southern China is "Han Territory" today, because of Ming Conquests. They were also doing a butt-ton of imperialism amongst the Mongol groups.>Muh Isolationism.The Ming literally allowed Europeans to visit their asses, were more willing to adopt foreign ideas compared to the insecure late Qing court, not to mention the Jesuits were some of the most important mfers in the Ming Court who served as advisors to all things outside of Asia.The Haijin sea-trade bans did not last long anyway, they were let go after the end of the pirate wars in the 1560s.
