yuhu's crazy ideas

Why did China not expanded overseas?

China was a static, even staggering, system until clashed and impacted with the West in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

In fact, Not only was China a state, it was a economic and cultural system, almost a organic whole in its own way. It was comparable in size and complexity to the whole of Europe. The Chinese system underwent enormous change over the past two millennia, including several periods of major transformation.

China is a vast land, yet it is often regarded as a single entity of great uniformity. In reality, there are distinctions between the core cultural centers and the periphery. Moreover, the centers have shifted from one region to another over the years. Examples include the shifts from the Yellow River valley to the Yangtze River valley, from the interior to the coast. China has at times been a unified empire and at times an area divided into contending states. China's history is complicated and, like all histories, replete with change.

Chinese science got off to a glorious start and then stagnated. Since the fifteenth century the Europeans have outpaced the Chinese in science and technology.

Chinese sea voyages might have resulted in the Chinese encircling and dominating the world, but they were stopped abruptly and China withdrew from the world.

2

Chinese naval expeditions were led by Cheng Ho [Zheng He] in the early fifteenth century. Cheng's seven voyages plowed the southern Pacific and Indian oceans as far as the East African coast and spread the influence of Ming China abroad. Indeed, it was a spectacular phenomenon for land-oriented China to turn its attention to the sea.

It should be noted that Ming China was the successor to the extraordinarily cosmopolitan Mongol Dynasty. China under the Mongols was reached by mariners of many nationalities on the seas that stretched between the Chinese coast and the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Merchants routinely sailed back and forth along the maritime silk route, and many foreigners resided in Chinese coastal provinces. Under the world of Mongolia, China was part of a network of international trade, and these activities continued in the early Ming Dynasty. Cheng Ho himself came from a Muslim background and was brought to the court from the southernmost province of Yunnan. The Chinese navy during the Ming period was created from the remnants of the Mongol navy. Thus overseas Ming activities should be regarded as a continuation of the Song-Mongol-Ming rather than a sudden upsurge of Chinese interest in seafaring. The cessation of the voyages by the Ming government was due to a combination of barbarian border threats, court political conflicts, and financial constraints, rather than a decision to withdraw from maritime contact.

3

The Chinese economy was basically a vast nationwide marketing system with a largely agricultural base. Overseas trade played a relatively insignificant role in the Chinese economy. Exchanges along the maritime silk route benefited the peoples along the route more than those at either end, i.e., China and Europe. Indeed, except for luxury items, China had little motivation to enter into foreign trade at all.

The situation was different in Europe, where after the fifteenth century there were strong motivations to engage in overseas trade and much to be gained from the riches of the East. The discoveries of new routes and new continents gave the European powers advantages over the Middle Eastern peoples along the old routes linking East and West. China eventually benefited from the influx of a large quantity of silver and its impact on manufacturing. The economic upsurge, especially in the coastal region, should be attributed to Ming China's new role in the emerging global market system. China faced no difficulties in overseas expansion as long as it manufactured silk, ceramics, and other profitable commodities.

4

Europe had largely developed the political diversity, thanks to its geography. There were no enormous plains over which an empire of horsemen cold impose its swift dominion; nor were there any broad and fertile river zones like those around the Ganges, Nile,Tigris and Euphrates, Yellow, and Yangtze, providing food for masses of toiling and easily conquerable peasants. Europe's landscape was much more fractured, with mountain ranges and large forest separating the scattered population centers in the valleys; and its climate altered considerably from north to south and west to east. This had a number of important consequences. For a start, it both made difficult the establishment of unified control, even by a powerful and determined warlord, and minimized the possibility that the continent could be overrun by an external force like the Mongol hordes.

Conversely, this variegated landscape encouraged the growth, and the continued existence, of decentralized power, with local kingdoms and marcher lordships and highland clans and lowland town confederations making a political map of Europe.

Europe's differentiated climate led to differentiated products, suitable for exchange. As market relations developed, they were transported along the rivers or the pathways which cut through the forests between one area of settlement and the next. Probably the most important characteristic of this commerce was that it consisted primarily of bulk products timber, grain, wine, wool, herrings, and so on catering to the rising population of the fifteenth century Europe.

5

Here, again, geography played a crucial role, for water transport of these goods was so much more economical and Europe possessed many navigable rivers. Being surrounded by seas was a further incentive to the vital ship building industry, and the later Middle Ages a flourishing maritime commerce was being carried out between the Baltic, the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

This trade, in general, continued to expand, increasing Europe's prosperity and enriching its diet, and leading to the creation of new centers of commerce and wealth likeAntwerp and Amsterdam. Regular long distance exchanges of wares in turn encouraged the growth of bills of exchange, a credit system, and banking on an international scale. The very existence of mercantile credit, and then bills of insurance, pointed to the basic predictability of economic conditions. In the meantime they developed more sail and masts, and stern rudders, and therefore became more maneuverable, and they were going to possess distinct advantages in the long run.

The political and social consequences of this decentralized and largely unsupervised growth of commerce, merchants, ports and markets were of the greatest of significance.

6

A basic fact was that there existed no uniform authority in Europe which could effectively halt this or that commercial development; no central government whose change in priorities could cause the rise and fall of a particular industry; no systematic and universal plundering of businessmen and entrepreneurs by tax gatherers.

Therefore, we could say that european overseas expansion was due to a combination of economic laissez faire, political and military pluralism, and intellectual liberty, however each factor was historically unique compared with later ages, it seems plausible to assume that only a replication of all its component parts could have produced a similar result elsewhere.

Nevertheless, that mix of critical ingredients did not exist in Ming China, or in the Muslim Empires of the Middle East and Asia, or in any others, they all appeared to stand still during the 15^th and 16^th centuries while Europe was expanding overseas and advancing to the center of the world stage.

posted by yuhu @ 8:30 AM