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Thread Starter-joey11223:
To be frank I don't know much about Ancient China, so maybe there were factors limiting their ability to set up exploration fleets. But it seems like they invented a lot of things long before other nations, when others were still in mud huts, these guys had great Empires, before the Romans and all that.
So why is it they don't have territories in Europe, Africa, America etc? Britain, France etc seemed to go all over the world, claiming areas of land as their own. Hell we took over the whole of North America.
They had ships long before us, thousands of years. Why didn't they expand like we did and lay claim to far away nations, beat back the indigenous population as we did.
We have random little islands in the Far east, or at least did at some point, independence wars and all that. But I don't see random little islands in the West having a Chinese population.
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tanzeel:
I don't know whether or not they had the means to expand way back when others didn't, but if they did have the means and didn't utilize them, I'm assuming that they believed in "live and let live" rather than "walk all over those worse off than you and then whine, b***h and moan when they bite back."
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robin22391:
their explorers were orderd not to explore anymore. they were never a match for europe anyway.
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Liquidus Zeromus:
China had plenty of land in the first place, and only the asiatic hordes expanded into Europe. Really, just like Russia, there were few factors which would have pushed China to expand overseas.
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Broderss:
It is actually all about Tea. They were content with drinking Tea, so unlike Britain who in the search for a material to keep whine and thus developed glass, they were left behind on the technology front. Along with glass for whine came things like windows, microscopes, glasses etc. which really helped us advance in technology.
It meant people could wear glasses to correct their vision when they age, so could read for a longer period of their lives than otherwise possible. This then enabled them to study longer, develop theories and technologies, pass it on and just allowed us to progress into new technologies.
If China had wanted to drink whine more than tea, they would have developed technologies themselves and by now would have taken over the world.
So, it's all down to Tea.
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No Future:
I wouldn't call HK a random little island.
China wasn't always united. It took a long time and much fighting for unification. China is/was already huge so by land area may compare to UK empire? Or no? I don't know the scale here. UK is small. China invented gunpowder but missed guns!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Captain Crash:
If you look at China's history, it follows of cycles of several small kingdoms eventually merging (by force or not) into a united china only for it to fracture into smaller kingdoms at a later stage. China never had the political stability to occupy itself with more than it's own house.
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cubezero3:
In a word, arrogance stopped the ancient China from expanding. Growing up in this culture and being a gut who has an intense interest in it, I'd say people, in the old times, rarely had the motivition to colonise. In their minds, this country was perfect enough.. Plus, not like the Christians, they believed that if other countries were not following China's steps, it would be their loss. Then, it turned out they were wrong, as it happened in the 19th century.
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RyanT:
I know this thread is two months old, but I do suggest you take a look at a map showing the size of China and ask yourself whether or not Chinese and ethnicity has been spread over that area since humans first move there or whether it had expanded to encompass such a vast area.
It's bigger then India and that's a sub-continent!
Take a closer look at the map and in almost all directions you will see that Chinese expansionism halted at the first significant environmental barriers. Deserts to the west, Siberia north, Himalayas etc
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favh:
Colonies and territories like that were not possible for a long time, when shipbuilding developed more. China did have a brief opportunity to join in, but their despotic government regarded shipping as a threat and largely banned it. China was simply too despotic, xenophobic and isolationist for its own good, while Europe had a lot of divided, liberal-ish governments that were much less stultifying. Of course, at the time it wasn't known there would be great trading empires, so maybe they would have acted differently if they could have seen the future. |
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