The Spanish Plan to Conquer China

[zhaoyun]

Conquering other Chinks isn't a great achievement. Which other civilizations Chinks conquered?
Actually Chinks got beaten many times by Central Asians and Northern Asians like Mongolians, Manchus and Turkic groups (and by Arabs too when Chinks tried to mess with the Caliphate, check the battle of Talas).

Manchus established a racial caste system in China and Chinks were still happy to serve them, hahaha.

Central Asia was filled with Turkic-Mongol tribes and there were several times that Chinese expeditions conquered various Mongol kingdoms too.

BTW, Chinese are so weak, that's why the PRC controls Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.

You're a dumb troll, probably that one lunatic Chechen coward that keeps popping up with different socks and acting tough.

[Cristiano viejo]

The Portuguese didn't conquer Macau. They leased it with the permission of the Chinese govt.

Sorry, I made a mistake. India for China.
Nevermind.

[ovidiu]

Lol when I read this I though it pertained to modern geopolitics and was like wtf? Still a pretty cool historic plot though. Did not know about it!

China seems to have had major long-term ups and downs in its very long history (being one of the most ancient civs and the dominant force in East Asia). I think it's still going places and shouldn't be underestimated. But yeah a lot of Asian countries and their experiment with isolationism (look at Japan, which gave up its early Portuguese guns at one point due to samurai culture) at a crucial time of European ascendance in world history was a major negative factor and downfall for them in comparison to the West. But economically East Asia has made a comeback in the last half century.

Also the diverse Han Chinese people were created over many centuries or millenia of conquering and absorbing and assimilating other peoples into them, so it's not like they just conquered each other only.

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

Lol when I read this I though it pertained to modern geopolitics and was like wtf? Still a pretty cool historic plot though. Did not know about it!

China seems to have had major long-term ups and downs in its very long history (being one of the most ancient civs and the dominant force in East Asia). I think it's still going places and shouldn't be underestimated. But yeah a lot of Asian countries and their experiment with isolationism (look at Japan, which gave up its early Portuguese guns at one point due to samurai culture) at a crucial time of European ascendance in world history was a major negative factor and downfall for them in comparison to the West. But economically East Asia has made a comeback in the last half century.

Also the diverse Han Chinese people were created over many centuries or millenia of conquering and absorbing and assimilating other peoples into them, so it's not like they just conquered each other only.

This is why I dislike Luddites. It's very easy to fall behind and it's very difficult to catch up.

[NSXD60]

Result: Replacement of an ugly language with one a notch less ugly, period.

[zhaoyun]

Lol when I read this I though it pertained to modern geopolitics and was like wtf? Still a pretty cool historic plot though. Did not know about it!

China seems to have had major long-term ups and downs in its very long history (being one of the most ancient civs and the dominant force in East Asia). I think it's still going places and shouldn't be underestimated. But yeah a lot of Asian countries and their experiment with isolationism (look at Japan, which gave up its early Portuguese guns at one point due to samurai culture) at a crucial time of European ascendance in world history was a major negative factor and downfall for them in comparison to the West. But economically East Asia has made a comeback in the last half century.

Also the diverse Han Chinese people were created over many centuries or millenia of conquering and absorbing and assimilating other peoples into them, so it's not like they just conquered each other only.

China dun goofed in the past especially during the Ming Dynasty. It could've ushered forth the industrial revolution and built a worldwide empire, but instead, it closed its doors.

But the reality is that China's greatest golden age is probably the one that's about to come. Which is pretty amazing when you think about all of the other past ancient empires and how they are all just in the dustbin of history now.

[Cristiano viejo]

Result: Replacement of an ugly language with one a notch less ugly, period.

Dont insult the language of your future grandchildren.

[Morena]

The Portuguese didn't conquer Macau. They leased it with the permission of the Chinese govt.

Actually, China back then was very naive. If they were warlike, Zheng He's navy could've sailed to Iberia and easily conquered it. Columbus's three ships were dwarves in comparison to his armada. But unfortunately, back then China was too naive and arrogant in its own supremacy to contemplate conquering other lands.

I don't think so. I think it would have gone the way it always did, the low lands would have been conquered, but the highlands wouldn't have been touched for long.

The Vikings couldn't do it. The Moors couldn't do it. The Phoneticians couldn't do it. The bell breakers couldn't genocide us like they did with the Brits.
The only ones who managed to conquer us were the Romans did by the skin of their teeth. I think that's why we respect them.

[zhaoyun]

I don't think so. I think it would have gone the way it always did, the low lands would have been conquered, but the highlands wouldn't have been touched for long.

The Vikings couldn't do it. The Moors couldn't do it. The Phoneticians couldn't do it. The bell breakers couldn't genocide us like they did with the Brits.
The only ones who managed to conquer us were the Romans did by the skin of their teeth. I think that's why we respect them.

There's no point talking about "what ifs" in history. My point was that China at that time had unprecedented power. Zheng He's ships were not only 10X larger than Columbus' ships and in fact that magnitude larger than what any other civilization could create, but he had a massive armada of 319 of them with 30,000 sailors. If China at the time, had the same mindset as Europeans, who were constantly hungry to conquer other peoples and seize gold, land, and converts, China would've remade the entire world in its image. But instead the Chinese imperial bureaucracy were made of idiotic and short sighted Confucian scholars who preferred to stay at home while the rest of Chinese society was content with its smug belief in its own supremacy which made them completely ignorant of the outside world. The halting of Zheng He's expeditions was the watershed moment that cursed China's fate in the modern era, which it would only realize four centuries later and which it is still just recovering from.



Also to the dumb Chechen who claimed China was never able to conquer the nomads around its periphery. Here are maps from several Chinese dynasties where they were.

Han Empire


Tang Empire


Ming Empire


And finally, the current PRC which obviously controls all of these borderlands


However, in the past, China set itself up as the patriarch of the Asian order and this prevented it from constantly invading and conquering its smaller neighbors because of the tributary system, similar to America's current array of alliances. China was inhibited because it was not greedy enough, and was too smug in its own status. That's why it lost immensely during the period of European ascension that ultimately went on to revolutionize the entire world.

[Morena]

There's no point talking about "what ifs" in history. My point was that China at that time had unprecedented power. Zheng He's ships were not only 10X larger than Columbus' ships and in fact that magnitude larger than what any other civilization could create, but he had a massive armada of 319 of them with 30,000 sailors. If China at the time, had the same mindset as Europeans, who were constantly hungry to conquer other peoples and seize gold, land, and converts, China would've remade the entire world in its image. But instead the Chinese imperial bureaucracy were made of idiotic and short sighted Confucian scholars who preferred to stay at home while the rest of Chinese society was content with its smug belief in its own supremacy which made them completely ignorant of the outside world. The halting of Zheng He's expeditions was the watershed moment that cursed China's fate in the modern era, which it would only realize four centuries later and which it is still just recovering from.

Also to the dumb Chechen who claimed China was never able to conquer the nomads around its periphery. Here are maps from several Chinese dynasties where they were.

Han Empire

And finally, the current PRC which obviously controls all of these borderlands

However, in the past, China set itself up as the patriarch of the Asian order and this prevented it from constantly invading and conquering its smaller neighbors because of the tributary system, similar to America's current array of alliances. China was inhibited because it was not greedy enough, and was too smug in its own status. That's why it lost immensely during the period of European ascension that ultimately went on to revolutionize the entire world.

I actually agree with everything you just said, except for the ships. I believe that it was the large size of the ships that really made expeditions impractical. The greater the ships, the greater the loss if things go wrong. A bad expedition could ruin a country, just look at what happened with the Spanish Armada. After the last African expedition, the Chinese called a halt to any more expeditions because of how little money was recovered from them.

Just look at the other great explorers, the Polynesians. They explored the whole Pacific, and even conquered Malenisians, using boats that were really the size of overgrown rafts. When it comes to exploration, trade, and even conquest through the ocean, smaller is actually better.