The Cautionary Tale of Zheng He
China should have discovered Europe, not the other way around. But it didn't. It's still paying a 600-year price for that mistake.
by Rod D. Martin
December 3, 2024
Many people are familiar with important figures from Chinese history, from Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek to Lottie Moon and Hudson Taylor.
Perhaps they should pay more attention to Zheng He.
Almost a century before Columbus, from 1405 to 1433, China’s Admiral Zheng He led daring voyages of exploration throughout the East Indies, along the South Asian coast, all the way to the Arabian Peninsula and as far as Zanzibar.
He commanded 317 ships and 28,000 crewmen. Columbus’ entire fleet would have fit in the hold of his flagship. He forced nations across half the world to pay tribute to his Emperor, and his treasure ships carried fortunes back to China.
Indeed, China was then the greatest nation on Earth: vast, rich, united, and far more technologically advanced than any possible foe. By contrast, Europe was a backwater, a patchwork of warring fiefdoms, locked in the Spanish Reconquista and the Hundred Years War.
Had Zheng He continued, China would likely have “discovered” medieval Europe, overpowered it and colonized it. Christian civilization would have been subjugated if not extinguished. The New World would have been the New Chinese World. And if you were even alive today, you would probably be a Taoist or a Confucianist, never having even heard the name of the Lord.
But China didn’t continue.
Lacking vision, the Ming emperor and court terminated Zheng He’s voyages. They dismantled his ships and struck virtually all mention of his exploits from the record. Like those at Babel they turned inward: they became convinced not merely of their greatness but of the sufficiency of what they’d already achieved.
Over the next half millennium Europe’s tiny, divided warring states become great nations. They explored and colonized most of the world, taking their faith and beliefs with them. They attained wealth and knowledge far beyond the great advantage China held in 1430. By the end of the 19th Century they’d virtually partitioned China amongst themselves, creating the opportunity Taylor and Moon would never otherwise have had.
Times have changed. Since the 1980s the story has been China’s rise. But China’s failure 600 years ago costs it dearly even today, not only in lost centuries and lost leadership, but in this: a billion Chinese even today are far poorer than the poorest alive in Portugal, Spain, France or England.
Where there was no vision, the people perished.
Today’s China does not see Zheng He as its forebears did. It is racing to make up for lost time: to recover its lost dominance, cultural as much as military or economic. And it knows that a race to settle space is just beginning, against lethargic visionless nations it means to beat.
So does Elon Musk. He’s ahead, and therefore so is America. Donald Trump sees it too. But he’s one of the few.
Like individuals, nations follow the leader. Whatever civilization leads the world politically and economically will also lead it culturally and religiously. A nation that ceases to lead, to achieve, to explore, to inspire, will no longer project its convictions but will be dominated by others’ civilizations and faiths.
Despite copious consumption of science fiction, Americans have learned from the last 70 years of top-down space programs run by navel-gazing government and the Space-Industrial Complex that space doesn’t really matter, that exploration doesn’t really add anything to our lives, and that even if all the promise of Star Trek or even For All Mankind is possible, nothing is really likely to ever happen. That long-term failure of government reinforces the presentist bias most people share, the belief that nothing truly different from our own experience is likely.
If you were living in 1924, you’d feel the same way about airplanes, which were still largely the toys of “barnstormers” at state fairs. And yet a decade later, airmail had led to airliners. A decade after that, the Japanese had employed carrier-based aviation to sink the old U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor, the Americans had returned the favor at Midway and Leyte Gulf, and they were close to dropping atomic bombs and breaking the sound barrier. Another decade and people were crossing the Atlantic in jet airliners. Fifteen years after that the first 747s flew and man walked on the Moon.
Technology relentlessly reshapes everything. Don’t be deceived by the early pace.
I would contend that space technology in 2024 is roughly where airplanes were in 1924, and will completely reshape civilization over the next 50 years. Most of you will be alive as that takes place.
But more than that, I believe that humanity is today roughly where it was in 1500: on the brink of capturing key territory that determines who dominates for centuries to come, exploring and colonizing new worlds, reshaping the old world’s economy and everything else. In time, the new worlds will likely become the richer and more powerful portion of human civilization.
Who will shape those worlds? The totalitarians, or the free? The Communists, or Christians?
I believe all these things are about to take place. But more to the point, China believes it. And they’re racing us for dominance, while Third World Democrat activists seek to kill the goose laying America’s golden egg.
Socialism is entirely based on envy. It rules by and preys upon fear. In those things, it is little different from the Ming court that dismantled Zheng He’s ships, and with them, China’s future.
Some believe the rapture will solve our problem long before any of this can happen. Perhaps that’s so. But some believed that in 1430 too. Christians are commanded to occupy until He comes. We are not at liberty to rest before quitting time.
Today, though China faces crippling internal problems as a result of its self-inflicted demographic nightmare, in the near-term it’s a hostile power and a near-equal, desperate to achieve dominance while that’s still possible. Space could reverse its decline; it could also restore its fortunes lost not just to the One Child Policy but to mistakes six centuries before. The Chinese Communist Party has more vision for our future than we do. If it’s a free future we seek, much less a Christian one, we must not neglect the lessons of history. What we do now will shape our grandchildren’s and great-great-great grandchildren’s lives.
Zheng He saw the future. Small-minded courtiers and priests stopped him.
On which side of that divide will America fall, or rise?
— An earlier, shorter version of this essay was published on July 27, 2015.
Thank you Mr. Martin; I'd not previously heard of Zheng He.
Regarding the PRC/CCP, may I suggest too that people watch Epoch Times' documentary "The Final War" ( https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/the-final-war-4851409 ) AND read the entire text of the Chi Hoatian speech ( https://jrnyquist.blog/2019/09/11/the-secret-speech-of-general-chi-haotian/comment-page-1/ ). Then, some familiarization with their doctrine of "unrestricted warfare" will explain much of what we have been seeing occur in this country in recent decades.
It is inarguable that the CCP not only intends to dominate future civilization, but also that they see stomping over and crushing the USA as a prerequisite step for getting there.