Rather than Columbus finding America, and English people populatiing it.... What do you think would be different, if Chinese or any Asian Country Populated America?

Can anyone please respond to this. I am working on a class project. It seems that the Sciforums community is dropping significantly in population. Just a year ago, people would respond within minutes, now it takes several days... Perhaps, I should join a different scientific community, does anybody know of any?

This is in the wrong subforum, for one.

Also, the "school project" thread typically attracts little interest... more often open disdain.

What motivated you to pick such an off-the-wall topic for a project, anyhow?

There would be 3 billion chinese instead of 1.5

Under the rule of Kublai Khan, its possible that China could have discovered America. Kublai was a Mongol, with the Mongol ideals of conquest, rather than the protectionist attitude of the Chinese.
The Chinese had the biggest fleet in the world at the time of Kublai (when Marco Polo supposedly went to China). Unfortunately, earthquakes, floods and plagues hit the Khan dynasty's peasant population hard. Peasant revolt, Khans were overthrown, and a far more consrvative Chinese dynasty was installed. The great imperial fleets rotted.

If China had populated America, I don't think they would have been so hard on the natives. After the traditional Mongol slaughter and butchery and rivers of baby blood invasion, they would have been content to tax the survivors, rather than subjagate and convert the natives.

The Aztec empire may still exist, and the New World would have been introduced to horses 400 years earlier, as well as new types of grain. The Indians of North America would at first be devestated by Old World diesease, just was they were when Westerners colonized it. However, with 400 extra years, they would be able to build resistances as well as an empire. An agrarian scociety of Indians and Chinese would probably result in the new world.

Under the superior technology and governance techniques of the Chinese, coupled with the Khan's tolerance of diversity, the Aztecs (the most bloodthirsty and warlike people of the New World), would probably thrive, and in time, be able to break away from China.
It's assumable that China would lose its colonies in the New World, as colonial empires never succeed in controlling old empires.

After the Aztec empire was kept dominion over many other Mexican tribes, all bitter enemies. It would be likely that the other tribes would help overthrow the Aztecs, just as the conquistadores used them in the Conquista. However, Mexican Indians would probably tire of paying taxes to the Khan across the sea, and over several 100 years together would begin to see that they had more in common with eachother than the yellow skins. Revolt would be likely, and probably successful. After introduction to horses and guns, as well as the compass and navigation techniques, it's likely that the Aztecs could attempt to conquer Europe.

All in all, the Native people of America would still be around, be strengthened by Chinese tech, and be able to resist a European invasion.

There would be no United States of America, but possibly a Federation of Plains Indians, an Aztec Monarchy, and an Incan Monacrh, too.

... that's one hell of a lot of speculation.

Yeah the population would have sky rocketed

Don't forget about environmental impacts.
The environment would most likely be better due to the fact that native americans and Aztecs where less damaging to the natural world and work with instead of against nature.
There would still be some environmental problems but not as much as today.

Don't forget about environmental impacts.
The environment would most likely be better due to the fact that native americans and Aztecs where less damaging to the natural world and work with instead of against nature.
There would still be some environmental problems but not as much as today.

So you think they would have pretty much just remained as stone age/bronze age societies and not advanced? More speculation

The book "1451" makes such a claim, but the documentary recently on THC seriously challenged the author's claims. His problem is the same as Afrocentricists have, which is nothing really tangible to substantiate such claims. It's sort of like saying, "I'm pretty sure that aliens have visited Earth before, because we've found some pretty strange markings on the tops of plateaus that look like symbols from space. Now prove me wrong."

So you think they would have pretty much just remained as stone age/bronze age societies and not advanced? More speculationThe Chinese were (and still are, even after half a century of mouldering under communism) merchants and traders. They would surely have brought steel to the Aztecs and Incas. Perhaps gunpowder too; the Indians would have quickly figured out its potential for weaponry. Add horses to that, and by the time the Europeans got here the locals would have been ready for them.

The Chinese did come to American, read 1421, they had little colonies, Chinese DNA has been found in Natives of Venezuela, and in California. The Chinese were here, Ming vases were found in Georgia, and Chinese cannons were found in the Western sea board, also Chinese chickens are found in Central America. Read the book it is very well substantiated.

I wouldn't say 1421 is substantiated. That's been the criticism of Menzie's book to date, no solid proof, simply theories. Even Chinese historians are skeptical of it. It's an interesting theory, but that's all it is at this point.

The Chinese were (and still are, even after half a century of mouldering under communism) merchants and traders. They would surely have brought steel to the Aztecs and Incas. Perhaps gunpowder too; the Indians would have quickly figured out its potential for weaponry. Add horses to that, and by the time the Europeans got here the locals would have been ready for them.

No doubt a possibility I was really refering to this part of his post



The environment would most likely be better due to the fact that native americans and Aztecs where less damaging to the natural world and work with instead of against nature.

If you are going to advance away from being a stone/bronze age culture then you are also going to get further away from the simple life, and get into some level of manufacture and production.
I think a more interesting scenario would have been if the vikings had managed to remain in the new world and blend with the natives. The vikings though their weaponry was more advanced were not so much more advanced that they could just disregard the native americans(witness what happened to them when they did). If they had been able to stay they would have needed to be more accomodating with the natives thus opening a possibility for a real blending of cultures where they could develop side by side.

Have you actually read 1421 Spyke?

Spyke is hardly the only one casting doubts on 1421.

From Publisher's Weekly:


While the book does contain some compelling claims-for example, that the Chinese were able to calculate longitude long before Western explorers-drawn from Menzies's experiences at sea, his overall credibility is undermined by dubious research methods. In just one instance, when confounded by the derivation of cryptic words on a Venetian map, Menzies first consults an expert at crossword puzzles rather than an etymologist. Such an approach to scholarship, along with a promise of more proof to come in the paperback edition, casts a shadow of doubt over Menzies's discoveries.

It's on my "to read" list, but I may not get to it for a while. The list is rather long. (hehe)

Have you actually read 1421 Spyke?

I read maybe the first half of it a few months ago, never finished it, although I found it extremely intriguing in the beginning, however, a friend of mine who is in that field was extremely critical of it. I watched the recent 2 hour documentary on THC, the first hour dedicated to Menzies theories, and the second hour dedicated to rather effectively dismissing them, and began to lose interest in his claims.

There is nothing substantiated in the book, only conclusions Menzies himself draws. On the idea of Chinese being in New Amsterdam (New York City), based on what some early European visitors stated: in a visitor's writings he stated that some of the locals physically acted like Chinese people he had seen when on an expedition into the East, and Menzies makes the leap from that that it means that there were actually Chinese in New Amsterdam in the early 1600s, which is the similar problem that Afrocentricists have when they claim that Africans came to the New World, basing it on European explorers writings that some of the indigenous natives 'acted like Africans', and thus claiming that as proof that Africans were here before Europeans. Another such claim was that Olmec statues had features 'similar to Africans'. Menzies makes many such leaps.

He simply takes a lot of leaps in his book without any solid evidence, and uses a lot of old maps to draw his conclusions even though these maps have been heavily contested for years.


Menzies' evidence is mainly ancient maps, often hotly disputed charts prepared by 15th and 16th century European cartographers. He says they could only have been based on eyewitness reports of Zheng's journeys between 1421 and 1423, which he says predate those of other adventurers.

He even identifies the eyewitness, a young and well-connected Venetian called Niccolo da Conti, whose accounts of the Chinese voyages were published on his return to Venice. But Menzies concedes that his research has not uncovered a smoking gun or revealed any single piece of startling new evidence.

Menzies had to concede as much, because, according to the documentary, there are no tangible accounts of Conti's voyage with the Chinese.


Central to Menzies' theories about Australia is a master world map produced in 1542 by Jean Rotz, a French-born cartographer from the Dieppe school, who became map-maker to Henry VIII. The Rotz map, when adjusted for ice and the lack of longitude, accurately shows Australia as Greater Java, Menzies says.

But Barber describes the Rotz map as "generally discredited or, at the very least, hotly contested".

"Nowhere does Menzies give any indication that what he says is fact, is in fact controversial. In order to prove something, you need to come forward with the hard evidence."

Another map used by Menzies, drawn by Venetian Fra Mauro in 1459, even fails to accurately depict China, a strange occurrence if the Chinese were the source, Barber says.

But the Royal Geographical Society remains at arm's length from Menzies, despite its obvious opportunity for bragging rights.

"The society does not endorse his views," spokesman Elliot Robertson says. "People are saying 'interesting theory, but where is your proof?' We'd like to see further information come forward, not just from him."

But perhaps the most telling criticisms have come from the Chinese themselves. Admiral Zheng may be virtually unknown in the West, but in China he has been the subject of intense academic scrutiny for centuries.

According to a report in The Times newspaper earlier this month, Menzies' ideas were politely pooh-poohed by many leading researchers during his recent visit to Nanjing.

Professor Luo Zongzheng, from the Nanjing Museum, reportedly told Menzies: "So far, there are too many theories about Zheng He, but there are no relics, no boats or anything concrete. So the theories are not convincing."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697982893.html?oneclick=true

Personally, if it is proven that the Chinese indeed were the first to discover the Americas, then great. I'm an historian, I love new discoveries, and this is not my field, so a discovery such as this would not destroy years of research for me, as it might for others, but I do recognize that Menzies has done little more at this point than produce a theory. Nothing more. He may very well be right, but he is going to have to provide some real evidence at some point to be taken seriously in the field.


The voyages to which Mr Menzies ascribes these surprising achievements are well known. By the standards of navigations of the time, they are extremely well documented. But there are gaps in the record, and there have been plenty of fantasists eager to fill them with speculations as wild as any of Mr Menzies's. His originality consists in taking all the nonsense which has ever been aired about these voyages and stuffing it into a single volume. How does he do it? Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance – allied to outrageous chutzpah, shorn of critical intelligence. The result is heroically defiant of logic, evidence, scholarship and sense.

Mr Menzies says that he has been able to spot truths undetected by professionals because of his 'knowledge of astro-navigation and the world's oceans'. These qualifications, it seems, were largely acquired during a voyage from Singapore in a submarine in 1959. It is hard to respect the navigational knowledge of someone who thinks 'portolan navigation' is the same as triangulation. Even if Mr Menzies's periscope gave him some strangely privileged view of the world, he ought surely still to be aware that practical seafarers, as well as professional scholars, have beaten him to the field, and anticipated and exploded almost all his claims.

Most of his delusions arise from elementary methodological errors. Dearth of Chinese documents, he admits, drove him to scour European maps for support for his conclusions. Anyone familiar with medieval maps knows their data should never be accepted without corroboration, for no other type of document is so vulnerable to emendation and forgery. Moreover, it was the normal practice of cartographers of the day to fill their maps, beyond the limits of the known, with speculative lands and seas. Mr Menzies is indifferent to these reasons for caution. He repeatedly tells us that 'as soon as' he compared old maps with new ones he 'saw at once' resemblances which he seems to think eluded earlier scrutineers.

His conclusions become boringly predictable: a slip or squiggle on an old map means someone 'must have' seen and charted some real topographical feature. And who could the discoverer be but a member of the Chinese expeditions of the 1420s? According to a sample of the author's reasoning, 'their landfall [in South America] must have been around the Orinoco delta, for the Piri Reis map shows they had surveyed that small part of the coast with great accuracy.' But the Piri Reis map dates from 1513 and was compiled with access to the charts of European explorers who were well acquainted with that coast by then. Like all the weirdest theories, those of Mr Menzies also rely on flagrantly wishful readings of toponyms. The word 'con' on a speculative island on a fifteenth-century map is wrenched to mean 'volcano' and is instantly, bewilderingly transformed into 'solid evidence that someone had reached the Caribbean and established a secret colony there.'

To reckless reliance on misread maps, Mr Menzies adds childish misuse of objects of material culture. He infers 'early Chinese presence' in Mexico from items which are indeed old and Chinese but which were introduced to the country of their present location in recent times. Are there Chinese silks in the Philippines or pepper in Peking? They must have been brought by his pet explorers, rather than arriving as the documents say they arrived, by the normal processes of trade. Are there bananas in Hawaii or sweet potatoes in Polynesia? His Chinese must have taken them there. Is there an unusual ruin in Newport? Mr Menzies makes it out to be a Chinese astronomical observatory. Cynocephali – a decorative favourite with medieval mapmakers – are misrepresented as giant sloths trapped by the Chinese in Chile and transported to Peking. And 'how could drawings of cossacks have been made' in a Chinese book 'without a visit to the Arctic?' Instances of this breathtaking logic are legion. 'The Incas had a word for chicken at least forty years before the arrival of the conquerors' and so must have got it from the Chinese. Chickens, indeed, are a favourite preoccupation of our author. 'I had lived in Malaysia,' he enthuses in a characteristic passage, 'and remembered well how the morning call of Asiatic hens – kik-kiri-kee – was markedly different from the cock-a-doodle-doo of their European counterparts;' so when he awakens in Peru to 'the familiar kik-kiri-kee' he leaps to a conclusion which will no longer surprise the reader.
http://www.kenspy.com/Menzies/review1.html
http://www.kenspy.com/Menzies/

The Chinese did come to American, read 1421, they had little colonies, Chinese DNA has been found in Natives of Venezuela, and in California. The Chinese were here, Ming vases were found in Georgia, and Chinese cannons were found in the Western sea board, also Chinese chickens are found in Central America. Read the book it is very well substantiated.I see there's a lot of controversy over these points. I don't know, haven't read up on that stuff. What I have tried to keep up with is the results of the recent DNA analysis of dogs, that has turned some of our conventional wisdom on its head.

The chihuahuas that the Spaniards found in Mexico are an interesting anomaly. When the Athabascan migration to the Western hemisphere occurred sometime before 13,000BCE, dogs had not yet been domesticated, so the ancestors of the Inca, Maya, Aztec, and all the other native peoples who today live south of the Rio Grande and/or east of the Rockies did not bring dogs with them.

And... the Athabascan tribes did not domesticate the native wolves and breed them down into Chihuahuas. (Actually wolves domesticated themselves, but that's a different topic that's been posted on several other threads.) All the dogs in the world are descended from a wolf population whose genetic markers are still found in the wolves in one location: an area in what is now China. Dogs spread throughout the world in the company of their humans, via exploration and trade.

So the Na-Dene people who migrated to the New World in 4,000BCE had dogs by then and brought them with them. Perhaps they traded with their southern neighbors and the chihuahua is descended from their dogs?

No. It turns out that the chihuahua is descended from much more contemporary Chinese stock. Chihuahua DNA is related to the Shi-zi (Shih-tzu in the old spelling), Lhasa Apso, Pekinese, Crested, and other modern Chinese breeds.

Chihuahuas (or their ancestors, they might be descended from Chinese Crested) were brought to Mexico from China, before any Europeans were making that trip.

The Aztecs didn't have seaworthy ships, so the voyage must have started in China.

What bothers me is that throughout recorded history the Chinese have never been an ocean-going people. To this day, the modern Chinese navy does not have a blue-water fleet. They could not fight a naval battle on the open ocean. Chinese sailors have always stayed within sight of the coastline, sailing in shallow water.

If Chinese sailors came to the Americas, they came the long way, hugging the coastline of Russia, Alaska, and Canada. There have been plenty of warm spells throughout history when such a voyage would have been reasonably safe.

The only ocean-going people in the Pacific region were the Polynesians. They were sailin' fools, able to navigate rafts between Tahiti and Hawaii, and I guess it's pretty well agreed that Polynesians built those giant heads on Easter Island, even if we can't figure out how.

Maybe they were the trans-oceanic link between ancient Asia and pre-Columbian America. The only problem is, as far as I know, the Polynesians weren't major dog fanciers and they certainly didn't have any pedigreed Chihuahuas. Other Malayo-Polynesian people, even in very recent times, considered dogs to be food animals. I don't want to explore that line of inquiry any further, but nobody would bother breeding tiny dogs if their goal was to eat them.

So my money is still on Chinese sailors in their not-so-sturdy craft following the coastline of the North Pacific. Must have been quite a voyage.

I'm not sure you don't mean China vs. Erikson but anyway,

The prevailing wisdom has been the land bridge theory where peoples of Asian stock migrated over the bering straight, and began the population of the Americas.

A similar theory of a nomadic fishing people that survived on the coasts and moved inland when the glacier receeded. These people were also to be of asia stock.

The Chinese Star-Fleet colonization theory is nearly completly refuted, however romantic and interesting it may be.

The Chinese Junk was not an inferior ship, quite the contrary. In the 1400's it was the greatest ship of the era. Both in size, construction, tonnage there is simply no inferiority about it. A political decision was made to cease exploration but technologically the Chinese were at the forefront of colonial capability.

Fraggle it is said in the book that the Chinese ships actually did not up the coast of Russia to America, but took the long route down Africa, then the currents took them across the Africa coast until they were pushed downward towards Brazil, from there one went north, one went south. Also there is a lot about Patagonia and a specific animal a mylodon (on which if you have the book is discussed on page 152-153):


…a Chinese book published in 1430 entitled The illustrated Record of Strange Countries. As its title implies, this book record the strange animals the Chinese found on their travels

Also he discusses the travels of Chinese breeds overseas on page 156-57. IMO there is little doubt due to Chinese animals and their descriptions and since they cannot transverse the Pacific alone it must have been the Chinese.

Fraggle it is said in the book that the Chinese ships actually did not up the coast of Russia to America, but took the long route down Africa, then the currents took them across the Africa coast until they were pushed downward towards Brazil, from there one went north, one went south.Believable enough as far as it goes. But if they sailed over here on the currents, how did they get back?

Across the Pacific like Magellan.

Across the Pacific like Magellan.Umm. That would mean that the Chinese people, at some indeterminate time before Columbus, had discovered that the Earth is round. I spent much of my youth among well-educated Chinese immigrants. We discussed history as much as any other topic. Not one of them ever mentioned to me the "fact" that Chinese people already knew the world was round long before our own ancestors figured it out. They regarded the European explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the people who "discovered" the Americas and also as the people who demonstrated that the world is round.

Furthermore, while global communication was not then what it is now, knowledge this phenomenal would surely have spread -- via the Silk Road if nothing else. Their Buddhist colleagues in India would soon have heard it as well, and it would then have spread throughout the Islamic countries, which were not stifling in the Dark Ages like Europe. The Moors would have brought it directly to Spain in the years before Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus would have known where he was going and not named the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere "Indians."

The Chinese Star-Fleet colonization theory is nearly completly refuted, however romantic and interesting it may be.

The Chinese Junk was not an inferior ship, quite the contrary. In the 1400's it was the greatest ship of the era. Both in size, construction, tonnage there is simply no inferiority about it. A political decision was made to cease exploration but technologically the Chinese were at the forefront of colonial capability.

I'd say the Chinese committed a heinous crime against their own technology, achievements and future potential. At the time of Zheng He, their ships were immensely superior to anything built in Europe. Here's a comparison of his flagship with Columbus' far more famous exploration vessel. Bear in mind that the Chinese collosus sailed about 80 years earlier.
http://www.sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3295&stc=1

While Europeans began taking faltering steps across the oceans which would lead them to colonise and dominate the World, the decadent and foolish Chinese emporers dismantled and ultimately outlawed their own navy! They burned the great ships or let them rot. China turned inward and stagnated, embracing xenophobia and making little technological progress.
http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/china.htm

Perhaps they will yet have their turn at global pre-eminence, in this century? :confused:

So, in answer to some the earlier posters: a Chinese colonisation of America, if it had happened, would probably not have produced a "better" or more tolerant New World civilisation. They would probably have been just as hostile to the Native Americans as Europeans were. They would have ruled their colonies with characteristic inefficiency and cruelty, prompting the colonists to break away just as the 13 British ones did - only earlier. As for whether there would be a single United States of New China, which would have become the superpower which the USA is - I wouldn't presume to guess.

His problem is the same as Afrocentricists have, which is nothing really tangible to substantiate such claims. It's sort of like saying, "I'm pretty sure that aliens have visited Earth before, because we've found some pretty strange markings...
actually, blacks have more of a backing to Afrocentrism, if you look at all the art work left behind, Egyptians were at the very lest, a mixed-race people, no one paints themselves so tanned, no one paints themselves as 'black', if they aren't

if they were not black, they were diff from sub-Saharan Africans, but black nonetheless

http://www.civilization.ca/civil/egypt/egcgov4e.html
http://www.civilization.ca/civil/egypt/images/govt05b.jpg
http://www.civilization.ca/civil/egypt/egcl05e.html
http://www.geocities.com/wally_mo/

the chinese, now thats an other story, they could never have made it to the western Hemosphere, without leaving diseases, artifacts, dna, not dreams, like Menzies

My guess is that America has been discovered many times. The oldest human sites in the Americas are now older than the land bridge to Asia era; so the first Americans came by boat.

Fraggle,

hroughout recorded history the Chinese have never been an ocean-going people.

I thought that under the Khan dynasty in China, a large fleet was built, trading as far west as Africa, with Arabs. At least, that's what I remember form Guns, germs and Steel. They also tried to invade Japan, twice, but were squelched by storms. That's where we get the word kamikaze from; divine wind.

Starthane Xyzth, the Chinese have never been the expansionist dicks like the West. The fleets were constructed under a Mongol dynasty, but when the peasants revolted and threw down the Khans, the new Chinese dynasty got rid of all the stuff that was the Khan dynasty, including the ships.

Fraggle, I thought that under the Khan dynasty in China, a large fleet was built, trading as far west as Africa, with Arabs. At least, that's what I remember form Guns, germs and Steel. They also tried to invade Japan, twice, but were squelched by storms. That's where we get the word kamikaze from; divine wind. Starthane Xyzth, the Chinese have never been the expansionist dicks like the West. The fleets were constructed under a Mongol dynasty, but when the peasants revolted and threw down the Khans, the new Chinese dynasty got rid of all the stuff that was the Khan dynasty, including the ships.You misunderstood my use of the term "ocean-going." I should have been clearer and found a word that means "open sea." The voyage you described has been made myriad times without ever losing sight of land.

I'm not a seaman so I don't know what the horizons look like in the Sea of Japan. Perhaps to sail from China to Japan required traversing open sea. But judging from the maps, I'd think that you'd almost always be within sight of an island.

I have read (and I'm no authority so I don't know whether this is true) that the modern Chinese navy still does not have a blue-water fleet of any useful size.

The voyage to the New World could also have been made by hugging the coastline. Indeed it probably was. Anthropologists are becoming increasingly unsure of the 12,000BCE date of the arrival of the Athabascans in North America. Some evidence pushes that date back by more than five millennia. That's enough to predate the ice age that created the Bering Land Bridge. The only way to have gotten here then was by boat. I've seen no one suggest that even the Malayo-Polynesians -- who can generally be counted upon to be the most competent sailors of any era -- were competent enough blue water sailors at that date to have found their way here by any means except hugging the coastline.

Khan dynasty in China.

You must mean the Yuan dynasty. We don't say anything about a "Khan" dynasty.

I thought that under the Khan dynasty in China, a large fleet was built, trading as far west as Africa, with Arabs. The Mongol "Khans", called the "Yuan Dynasty", conquered China, then tried to conquer Japan


At least, that's what I remember form Guns, germs and Steel. They also tried to invade Japan, twice, but were squelched by storms. That's where we get the word kamikaze from; divine wind.please re-read GGS, it has diff facts than you state


the Chinese have never been the expansionist dicks like the West.
wrong, ask the Hmong, they got chased out of China, they went after Tibet, Viet Nam (for over 1,000 years) & the T'ang Empire tried to conquer Central Asia before the Arabs kicked them back to China


BTW, the Chinese taught the VM the skills they needed to kick the Japanese (1945), the French (1956), the US (in 1973) & China (1979) out

http://home.earthlink.net/~emopam/webdoc27.htm

I have read (and I'm no authority so I don't know whether this is true) that the modern Chinese navy still does not have a blue-water fleet of any useful size.

Anthropologists are becoming increasingly unsure of the 12,000BCE date of the arrival of the Athabascans in North America. Some evidence pushes that date back by more than five millennia. That's enough to predate the ice age that created the Bering Land Bridge.

Here's a site with details on the Chinese navy. Their destroyers sound perfectly capable to me.
http://www.stormpages.com/jetfight/luhai_luhu_luda.htm

The height of the last glacial period, when sea levels were lowest, was about 18,000 BCE. There would in fact have been a Bering Strait land bridge during the time periods you refer to.

Hey Starthane Xyzth,
That was a great link on the ancient Chinese fleet.
Complex to these western eyes, but I do not think China committed a heinious crime. Her people have never been assimilated. While every other nation has been. The Chinese can read the text's of Confucius' analects from 2500 yrs ago iirc. What other people have such cultural longevity. True the governments have changed a bit. But they never had a dark ages. The oldest uninterrupted geneology in the history of civilization is of Confucius.

Regarding the Chinese colonization theory, The lack of protection from old world diseases was an excellent point, disproving through inductive reasoning.

You're right, it's amazing that Chinese culture, language and art have retained their identities for so long. I suppose that their only near rival in terms of longevity was Ancient Egypt, which had persisted as a distinct civilization for about 3000 years before it was conquered by the Romans.

Still, China has itself been conquered more than once: by the Mongols, and by the Manchus. Not to mention that it broke up into a congeries of rival states at least twice. The stability of Chinese culture, which survived these changes, might in fact be looked upon as a symptom of inadaptability - the more things changed, the more they stayed the same, and China was pretty much left behind by the rest of the World until the 20th Century.

Yeah,

China has been conquered, also by Mao from within in the communist revolution. Egypt is comparable in longevity and in the assimilation aspect but is hardly a contemporary of China(anymore). Because of her stability of culture, China is primed to be the next superpower (if she isn't already). It will be interesting(frightening) to watch her this millenia. I will predict that Taiwan will be assimilated soon. Korea also to be a satillite.

China has been conquered, [/SIZE]


Egypt is comparable in longevity and in the assimilation aspect but is hardly a contemporary of China(anymore). was, even Greeks assimulated, Romans stood out, Arabs killed a lot of Egyptians when they conquered the country in 639 A.D. Lots had converted, then when they try to change back, the sword.


Because of her stability of culture, China is primed to be the next superpower (if she isn't already). It will be interesting(frightening) to watch her this millenia. China may have to learn to adjust more, it still has to resolve these issues;
1) dichotomy between rural poor & urban rich,
2) assimilative minorities: Hui, Hmong, Tibetan,
3) millions of little kings (all those spoiled only-children)
4) not enough females (because of the only one child limit)
5) industrial pollution & waste
6) immense population (1.2 billion)


I will predict that Taiwan will be assimilated soon.not without a fight, they will have to woo the young


Korea also to be a satillite.koreans are very nationalistic, they too have a proud 5000 year history. the 2 Koreas will unite first, then become a powerhouse in their own right

It's tough to imagine the two Koreas uniting, except as Randolfo suggests, in the face of an external threat.

I don't see why China would want to officially annex Taiwan: as long as they remain on good economic and political terms. It would only be asking for trouble from the international community. China has enough land, resources and people to become a USA-level superpower already, without needing to swallow up its little neighbours.

Industrial pollution and waste are problems faced by all industrialised nations: China (and India) can at least learn from the mistakes of the west. Its huge population, as long as they can all be fed, are an advantage: unlimited cheap manpower, making the development of new infrastructure and industries relatively easy.

This is from MSNBC encarta

Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China. Leaders of the government moved to the island from the Chinese mainland in 1949, when Communist armies gained control of the mainland and established the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The government on Taiwan recognizes the mainland city of Nanjing (spelled Nanking in Taiwan) as its official capital, and designates Taiwan’s largest city of Taipei as its temporary capital. The PRC does not recognize the government on Taiwan and considers the island a renegade province. Taiwan recognizes that the Communist government rules the Chinese mainland while the republican government rules Taiwan.

IIRC the PRC have clearly stated That a declaration of the Taiwanese as an independent nation will be an act of war. I understand there is lots of fine print to it's existence as it relates to international treaties and regions of control.

China has shown in the Korean war that it would protect its interests by fighting on Korean soil. The satillite senario I offered would be a realization of this in the event of an American attack. As new lines are drawn on our globe US should remember that we are not the only power with foriegn interests. With the troop reduction in SK and possible future abandonment, I think a united korean penninsula would likely seek protection from China.

I realize the Korea has a great rich history. 1st iron clad before US existed, 1st moveable type over 5 centuries before guttenburg. But it is the Japanese that has their antipathy. Not China. A satillite or protectorate could well suit both countries interests.