Could you get USA or something similar if the western coast was colonized by china and has a large (chinese) population?

You're off by an order of magnitude.

There would be a lot more railroads all over NA.

>Do you even have a remote idea about the Chinese administration model
Do you have any idea how distance and travel time hampers administration and governing? Or how hard is to control heavily populated areas on the other side of huge ocean? Sending enough troops to pacify them?

>Or grasp the sheer concept that China as such is a continous civilisation that survived for almost 4000 years?
Define continuous civilization.

You mean you want to have USA as such, but with West Coast under Chinese rule at any point in the past?
Would probably end up with some war in tune of American-Mexican war, with Manifest Destiny and shit. The sheer barrier and size of Rockies and then all the wilderness of the central part of what is now US of A would prevent Chinese influence from spilling eastward, thus not preventing or affecting formation of USA in any particular way. The real question is how things would go for the Chinese province(s) in case of Qing conquest. IF there would be Qing conquest in such timeline.
Also, like this mentioned, the Chinese colonisation would be rather around the area of Cascadia rather than California.

Immigration and colonization aren't the same thing. Colonization implies that it was a planned effort by a political entity such as a crown or a state, who founded new political bodies in an area and populated it with settlers from the home territory.
The Chinese on the west coast came over as immigrants, guest workers, and individual settlers with no state power organizing their efforts.

1) Who and why you want to pacify
2) Why they are rebelling in the first place?
And I've already pointed out - the distance from Nanjing/Beijing/any other Chinese capital to Gansu is LARGER than reaching shores of North America and SLOWER than just sailing there. Somehow Gansu was perfectly controlled, along with Xinjiang, which itself is in size of 1/5 of China and faaaar away.
The exact same applies to Russia, really - somehow they've managed to control everything from Europe to Pacific WITHOUT ANY means of fast travel or communication

Do you even geography?

? ? ?

Still being around, as a constant evolution of the same culture/civilization, rather than constant migrations and change of local population. Han Chinese are still dominant in their homeland the same way as they were from the rise of their "nation".

>China as such is a continous civilisation that survived for almost 4000 years?
Except for all the times that it broke into several warring kingdoms.

So you're saying that about 1,000 km is about equal to 10,000 km if I'm reading this correctly.

... have you learned nothing from all thise times china broke apart into warring kingdoms over the littlest things?

>le eternal china meme

China never had space magic. Sure they valued stability and continuity higher than europeans but to define them as a continous civilization is naive china wankery.

Just because they try to maintain the facade of a continous state that isn't true. They were subject to the same power grabs and cultural shifts every civilization experiences.

Depends. Imho its a shit premise because China would have to be drastically different to sustain a large scale colonization effort.

That aside:

Probably something not quite south american would result. More isolationist, less wealthy, the indians are more numerous. Less exploitation though.

Or was conquered by invading steppe peoples

And what about Ratin Amewica?

thats japan not chinkistan

>1) Who and why you want to pacify
>2) Why they are rebelling in the first place?
Local rulers who know they can put taxes and tariffs they collect for you in their own pockets and you can't stop them because hint they are too far away and have home turf advantage. Or maybe they are ambitious and want to start their own dynasty. Greed and vanity are common motivations.
>he exact same applies to Russia, really - somehow they've managed to control everything from Europe to Pacific
I'm Russian and I can tell you that everything between Urals and Pacific coast is scarcely populated cold shithole with swarms of mosquitoes and a handful of large cities far from each other in resource rich areas. Russian Empire didn't try to settle this area to keep its important assets (natural resources, not land) under control. If it was more populated it would try to break away and it did briefly during Civil War.

Or became a republic, a warzone, partly a japanese colony... and then a communist totalitarian hellhole. Oh and then turbo capitalist.

>And I've already pointed out - the distance from Nanjing/Beijing/any other Chinese capital to Gansu is LARGER than reaching shores of North America and SLOWER than just sailing there. Somehow Gansu was perfectly controlled, along with Xinjiang, which itself is in size of 1/5 of China and faaaar away.
The exact same applies to Russia, really - somehow they've managed to control everything from Europe to Pacific WITHOUT ANY means of fast travel or communication

God damn, son.

You can't into geography - Beijing, (the northernmost historical capital, but ignoring that for the time being) is roughly 2400km from the capital of Xinjiang.

Anywhere in the continuous US is more than 8000km away, over the goddamn pacific ocean (which in case you didn't notice, you can't march troops over)

Even going from the westernmost historic capital, anywhere in the US is more than twice as far - even Alaska (measured from Beijing) or Hawaii

The British Empire at its height ruled more people than China did, who were more spread out, had more varying culture and religion and so on. They were by far the more powerful and competent rulers and had a more powerful and organised military machine. The USA broke away anyway.

In the same way, if there was any real reason to do so, China-USA could break away from China. Reasons to want to break away could be many, but over time would almost certainly occur, as they did for all the overseas territories of real world empires.

Going back to the original topic though, if history were changed in a way that meant China started trying to explore and colonise around the same time or before the Europeans did then I don't see any reason they couldn't colonise the west coast of North America. The issue would be changing history enough to allow this, which would involve completely changing China and possibly other parts of the world. It also seems more likely that their colonisation would focus on Indonesia, Australia and the Indian Ocean because those are areas China had a vague knowledge of and from which they already imported foreign goods.

Not him, but he does have a point - there is still China after all that shit going.

Sailor here, always examinging all sort of "what if" colonisation scenarios. If you want to cross Pacific in a straight line - or any large body of water, for that matter - you are doing it wrong. The shortest way to travel over what is a sphere is to travel in arches. It doesn't matter on land that much, but it does have effect in high seas, where you can save entire WEEKS of sailing by taking what appears to be a longer route. Maps are flat. Earth isn't. Going as close as possible to either pole and circling around that area cuts a lot of distance, even if you are "adding" way to get to the pole first. That's for examply the reason why Panam Channel is such shit thing, as it's placed in one of the worst spots imagined from the sheer distance point of view, as you need to get to equator, making the journey needlessly long. Sure, it's still better than circling the entire continent, but is still a sub-optimal solution for anyone from close vicinity.

>The shortest way to travel over what is a sphere is to travel in arches. It doesn't matter on land that much, but it does have effect in high seas, where you can save entire WEEKS of sailing by taking what appears to be a longer route. Maps are flat. Earth isn't.
That's actually a very helpful info. Thanks a lot, sailor man.

>The issue would be changing history enough to allow this, which would involve completely changing China and possibly other parts of the world
You don't need to change that much. All you have to do is not burning down the imperial fleet once Zhang He died. Or organise the fleet differently in times when he was still alive.
If you want to add more ahistorical flavour, you can make that a factor during Tang heigh period, where Chinese was ALL about exploring the world around them and looking for trade partners, while securing their influences. Want the best example of it? Japan as we know it exists solely because Chinese were busy pacifying Korean frontier and thus had increased activity over Japanese Archipelago, which in turn spiked Korean-Japanese trade and cultural exchange in a domino effect.
There is also Song period going slightly different, so maybe they won't get shanked by Mongols (not hard to imagine, just not getting that drought in the stepped during Genghis times or Jurchens not managing to conduct their invasion earlier).
And let's not forget about mid-term Ming, who were looking eagerly to establish themselves abroad, right when Europeans were busy doing the same.

Even if we assume China doesn't change much and starts colonizing:

North America owes its success to the proto-capitalism and the first few branches of individual liberty of the settlers.

Look at South America. This is how colonization happens from your standard adminstrative monarchy. Exploitative economy, leading to a stratified society etc.

>Not him, but he does have a point - there is still China after all that shit going.

You could say the same thing about the indians. Sure the settlers purged them but they are stil there.

That just lowers the distance from 10,000+ km to somewhere in the ballpark of 8,000 or so.

Also not to mention you'd be sailing against the Kuroshiro the entire way.

>there is still China after all that shit going
The question is what is China? Is it presence of organized government on Chinese central plain?

Might as well say that Italy is still Rome.

Most of the empire bit of the British empire came well after the US broke away, and as others have mentioned the Chinese settled areas in a fundamentally different way to European powers.

Also the way many European empires broke up was all quite different, based on a shitton of things.

I didn't know that Panama Canal was shit for that reason (I did hear it's a bit tight nowadays though), but anything's got to be better than the Cape Horn?
That said, the Northwest Passage is a dream for several reasons (presumably including the one you're saying), and it's looking ever-more viable

To elaborate, because this
>It doesn't matter on land that much, but it does have effect in high seas
Might not be clear to everyone:
When travelling over land, you have natural barriers, like mountain ranges, arid regions, dense vegetation, unfriendly natives, national borders and what not. So you are looking for EASIEST route between all those barriers.
On high sea there is just large body of water, so all you need to do is adjust your sails properly and find the SHORTEST route.
That's why "pole shortcut" is so important and perfectly possible to pull for Chinese or Japanese in "what if" scenario.

Want improbable scenario? Hindu colonies in Americas. That's literally not going to happen.

>Hindu colonies in Americas
Nobody argues against Chinese colonies in Americas, Zheng He could pull it off with enough support. But most people except one guy agree that these Chinese colonies would very soon become independent. It would be very funny if Columbus met Chinese settled in Americas.

Which part of "as close to pole as possible" you didn't get the first time that you still are going in a straight line, rather than arching up?
That cuts the distance - assuming starting from China "proper" and not Manchuria - to 6-7k km. If you "shortcut" through Manchuria and starting there, you cut off another 1k km. Either way, this is NOTHING for a sailing vessel. You can easily make 280-300 nautical miles a day using a high sea ship in absolutely average conditions. That's 520-560 km A DAY. Meaning you can cover entire distance in two weeks, assuming 7k distance. Even if we pick your 10k distance, that's still going to be 3 weeks. And we are talking about average situation, when you are only moving with 12 knots. That's almost standing still for a high sea ship. So assuming worst case scenario, it would take you a MONTH to cross that gap. Best case scenario - two weeks.
Now I'm no expert when it comes to land travel, especially without cars and rail getting involved, but I doubt horseback journey would be this consistently fast, unless performing some sort of relay run from Beijing to... whenever Xinjiang is. But unlike ships, horses do get tired.

I don't know shit about ships so I have to ask: what kind of ships?
Also if we are talking about roughly renaissance technology wouldn't you have problems with food and water?

Being narrow is one thing, but most of the time you are just putting up a lot of distance to first reach the canal and then get back to either of the poles. Anything is better than sailing (even if you use engine-powered ships) around equator, since that's the longest journey you can take. The only time when there are no issues with using the Canal on long distance is when travelling to or from Europe from central America, because there is no shorter route.

I don't know much about China either, but I don't see why it should broke away. I've already explained why distance on sea doesn't really matter and is in fact faster than going over land here . So I would rather understand why colonies in the interior of the continent would try to break away (sort of how Boers established their own countries in South Africa) rather than entire colonial region breaking away.

>I've already explained why distance on sea doesn't really matter
Now imagine how they matter when you need to organize and send thousand troops with supplies on ships and do it all fast.

Chinese junks, obviously. After all, we are discussing Chinese "what if" scenario. Considering how you can measure speed from sail-to-ship ratio (they do teach this when you apply for sailor certificate), a junk should be perfectly capable of pulling up to 20 knots without any structural danger, assuming a junk rigging and a mast of 22 meters tall. It's all about propertions, things then get wonky above 25 knots.
Either way, if we are discussing junks, an average speed of such ship, if sea-worthy, should be considered 12 knots. They are pretty light, especially when compared with European ships of similar size, so they would need much less wind, going with that speed with just 3 on Beaufort scale, so I would be even eager to make that 13 knots (yes, a single knot does make a difference, as it's additional 24 miles/day, which can save you few days of sailing if you are crossing ocean)

As for supplies - ask someone who knows a thing or two about Chinese provisions. I know that Zhang He fleet was even growing fresh vegetables, but their vessels were considerably bigger than your "typical" junk. But if you are having a one-month journey, it's not that hard to just pick things, even with Renaissance know-how and eat them before they rot. It takes about 4 weeks for rot to set up when transporting veggies, so go figure.

I say it's perfectly possible to pull and for the same reason very unlikely for flaking out from the homeland - because despite the distance sounding long, it's not really THAT long journey. It also makes information flow much easier, as you can have constant exchange of messages in a reliable fashion. Entire empires endured with worse communication than that, just to remind of Romans or Persians.

>It takes about 4 weeks for rot to set up when transporting veggies, so go figure.
isn't that with modern ones?

Also how can those bigger ships you mentioned fare in the high seas?
How safe would be a journey statistically speaking?

I'm interested what kind of problems could arise in such situations

Considering that you need first such capabilities to even establish your colony at all - I don't see the problem. I've read this in another thread and assuming this is true, then I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese colonies sided across the ocean would work the same.

Like I've said, I don't know much about China itself, but I do know a thing or two about sailing and people tend to greatly overblow issues with distances and transportation, while openly ignoring (or not knowing) that until mid 19th century railway, there was nothing as fast as sailing vessels, while also providing so much space and transportation capabilities and most importantly - being cheap. Once steam-powered ships became a thing, they've allowed shipping to remain viable even in era of first railway and then automobiles. After all, you can transport just HUGE amounts of material and people over any distance, as long as it's next to the shore.

That literally makes them faster than the Flying Cloud, which just to be clear did the LA to NYC route in 89 days and 8 hours. Remind me why it took til the mid 1800s for this record to be set or did China just hold back so the rest of the world could feel special.

China had retardedly huge fleets with global ranges when they wanted, it was not lack of capacity that hindered them, mostly internal troubles and lack of will.

>isn't that with modern ones?
How does it make it any different?

>Also how can those bigger ships you mentioned fare in the high seas?
The bigger the ship, the safer the voyage. No, really. The point I was mentioning was the calculation of "safe speed". Each sailing vessel has theoretically unlimited speed of sailing, BUT the sheer structural integrity of the vessel is in danger when the safe speed is crossed. It's usually accounted as Ship Lenght In Meters times 1.15 = Safe Maximum Speed In Knots (assuming mast of a proportional size). But it DOES get wonky after about 25 knots. Either way, it's about maximum possible safe speed. And crossing it won't instantly destroy your ship, it just MIGHT take damage. A pure gamble, you know.

>How safe would be a journey statistically speaking?
Depends on season and your navigational tools. The biggest danger on the high sea is losing your direction. Didn't Chinese discovered magnetic compass, along with magnetic declination and deviation? So as long as you can keep your course, an oceanic journey is relatively safe.
Another issue might come from seasonal storms, making certain months unsuitable for sailing or making it still safe, but needlessly bumpy.
Other than that, there is proper provision. Not in term of rotting, but sufficient amount of food for entire crew. You would be surprised how late logistics became involved in sailing endevours, historically speaking.

Historical Chinese weren't maritime nation, it's that simple. Having capabilities = using them. They've build the huge and powerful fleet, send Zhang He on few cruises with it... and then burned the ships once he was too old to continue sailing.
That's as if Royal Navy disbanded itself in the middle of 18th century and British stopped paying any interest to sailing.

I think you should read some books by Joseph Needham. You would probably love them, as he puts all the existing records, data and what not about Chinese technology and application of it, including the discussion how they never went on the sea despite having absurd superiority when it comes to shipbuilding and navigation and never figured steam power, despite having all the elements in their hands and experimenting around them.
Really good reads, without any "Europe was better, because it had Europeans" nor "China was better, because it wasn't Europe" wankery.

* =/=

>I would rather understand why colonies in the interior of the continent would try to break away (sort of how Boers established their own countries in South Africa
This

It would actually fit into how all sort of break-outs happend in Chinese history - always the fringes of the country, usually after realising they control more land than the central province. In this case "central" would mean the main colony, as breaking away from them would mean dealing with them and nobody else. Meanwhile breaking entire colony from the "central" on the other side of the ocean would brought back reaction of the empire itself.
I'd rather see it as "break away, beat the shit out of colonial government, replace them, keep paying taxes to emperor, but be now governor yourself" rather than anything else. Shit like this was happening all over south-east China all over the time and regional nor central government did nothing to stop it, as long as the taxes were being paid on time.

>Meanwhile breaking entire colony from the "central" on the other side of the ocean would brought back reaction of the empire itself.
And how well it worked for the empires?

You mean China or everyone else?

Chinese usually beat the living shit out of the rebels, unless the rebellion triggered northern invasion/rebels were stupid enough to ask nomads to "help". And when I say "usually", I mean 19 out of 20 cases.
Everyone else? Depends on country, time period and what not. No way to describe without mentioning which empire do you mean.

Well yes. The Anglo basically is a type of state-forming insect, so the Chinese community would be culled down to a level that doesn't trigger the Anglo's Genocide reflex eventually.

The Han Chinese are basically the Jews of Asia - they don't talk about all the times their communities expanded via conversion.

>Be displaced by outsiders
vs
>Turning outsiders into your own
I can see the massive difference, why can't you?

>All those fags talking about instantly breaking away
I get it, you are trying to project experience of USA on others, but this shit is not going to work in different context and completely different culture following different values. Nobody is going to rebel, just because they've got taxes levied on them without having representation in the parliament.

Maybe he's not a cuck.

Just look at what the fuck happened in Chinese history.

The Chinese actually *did* colonization, similar to Europeans. Unlike Europeans, they were unofficial: the private enterprise of Merchants in China who settled in places in Southeast Asia to conduct trade. The Imperial state didn't look kindly to such emigrations outside what is considered the end-all of civilization but the trade these private colonies brought made them look the other way.

The greatest of these trading posts became independent """""republics"""" ruled via "Clan Democracy". The Kongsi States in what is now Indonesia, the largest of which was the Lanfang Republic.

>That's for examply the reason why Panam Channel is such shit thing

So, by "sailor", we've confirmed you mean "weekend sailor who hangs around Cape Cod and once sailed down as far as Norfolk".

You'd have to be fucking retarded to think that it's faster to go from, say, London to Tierra del Fuego to Los Angeles, then it is to go from London to Panama to Los Angeles.

Look, I can prove it:

- Distance from London to Tierra del Fuego, straight line: 7213.67 nautical miles
- Distance from London to Panama the Panama Canal, straight line: 4584.88 nautical miles.

Source for both: distancefromto.net/

You shave off 2628.79 nautical miles just by going through the Panama Canal, nevermind the additional distance you save by only having to now sail from Panama to California, rather than from Tierra del Fuego to California. A typical container ship is designed to sail at a speed of 24 knots (24 nautical miles per hour). So a container ship taking the Panama Canal shaves off about 109.5 travel hours, or 4.6 days, by taking the Canal. And that's a modern container ship, not the speed of ships that were in use at the time of the canal's construction.

This is reasonably basic geometry, dude; even on a sphere, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The Panama Canal allows the lines to be closer to straight by not having to schlepp around the fucking entire continent of South America.

containerships nowdays sail neairly at the same speed as ships back in ye olden days or sometimes slower to consume less fuel

"Continuous civilization" is a self-defined claim of legitimacy that rarely holds. The thread of authority from Huangdi to Qin Shi Huang to Xi Jinping is every bit as tenuous as that which wends through Priam, Romulus, Julius Caesar, then Friedrich Barbarossa and Yekaterina Velikaya on its way to Vladimir Putin.

Shit, a billion and a half Chinese with nukes can't pacify a rebellious province 180 clicks offshore. You'd just have ended up with a loosely-aligned Sinosphere like our modern Anglosphere.

>Nobody is going to rebel, just because they've got taxes levied on them without having representation in the parliament.
How about local general rebeling because Imperial Court decided he grew to be too powerful and summoned him to the capital (to imprison and execute him). Seeing through their lies general decides to break away and start his own mirror empire on the other side of the Pacific ocean.

Forget about Putin. Sauli Niinistö is the true successor of Roman glory.

Illustrating how tenuous it is and how poor it is at defining cohesive polities. After all, a similar argument in the East makes pic related - who of course rules not China but instead a self-governing state of majority Hans somewhere across the Pacific - legitimate.

How are you deciding Illegitimate here?

Part of it still is.

wishful thinking I guess

It's a mocking chart because they are all illegitimate. HRE lost control over Rome, Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian claims are only as strong as their prestige and they never controlled Rome to begin with, Ottoman claim is baseless.

So, we're supposing a loyal Chinese colony in the west. Depending on when this occurs, they might anything from chilly to red hot relations in the south with the Mexicans. My gut instinct is that Chinese-versus-Aztecs would go about as well for the Chinese as it went for Cortez, but later Chinese versus Spanish Mexico would be brutal. And it's not like miles and miles of desert has ever been a natural barrier that bothered either civilization, so long as there was gold to be had somewhere in it.

Speaking of gold, I'm interested to see what Manifest Destiny looks like in this world. Obviously the Rockies are a satisfying western border for the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark make it all the way to Montana in search of the Northwest Passage and, knowing from Chinese records that there's no mouth in Washington, probably head north into Canada, possibly never to be seen again. The California Gold Rush happens decades early, leading to an immigrant population of whites in California and a reversed Gentleman's Agreement.

Depending on how the Sinno-Mexican war goes, and depending on when it happened, Texas would be really interesting. An early war with the Aztecs that leads to a Chinese west all the way to Sonora could lead to a loyally Spanish Tejas that never welcomed immigrants. A later war with Spanish Mexico could lead to a split Texas with a northern Chinese region and a southern Spanish region. In the latter, China would probably welcome settlers to work the land and, well, history shows how well that tuns out. In the long term, both land areas would be rich in oil, but whoever controls the south of Texas also controls the Gulf oil. Speaking of, Chinese friction with Spain over Mexico would definitely lead to interesting outcomes in the Philippines.

...

>Could you get USA
>loyal Chinese colony
user, the question was about disloyal colony

If you have the Chinese establishing themselves significantly earlier than Europeans you could plausibly justify having Eurasian diseases as well as things like horses being introduced to the Americas early, which would remove some of the early advantages Europeans enjoyed.

>Ottoman claim is baseless.
>Holds the Capital of the roman empire on top of many of it's previous territories minus the shitty ones in Europe
>Claim to being a roman successor is baseless

How do you figure, Infidel?

Addition on Chinese Mexico: As fun as the idea of "Chinese Mexico" is, even to type out, I can't see any reason for it to reach south or east of the Sierra Madres, hence why no matter when China goes to America and no matter when they encounter Mexico, Aztec or Spanish, the eastern and southern parts will always end up Spanish. An early encounter that goes well for China leads to a Spanish Tejas because there's nowhere else in Mexico for the Spanish to settle, a later encounter that goes well for China leads to a Spanish Gulf because everything south of Utah and north of Chihuahua is Chinese. And if either encounter goes poorly, then the history of Texas is basically the same. I can't foresee the wholesale immigration of Chinese Californians to Texas in the same way Spain and Independent Mexico both allowed Americans to come settle the territory.

I took the question to be regarding the thirteen colonies creating a nation that stretches from Sea to Shining Sea, which I don't think you could have. Some of the eastern parts of Chinese America would break away overtime, though, as they have nobody to worry about but Chinese America (local authority? Fuck 'em!) and natives (and look how that worked out in reality). Over time they could end up enveloped into the USA in the same way that Texas did, but I still think you're looking at a North America that's split at the continental divide until at least the late 1800s, early 1900s. By that point the global age of Imperialism entered its weird, experimental phases and I have no idea what would happen.

The Chinese reintroduction of horses to America would be, without a doubt, the most fascinating aspect of this alternate history. Way moreso than what-ifs about Texas oil deposits.

>Claim to being a roman successor is baseless
Yep, nobody recognizes it, my dear heathen

why do you hate OP? Don't send him into that shithole

This is fucking china
As soon as warring states happenes colonies are out
As soon as an ambitious general decides he wants to be a emperor colonies are out
As soon as a greedy adminastrator thinks he's got a shot at winning colonies are out

Nobody except a few autists on each side recognizes any of them. Which is why I brought it up as an example of how 's "muh chinese continuity" is dumb.

user, China has balkanized itself more times than you can count, it just has always remained culturally chinese. If i had a penny for every time a schizophrenic Chinese prophet lead a massive holy war against a declining Chinese empire which ultimately failed yet still directly contributed to said empire's eventual balkanization, I'd have seven pennies.

Which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's still weird that it's happened seven times.

...

The ambitious general scenario is making me want to write a scenario set in hilly Dongjing, famous for the fogs every bit as picturesque as those in the Lost Provinces.

...

If Veeky Forums is a shithole, then bringing Veeky Forums content to Veeky Forums will make Veeky Forums even more of a shithole itself.

Korea is like this retarded midget that likes to get drunk and watch football. The more riled up China gets, the more riled up the midget gets, until China calms down and has to pick the little guy up off the floor to keep him from flailing into a wall.

Veeky Forums is a shithole because of the people that frequents it and try to sell their opinion as facts. At Veeky Forums we at least know it's all opinions. And every once in a while someone with actual knowledge pops in.

America, I like you and your a fun guy to be around, but right now you're kinna being a dick.

This is how I know you're new.

How are two entire continents being dicks right now?

nice comeback fellow redditor

China wasn't a single polity or a continuous civilisation or even a single ethnically dominated polity stop falling for fucking propaganda just because you don't want to be Eurocentric.

This is a common topic over at alternate history dot com. Among many other issues, is the fact that the Pacific's size makes it a far greater hurdle to cross than the Atlantic.

You're going to need something or, more accurately, a group of somethings which lure and/or force the Chinese across the Pacific. After Spain his the lottery in the form of the Aztecs and Incas, Europeans were lured by the hopes they too would find some civilization to loot. Sugar, tobacco, and furs became lures later on and did "empty" lands when the Amerinds died off enough.

The "force" side of the equation is best illustrated by the Puritans and other religious kooks heading for the Americas for "religious freedom". What they really wanted was freedom to persecute those who didn't worship they way they did. Their neighbors got fed up and basically told them to get fucked. so they packed up and went somewhere without neighbors.

Furs aren't going to lure the Chinese across the Pacific because Siberian fur stocks are much closer and haven't collapsed. Gold won't be a lure until someone finds it and gold was a lure from the 1840s on for individual Chinese. Incan silver could be a lure, but the west coast of South America is on the same longitude as NYC and thus even further away. Spain used silver from Potosi shipped to Manila to pay for Chinese goods.

The upshot is you have to find a reason or reasons why the Chinese begin exploring. And, no, Zheng He wasn't exploring. He sailed along trade routes already known to Chinese merchants and those who traded with China.

It's pretty simple to control vast swathes of nothing with handfuls of tribal nomads being the only population who barely even know they're controlled.

"Harder to cross" is a technological question more than anything, though. I'd certainly take the Atlantic ca. 1500 with ocean-sound but tiny vessels, but much earlier or later and the ability to coast-hop in shallow water shows its value again.

The British military was run down, threadbare and dilapidated in 1776 because the British state was trying to pay off their national debt.

Playing devil's advocate here, one could argue that the US/British split lasted barely a century and a half before one side was again a tribute-paying subservient military outpost of the other. That's not unheard of for Chinese dynastic splits like the Song/Xia/Liao clusterfuck.

Also not gonna happen, considering how Chinese bureaucracy was run.

You don't know anything about China, don't you?

Yes, user, 150 years of Sinology, run by fucking EUROPEANS, is anti-Europocentric propaganda.
Good one.
Even a great one.

Not that user, but if there's anything Europeans have proven themselves good at it's baseless Orientalism that makes no sense to the people it purports to describe.