A hundred elite Chinese special forces troops accompanied by ten Chinese historians travel back in time to the Roman...

"Asian" is a pretty broad term. They could have been Turkics

>Why would they have to go back that far?

23rd century Chinese time machines can only drop into certain 'holes' which correspond to certain times. Their options are very limited.

>You will never be an Asian sex slave in ancient Rome

If they're already powerful enough to build fucking time machines, why would they need to go back in time? Sounds like they're already a superpower

OP's question is retarded

> Four people were ethnically African and two were Asian – probably from ancient China,

And here's an Indian Buddha statue found during excavations of the Viking age town Birka in Sweden. In the same house they also found the head of an Irish bishop's crook, seems whoever lived there liked collecting exotic religious artefacts.

I do find the "ethnically Asian" bit a bit amusing though. Ainu or Turk, there's a bit of a difference in the journey to get there. Thankfully the article got a bit more specific.

>why would they need to go back in time? Sounds like they're already a superpower

Yes. The one and only world super power of their age.

Thing is they've been able to drop a few probe drones into the future. What little it could communicate back before the hole sealed scared the Chinese very much. They don't seem to have much of a future as things stand--thus the desire to strengthen their position.

>Defending Socialism
>Defending Communism

Those only work in Fantasy, where magic can break the rules of physics and reality.

Did they bring any transportation? If not then all they're going to accomplish is give whichever group that ultimately kills them some fancy magic sticks to sell to the Romans. Their biggest influence would be that wherever their stuff ends up would likely develop guns faster.

I bet you're a libertarian.

Terminator rules

They had to travel back naked without gear

>one of them is carrying a disease which everyone in their era is immune to
>no one in Rome has encountered it before
>before modern medicine
>accidentally spreads disease everywhere

>A sub-set of the Chinese time travelers heads for ancient China despite orders not to.

>They reach it and find, to their horror, that ancient China is completely inhabited by white people.

Good plot twist?

Yes.

Also, a realist.

Communists and Socialists are not realists.

Capitalism is the best of the worst.

Didn't this already happen?

Ever wonder what killed Homo floresiensis?
They were a master race that would have eventually conquer half of the known world, subjucate and enslave the lesser homo sapiense and rule Eastern Asia with an iron grip, leading a dynasty that would last thousands of years.
Then, on the dawn of what would have been the Golden Age of floresiensis space colonization time travel was discovered and the Chinese slave uprising finally happened. With a great cost they took control of the prototype and vowed to save their race. Homo floresiensis was no more.

>Changing the past to change the future
Doesn't make any sense, if China is already the world superpower they wouldn't change the past in any way in case butterfly effect destabilizes the current world order?
Wouldn't it be much easier to fix the now and prevent nuclear Armageddon?

>lincoln assassination
Damn right
youtube.com/watch?v=bUjG1HSSaGI

Obviously they are joining Gan Ying in his quest for relations with Rome. Just look how he wrote about them. If they had actually met both empires could have formed a grander world then we can imagine today.

>Their kings are not permanent. They select and appoint the most worthy man. If there are unexpected calamities in the kingdom, such as frequent extraordinary winds or rains, he is unceremoniously rejected and replaced. The one who has been dismissed quietly accepts his demotion, and is not angry. The people of this country are all tall and honest. They resemble the people of the Middle Kingdom and that is why this kingdom is called Da Qin [or 'Great China']. This country produces plenty of gold [and] silver [...] The king of this country always wanted to send envoys to Han, but Anxi [Parthia], wishing to control the trade in multi-coloured Chinese silks, blocked the route to prevent [the Romans] getting through [to China].

Just disassemble your rifle, put it in little plastic bags and swallow it. It's easy if you've got the guts.

Maybe that time machine is their last hope, Skynet-style :
Being on a losing edge against rival nations, they dumped all the ressources they had into this "wunderweapon", hoping it would allow them to send agents back in time whenever and wherever they wished, completely turning the geopolitical table.
It failed : they can only send them back in a few specific times and places.

This is actually the way to go.
Imagine the Black Death hitting centuries before it did.

Or cover your tank in steaks

The Chinese are scavengers and are helpless without western intervention. If the Chinese have time machine it's because the American Government had them for decades and they stole the tech.

It did though. The Plague of Justinian is likely to have been the same strain that caused the black death 800 years later.

Isn't that something the Chinese should have taken into account themselves? Otherwise they can only go back to the civil war.

This mission is doomed from the outset, because any action that makes it better for China compared to today will also lead to a continuation of the empire rather than the rise of communism.

I bet without Lincoln becoming a martyr, there would be follow up civil wars that would eventually lead to balkanization of the US, and later the incorporation of a few of those into the French-British sphere of influence. Perhaps even spain would make a come back without the US as a strong nation in the picture. And maybe portugal could launch expeditions from macau and Goa to colonize the pacific northwest and other bits, leading to new, unheard of nations, since a not unified united states would not be able to establish such a strong foothold there.

Rome and China had semi-regular contact, owing to the Silk Road, which the Romans were the end target of. One they had seen silk, they wanted more. Some Romans bemoaned that silk eroded Roman values and sent Roman gold to Chinese coffers. The Chinese apparently consider Rome the logical counterpart to their own massive empire. Apparently they even sent official condolescences when an emperor died.

At one point the Romans, who deal through a lot of intermediary states which drove the price up, debated establishing a naval route. But the intermediaries managed to convince them that it was much too dangerous.

Don't forget, Alexander the Great made it all the way to India, and everyone knew who he was. And the Roman we can identify as having travelled the furthest East made it into Western China.

It's entirely possible that some border dwellers knew about Rome, and set out towards it.

Reminder that China has declared both time travel and reincarnation illegal

Isn't reincarnation basically unavoidable (barring enlightenment or whatever) under the spiritual paradigms in which it's believed in? Or am I missing some important ones? It seems like it'd be like declaring going to the bathroom illegal.

Fictional portrayals that take reincarnation at face value are illegal.

Ready?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Religious_Affairs_Bureau_Order_No._5

Reincarnation in China is illegal and invalid if done without government permission

Oh, okay, so you have to pre-register if you want your reincarnation to be recognized by the state. That makes more sense than what I was assuming it was.

Why, OP? The further back you go into the past, the more unpredictable the effects of your meddling. How could China possibly predict how the present would be like after your team's antics a thousand years in the past?

You're travelling too far in distance and time for it to remotely be of any use, so I'd suggest changing the concept so that the drop in 200 AD on the other side of the world is entirely accidental.

Otherwise this just makes no sense.

>not using 'occidental' as a pun

Do you even venerate your blessed ancestors, user?

Things go badly for them. They end up as exotic slaves and eventually all die.

ibtimes.co.uk/mysterious-chinese-skeletons-ancient-cemetery-shed-new-light-roman-empire-1583008