>>116233477>Europeans were betterThat's the weird thing, they weren't. China was far superior in terms of exploration, trading, culture, and technology. It was pretty much one person (Emperor Hongxi, aka Notorious Zhu Gaochi) who stopped China from conquering the world. Before him, there were vast fleets of ships exploring, trading, and whatnot.There are a few reasons they were stopped, but it basically boils down to
>Unity/lack of competitionIf you're the biggest kingdom as far as you can see, why bother expanding more? You're getting a limited return on investment.
If you want to be perfect (Confucianism), you need to focus on internal issues. This lead to increased politics instead of exploration. China gave itself and it's citizens one direction to grow- up.
Europeans, on the other hand, hated each other, and did not have a great unified culture. So a century or two after China gave up, Spain and Portugal started expanding hard, and then everyone wanted in on the action because European countries were competitive with each other (as opposed to China, which was largely concerned with itself).
