02-09-2017, 11:36 AM
(02-07-2017, 09:18 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: And what political distraction canceled those (Chen Ho) voyages, again? Do you know?
China is fairly unique in that for almost all of their history they were the regional hegemon, so we have an idea what that would look like, culturally speaking. Not a perfect one, by any means, but an idea nonetheless. They are far more likely to be concerned with their immediate neighbors than they are with mucking about in Africa or Latin America. This is not the same as Xenakis' nutjob idea of them going to war in the next couple of minutes, but it's not your idea of perfect amity either, particularly in the absence of a common threat.
Past is no longer truly prologue, because the world is a lot smaller now. China still has needs, and it has needs that mandate access to materials found outside their borders. If I have to guess, they will start to conquer some of the Farthest East areas of Russia, by proxy. Russia can't fully populate the area, and the Chinese have plenty of extra people close at hand. It's the same game the Russians played in their near-west.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.