AH Challenge...Ming China doesn't go isolationist

In the early 15th Century, Ming China was the the most technologically advanced nation and the greatest naval power in the world. Huge fleets of ocean-going junks traveled as far as the east coast of Africa and China traded actively with Europe and the Islamic world. And then, suddenly, they just brought the fleets home, dismantled them, and isolated themselves. As a result they fell farther and farther behind technologically, and became easy prey for western powers.

The most frequently cited cause for this isolation was a power struggle between the court eunuchs, who favored expansionism and trade, and the Confucian scholars, who claimed that such policies were fiscally wasteful and brought no great advantage to China. In the end, the scholars won, and China withdrew into itself.

But how could this have been otherwise? And if China does not withdraw into itself, how does that affect history? Do we have, perhaps, a nation sort of like Japan in the late 19th and 20th centuries, only much bigger and much more dangerous to the rest of the world? Any ideas?
 
China needed to keep a strong defence in depth in the west to avoid being overrun by a Muslim army which would then likely wipe blank all existing Chinese culture and Islamise China.
 
"China needed to keep a strong defence in depth in the west to avoid being overrun by a Muslim army which would then likely wipe blank all existing Chinese culture and Islamise China."

Anthony,

Huh? I know you don't have a high opinion of Islam, but what Muslim power in Central Asia at that time was capable of overrunning China?
 
The Mongols and the Manchus conquered China, but they were not Muslim. Next along might be a Muslim nomad army arising in Central Asia, given a few butterflies in the area.
 
If the Ming dynasty had not halted its progress, it very likely would have developed modern weaponry faster than the Europeans; at the very, very least, it would have adopted Western technology once the Portugeuse and the Dutch came in.

As for a major Islamic power, I doubt it; Persia was too busy wrangling with the Ottomans in the 1600s, and by the 1700s it was just becoming too late for them to modernize (state sponsored, supported, and run religion just doesn't permit the type of modernization necessary). It was getting to a point where modernization would just come too late.
 
Top