Were Zheng He's voyages the Apollo program of their time?

Expensive undertakings designed to show off the muscles of an empire doomed to die that had absolutely no long-term interest at all in colonizing the places visited, and overrated by alternate historians with starry-eyes dreams of "oh! What may have been..." because said dying imperial state never would have spread beyond the realm they were most comfortable with.

And perhaps, the only chance of colonization and expansion would be at the hands of private enterprise seeking to profit from those lands. Said enterprise was and is often hamstrung by imperial regulations.

I wouldn't say that there was inevitably going to be 0% interest, throughout all possible TLs of the Ming Dynasty, of not colonizing those places. Transportation was a punishment of sorts during other periods of Imperial China (the poet Su Shi, for example, was exiled to Hainan Island and Lin Zexu was exiled to Xinjiang), so it's possible that some Emperor could have thought that placing his enemies on some island far, far away from China would have been a good idea.

I do think that any Ming (or other Chinese dynasty) colonization will likely have to involve the state to a much greater extent compared with Europe, but it's possible to see scenarios where the Chinese state sees this sort of colonization as a good idea.

The Tang and Song Dynasties may be more amenable to such enterprises/

You think America is doomed to die?

No, it wasn't. America went to the moon in fear the Soviets would first, did the Mings have a serious rival that could fund such trips?

Is America doomed to die, or is it only in that vague way that a country expiriences decline, only to later return. After all, China did it.

I'd say that apart from the dying empire thing it sort of works. Or maybe the Viking explorations.

profxyz said:

I do think that any Ming (or other Chinese dynasty) colonization will likely have to involve the state to a much greater extent compared with Europe, but it's possible to see scenarios where the Chinese state sees this sort of colonization as a good idea.

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I posit the opposite. I think if the Ming didn't forbid overseas trade then you could have enterprise half-pirate merchant lords running profitable trading companies reaching into SE Asia, and from there, gradually outwards. Maybe some of them, chasing the wokou raiders who harried their convoys, end up in the Aleutians. And from there onwards, to the Far East...

Buzz said:

You think America is doomed to die?

No, it wasn't. America went to the moon in fear the Soviets would first, did the Mings have a serious rival that could fund such trips?

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But why did America seek to thwart that fear? In order to show off its capabilities and strength to the world, its prestige and glory. Same as the Ming. Just because they didn't have a counter-Ming to race to reach Africa doesn't mean the core motive isn't the same.

Demothenes said:

Is America doomed to die, or is it only in that vague way that a country expiriences decline, only to later return. After all, China did it.

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I just want to belittle man walking on the moon by comparing it to Zheng He's voyages, which resulted in no real long-lasting value to the Ming, other than for a qilin in the zoo, and people getting misty eyed "oh, but what if..."

Strategos' Risk said:

I posit the opposite. I think if the Ming didn't forbid overseas trade then you could have enterprise half-pirate merchant lords running profitable trading companies reaching into SE Asia, and from there, gradually outwards. Maybe some of them, chasing the wokou raiders who harried their convoys, end up in the Aleutians. And from there onwards, to the Far East...

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I'd expect the Ming court to be highly suspicious of any Chinese movement that was beyond their control. Exploration or trade certainly doesn't need state backing but the right to exploit that knowledge through colonization certainly requires the blessings of the Ming state, however open.