Though the parallel is very limited, the word is like "balkanize" pretty convenient and clear a name for the idea.
So, the idea is to get China getting stuck into a period of longer disunity into the 17th century as European navies begin to trade in the region.
In the end, it's anything but getting the country colonized by European powers (though I imagine parts of it could end up under foreign control at times).
IOTL, all in all, the Ming collapse was quickly followed by the Manchu Qing assertion of its power over the whole country, instead of having like so many times in the past the empire breaking up for many decades to a couple centuries before the next reunification. The Qing policies of isolation (well, the Ming did it too) within the context of Europeans' arrival in the region (Russians from the north, English, Dutch and Portugueses from the south) made it a technologically backward country while it had been in the days of the Tang and the Song dynasties one of the most technologically developped and advanced countries of the time.
As with Japan which got infused with European technologies and culture (guns and christianism for the most speaking example) and experienced a period of heightened social-cultural mobility during the Sengoku Jidai before Toyotomi Hideyoshi and after him the Tokugawa shogunate put an end to all of this, the idea is basically to see in a China that gets away from socially, culturally, economically and technologically rigid structures in a period of division and warrying.
That is taking into account the European factor, traders supplying arms and ammunitions to different regional rulers like they did in Japan in exchange for luxuries, establishing outposts (beyond the Dutch and Spanish outposts of Formosa or the Portuguese base at Macau) and missionaries being more frequent a sight, etc.
Eventually, we could see proxy conflicts being played out between European's Chinese allies.
And in the end, still a reunification (as it always happen), but with a country much different from the one we know.
So, the idea is to get China getting stuck into a period of longer disunity into the 17th century as European navies begin to trade in the region.
In the end, it's anything but getting the country colonized by European powers (though I imagine parts of it could end up under foreign control at times).
IOTL, all in all, the Ming collapse was quickly followed by the Manchu Qing assertion of its power over the whole country, instead of having like so many times in the past the empire breaking up for many decades to a couple centuries before the next reunification. The Qing policies of isolation (well, the Ming did it too) within the context of Europeans' arrival in the region (Russians from the north, English, Dutch and Portugueses from the south) made it a technologically backward country while it had been in the days of the Tang and the Song dynasties one of the most technologically developped and advanced countries of the time.
As with Japan which got infused with European technologies and culture (guns and christianism for the most speaking example) and experienced a period of heightened social-cultural mobility during the Sengoku Jidai before Toyotomi Hideyoshi and after him the Tokugawa shogunate put an end to all of this, the idea is basically to see in a China that gets away from socially, culturally, economically and technologically rigid structures in a period of division and warrying.
That is taking into account the European factor, traders supplying arms and ammunitions to different regional rulers like they did in Japan in exchange for luxuries, establishing outposts (beyond the Dutch and Spanish outposts of Formosa or the Portuguese base at Macau) and missionaries being more frequent a sight, etc.
Eventually, we could see proxy conflicts being played out between European's Chinese allies.
And in the end, still a reunification (as it always happen), but with a country much different from the one we know.