Pretty much this, yes.
Maybe more the Asia of late XIV century, pre-Ming with maybe some features about Ming Empire, but not that much more.
Informations from Far East tended to be copied from travel accounts of Marco Polo and tentative of Christian in Mongol China, rather than newer, as direct echanges were still rare (and would be before the exchanges between Spanish America and China).
For instance, what I translated was part of a compilation made in the early XV century for the dukes of Burgundy : as I pointed, it was as much a moralistic account that a geographical article.
Because he was an unsufferable idiot. There's no better way to tell this, really.
Basically, he tought he was right against almost everyone else, and that you could reach Indias by west, and if someone said otherwise, it's because they're part of the establishment (Ok, I caricaturize, but you get the point).
When he found Caribbeans, he had the choice to either
- Admit he was wrong, and that was *not* Cipangu or Cathay, and probably not be funded or trusted by anyone after coming back in Spain with two potatoes and a native instead of any asiatic marchandise.
- Cover his ears and singing loudly "IT'S ASIA", avoiding self-analysis, and trying to get some funding by claiming "Yes I sware, they told me that there was a shitload of gold and Chinese-ish guys, just in the next island".
IIRC, it's only at his third or fourth travel, when approaching Venezuela that he actually tought "Hey, maybe it's not Asia actually".
Granted he allowed Europeans to really discovered Americas, and so managed to connect both worlds for best and for worst. It's still the equivalent of a crazy guy pretending that Pyramids were nuclear reactors managing to find a genuine huge archeological discovery by sheer luck while trying to find the radioactive citerns.
I see, got a few chuckles from this post.