What would the Americas be like if the Chinese colonized it?

[Sapa Inka Wiraqucha]

Now let's go to detailing the Americas, because there's actually a lot we can say about the area despite the relative lack of records. This is part 1 of a series I plan to make on the Americas, interspersed with commentary for other regions.

Following whatever contact plague happens in the Americas, there will come a big population explosion once local trade with the Chinese picks up. If this is set in Qin/Han era, they'll be importing beasts of burden (which will drastically increase the size of local empires) and foreign crops, and by the time the Chinese or anyone else is in a position to think about overseas population-colonization, they'll have already rebounded back to full population and then some.

IOTL, the Aztecs were always on the brink of famine because, despite having turned all the land in a week's walk from Tenochtitlan into farmland, they were still barely capable of feeding the city, and frequently suffered famine for it. One particular round of this in the 1440s coincided with earthquakes and some sort of disease which combined to make it seem like the end was nigh and the Age of the Fifth Sun was about to end. This was what motivated an increase in the sacrifice levy, which angered the rest of the city-states. Not because they didn't believe the same thing, but because it was the Aztecs imposing it.
In general, the Aztecs were less hated for this than for their economic meddling; they deported all the best local craftsmen to Tenochtitlan and forced the local city-states into a captive market. If they were able to cut off resisting city-states from their economic lifeblood, they did so, like they did once they cut off Tlaxcalla from the Gulf trade.

One more thing: Mesoamerica has been a major agricultural area since around 2000 BC, which roughly coincides with the arrival of Oto-Manguean speakers in the area. They formed the dominant culture of Mexico, and absorbed the steady flow of Nahua barbarians into the area which started in the early centuries of the first millennium AD. In that time, they formed one half of what they considered the civilized world (the other half being the Maya).
We know that they universally practiced human sacrifice. Their only complaint about the Aztecs was that they imposed a barbarian deity (Huitzilopochtli) on them and were very successful in providing him sacrifices despite their resistance.

 

[Sapa Inka Wiraqucha]

Up next, maps! Because believe it or not, there's a whole lot we can pin down on a map, even at centuries before the heyday of Mexican and Mayan politics.
Also, there's a lot that needs to be defined about any potential cross-Pacific trade route and how that might affect the concurrent Polynesian migrations.

 

[Skraea]

OK, so we assume that the Chinese are more expansionist than usual. They were expansionist, just ask the Vietnamese and Koreans not to mention numerous pilgrimages to India. Are their junks capable of traversing the Pacific Ocean? Who would sponsor it? The Mongols? Manchu? Maybe they hear something from Siberians about a huge landmass to the east. Then we have to look at how they would colonize the Americas. How Chinese and Indians did it in Asia was merchants intermarried with the locals but brought their customs and beliefs. I reckon that'd be the case for whatever Dynasty of Chinese colonizers. Unless they were able to quickly get to Mesoamerica or the Andes where the wealth and high civilization was, then they might send troops. It's tricky getting a colonial China outside of East Asia. Outside of that, let's see the exchange........................................................
The Chinese could very well introduce yak, water buffalo, pig, peafowl, bactrian camel, Asian elephant and horse. Also domestic cats. They farm rice, peaches, millet, various yams and import spice from neighboring South/Southeast Asia. What they could receive from the locals, would be llama, alpaca, guinea pig, muscovy duck and ocellated turkey. Plus the various peppers, corn, squash and whole agricultural package. Peyote and coca could be fascinating for Chinese healers to learn. They could be astonished by the capybara, armadillo, anaconda and various native wildlife.
Religion wise, I don't know about Buddhism. But, the Mongols have Tengriism, Taoism is for China and various folk belief. Could be a problem with some of the matrilineal tribes regarding Confucianism. Anyway, it's a mixed bag, with anyone's guess as to how it all turns out.

 

[Sapa Inka Wiraqucha]

First, the consequences of early Chinese expansion on the Pacific.

To summarize, the Pacific is teh fuckhueg. It's also the setting for the most epic migration of all time. Pic 2 related.
For a Qin-Han era setting, our story begins around ~200 BC. Now, to be clear, the Chinese don't just discover the Americas at this time. They have to take a while to get there, and this is one area where I think keeping China Legalist over Confucian is a good thing.
See, Confucianism is, as I already discussed, very insular and unadventurous. Legalism shares this aspect, but a surviving version of it is likely going to pay great homage to Qin Shi Huangdi, and one of his driving obsessions was finding the elixir of immortality. He sent out a few fleets to find it, but there's no indication they went farther than Japan. However, if his dynasty survives, or if his example becomes something future emperors want to be associated with in public, it's likely his successors might continue down this path. Their forefather's obsession with immortality could easily become part of the ideology's cultural canon.
This sort of superstitious belief could motivate future expeditions going ever outward -- it sure beats anything else I can come up with, so we'll go with that.

Anyway, for this we need to know the patterns of ocean exploration, and for this we need a map of the ocean currents. Pic 1 related.
Thus, by following the currents we can see the likely path of exploration.
First we go out to Japan, Ryukyu and the Philippines. Around Japan, we move out along the Kuroshio into the NPC. This is a long and empty stretch of ocean, so it'll take a long time for anything to be found here. Around the Philippines, we move out east along the ECC and down southeast along the stretch of the Indonesian isles.
In addition, we can crawl along the coastline to reach Alaska that way.

It's important to note that, depending on the date, certain places simply don't have natives yet. For example, Hawaii has none until 900 AD; New Zealand and Tahiti don't until 1200, because the Polynesians were the first people on the scene and were at the mercy of the tides. Thus, the Chinese will only have local knowledge to rely upon for as far as the Polynesians have traveled. This is why they'll discover Alaska easily despite it being up-current of the Aleutian Islands and non-contiguous with them: the local Aleuts and Kamchaktans will tell them that Alaska exists. Why shouldn't they?
However, they'll have to find Hawaii and New Zealand on their own, and it's quite like that Polynesians will follow them based on the trade routes that the Chinese set up in those places. Wherever the Chinese go, so do the Polynesians. In fact, the Polynesians are likely to spread all the way to South America because of this.

Spoiler: A prospective timeline of exploration; more like an ordered list than a timeline, though

Here is a track of discoveries I've spitballed together. Note that this assumes that dynastic succession occurs as normal, with Qin and Han counting as same dynasty.

I am also assuming a fairly slow pace of exploration because I expect the early dynasties to still have trouble with the Xiongnu and their successors.​

Starting Position -- 200 BC: Japan, Ryukyu, Philippines
Stage 1 ~ 100s BC: New Guinea and the rest of Melanesia.
Stage 2 ~ 0 BC: Kamchatka, Aleutians, Chuuk (in Equatorial Countercurrent). -- following up on the Aleutians will be difficult because they're not contiguous and you have to fight the currents. Also they're inhospitable as fuck. However, Kamchatka is nice and the local Chukchi and Itelmen tribes might have something to trade, and they'll probably tell the Chinese about Alaska.
Stage 3 ~ 100s AD: Australia, Samoa, Kiribati, Alaska. -- Australia is but a stone's throw from New Guinea, Samoa is further along the island grouping along the South Equatorial Current. Kiribati, though it may seem far away from Chuuk, sits along the fast-flowing Equatorial Countercurrent.

After this, going along the South Pacific Gyre out to Tahiti gets really difficult because the current flows against you and the Polynesians only got there around 700 AD according to the migration map. Also there's going to be a lot of political turbulence at home starting from the 160s AD. Exploration doesn't resume until the Jin dynasty restores order in 226 AD.​

Stage 4 ~240s AD: Alaska all the way down to Mexico. The loop has been completed. Also Hawaii is discovered at this point, by ships moving along the new direct route from the Philippines to Mexico.
Stage 5 ~310s AD: by this stage, Jin is declining and persistent rebellions cut away all the land around the Yellow River. Support for major exploration ceases, and the trade stations around California and Mexico are shut down, as the government has bigger issues to spend money on.

360s ~ 590s: Northern and Southern dynasties: all government-sponsored expansion is halted, as no central authority exists anymore.​

Stage 6: ~600s AD: The Sui dynasty reunites China and embarks on an ambitious expansion project, which ITTL includes a return to the old trading posts in America. Within just two decades, however, they are overthrown by the Tang. They add Peru to the map.

Spoiler: Effects

How this influences Chinese political worldview:
1. Historically, Rome was always thought of as the Far Western equivalent of China, sitting at the back of the world. Once they reach Mexico and meet the local potentates, they probably wonder if these are actually the Romans. This, combined with Chinese advances in astral navigation, might lead the Chinese to wonder if the world was in fact a globe. After that, the maths to determine circumference isn't that far off. This could lead to them thinking of America as the Far East and Rome as the Far West, with them in the Middle.

I would speculate that they would think of the divided city-states situation in Mexico and Peru in the same way they think of themselves: "What is divided must unite; what is united must divide". Their eventual unification into empires will be a vindication of this idea.​

2. Historically, the Philippines were never Chinese possessions. They provided tribute whenever a Chinese fleet bothered to show up, but they largely conducted politics independent of meddling from China. ITTL, the Philippines are a Chinese "outer territory" from the beginning, becoming independent whenever China divides and having to be brought to heel whenever it reunites.
3. With greater Chinese naval presence, a greater chunk of Southeast Asia is Sinicized, and Vietnam probably has a more important role in Chinese politics as its southern gate to the Indian Ocean trade.
4. Expect the Chinese to establish copies of the Lanfang Republic across Indonesia from Singapore to the Moluccas. They'll act as proxies for Chinese political ambitions in the area, and they'll be first on the list of a freshly-reunited China to reclaim.

List of places they'll steer clear of: Papua New Guinea, central Borneo (cannibals, headhunters)​

5. Srivijaya, Majapahit and all the other Indonesian thalassocracies are Sinicized instead of Indianized.
6. Australia gets horses early on. This is an absolute gamechanger for the continent, since it allows the local Stone Age primitives to form large empires. This jumpstarts their political evolution and possibly allows for the creation of lots of local states who'll do god knows what in the future.
7. The Polynesians develop major trade with the Chinese mainland, including trade in weapons and metal tools. This upgrades them from Stone Age primitives on canoes to Iron Age primitives on galleys.

8. America gets the Columbian Exchange up to a millennium early. This allows culture areals isolated in our timeline (Mesoamerica, Mississippi, the Great Plains, the Rockies and the West Coast) to come into intensive contact early on. This allows the Mesoamericans in particular to significantly expand their cultural reach, from California to Florida to Panama; expect sacrificial religions to proliferate all along that area.

9. Japan is much more well-connected to the Sinosphere, and probably adopts courtly bureaucracy over military feudalism early on.

Spoiler: Maps 1 & 2

 

[Sapa Inka Wiraqucha]

Oh, and btw, the alternate history Youtuber Whatifalthist has made a video on exactly this topic!

 

[Sarufiyyun]

I like to think Chinese colonization wouldn't be so much the imperial court sponsoring settlements but more like independent actors migrating into the area and establishing a niche in the New World. I am thinking it would be merchants organizing amongst themselves and founding guilds that would create colonies. Assuming that history isn't TOO different, we could have Chinese merchants integrating themselves within the pochteca system established by the Mexica.

 

[DeltaEnterprise252]

In my opinion, I believe Chinese colonization will be different from European ones and somewhat more similar to what happened to the Chinese that settled in S.E Asia and mingled with the natives.

 

[Faeelin]

The points about Chinese being unable or unwilling to travel or settle due to Confucianism, now let me look up the history of Chinese immigration in the 19th century.

 

[Faeelin]

Perversely, I tend to think the best chances for a Chinese New World colony date to the late Ming and how its successors shake out, which, admittedly, doesn't get you there where I think the original poster wants.

 

[FurthestBorealia]

The points about Chinese being unable or unwilling to travel or settle due to Confucianism, now let me look up the history of Chinese immigration in the 19th century.

I find it very unconvincing for individual settlement, as you said, there are millions of Chinese in Southeast Asia & the Americas. Indeed, the Chinese diaspora seems to be only rivalled by Europe, and it's own history of colonialism and exploration makes that pretty clear.

As for state-sponsored overseas settlement... it really depends. I think the attribution of the lack of Chinese colonialism to Confucianism is somewhat overstated, but it does make some good points. But it's not like replacing or reforming it would be any difficult.

 

[M79]

We may see larger settlements of rogue Imperial factions, religious splinter groups, treashre seekers, and prison colonies that eventually grow into viable polities along the West Coast. Native states, especially in the Andes, may resist heavily to the greatest extent possible but still adopt the goods, foods, and weaponry of the invaders. Eventually we may see a Federation or outright Empire of Chinese descent emerge, perhaps with ideas of reclaiming the motherland, and one that could retain and expand upon advances lost to the Celestial Empire in OTL.

 

[Sapa Inka Wiraqucha]

We may see larger settlements of rogue Imperial factions, religious splinter groups, treashre seekers, and prison colonies that eventually grow into viable polities along the West Coast. Native states, especially in the Andes, may resist heavily to the greatest extent possible but still adopt the goods, foods, and weaponry of the invaders. Eventually we may see a Federation or outright Empire of Chinese descent emerge, perhaps with ideas of reclaiming the motherland, and one that could retain and expand upon advances lost to the Celestial Empire in OTL.

Well that's the problem; the situation you described -- rogue factions, religious runaways, Cortezes, prison colonies -- is the Western way of doing things and it presumes Western sensibilities regarding culture and government (in fact, that's actually only the British way, mainly because nobody else really got bigtime colonialism going until the Scramble for Africa, which was entirely different in motivation).

China doesn't run way, hasn't run that way, and would not look like China if it did. ​

This isn't just down to ideological factors; the situation of China itself promotes this.​

Spoiler: Here's a list of the biggest reasons

1. Europe is naturally heavily divided and actually has three centers: one in the Mediterranean, one somewhere around Poland, and another in the Low Countries.
China is internally focused on the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys, bounded to the south by malarial jungles, to the east by ocean, to the north by barbarian-filled desert, and to the west by high mountains.

2. Europe has always been culturally and ethnolinguistically divided, with a lot of differences in local custom/law/government stemming from that. Moreover, no one faction since the Romans has ever been strong enough to impose their culture wholesale on everyone else. This allows French culture to be largely autonomous from English, and English from Dutch, and Dutch from German, and German from Russian. They can interact on their boundaries, but they are recognizably different and each recognizes that the others are not illegitimate by nature.
China has always been dominated by one culture: the Han. The Han people originated in the Yellow River valley, but have since expanded to fill all of the arable and halfway-warm parts of China by a process of colonialization and marginalization of their subjects' cultures. This process isn't complete even now, as southern China still has large non-Mandarin-speaking populations. Throughout all this time, the state has always been Han and has always promoted Han-ness in its borders; other Chinese cultures and ethnolinguistic groups are officially seen as backwards and inferior, and the barbarians (Mongol/Manchu/Tibetan) were officially seen as blights upon China (because they were; key word being were).

3. Europe has always been divided among many states, due to the above two factors. Many have tried to unite it, but all have been defeated, and over the centuries drastically different cultures have arisen in it, such that culturally reuniting it is impossible.
China has divided many times, but it has always reunited. This is principally because, since there are no strong natural boundaries inside China (mountain ranges, coastlines) it is always more difficult for any faction of a divided China to remain independent. Similarly, there has been an ideological impetus since the late Zhou dynasty for China to reunite once divided, guaranteeing that at least one warlord will always try to do just that. Such a warlord would also face less resistance from the common people of other factions than you'd see in Europe because, at their core, they and their rulers belong to the same culture (Han).

4. China's Han core has always had a strong identity. That Han core, centered around the Yellow River, has conquered the Yangtze and Pearl River valleys and more or less assimilated the peoples living there. Throughout its history, its only major cultural counterpart has been the nomadic barbarians of the north, and the Chinese have never been friendly with them (mainly because they have the annoying habit of burning Chinese cities to the ground every few centuries or so).

In fact, the Chinese have a very simple way of dealing with recalcitrant barbarians: break them up into factions, support the faction friendlist to China, and then sit back and receive the tribute. If they still don't give tribute, just go in and genocide them. This has been the driving factor behind many westward migrations out of the steppe; it's why the Uyghurs are the dominant population in Xinjiang and not the Mongols, and it's why the Turkic peoples don't live in Mongolia anymore.

In Western Europe, the big catalyst for making the mode of colonialism you described possible was the Reformation and Religious Wars that came with it.
After going through that, Western Europe had to face the fact that religious and ideological unity was no longer possible, and that seeking to restore those things would only result in further bloodshed and even less unity.

The Chinese state and culture would have to change drastically -- so drastically that you probably need a PoD before the Zhou dynasty -- for the European mode of politics and colonialism to appear natural and not an abominable way of doing things.

Rogue factions would be regarded as a mortal threat to the current dynasty's security, as any rebellion against it would be taken advantage of by them to return to the homeland.​

Religious runaways would be regarded as the sort of people who shouldn't be allowed to run anything; in fact, colonies will almost certainly have a great deal of backseat driving being done by the bureaucrats back home.​

Cortez-style adventurers would be executed for going beyond the bounds of their orders and getting China involved in wars / wastes of money it didn't expect. This is a common thing in its history, and is a feature of all Chinese philosophies that ever dealt with government.​

Cortez and Pizarro would have both been executed had they been Chinese, because they were officially freebooters and not authorized by the emperor to do anything except sit where they were and do jumping jacks. In fact, Cortez would have been a rebel as well, since he resisted arrest by his own governor, so he'd definitely be executed.​

Prison colonies would be seen as wasteful, since you could just make the prisoners toil in local mines/farms/armies.​

​

The maxim of the Chinese state throughout history is: "If it's a way for an individual to gain power/wealth which doesn't involve us, it's illegal. Suck it, bitch."
That's one of the reasons why merchants were never allowed to transcend their status as the lowest class in society.

 

[M79]

Why are the voyages state-sponsored? There's land faraway that's unclaimed and untamed, no one to persecute them, and staying likely means a risk of jail, death, or worse. Some people under those circumstances likely decide to take their chances.

 

[FurthestBorealia]

Prison colonies would be seen as wasteful, since you could just make the prisoners toil in local mines/farms/armies.​

​

Oh, but the Qing did send political prisoners to exile in Xinjiang. Why would it be so hard to see this similar line of notion be applied to overseas settlements?

I personally don't buy the geographical argument. Would you really say the North European Plain is any different from the area between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers? If so, why did no state spanning Northern France to Poland ever arise and stayed united? On the top of my head, only Nazi Germany, and maybe Napoleonic France, ever rose to cover that land, but they didn't last for more than a few years. Or how about Iberia? Why is it divided into three states? Why, if there were no major geographical barriers, as you claim with China?

It just seems that China became a civilizational concept... because it stayed long enough for a loose sense of Chinese identity, culture, empire emerge. P
erhaps a different collapse of the Han dynasty, one that doesn't follow into the Three Kingdoms warring era -- because their objectives were to unify China -- and the resultant states aren't powerful enough to conquer another, and eventually coalesce into regional dependencies and localities.



I would not claim penal colonies, religious runaways, rogue factions and Cortezes as strictly a Western idea.... I mean, why? Is it so hard to see persecuted Buddhists fleeing to the Americas? Local Chinese adventurers conquering foreign kingdoms?

Do you really need Christianity and it's many variants and offshoots to see religious runaways? It's not exactly a new concept... People fleeing because of persecution.... "Wow, what a European idea!" is not the first thing to come off my mind.

Or rogue factions, that just seems to encourage Chinese expansion. Think of a rogue dynastic claimant and his army fleeing to the Americas, with the local Han or whatever foreign dynasty controlling China coming to the Americas. They'll conquer the colony for reasons of "just in case". As they did with Taiwan. This is assuming they don't find some gold. And then, with all the natives dropping like flies from diseases... You'll eventually see a slow, oftentimes probably genocidal settlement of North America. You don't even need the state for that.


What I'm confused about is these are basic and fundamental ideas, not exactly something that would require specifically Western culture or religion to allow or permit. Religious runaways, penal colonies, rogue factions, rogue conquerors.... is that so hard to see elsewhere? Why would it be a strictly Western idea?











I personally believe Chinese colonies with the Americas will not be much different from European colonies, but instead expansion starts east-west instead of west-east. Oh, and we'll see Buddhism instead of Christianity -- although this depends if we still see European colonizers on the East Coast -- Not to be reductive, but basic patterns of conquest and settlement usually stay the same along all cultures.

 

[Sapa Inka Wiraqucha]

Spoiler: See my next post for tl;dr if you just want to get to the point. This one is very long and waffles a bit.

Oh, but the Qing did send political prisoners to exile in Xinjiang. Why would it be so hard to see this similar line of notion be applied to overseas settlements?

Spoiler: Response 1

The point of putting prisoners in that area was that it was a distant part of China. It was not Han-dominant, but it was under Chinese claim since the Han dynasty.
It was far from any other Chinese possessions (apart from Tibet, which is not a place you want to run away to), and it was out in the asscrack of nowhere without being unreachable by armies, and that's the key point: not unreachable by armies. The local governor could control them and integrate them into the established Han and Turkic population without being on his own should a rebellion happen. And in Xinjiang, rebellions did happen, and often.
In fact, the Qing were quite famous for genociding the local Dzungar population after they rebelled against a combination of harsh taxes and the governor being Evil For The Lulz (TM).
No Australia-style penal colonies overseas since those would be a perpetual rebellion risk (much like British Australia was at some points). And unlike Australia, America is not trying to kill you; the Americans are, but the grass isn't. I wouldn't shove political prisoners there if I didn't want them to escape to fuck knows where, and I wouldn't shove them there en masse unless I wanted them to rebel and then require an army or two to be sent their way to reclaim it.

I personally don't buy the geographical argument.

Geography isn't the only thing in the equation; culture also matters. It's just that you seem to place too little emphasis on geography, or on the effects it can have when it resonates with some cultural feature. See below for details.

Would you really say the North European Plain is any different from the area between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers?

Spoiler: Response 2

Yes For one, the Chinese basin is the only major population center of its magnitude in the entire area, and is surrounded by harsh and ill-populated lands (Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Manchuria).
The only area that resisted Chinese attempts to incorporate it which was fertile land was Vietnam, and that place had a combination of factors going for it.
1. It's Tropical Disease Central -- malaria is an endemic disease here, and large Chinese armies are very good breeding grounds for disease.
2. It's not securely connected to the rest of China's holdings except by sea; everything to the north up to the Pearl River is poorly-developed jungle which has the same malaria problem as Vietnam.

Second, the North European Plain was not dominated economically by agriculture. In fact, it's dominated by the North Sea, which is born out by the fact that for a long time the Hanseatic League was the major uniting factor in this area. Also, the entire area is noticeably less well-populated than neighboring France, and is geographically more stretched out. The former means that your army sizes are smaller (even if you don't account for German-style feudalism, which is famously gory), which means your imperial reach is smaller and dependent on the will of lots of local lords. The latter fact means that you need a strong overlord to take care of the whole region, since he'd have to deal with farflung provinces moving out of his political grip; a weak lord cannot rule over a land effectively.

Now consider the typical big-name German lord versus the typical big-name French lord -- see the difference? Geography + poor population + godawful inheritance division = NEP isn't centralizing by itself.​

Feudal state --> king less powerful --> less control over own territory and little/no standing army --> limited state size. ​

Big populations --> big armies --> ++ warmaking capacity --> ++ size of states --> bureaucratic centralization, such as in France and Qin. ​

No state centralization in Europe post-Rome --> cultural divergence up the wazoo. In fact, once Germany centralizes into, well, Germany, their corner of the NEP starts to look a lot less culturally diverse.

Also, the whole NEP area is very underdeveloped up until the mid-Middle Ages compared to France right next door, meaning that local institutions are at most at the level of tribal confederacies. Compare that to the very fertile and well-developed France, whose economy was dominated by agriculture and rested in the interior and not around the sea, and you see why France was first to centralize and not Germany: in France you had big magnates whose territories could be incorporated into the king's rule easily once the magnates were broken, but in Germany you have every dick and tom insisting on his feudal rights; even worse in Poland and Hungary.
In France, the king directly held anywhere between 30% and 70% of the realm (regularly on the high end of that bracket), whereas in Germany it was between 5% and 20% on a good day.

In Germany, the emperor faced a league of little lords fighting his power; in France, he was top dog after Charles VIII. Were it not for Charles VI's madness and incapacity, he might very well have been the one to secure final supremacy.​

Contrast the situation in Germany with China, where the state reined in the feudal landlord class under the Qin in order to actually get shit done, whereas the European states did not. Their successors, the Han, only continued in this course of action since it was a feudal rebellion which had brought down the Qin.

If so, why did no state spanning Northern France to Poland ever arise and stayed united? On the top of my head, only Nazi Germany, and maybe Napoleonic France, ever rose to cover that land, but they didn't last for more than a few years.

Spoiler: Response 3

Because it's separated by multiple rivers which don't dominate agricultural production, is much more fertile in France than anywhere else, and France was much more developed economically. Was French or German agriculture dominated by the Rhine? Was it vital to the economy of the entire area from Bordeaux to Berlin? Combine that with the population + feudalism argument from above, and you get the reason France and Germany have been distinct since Rome.

Having your best-developed lands and heart of your power lie at one end of your empire while there's a long tail stretching outward from it is only possible if that tail is very sparsely populated (so, like the Russian Empire). Say what you will about Germany, but it wasn't Siberia-levels of underpopulated, and it's got locals who really don't appreciate being ruled by snail-fuckers from Paris. France may be well-developed, but it wasn't so well-developed and populous that it could dominate everything in sight.

Or how about Iberia? Why is it divided into three states? Why, if there were no major geographical barriers, as you claim with China?

Spoiler: Response 4

Is Iberia divided into three states? Last I checked Andorra was more a speck of shit on France's arse than a real state.
That thing is more a creation of feudal custom than anything else. It's also harmless and attacking it is an attack on its co-leader, the French king.

Leaving aside their brief union, Portugal for the longest time has had big backers who wouldn't appreciate if Castile touched their little buddy: at times France, at times England. As for how it formed? Westernmost county of the Reconquista grows southward just everyone else, then maintains itself in a stable situation until it's suddenly part of Spain. Over the good few decades that it's part of Spain, it finds itself being economically marginalized and its political power being increasingly taken up by the Spanish court, for which it rebels. At this point, Spain is already in several major wars and in decline, so it sods off and doesn't try anything like that again.
Thus, the old order is reaffirmed.

Well, here's the fun bit: Warring States is a time of warring states: fast, frantic and all about getting on top of the pile. Peacetime is more or less the opposite: quiet, stable, and about maintaining the status quo and angling for advantages against your enemies for the next war.

Yes, I get that geography is not the only force in human life! But it severely affects it, especially when order and stability are cast aside in a mad rush to the top.

It just seems that China became a civilizational concept... because it stayed long enough for a loose sense of Chinese identity, culture, empire emerge. Perhaps a different collapse of the Han dynasty, one that doesn't follow into the Three Kingdoms warring era -- because their objectives were to unify China -- and the resultant states aren't powerful enough to conquer another, and eventually coalesce into regional dependencies and localities.

If you can manage the division of China without setting your PoD before the Zhou in order to remove the Mandate of Heaven as a concept, go ahead.
Considering that the Han dynasty ruled a grand empire with tribute flowing in all quarters and represented a height as yet unmatched in history, I think the various faction leaders would have inevitably wanted to regain the entire thing at some point (if only so they could swim Scrooge McDuck-style in the pool of tax cash a united China would bring to their pocket).

Also, your idea of "just have 3 Kingdoms last forever" requires that every kingdom be kept from gaining advantage over their rivals for a long time, much longer than typically happened in China. Things would have to be much more stable than they were iRL, and I think that a lot of the instability of divided China comes down to the fact that the land is very populous and flat. You can't use mountains to maintain a border (Pyrenees for Spain-France, Alps for Italy) because they don't exist; you can't use rivers to maintain a border (Danube+Rhine for Rome) because they're too densely farmed to be useful as frontier markers.

The longest periods of disunity were the Late Zhou era (722 - 221 BC) and the Northern and Southern Dynasties period (~380s - 589 AD), and both of these were characterized by constant and accelerating flux. All of them are right next to each other, they have few naturally defensible landmarks, and they have large populations with high degrees of centralization, which means large armies. They fight constantly, so inevitably one or two come out of the pack eventually.

This all discounts the relatively short Three Kingdoms period and Five Dynasties period and the myriad of quick power struggles right after the fall of a dynasty, where sometimes dozens of warlords set themselves up and get offed in rapid succession.

I would not claim penal colonies, religious runaways, rogue factions and Cortezes as strictly a Western idea.... I mean, why? Is it so hard to see persecuted Buddhists fleeing to the Americas? Local Chinese adventurers conquering foreign kingdoms?

They're not a unique property of the West... they're just something the Chinese state would invariably be displeased with to the point of seeking their destruction.

Adventurers -- as I said, they aren't going to be rewarded for their behavior.
For example, see this video, around the 6:35 mark. Ignore the speculation about Roman POWs fighting the Chinese at Zhizhi. Focus on what the expected consequences were for just sending out the army to crush the remnants of an enemy without orders from above.

"You need orders from above" is the default mentality of the Chinese bureaucracy throughout history.
Maybe they'll take the territory as a happy accident, but they'll sure as shit execute the adventurer.

Do you really need Christianity and it's many variants and offshoots to see religious runaways? It's not exactly a new concept... People fleeing because of persecution.... "Wow, what a European idea!" is not the first thing to come off my mind.

Spoiler: Response 5

What is a non-Chinese idea is that these people should be allowed alive anywhere in your sphere of influence. The idea that dissent should be tolerated in this manner itself comes after the Reformation in Europe, when it's accepted that religious unity is no longer possible and people shouldn't even try for it anymore.

The British allowed places like Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, etc, to be set up because they wanted these folks gone with as little fuss as possible, and in the former two cases because the founders were friends of the king at the time.

The Chinese take on Massachusetts would be the following: these guys are a splinter faction of a rather large religious faction in whom membership is treason (since not being CoE is tantamount to treason to the king, its leader). Why should these guys be given a colony? Why are we giving these guys the impression that we'll give them anything for the simple act of dissenting? Better yet, why should these guys be allowed to call upon the king's protection from other nations seeking their land? Sure is a lot of effort to go to for protecting traitors. Moreover, it requires money to be siphoned out of someone's budget and into the protection of these people; sure, whoever gets to head that committee is going to be a very wealthy embezzler, but the top ministers who have to oversee the creation of this won't!

Flash forward to 1688, by which time their mainland cousins have killed a king and reduced the next two kings to puppets of their will. They would treat the idea of allowing them to continue on living as an affront to common sense. But then, China never had to deal with being that splintered on the religious level. Either way, they'd treat their unmolested existence as a mortal threat to social stability, since it sets the view that the central authority can be flouted and you can still nuzzle up to it for cash and protection in the end.

Or rogue factions, that just seems to encourage Chinese expansion. Think of a rogue dynastic claimant and his army fleeing to the Americas, with the local Han or whatever foreign dynasty controlling China coming to the Americas. They'll conquer the colony for reasons of "just in case". As they did with Taiwan. This is assuming they don't find some gold. And then, with all the natives dropping like flies from diseases... You'll eventually see a slow, oftentimes probably genocidal settlement of North America. You don't even need the state for that.

Spoiler: Response 6

Conquer the colony, set up outpost with military commander, reiterate to the locals who's boss... and then sit back and watch the tax/tribute come in.

And again, I believe that, for various reasons, there will be little colonization of that sort, at least if the date for discovery is set back during the 200s-400s AD. A
After all, the Han haven't yet even finished with their own backyard; by the time they can consider that sort of overseas colonization, the Americans would have recovered and begun reforming the old empires, this time with Chinese horses. China doesn't need overseas colonies to provide it the resources of the land if it can just get the locals to do it for them under the pretext of showing that they know their rightful position in the earthly hierarchy.

If it's within a few centuries of Columbus coming onto the scene, then it's much more likely to go the way you see it.​

There will be lots of Chinese emigration into established cities, though.
And yes, if you want your colonies to be both big (ie. not kongsi) and not attacked by their own motherland, you need the state's approval.

Also, one thing to point out: Taiwan is a.) small, and b.) very near by. If a rebellion pops up, it can be responded to very quickly. Not so across the Pacific. And the Imperial Chinese government does not like the idea of there being territories which it would be hard to immediately contest if they were to break away. If they were to declare independence, that would be a signal for local tributaries to do the same, and if they were to proclaim themselves a rival dynasty with claim to the Mandate of Heaven, that's a grave threat which cannot go unanswered. For Great Britain, the Americans declaring an independent republic wasn't a huge threat to the monarchy's legitimacy given the Parliament system and the unquestioned supremacy of the pro-Parliament Whig Party's politics since the Hanoverians took over -- as long as it's over there and not over here, it's only as bad as losing a colony. Not so in China, where the ideology holds that the government is illegitimate if too much shit starts turning south. Compared to that, maintaining the natives as tributaries with a small Chinese emigrant population just seems like the safer bet. Chinese foreign politics always functioned on the idea that China is supposed to be top dog in the universe and that everyone else is either paying China tribute, rebelling against China and in need of being put in their place, or hasn't heard of China's greatness and needs to be enlightened as to their true place in the universe.

Ultimately, I think the government will just be too scared of the political dangers to consider anything beyond the usual scheme of gunboat diplomacy and letting the locals do the work of providing the government with gold. It certainly wasn't very forward-thinking IOTL, so I don't think it'll be that much bolder if it knew more about the wider world. At the very least, the emperor will consider the fact that he has much less control over his ministers overseas than at home to be a major liability, and one which they'll probably take to rebel and create challengers to his authority.

You want to do something big in Imperial China, you do it through the bureaucracy.
And the bureaucracy is: a.) corrupt, and b.) conservative.
It's as they say: "Around here, we do everything through the anus, even dentistry."

What I'm confused about is these are basic and fundamental ideas, not exactly something that would require specifically Western culture or religion to allow or permit. Religious runaways, penal colonies, rogue factions, rogue conquerors.... is that so hard to see elsewhere? Why would it be a strictly Western idea?

[snipped gigantic space -- seriously, why do people sometimes leave gigantic spaces in their posts? Is it a picture glitching out or something?]​

Spoiler: Response 7

Rogue factions -- will be treated as threats and immediately have fleets sent after them to destroy them.

Also, what rogue factions can you identify as having created colonies in European history?​

Rogue conquerors -- will be treated as traitors, as standard per Chinese law.
Religious runaways -- if they're persecuted enough to want to leave, they'll be persecuted enough to be told to get lost and suck a dick.

Imperial China always had a strong system of internal borders much like Russia, wherein peasants had to have the permission of their landlord to move, as well as ID for the bureaucracy to verify. Freedom of movement didn't exist out in the provinces.​

Also, as mentioned, a colony requires a lot more than just a charter, a boat and some people. It needs to get put to the attention of the king, the favor of the king, and then more paperwork to arrange for it. "Go off and fend for yourself" is never an option; even the Plymouth Pilgrims had to get a land grant from the Plymouth Company, founded by King James I, to be allowed to settle there. If they were to have tried, they'd have been evicted as squatters on company interests.​

​

In China, you can't just be the friend of the emperor like William Penn or Lord Baltimore and still be a persecuted heretic; you're either not persecuted or you're not a heretic. So you have to get an audience with him to get his favor for it, because he is the only person who is legally capable of signing off on this big of a project. You now have to get noticed, so you go to the local magistrate and ask him to pass along a note or write to any of your friends who happens to be in high places. If the latter, great! If not, expect to have to pay, because Chinese lower bureaucracy is always understaffed, underpaid and have far too many opportunities for corruption. But let's say you've paid your way into being noticed. The magistrate's / your friend's superiors have noticed you, and they will expect the same cut of money as well; they themselves may not be badly paid, they grew up in that sort of workplace culture and keep old habits -- besides, they'd be a fool not to when everyone else is doing it.​

Rinse and repeat process, and expect to do that a lot because appointments come and go and many people, often much richer people, want the emperor's attention for something or other. Okay, you've secured an audience, and let's just say you get his favor because if you don't there's no fucking point to this.​

So now he turns you over to the relevant ministers, and boy are there a lot of ministers! Food, supplies, diplomatic status, making the other colonies aware of this... it's a lot of people responsible for something which requires a budget... which naturally means you have to pay off every single goddamn one of them! Have fun doing that, I think I'd rather try my luck on the docks and get shanghaied into a voyage out far away; certainly beats trying to leave any other way! Or maybe you become a filthy merchant --- booo! --- and emigrate out into the existing colonies, where they'll gladly take your sorry ass.​

​

In case you think I'm overblowing the levels of corruption, check out something called The Book of Swindles, which was a how-to book on the most common types of swindles in Ming China. Or how about the Ming-era satires Golden Lotus and Water Margin, both of which deal with contemporary corruption. Or how about Heshen, the guy who embezzled nearly the entire treasury under Qianlong! Or how about the contents of this paper, which deals with Ming and Qing era corruption?​

Or how about the account of Nikolai Przhewalski on his travels to China? If you can stomach the racism and the way he casually attributes everything he despises about them to their race, you'll observe that the stuff he's describing is true.​

​

Half the reason the Imperial Chinese bureaucracy is so thoroughly and unyieldingly entrenched in people's lives is because not being so would lessen its own power and ability to suck people dry in bribes.​

Even in Europe, there were states which refused to let such things happen. In fact, Britain itself was rather unique for allowing colonies to determine their own religion, and it was one of the few which didn't meddle too much in local politics; in fact, that's what did it in, as the colonials had gotten so used to this wretched coddling that they rebelled at the first exertion of London's power, after the Seven Years' War. In France, the kings barred the Huguenots from making any colonies, as they wished to create sound colonies without split loyalties, and the Spanish actively persecuted non-Catholics who tried to set up shop next to or in their colonies. They also did a lot of backseat driving, with every major decision of local government having to be approved by Madrid and the greedy embezzlers bureaucrats there.

What is required for what you describe to implemented requires that:
1. The Chinese bureaucracy isn't omnipresent in anything that requires money or paperwork. Its default stance is "But do you have authorization for that? Don't worry, your request will get back to you in six months... but I could speed it along in exchange for some $$$."
2. The existing Chinese tributary system is reworked. Historically, the Han people thoroughly colonized fertile areas adjacent to their homeland and left token populations everywhere else. Without a rework, I don't see how that'll change.

Spoiler: Response 8

I personally believe Chinese colonies with the Americas will not be much different from European colonies, but instead expansion starts east-west instead of west-east.

For sure, except I think that the Chinese will do what the Chinese did with Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Korea, Philippines: barge in, tell the locals to pay up or else, and then establish trade with them. Thereafter, a local community of Chinese merchants arises like in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. Meanwhile, local rulers maintain the tributary relationship. After all, even if Siam and the Philippines had large and wealthy Chinese minorities, they weren't dominated by them like Singapore was; the Chinese were simply integrated into the local hierarchy.

Oh, and we'll see Buddhism instead of Christianity -- although this depends if we still see European colonizers on the East Coast

If the Buddhists decide to arrive and proselytize, they will. They're actually rather good at syncretizing with barbarian traditions (look at their efforts with Mongols, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese and Siamese). But they won't be creating Spanish missions for the purpose of conversion: they don't do it that way, and they're not going to get any funding out of the state (unless it's under a Buddhist dynasty) because Buddhists are ideologically sketchy at best and prone to creating cults the state definitely doesn't approve of.

-- Not to be reductive, but basic patterns of conquest and settlement usually stay the same along all cultures.

Basic patterns hold, but they are affected by different details in every culture. In China, the bureaucracy is a ponderous slug stymieing everything that requires it.

Don't get me wrong -- it works, and China couldn't run as the only centralized state apart from Rome in the ancient and medieval world without it -- but it comes with certain drawbacks when the oversight is non-existent, the pay is shitty, and the ideology conservative.

 

[Optical_Illusion]

I think the results would be similar, but the patterns would be different; if you had Chinese contact with Americas, you would be more likely to see a mix of conquest of metal rich civilizations (as in OTL), settler colonisation in the Americas, without much state backing, and expansion around SE Asia.

Basically, I think there's still a meaningful reason for the precious metals driven conquest of Central America, but I'm not so sure it makes sense for them to set up plantations in the Americas rather than insular and mainland SE Asia. If you've got big ocean going trade and there's capital for merchants to set up colonies, and there's demand for tropical specialisms, SE Asia seems more attractive. If there were plantations in the Americas, I expect there would be more of a "Work Native Americans to death until the plantation becomes unviable" and less of a "Substitute male African slaves with terrible mortality rates" dynamic.

Good agricultural land is less plentiful in the West of the Americas than the East (it's not your grain basket there), so I'd expect settler colonialism to be less attractive there, and possibly less attractive than even Australia, but something would happen. I'd expect the government to try and keep more control over the Pale of Settlement and have more concerns about an offshoot society.

If you got a "steppe-society like pastoralists" developing in the Americas where the Sioux did in OTL, maybe there would be a Great Wall Part Deux (some other attempt to build a fortified zone)?

In summary I think you'd see a lot of stuff, but, if China had the ship technologies and maritime economy to do it, I do think a lot of their expansive force would go elsewhere around Asia and Oceania, just because of the relative position. The Americas were a facing frontier for Europe in a way I don't think they would be as much for China.

 

[Sapa Inka Wiraqucha]

Okay, tl;dr, because I probably lost what I was trying to get at in my previous post. This time, more succinctly.

I would not claim penal colonies, religious runaways, rogue factions and Cortezes as strictly a Western idea.... I mean, why? Is it so hard to see persecuted Buddhists fleeing to the Americas? Local Chinese adventurers conquering foreign kingdoms?

They're not just Western ideas, but you either won't find them being implemented at all in China or they'll be executed very differently because local pressures in China are just not the same.
Penal colonies -- why move them overseas when you have places nearer at hand?
Religious runaways -- why give them anything? Why even tolerate them? -- tolerance is not a given in China, nor was it in Europe until the Reformation made unity impossible
Rogue factions -- won't be tolerated.
Cortezes -- won't be tolerated.

Or rogue factions, that just seems to encourage Chinese expansion. Think of a rogue dynastic claimant and his army fleeing to the Americas, with the local Han or whatever foreign dynasty controlling China coming to the Americas. They'll conquer the colony for reasons of "just in case". As they did with Taiwan. This is assuming they don't find some gold. And then, with all the natives dropping like flies from diseases... You'll eventually see a slow, oftentimes probably genocidal settlement of North America. You don't even need the state for that.

Again, depends on your starting date.
If it's Han-era, it's way too early for the Chinese to create overseas colonies, and time will give the natives adequate technological parity and parity in diseases. Instead, they'll do things more like Scramble for Africa, where they come in, stick a flag in the ground, and tell everybody in the area to give them a blowie.

In this case, there's already a standard way of asserting China's dominance over barbarians: the tributary system.​

If it's Ming-era, then your scenario plays out and the natives are fucked much like in the east.

What I'm confused about is these are basic and fundamental ideas, not exactly something that would require specifically Western culture or religion to allow or permit. Religious runaways, penal colonies, rogue factions, rogue conquerors.... is that so hard to see elsewhere? Why would it be a strictly Western idea

Basic ideas, but they are interacting with different factors. The government is a lot more powerful and corrupt, and it has somewhat different immediate priorities.
Its solution to dissidents won't be to send them into exile overseas like in post-Reformation Europe; it'll be to execute them or else work them to death in some local gulag. Freedom of movement is restricted, social mobility is restricted, and the primary threat to the government is not other states but rebellious governors, a threat which would be made more unpleasant by the fact that reconquering their land would be considerably harder than if they were contiguous to China.



Also Imperial China's corrupt as shit no matter what.

 

[FurthestBorealia]

I think the results would be similar, but the patterns would be different; if you had Chinese contact with Americas, you would be more likely to see a mix of conquest of metal rich civilizations (as in OTL), settler colonisation in the Americas, without much state backing, and expansion around SE Asia.

Basically, I think there's still a meaningful reason for the precious metals driven conquest of Central America, but I'm not so sure it makes sense for them to set up plantations in the Americas rather than insular and mainland SE Asia. If you've got big ocean going trade and there's capital for merchants to set up colonies, and there's demand for tropical specialisms, SE Asia seems more attractive. If there were plantations in the Americas, I expect there would be more of a
"Work Native Americans to death until the plantation becomes unviable" and less of a "Substitute male African slaves with terrible mortality rates" dynamic.

That, and the fact there isn't really a comparable Caribbean in the Pacific. I don't expect to see a lot of slavery in western North America... there's indentured Chinese peasants for that. Instead, Southeast Asia might be the place of plantations worked by enslaved locals. Eventually, the whole region will probably be sinicized due to two reasons; Firstly, an outlet for merchants, traders and settlers coming from China. Secondly, most of island Southeast Asia besides Java was rather sparsely populated before the 19th century.

Good agricultural land is less plentiful in the West of the Americas than the East (it's not your grain basket there), so I'd expect settler colonialism to be less attractive there, and possibly less attractive than even Australia, but something would happen. I'd expect the government to try and keep more control over the Pale of Settlement and have more concerns about an offshoot society.

If you got a "steppe-society like pastoralists" developing in the Americas where the Sioux did in OTL, maybe there would be a Great Wall Part Deux (some other attempt to build a fortified zone)?.

Well, not as unattractive as Australia. It's still a good spot for trading posts on the way to Mesoamerica & the Andes, and the Central Valley is particularly fertile. Not as good as the East, sure, but it's still pretty great.

Eh, I don't think there's much of a need for a second Great Wall, although I get the historical appeal. I don't expect Native American horse nomads to be comparable to Mongols in organizational and technological levels... and many will die from the diseases brought by the Chinese, anyways. Most likely they'll be killed and their land taken.

The East will be settled by who gets there first, which is rather obvious. Depending on when the Chinese discover the New World, they have the possibility to snatch up the East Coast, but I believe it's rather likely for some Scandinavians or Basque to settle the Northeastern part of America. The rest is debatable, in my opinion. Many people tend to hold that Europeans arriving are an inevitability, but while I would tend to agree that Europe is probably more likely to discover the New World than other regions, due to geography and closeness relative to the Americas, I would not hold it to be inevitable. It really depends on the POD.

Spoiler: See my next post for tl;dr if you just want to get to the point. This one is very long and waffles a bit.

Spoiler: Response 1

The point of putting prisoners in that area was that it was a distant part of China. It was not Han-dominant, but it was under Chinese claim since the Han dynasty.
It was far from any other Chinese possessions (apart from Tibet, which is not a place you want to run away to), and it was out in the asscrack of nowhere without being unreachable by armies, and that's the key point: not unreachable by armies. The local governor could control them and integrate them into the established Han and Turkic population without being on his own should a rebellion happen. And in Xinjiang, rebellions did happen, and often.
In fact, the Qing were quite famous for genociding the local Dzungar population after they rebelled against a combination of harsh taxes and the governor being Evil For The Lulz (TM).
No Australia-style penal colonies overseas since those would be a perpetual rebellion risk (much like British Australia was at some points). And unlike Australia, America is not trying to kill you; the Americans are, but the grass isn't. I wouldn't shove political prisoners there if I didn't want them to escape to fuck knows where, and I wouldn't shove them there en masse unless I wanted them to rebel and then require an army or two to be sent their way to reclaim it.

Geography isn't the only thing in the equation; culture also matters. It's just that you seem to place too little emphasis on geography, or on the effects it can have when it resonates with some cultural feature. See below for details.

Spoiler: Response 2

Yes For one, the Chinese basin is the only major population center of its magnitude in the entire area, and is surrounded by harsh and ill-populated lands (Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Manchuria).
The only area that resisted Chinese attempts to incorporate it which was fertile land was Vietnam, and that place had a combination of factors going for it.
1. It's Tropical Disease Central -- malaria is an endemic disease here, and large Chinese armies are very good breeding grounds for disease.
2. It's not securely connected to the rest of China's holdings except by sea; everything to the north up to the Pearl River is poorly-developed jungle which has the same malaria problem as Vietnam.

Second, the North European Plain was not dominated economically by agriculture. In fact, it's dominated by the North Sea, which is born out by the fact that for a long time the Hanseatic League was the major uniting factor in this area. Also, the entire area is noticeably less well-populated than neighboring France, and is geographically more stretched out. The former means that your army sizes are smaller (even if you don't account for German-style feudalism, which is famously gory), which means your imperial reach is smaller and dependent on the will of lots of local lords. The latter fact means that you need a strong overlord to take care of the whole region, since he'd have to deal with farflung provinces moving out of his political grip; a weak lord cannot rule over a land effectively.

Now consider the typical big-name German lord versus the typical big-name French lord -- see the difference? Geography + poor population + godawful inheritance division = NEP isn't centralizing by itself.​

Feudal state --> king less powerful --> less control over own territory and little/no standing army --> limited state size. ​

Big populations --> big armies --> ++ warmaking capacity --> ++ size of states --> bureaucratic centralization, such as in France and Qin. ​

No state centralization in Europe post-Rome --> cultural divergence up the wazoo. In fact, once Germany centralizes into, well, Germany, their corner of the NEP starts to look a lot less culturally diverse.

Also, the whole NEP area is very underdeveloped up until the mid-Middle Ages compared to France right next door, meaning that local institutions are at most at the level of tribal confederacies. Compare that to the very fertile and well-developed France, whose economy was dominated by agriculture and rested in the interior and not around the sea, and you see why France was first to centralize and not Germany: in France you had big magnates whose territories could be incorporated into the king's rule easily once the magnates were broken, but in Germany you have every dick and tom insisting on his feudal rights; even worse in Poland and Hungary.
In France, the king directly held anywhere between 30% and 70% of the realm (regularly on the high end of that bracket), whereas in Germany it was between 5% and 20% on a good day.

In Germany, the emperor faced a league of little lords fighting his power; in France, he was top dog after Charles VIII. Were it not for Charles VI's madness and incapacity, he might very well have been the one to secure final supremacy.​

Contrast the situation in Germany with China, where the state reined in the feudal landlord class under the Qin in order to actually get shit done, whereas the European states did not. Their successors, the Han, only continued in this course of action since it was a feudal rebellion which had brought down the Qin.

Spoiler: Response 3

Because it's separated by multiple rivers which don't dominate agricultural production, is much more fertile in France than anywhere else, and France was much more developed economically. Was French or German agriculture dominated by the Rhine? Was it vital to the economy of the entire area from Bordeaux to Berlin? Combine that with the population + feudalism argument from above, and you get the reason France and Germany have been distinct since Rome.

Having your best-developed lands and heart of your power lie at one end of your empire while there's a long tail stretching outward from it is only possible if that tail is very sparsely populated (so, like the Russian Empire). Say what you will about Germany, but it wasn't Siberia-levels of underpopulated, and it's got locals who really don't appreciate being ruled by snail-fuckers from Paris. France may be well-developed, but it wasn't so well-developed and populous that it could dominate everything in sight.

Spoiler: Response 4

Is Iberia divided into three states? Last I checked Andorra was more a speck of shit on France's arse than a real state.
That thing is more a creation of feudal custom than anything else. It's also harmless and attacking it is an attack on its co-leader, the French king.

Leaving aside their brief union, Portugal for the longest time has had big backers who wouldn't appreciate if Castile touched their little buddy: at times France, at times England. As for how it formed? Westernmost county of the Reconquista grows southward just everyone else, then maintains itself in a stable situation until it's suddenly part of Spain. Over the good few decades that it's part of Spain, it finds itself being economically marginalized and its political power being increasingly taken up by the Spanish court, for which it rebels. At this point, Spain is already in several major wars and in decline, so it sods off and doesn't try anything like that again.
Thus, the old order is reaffirmed.

Well, here's the fun bit: Warring States is a time of warring states: fast, frantic and all about getting on top of the pile. Peacetime is more or less the opposite: quiet, stable, and about maintaining the status quo and angling for advantages against your enemies for the next war.

Yes, I get that geography is not the only force in human life! But it severely affects it, especially when order and stability are cast aside in a mad rush to the top.

If you can manage the division of China without setting your PoD before the Zhou in order to remove the Mandate of Heaven as a concept, go ahead.
Considering that the Han dynasty ruled a grand empire with tribute flowing in all quarters and represented a height as yet unmatched in history, I think the various faction leaders would have inevitably wanted to regain the entire thing at some point (if only so they could swim Scrooge McDuck-style in the pool of tax cash a united China would bring to their pocket).

Also, your idea of "just have 3 Kingdoms last forever" requires that every kingdom be kept from gaining advantage over their rivals for a long time, much longer than typically happened in China. Things would have to be much more stable than they were iRL, and I think that a lot of the instability of divided China comes down to the fact that the land is very populous and flat. You can't use mountains to maintain a border (Pyrenees for Spain-France, Alps for Italy) because they don't exist; you can't use rivers to maintain a border (Danube+Rhine for Rome) because they're too densely farmed to be useful as frontier markers.

The longest periods of disunity were the Late Zhou era (722 - 221 BC) and the Northern and Southern Dynasties period (~380s - 589 AD), and both of these were characterized by constant and accelerating flux. All of them are right next to each other, they have few naturally defensible landmarks, and they have large populations with high degrees of centralization, which means large armies. They fight constantly, so inevitably one or two come out of the pack eventually.

This all discounts the relatively short Three Kingdoms period and Five Dynasties period and the myriad of quick power struggles right after the fall of a dynasty, where sometimes dozens of warlords set themselves up and get offed in rapid succession.

They're not a unique property of the West... they're just something the Chinese state would invariably be displeased with to the point of seeking their destruction.

Adventurers -- as I said, they aren't going to be rewarded for their behavior.
For example, see this video, around the 6:35 mark. Ignore the speculation about Roman POWs fighting the Chinese at Zhizhi. Focus on what the expected consequences were for just sending out the army to crush the remnants of an enemy without orders from above.

"You need orders from above" is the default mentality of the Chinese bureaucracy throughout history.
Maybe they'll take the territory as a happy accident, but they'll sure as shit execute the adventurer.

Spoiler: Response 5

What is a non-Chinese idea is that these people should be allowed alive anywhere in your sphere of influence. The idea that dissent should be tolerated in this manner itself comes after the Reformation in Europe, when it's accepted that religious unity is no longer possible and people shouldn't even try for it anymore.

The British allowed places like Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, etc, to be set up because they wanted these folks gone with as little fuss as possible, and in the former two cases because the founders were friends of the king at the time.

The Chinese take on Massachusetts would be the following: these guys are a splinter faction of a rather large religious faction in whom membership is treason (since not being CoE is tantamount to treason to the king, its leader). Why should these guys be given a colony? Why are we giving these guys the impression that we'll give them anything for the simple act of dissenting? Better yet, why should these guys be allowed to call upon the king's protection from other nations seeking their land? Sure is a lot of effort to go to for protecting traitors. Moreover, it requires money to be siphoned out of someone's budget and into the protection of these people; sure, whoever gets to head that committee is going to be a very wealthy embezzler, but the top ministers who have to oversee the creation of this won't!

Flash forward to 1688, by which time their mainland cousins have killed a king and reduced the next two kings to puppets of their will. They would treat the idea of allowing them to continue on living as an affront to common sense. But then, China never had to deal with being that splintered on the religious level. Either way, they'd treat their unmolested existence as a mortal threat to social stability, since it sets the view that the central authority can be flouted and you can still nuzzle up to it for cash and protection in the end.

Spoiler: Response 6

Conquer the colony, set up outpost with military commander, reiterate to the locals who's boss... and then sit back and watch the tax/tribute come in.

And again, I believe that, for various reasons, there will be little colonization of that sort, at least if the date for discovery is set back during the 200s-400s AD. A
After all, the Han haven't yet even finished with their own backyard; by the time they can consider that sort of overseas colonization, the Americans would have recovered and begun reforming the old empires, this time with Chinese horses. China doesn't need overseas colonies to provide it the resources of the land if it can just get the locals to do it for them under the pretext of showing that they know their rightful position in the earthly hierarchy.

If it's within a few centuries of Columbus coming onto the scene, then it's much more likely to go the way you see it.​

There will be lots of Chinese emigration into established cities, though.
And yes, if you want your colonies to be both big (ie. not kongsi) and not attacked by their own motherland, you need the state's approval.

Also, one thing to point out: Taiwan is a.) small, and b.) very near by. If a rebellion pops up, it can be responded to very quickly. Not so across the Pacific. And the Imperial Chinese government does not like the idea of there being territories which it would be hard to immediately contest if they were to break away. If they were to declare independence, that would be a signal for local tributaries to do the same, and if they were to proclaim themselves a rival dynasty with claim to the Mandate of Heaven, that's a grave threat which cannot go unanswered. For Great Britain, the Americans declaring an independent republic wasn't a huge threat to the monarchy's legitimacy given the Parliament system and the unquestioned supremacy of the pro-Parliament Whig Party's politics since the Hanoverians took over -- as long as it's over there and not over here, it's only as bad as losing a colony. Not so in China, where the ideology holds that the government is illegitimate if too much shit starts turning south. Compared to that, maintaining the natives as tributaries with a small Chinese emigrant population just seems like the safer bet. Chinese foreign politics always functioned on the idea that China is supposed to be top dog in the universe and that everyone else is either paying China tribute, rebelling against China and in need of being put in their place, or hasn't heard of China's greatness and needs to be enlightened as to their true place in the universe.

Ultimately, I think the government will just be too scared of the political dangers to consider anything beyond the usual scheme of gunboat diplomacy and letting the locals do the work of providing the government with gold. It certainly wasn't very forward-thinking IOTL, so I don't think it'll be that much bolder if it knew more about the wider world. At the very least, the emperor will consider the fact that he has much less control over his ministers overseas than at home to be a major liability, and one which they'll probably take to rebel and create challengers to his authority.

You want to do something big in Imperial China, you do it through the bureaucracy.
And the bureaucracy is: a.) corrupt, and b.) conservative.
It's as they say: "Around here, we do everything through the anus, even dentistry."

Spoiler: Response 7

Rogue factions -- will be treated as threats and immediately have fleets sent after them to destroy them.

Also, what rogue factions can you identify as having created colonies in European history?​

Rogue conquerors -- will be treated as traitors, as standard per Chinese law.
Religious runaways -- if they're persecuted enough to want to leave, they'll be persecuted enough to be told to get lost and suck a dick.

Imperial China always had a strong system of internal borders much like Russia, wherein peasants had to have the permission of their landlord to move, as well as ID for the bureaucracy to verify. Freedom of movement didn't exist out in the provinces.​

Also, as mentioned, a colony requires a lot more than just a charter, a boat and some people. It needs to get put to the attention of the king, the favor of the king, and then more paperwork to arrange for it. "Go off and fend for yourself" is never an option; even the Plymouth Pilgrims had to get a land grant from the Plymouth Company, founded by King James I, to be allowed to settle there. If they were to have tried, they'd have been evicted as squatters on company interests.​

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In China, you can't just be the friend of the emperor like William Penn or Lord Baltimore and still be a persecuted heretic; you're either not persecuted or you're not a heretic. So you have to get an audience with him to get his favor for it, because he is the only person who is legally capable of signing off on this big of a project. You now have to get noticed, so you go to the local magistrate and ask him to pass along a note or write to any of your friends who happens to be in high places. If the latter, great! If not, expect to have to pay, because Chinese lower bureaucracy is always understaffed, underpaid and have far too many opportunities for corruption. But let's say you've paid your way into being noticed. The magistrate's / your friend's superiors have noticed you, and they will expect the same cut of money as well; they themselves may not be badly paid, they grew up in that sort of workplace culture and keep old habits -- besides, they'd be a fool not to when everyone else is doing it.​

Rinse and repeat process, and expect to do that a lot because appointments come and go and many people, often much richer people, want the emperor's attention for something or other. Okay, you've secured an audience, and let's just say you get his favor because if you don't there's no fucking point to this.​

So now he turns you over to the relevant ministers, and boy are there a lot of ministers! Food, supplies, diplomatic status, making the other colonies aware of this... it's a lot of people responsible for something which requires a budget... which naturally means you have to pay off every single goddamn one of them! Have fun doing that, I think I'd rather try my luck on the docks and get shanghaied into a voyage out far away; certainly beats trying to leave any other way! Or maybe you become a filthy merchant --- booo! --- and emigrate out into the existing colonies, where they'll gladly take your sorry ass.​

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In case you think I'm overblowing the levels of corruption, check out something called The Book of Swindles, which was a how-to book on the most common types of swindles in Ming China. Or how about the Ming-era satires Golden Lotus and Water Margin, both of which deal with contemporary corruption. Or how about Heshen, the guy who embezzled nearly the entire treasury under Qianlong! Or how about the contents of this paper, which deals with Ming and Qing era corruption?​

Or how about the account of Nikolai Przhewalski on his travels to China? If you can stomach the racism and the way he casually attributes everything he despises about them to their race, you'll observe that the stuff he's describing is true.​

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Half the reason the Imperial Chinese bureaucracy is so thoroughly and unyieldingly entrenched in people's lives is because not being so would lessen its own power and ability to suck people dry in bribes.​

Even in Europe, there were states which refused to let such things happen. In fact, Britain itself was rather unique for allowing colonies to determine their own religion, and it was one of the few which didn't meddle too much in local politics; in fact, that's what did it in, as the colonials had gotten so used to this wretched coddling that they rebelled at the first exertion of London's power, after the Seven Years' War. In France, the kings barred the Huguenots from making any colonies, as they wished to create sound colonies without split loyalties, and the Spanish actively persecuted non-Catholics who tried to set up shop next to or in their colonies. They also did a lot of backseat driving, with every major decision of local government having to be approved by Madrid and the greedy embezzlers bureaucrats there.

What is required for what you describe to implemented requires that:
1. The Chinese bureaucracy isn't omnipresent in anything that requires money or paperwork. Its default stance is "But do you have authorization for that? Don't worry, your request will get back to you in six months... but I could speed it along in exchange for some $$$."
2. The existing Chinese tributary system is reworked. Historically, the Han people thoroughly colonized fertile areas adjacent to their homeland and left token populations everywhere else. Without a rework, I don't see how that'll change.

Spoiler: Response 8

For sure, except I think that the Chinese will do what the Chinese did with Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Korea, Philippines: barge in, tell the locals to pay up or else, and then establish trade with them. Thereafter, a local community of Chinese merchants arises like in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. Meanwhile, local rulers maintain the tributary relationship. After all, even if Siam and the Philippines had large and wealthy Chinese minorities, they weren't dominated by them like Singapore was; the Chinese were simply integrated into the local hierarchy.

If the Buddhists decide to arrive and proselytize, they will. They're actually rather good at syncretizing with barbarian traditions (look at their efforts with Mongols, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese and Siamese). But they won't be creating Spanish missions for the purpose of conversion: they don't do it that way, and they're not going to get any funding out of the state (unless it's under a Buddhist dynasty) because Buddhists are ideologically sketchy at best and prone to creating cults the state definitely doesn't approve of.

Basic patterns hold, but they are affected by different details in every culture. In China, the bureaucracy is a ponderous slug stymieing everything that requires it.

Don't get me wrong -- it works, and China couldn't run as the only centralized state apart from Rome in the ancient and medieval world without it -- but it comes with certain drawbacks when the oversight is non-existent, the pay is shitty, and the ideology conservative.

Okay, thanks for the informative post. I don't really have time to address and agree to every point, but you have changed my mind on most of my arguments.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Rogue factions -- won't be tolerated.
Cortezes -- won't be tolerated.

The problem is that you're assuming that the central state has the ability to not tolerate those groups. Crossing the Pacific with a strong force that can overthrow a "Cortez" who sets himself up as a local king or emperor or a pretender who flees overseas is a decidedly non-trivial proposition, however much the central government might like to do it, even when the imperial government is at its height. And, of course, knowing that the central government isn't going to tolerate any of them removes all incentives for adventurers and the like to even pretend to submit to the central government the way that Cortez did. They'll just outright be carving out their own kingdoms with no reference at all to the imperial state itself, something like certain rebels and adventurers actually did in the course of Chinese history, meaning that putting down those groups will require full-scale military campaigns.

And then, of course, you have to consider what happens in times of turmoil when the central government is collapsing and can barely control China itself; given your scenario of a Han Dynasty-era contact, think of what would happen during the Yellow Turban rebellion (or equivalent), or the descent into the Three Kingdoms era. With conflict raging over control of China proper, the imperial government (if it even exists) would have little or no ability to project power across the Pacific to the Americas. Any existing trade outposts or settlements would be left to fend for themselves, and certainly any adventurers or rogues who decided that now was the time to go for gold and glory would find little barrier from a collapsing regime.

 

[Reggieperrin]

The problem is that you're assuming that the central state has the ability to not tolerate those groups. Crossing the Pacific with a strong force that can overthrow a "Cortez" who sets himself up as a local king or emperor or a pretender who flees overseas is a decidedly non-trivial proposition, however much the central government might like to do it, even when the imperial government is at its height.

It’s not too much of a stretch to assume that a bureaucratic state has more ability to control dissenting groups than the somewhat chaotic Spanish state did. If any significant overseas expedition has people in leadership positions with an explicit mandate to cut the throats of anyone showing dangerous levels of political initiative then it narrows the field somewhat.

The other side of the coin is - just how long does the elephant remember? Cortez IIRC pulled all kinds of shit and got away with it (as he expected) because he presented the big man back home with mountains of treasure and many square feet of map. Open to question how many of those stunts he would have pulled if he was 100% sure that government’s start, middle and end point woukd be “you’re a filthy rebel fit only for execution by torture. Doesn’t matter how much treasure or land you have conquered, rebels must die, as must anyone who deals with them or is related to them by blood or marriage, btw this sack of heads is all thats left of your family.“
On the other hand, if the imperial bureaucracy is really that corrupt, and there are literal mountains of silver sitting in the americas then it would be tempting for someone who’s been really naughty and needs a really big bribe to head out that way.