Flocculencio
Donor
Why do people always think that the Chinese literally knew nothing of the world outside of China.
Their main problem was just that they had no use for Indonesia, not that they didn`t know about it.
They had plenty of use for Indonesia- there were a whole lot of Chinese merchants and planters in the East Indies. Having trade links with a place doesn't automatically mean you're going to go out and conquer it. The trade links were stable, ever now and then a local ruler would swear allegiance to the Son of Heaven (like the Sultan of Malacca did) and everyone was happy with the situation remaining like that.