You're not reading what I'm saying:
"Obviously, it wasn't just the Spaniards and Portuguese who did the fighting, but the same would have happened in China."
Yes, deposing the king of an empire 20,000 kilometres away from you in a geographical area protected by straits and islands very hard to navigate with 16th century technology and logistics is not impressive at all. I want to see Ming China pulling that off.
Correct me if I'm misreading the context here but you're citing the Spanish temporarily disrupting a monarchy already teetering on the edge due to a massive invasion by an aggressive neighboring regional power as proof that the Spanish could do the same to China, an empire many times larger than Cambodia.
I'm not denying that the overthrow was unusual but it's not as impressive as claiming that the whole thing happened in a vacuum. And saying "Obviously it wasn't just the Spanish and Portuguese who did the fighting" is a bit of an understatement when comparing tens and even a hundred thousand soldiers to a couple hundred.
Cambodia were not an empire by this point and that particular kingdom had been battered from warfare and domination by foreign powers. It's more telling of the state of Cambodia that a few hundred Spanish troops could overthrow their king than of the capabilities of the Spanish, who, while impressive during the era, were up against a horrifically weakened nation about to in the midst of their self-proclaimed Dark Ages.
Whether the Ming would or could do the same is beside the matter; I'm not questioning the Ming or your estimates of them, I'm questioning how you're rating the Spanish.
Wait, are you comparing the Ming Empire to those regions or not? I'm saying that the Spanish being occupied elsewhere isn't the only reason they couldn't have gone after China. You're implying I'm comparing the Ming with the Solomon Islands or the New World and also saying the Spanish were too busy elsewhere to conquer someone but not specifying whom. I'm just a bit confused about what's being argued here.How? To give you an example the Spanish didn't press into the lower Antilles, the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest nor into Canada, or even Greenland where the Vikings had previously landed. They also didn't conquer the Solomon Islands after an exploratory expedition there went badly. Are the natives of these territories now comparable to Ming China? The explanation instead lies in that the Spanish were occupied with other things, like quelling revolts and fighting other European rivals both at home and abroad in their colonies.
1. Portuguese invasion? I'd love to see a source refer to the Portuguese warships that invaded Japan in the 16th century.I'm not misrepresenting anything. The Mongols, invading from a country that is a direct neighbour of Japan, were incapable of consolidating anything in Japan. Meanwhile the Portuguese invading from 20,000 km. away, traversing the difficult waters of the Indian Ocean that also weren't charted by Europeans before, established a colonial post in Nagasaki that endured for a century where they traded slaves and many other goods and from which they were able to make alliances, especially with Oda Nobunaga, spread their culture and revolutionise the warfare of the locals. The fact that the Mongols were incapable of doing anything remotely similar in Japan speaks a lot against them.
2.We're comparing the Mongol Empire, a nation with no naval tradition to speak of, intent on conquering as much of the world as possible, trying to cross a storm-prone sea, failing to secure their goals in Japan (total conquest) in the 13th century with Portugal, a coastal kingdom with centuries of experience on the seas and exploration, intent on establishing trade routes, making peaceful contact with Japan in the 16th century and having that comparison speak against the Mongol Empire, which spanned the Yellow and Black Seas, crushed every great empire of Asia, and encroached on Europe and Egypt within two hundred years of being a group of scattered tribes (before returning to that state rather quickly).
Their goals were different from the onset so to compare the results of a failed military expedition to a century of trade relations is a bit like asking why the French failed to conquer Russia when the Eastern Roman Empire did (by trading and getting their imperial bloodline into the Russian monarchy, since apparently that counts as an invasion in some standard).
The Portuguese and Spanish accomplished great feats, I'll not deny that, but marking the Portuguese trade relation with Japan as a colonial invasion and the Spanish intervention in wartorn Cambodia as evidence that Ming China would fall to the Spanish seem to be leaps in logic that don't account for the things you've omitted in this thread.