The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [29]
The Chinese ships were constructed with special woods, intricate joints, sophisticated waterproofing techniques, and an adjustable centerboard keel. The treasure ships had large, luxurious cabins, silk sails, and windowed halls. All were constructed on dry docks in Nanjing, the world’s largest and most advanced shipbuilding port. In the three years after 1405, 1,681 ships were built or refitted at Nanjing. Nothing remotely comparable could have happened in Europe at the time.1
Size mattered. These massive fleets were meant to “shock and awe” the inhabitants of the surrounding area, making clear the power and reach of the Ming dynasty. On his seven voyages between 1405 and 1433, Zheng traveled widely through the waters of the Indian Ocean and around Southeast Asia. He gave gifts to the natives and accepted tributes. When encountering opposition, he did not hesitate to use military might. On one voyage, he brought back a captured Sumatran pirate; on another, a rebellious chief from Ceylon. He returned from all of them with flowers, fruits, precious stones, and exotic animals, including giraffes and zebras for the imperial zoo.
But Zheng’s story ends oddly. By the 1430s, a new emperor had come to power. He abruptly ended the imperial expeditions and turned his back on trade and exploration. Some officials tried to keep the tradition going, but to no avail. In 1500, the court decreed that anyone who built a ship with more than two masts (the size required to go any distance at sea) would be executed. In 1525, coastal authorities were ordered to destroy any oceangoing vessels they encountered and throw the owners in prison. In 1551, it became a crime to go to sea on a multimast ship for any purpose. When the Qing dynasty came to power in 1644, it continued this basic policy, but it had less faith in decrees: instead, it simply scorched a 700-mile-long strip of China’s southern coast, rendering it uninhabitable. These measures had the desired effect: China’s shipping industry collapsed. In the decades after Zheng’s last voyage, dozens of Western explorers traveled to the waters around India and China. But it took three hundred years for a Chinese vessel to make its way to Europe—on a visit to London for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
What explains this remarkable turnaround? The Chinese elite was divided over the country’s outward approach, and Beijing’s new rulers considered the naval expeditions failures. They were extremely expensive, forced higher taxes on an already strained population, and provided very little return. Trade had flourished as a result of some of these contacts, but most of it had benefited only traders and pirates. In addition, by the mid-fifteenth century, Mongols and other raiders were threatening the empire’s frontiers, demanding attention and consuming resources. Seafaring seemed like a costly distraction.
It was a fateful decision. Just as China chose to turn away from the outside world, Europe was venturing abroad, and it was Europe’s naval expeditions that allowed it to energize itself and spread its power and influence across the globe. If China had kept its navy afloat, would the course of modern history have been different? Probably not. China’s decision to turn inward was not simply one bad strategic call. It was an expression of a civilization’s stagnation. Behind the decision to end the expeditions lay the whole complex of reasons why China* and most of the non-Western world lagged behind the Western world for so many centuries. And lag they did. For hundreds of years