The Death of Zheng Ha

By the year 1500, as distrust of outsiders and outside ventures took firm hold in China, it was illegal to have more than two mass on a ship. By 1525, all ocean-going vessels were ordered destroyed by the government. In less than 100 years, the Chinese had gone from the greatest naval power in the world to having no navy to speak of. Ironically, Westerns came to the Far East and saw themselves as superior when only half a century earlier, they would have seen ships and fleets that dwarfed their own.