Anyway I know you are much smarter than someone like that (not that it's too hard to be) but this is why it is disappointing that you are falling for such silly non sense ideas like Chinese not going out to trade because "well nobody else had anything that they wanted



I have a little trouble following your reasoning. Well, the question is – are you smarter than Felipe Armesto (Prof. of Global History, Tufs University) and his "silly ideas"?

This

"Paradoxically, therefore, poverty favored Europeans, whom the paucity of economic opportunities at home compelled to explore for them elsewhere" And this
"..The arabs, the Swahili merchant communities, Persians, Indians, Javanese and other island peoples of the region, and the Japanese all had plenty of commercial opportunities in their home ocean to keep them fully occupied. Indeed, their problem was, if anything shortage of shipping in relation to the scale of demand for interrregional trade" You know, it's crystal clear -t he search for wealth/trade was a crucial factor; the Portuguese expansion was a response to poverty and the need to grow by conquest (well, in fact, it's a little more complex than that).
In fact Portugal took a window of opportunity at the beginning of the 15th century: China, at the time the largest economy of the world, retreated from its projected oceanic expansion, and Catalonia and Venice had neither strategy/innovations to go further.
It seems to me that the first voyagers to China (13-16th century) looked upon the Chinese with reverence/ awe.
Examples:
1 -Marco Polo in the 13th century: "you may take it for a fact that the most precious and costly wares are imported into Khan-balik than into any other city in the world…the volume and value of the imports and the internal trade exceed those of any other city in the world"
2- Fern�o Mendes Pinto, 16th century (previous post)
You should know that the Jesuits were engaged in cultural and religious imperialism on behalf of Catholic Europe, and they often judged the Chinese/Indians/Japanese negatively compared with European values.
Talking about cultural prejudices… for example - he states:
"Chinese architecture is in every way inferior to that of Europe with respect to the style …this trait of theirs makes it impossible for them to appreciate the magnificence of our architecture"

And yet, Mateo Ricci found much to admire in Chinese civilization.
The Diary of Matthew Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century

Printing Press :

Their method of making printed books is quite ingenious. The text is written in ink, with a brush made of very fine hair, on a sheet of paper which is inverted and pasted on a wooden tablet. When the paper has become thoroughly dry, its surface is scraped off quickly and with great skill, until nothing but a fine tissue bearing the characters remains on the wooden tablet. Then, with a steel graver, the workman cuts away the surface following the outlines of the characters until these alone stand out in low relief. From such a block a skilled printer can make copies with incredible speed, turning out as many as fifteen hundred copies in a single day.
Chinese printers are so skilled in engraving these blocks, that no more time is consumed in making one of them than would be required by one of our printers in setting up a form of type and making the necessary corrections.

Their method of printing has one decided advantage, namely, that once these tablets are made, they can be preserved and used for making changes in the text as often as one wishes. Additions and subtractions can also be made as the tablets can be readily patched. Again, with this method, the printer and the author are not obliged to produce herc and now an excessively large edition of a book, but are able to print a book in smaller or larger lots sufficient to meet the demand at the time.

We have derived great benefit from this method of Chinese printing, as v e employ the domestic help in our homes to strike off copies of the books on religious and scientific subjects which we translate into Chinese from the languages in which they were written originally, In truth, the whole method is so simple that one is tempted to try it for himself after once having watched the process.

The simplicity of Chinese printing is what accounts for the exceedingly large numbers of books in circulation here and the ridiculously low prices at which they are sold. Such facts as these would scarcely be believed by one who had not witnessed them.

They have another odd method of reproducing reliefs which have been cut into marble or wood, An epitaph, for example, or a picture set out in low relief on marble or on wood, is covered with a piece of moist paper which in turn is overlayed with several pieces of cloth. Then the entire surface is beaten with a small mallet until all the lineaments of the relief are impressed upon the paper. When the paper dries, ink or some other coloring substance is applied with a light touch, after which only the impression of the relief stands out on the original whiteness of the paper. This method cannot be employed when the relief is shallow; or trade in delicate lines.

Public administration

"Before closing this chapter on Chinese public administration, it would seem to be quite worthwhile recording a few more things in which this people differ from Europeans. To begin with, it seems to be quite remarkable when we stop to consider it, that in a kingdom of almost limitless expanse and innumerable population and abounding in copious supplies of every description, though they have a well-equipped army and navy that could easily conquer the neighbouring nations, neither the King nor his people ever think of waging a war of aggression They are quite content with what they have and are not ambitious of conquest.

In this respect they are much different from the people of Europe, who are frequently discontent with their own governments and covetous of what others enjoy. While the nations of the West seem to be entirely consumed with the idea of supreme domination, they cannot even preserve what their ancestors have bequeathed them, as the Chinese have done through a period of some thousand of years....

Another remarkable fact and quite worthy of note as marking a difference from the West, is that the entire kingdom is administered by the Order of the Learned, commonly known as The Philosophers. The responsibility for the orderly management of the entire realm is wholly and completely committed to their charge and care. The army, both officers and soldiers, hold them in high respect and show them the promptest obedience and deference, and not infrequently the military are disciplined by them as a schoolboy might be punished by his master. Policies of war are formulated and military questions are decided by the Philosophers only, and their advice and counsel has more weight with the King than that of the military leaders. In fact very few of these and only on rare occasions, are admitted to war consultations. Hence it follows that those who aspire to be cultured frown upon war and would prefer the lowest rank in the philosophical order to the highest in the military, realizing that the Philosophers far excel military leaders in the good will and the respect of the people and in opportunities of acquiring wealth.
---

Jesuits, take II:

As Russell -Wood has pointed out,
"The real question lies in the nature of the audience for the Jesuits and other missionaries, because if there were to be any dissemination of European ideas and classical learning or if the Europeans were to be recipients of concepts and philosophies from beyond Europe, the disseminators would for the most part be men of the cloth. In the case of America and Africa, the Portuguese were entering regions where the intellectual tradition and corpus of philosophy were less developed than in the highly sophisticated milieux of India and China with millennial traditions of intellectual and cultural refinement.
They also come into contact with Islam, Budddhism, Hinduism and Confuncionism whose philosophical tenets were all pervasive and guided all aspects of their adherent�s lives. In India, missionaries were exposed to ideas from religious literature in Sanskrit, and Marathi. In China and Japan, they were exposed to other philosophies and the opportunities to disseminate European philosophies were limited…. For the most part, they failed to engage in intellectual exercises and dialogue with the intellectual elites.

The problem I think is in large part in the Chinese mindset


Well, Needham wrote that the philosophy of the Chinese culture was an organic naturalism: "Europeans suffered from schizophrenia of the soul, oscillating forever between the heavenly host on the one side and the "atoms and void" on the other, while the Chinese, wise before their time, worked out an organic theory of the universe which included nature and man, church and state, and all things past, present and to come"