@aphysicist This actually was a debate at the time. China had a huge naval head start, but decided exploratory expeditions were too expensive and left India and the Americas to the Europeans https://t.co/tUEPhBDtbq

Even then, China’s turmoil did not end. The new state embarked on a Soviet-style centrally planned economy in the 1950s, but Mao became impatient with the results by the end of the 1950s and launched the Great Leap Forward to accelerate industrialization. The result was chaos and starvation, as farmers were required to leave the fields and devote t

... See more