Zheng He lived in the reigns of five Ming emperors, four of whom had shilu composed for their reigns. Also called "veritable records" the shilu of the period. are the highly formalized process of official historiography, presented to or issud by the emperor in his daily court sessions. After the fall of the dynasty, the shilu served as the primary sources for the official bistory compiled by the successor dynasty, and then they were usually destroyed. Since the Mingshi, the Qing-compiled official history of the Ming Dynasty, was issued only in 1739, long after the fall of the dynasty, copies of the shilu of the Ming period  survived down to the present.

For example the Taizong Shilu compiled after Emperor Yongle's death includes the period of Emperor Jianwen's reign, and since the first six voyages of Zheng Hi took place under Emperor Yongle, this is the richest source of Zheng He material. The Renzong Shilu of the brief Hongxi reign and the Xuan­zong Shilu covering the Xuande reign also have notices relating to Zheng He.

The tribute system during the Ming, started when Ashikaga Takauji was made "king" of Japan for this purpose. And next, also made possible by earlier maritime advances, 1405-33 Zheng He (1371-1433)  asserted Chinese power untill 1433. The first Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, rose from the ranks of the White Lotus (Maitreya) inspired "Red Turban" rebellion. A much later White Lotus (Maitreya) the 'Boxer' Rebellion (against  European influence), from November 1899 to September 7, 1901, is frequently mentioned in the propaganda of the current, Chines regime. Especially since the 1999 presumed American 'air attack' deemed "part of a greater plot, such as  distracting China 's attention from the economic development and causing China to be bogged down in upheavals or saddled with the heavy burden of warfare." (People's Daily editorial appeared on the first page of the newspaper on May 19, 1999).

Also Zheng He's biography states that Qing dynasty emperor Yongle "wanted to display his soldiers in strange lands in order to make manifest the wealth and power of the Middle Kingdom." In order to carry out this mission Zheng He's fleet "went in succession to the various foreign countries, proclaiming the edicts of the Son of Heaven and giving gifts to their rulers and chieftains. Those who did not submit were pacified by force." However this deserves further investigation thus, for the first time ever (sociologyesoscience.com web exclusive): From Red Turban to Ming Tax collecting.

The Ming Empire rose from (a much earlier) White Lotus (Maitreya) inspired, in this case "Red Turban" rebellion against the Yuan Dynasty and its 'foreign Mongol,' elite. In fact the Ming derived their name from the White Lotus' messianic figures of "Big and Little Ming Wang" (Brilliant Kings), who were thought to have been sent by Maitreya to the world to restore order. Although no direct relationship has been established, it is not difficult to see a paralell legend among the Shi'ite in Iran of some kind of 'future Maitreya' that will restore order..).

Where the ships used by the Ming 'navy' the larger ships built for the Zheng He voyages were first built in what now would be part of Indonesia. By the time of the Ming, these were often pirate ships.

While the true nature of whatever thalassocracy Majapahit wielded has been much debated, under Rajasanagara (Hayam Wuruk, ruled 1350-89), during whose reign the Ming Dynasty came to power, the Javanese kingdom was certainly able to exert military power at least in southern Sumatra. The proclamation of the Ming Dynasty in early 1368 coincided with an impressive display of Chinese naval power, since troops transported by sea established Ming authority over the southern coast of China at the same time as the Ming main army marched overland to capture the Yuan capital. A new dynasty reigning at Nanjing might well be expected to revive traditional maritime connections between a regime based in south China and southeast Asia. In reality Emperor Hongwu from the beginning based his revival of the tribute system on his understanding of ancient precedents, and he considered the more recent precedents of the Yuan and Southern Song undesirable. He maintained a public posture of indifference to wealth derived from overseas trade, and he was very suspicious of the political and social consequences that might accompany oceangoing commerce. He welcomed tribute missions, but only from truly independent states. He allowed trade to take place only under official auspices and only when tribute was presented. He prohibited private trading between Chinese and "barbarians" and prohibited Chinese from sailing overseas. He repeated his prohibitions against foreign trade and overseas travel frequently, and in an edict of 1394 he admitted that, because he had prohibited even tribute missions from most countries, Chinese merchants were sailing overseas to buy spices and aromatics. His solution was that they should use Chinese substitutes. These prohibitions had the effect of turning the already numerous (even if the numbers are difficult to estimate) Chinese maritime population into pirates and smugglers, since they could not be expected to give up their livelihood. Hence Zheng He found Palembang under the control of a Chinese pirate fleet on his first voyage, and the Chinese sources describe "pirates" -certainly Chinese pirates-preying heavily on shipping in other areas.

Since Hongwu had prohibited overseas commerce, he was also concerned that tribute missions not become a mere cover for trade, and therefore he looked for proof that entities sending tribute missions were in fact independent countries. By 10S2 Jambi rather than Palembang had become the capital of the state the Chinese still called Shri Vijaya (Sanfoqi), even though trade was conducted in both harbors and a dynasty still ruled Palembang in a subordinate status. The founding of the Ming raised great hopes for the revival of trade with China , and from 1371 to 1377 both harbors sent missions to China. In 1374 a mission came from Palembang, whose ruler called himself both king of Sanfoqi and maharaja (transcribed as manada in Chinese) of Palembang (here called Baolinbang); Hongwu formally invested this unnamed person as king and granted him a calendar and other gifts. In 1377 Hongwu approved the request of the ruler of Jambi (also called Malayu or Malayu-Jambi) for investiture as ruler of Sanfoqi. Java protested that Sanfoqi was a dependency of Java and waylaid and murdered the Chinese embassy sent to confer this investiture. The events of 1377, sometimes described as a Javanese conquest of southern Sumatra , seem in fact to have been more like a firm reassertion of a suzerainty established earlier.

Hongwu, furious that he had been deceived, cut off relations with Sanfoqi for twenty years. In 1380, when he executed his chancellor Hu Weiyong and massacred hundreds of high officers and their families whom he accused of involvement in Hu's crimes, intrigues with foreigners and illicit trade in connection with the tribute missions were a major element in the accusations. Foreign rulers, he felt, often conspired with merchants to turn tribute missions into occasions for trade, and for that reason tribute missions from foreign countries were often rejected. Chinese missions to Southeast Asia during 1377-97 went only to countries that could be reached by land.

Sometime between 1377 and 1397, probably in 1391-92, Java expelled the now subordinate but still hereditary ruler of Palembang from his capital, compelling him to begin the journey that transformed him into the founder of Malacca. Trade unauthorized by Ming China continued to sail to and from Palembang, and in 1397 the old emperor sent an angry letter by way of Thailand to Java, ordering the Majapahit king to order the Palembang ruler to mend his ways. Instead, Java appointed a "small chief" to manage affairs in Palembang, where things were rapidly slipping out of Javanese control partly because of the influx of Chinese merchants. "At this time"-the Mingshi says-"Java had already overthrown Shri Vijaya (Sanfoqi) and annexed the country, changing its name to Old Harbor Uiugang). But after the demise of Shri Vijaya, there was great disorder in the country, and Java also was not able to hold on to all of this territory. Chinese people residing there temporarily more and more often came to live there permanently. There was Liang Daoming, originally of Nanhai District in Gllangdong, who had lived in this country for a long time. Several thousand families of soldiers and people from Fujian and Guangdong , who had sailed across the sea and joined him, selected Liang Daoming as their leader." This was taking place while China was distracted with the civil war that followed Hongwu's death. By the beginning of the Yongle reign, Palembang had become a southeast Asian city ruled by an overseas Chinese community drawn from the Chinese maritime population whose oceangoing trade Yongle's father had tried to prohibit.

In 1405 Yongle sent an official, a native of the same county as Liang Daoming, to summon the latter to court. Liang Damning came to court, presented tribute in local products, received imperial gifts, and returned. In 1406 Chen Zuyi, described as a "headman" (toumu) of the Old Harbor and "also" (like Liang Daoming) originally a native of Guangdong , sent his son to court with tribute; Liang Daoming sent a nephew. "Even though Chen Zuyi had sent tribute to court, he committed piracy on the high seas, and tribute missions going to and fro suffered from this." Returning from his first voyage in 1407, Zheng He defeated and captured Chen Zuyi. Zheng He had been warned about Chen Zuyi's piracy by Shi Jinqing, another member of the Chinese community at Palembang, whom the Ming court then appointed as its chief. Liang Daoming's fate is unknown.

Palembang's previous hereditary ruler Paramesvara, alias Iskandar Shah, by then had ended his wanderings and had established himself as ruler at Malacca. His career consisted of three years in Palembang (1388-91), six years in Singapore (1391-97), two years en route to Malacca (1397-99), and fourteen years as ruler in Malacca (1399-1413), making up the full twenty-five years of rule ascribed to him by the Malay sources. Originally at Malacca he was subject to Thailand, with an annual tribute of 40 Chinese ounces, or liang, of gold, an item confirmed by both the Mingshi and Ma Huan. In 1404 the eunuch Yin Qing was sent as envoy to his land, and Paramesvara (Bailimisula), "very happy" at this, promptly sent back an embassy with tribute in local products. His reward the following year, in which Zheng He commenced his first voyage, was Ming investiture as king of Malacca. Malacca collaborated enthusiastically with the treasure voyages: Ming China, after all, had recognized their royal status; that, plus Zheng He's fleet, protected Malacca against any reassertion of Thai overlordship. Paramesvara's death in 1413 was reported to the Ming emperor in 1414.

seen as for the book 1491“The Island of the Seven Cities” by Paul Chiasson 2006, David W. MacKenna, President and General Manager of Kelly Rock Limited, the company, which did the geologic work and road building on Kelly's Mountain featuring in the above book, wrote that:
The clearings, which Paul Chassion claimed in the book were Chinese courtyards, in reality are the drill locations of our drill holes. The cleared areas are the spaces  cleared for the drill set up. The roads, which Mr.Chiasson claimed were made by the Chinese and associated with his so-called "courtyards any indication that others had been there before us (except the roads, fire breaks, around the "burned  areas"). From the location of the fires NW to the proposed quarry site, there was no evidence to suggest to us that any man made features were on the mountain.

Mr. Chiasson states in his book that he acquired the aerial photography for the area from 1929 up until the present and carefully examined these to discover information on the Cape Dauphin site. He uses some of these aerial photos in his book.

A review of the aerial photography of this location across the various years will assist in a proper understanding of what actually exists on the mountain at Cape Dauphin. The early aerial photos clearly show an area of relatively even aged softwood forest interspersed by upland bogs (both treed and open), small pothole lakes or ponds, granite knolls and rocky barrens. Steep ravines, which flow both toward the Bras d’Or Lakes on one side and the St. Ann’s Bay on the other, cut deeply into the edges of this forest. It is flanked by the mixed and hardwood stands on the steep side slopes of the mountain.

Photo a – Close up of partial aerial photo A3472-79 from 1931. Shows site where the Book The Island of Seven Cities claims there is the remains of a city wall and an ancient Chinese town site. The photo does not indicate any such evidence exists. S-turn in the brook is used as a reference point. This S-turn is just below the site of the alleged city ruins and will be reference in additional photos. Photo b – Full view of aerial photo A3472-79 from 1931 flight line series. No evidence of roads or city wall. Photo c – Full view of aerial photo A3471-16 from 1931 flight line year. This is the area on the western side of the Cape Dauphin site and referenced in the book The Island of Seven Cities to show alleged ancient roads and remains of ancient Chinese villages. Lynn Lake is seen in the photo and is used as a reference point. The white colored areas are areas of exposed weathered bedrock. The photo does not indicate any evidence of roads or remains of ancient village courtyards. Photo d - Close up of portion of aerial photo A3471-16 showing the area south and south west of Lynn Lake where the reported roads and Chinese village courtyards are alleged to exist. There is no evidence of either seen in the photo.

A review of the Fernow Report of 1912 (Forest Conditions of Nova Scotia by B. E. Fernow), published by the Federal Government Commission of Conservation, Canada, indicates the entire mountain range of Kelly’s Mountain including the area of Cape Dauphin as being classified (in 1910) as young regenerating second growth softwood forest. It is most likely that this forest regenerated after major fires of the 1880’s of which there are newspaper accounts. The importance of this is that we would not expect to find any major logging roads in this area and a review of the earliest aerial photos and maps do not indicate any roads on the mountain at Cape Dauphin. The nearest road on the Kelly’s Mountain range is an old settlement road passing over the mountain from Kelly’s Cove over to the Oyster Pond area on the Englishtown side and would be best described as a cart track. This road / track is a few kilometers southwest of the area that Mr. Chiasson deals with in his book. The earliest aerial photos also do not indicate any evidences of the outline Mr. Chiasson reports as an abandoned city wall. The feature that Mr. Chiasson reports in his book on page 184 is first seen in the aerial photos of 1953. In fact the aerial photo in his book is from the flight line year of 1953 and not 1929 as he states in his book and media interviews. By comparing the aerial photography of the early years of this site we can definitely state that the feature Mr. Chiasson reports as the ruins of an abandoned city wall came into existence between the flight line year of 1947 (no evidence seen on the early photos) and 1953 when the feature first appears.

The outline shown in the 1953 photo (reference number A13710 – 102) is actually a firebreak or fire line road constructed with bulldozers on July 29, 1952 by Mr. Rindress MacKenzie and Mr. MacAulay of the Nova Scotia Department of Highways to access, surround and contain a forest fire at this Cape Dauphin location. The history of this fire is well documented locally including in the Beaton Institute of the Cape Breton University where newspaper articles of the fire are kept. Journalists and other witnesses of the day reported that the firebreak was constructed in very difficult terrain amid extremely rocky conditions and was built to a width of up to forty feet although it probably averaged about 20 feet or 7 meters, all around the outside edge of the fire to prevent it from spreading. The aerial photo shows the site approximately one year after this forest fire and the width of the firebreak is easily seen in the aerial photos as exposed mineral soil. This is the feature seen in the 1953 aerial photos of this location and pictured in Mr. Chiasson’s book on page 184 and again on page 186. When viewed in stereovision this 1953 flight line shows that the fire killed almost all the standing trees within the bounds of the firebreak surrounding the fire site although small patches were left untouched. The dead trees would eventually fall to the ground and new growth would regenerate on the site.

A second forest fire occurred at this location on July 24, 1968 and we are fortunate to have aerial photos flown the following year on July 10, 1969. Also, we have the fire report prepared by Mr. Reginald Wyer of the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forests, after this fire. The 1969 aerial photo (reference number 68 – NS – A 30205) shows the detail of this new fire on the site. Again firebreaks were constructed with bulldozers around the fire site, which consisted as an area along the western portion of the 1953 fire location and a second spot fire just south of this where wind had caused the fire to jump over the fire lines. The portion of the fire located in the old 1953 fire site burned in young regenerating trees, grasses and shrubs (mentioned as the old burn in the fire report) while the reminder of the fire burned in older trees and brush which can be easily seen as dead and blackened in this photo. Also the 1969 aerial photo shows that an area of the 1953 fire did not regenerate back into trees but had converted to a small rocky barren area on the upper side slope of the site, inhabited mainly by low ground plant species interspersed with scattered young trees where suitable growing conditions could be found, common to fire barren areas. This is the large clearing Mr. Chiasson claims is the old town site in his book and it does not exist in the 1953 or earlier photos. The 1969 photo also shows that a narrow trail was bulldozed westward to reach a small pond the fire fighters used as a water source to set up their fire pumps. This trail does not appear on earlier photos.

On page 258 on his book there are portions of two aerial photos from the 1990’s. On these photos he has made some interpretation of the features to support his theory. The original photos of these flight lines are in color.

In the upper photo what he has labeled as “remains of wall” at the top of photo is the edge of the old 1953 firebreak. The contrasting difference in the forest stand ages highlights the edge effect. Toward the bottom of this photo what he has labeled as “remains of wall” is a portion of the firebreak from the 1968 fire. The labeled “town site “ is the small fire barren on the upper slopes of the site resulting from the 1952 fire.  It is interesting that the light colored area seen in the lower right hand side of the photo in the book has also reverted to a small fire barren after the 1968 fire (this was the portion that had jumped over the first fire lines and noted as a spot fire in the above description of the 1968 fire).  This photo is of the site 41 years after the 1952 fire and 25 years after the 1968 fire. What he casually labels as “road continues” is a view of newly upgraded road construction carried on in 1989.

The lower photo is a most interesting one for a researcher examining the validity of Mr. Chiasson’s book.  It shows road and drill site construction completed in the summer of 1989 and is westward of the area seen in the upper photo. The old 1968 pond from which firefighters set up their pumps can be seen at the edge of each photo on page 258 of his book, just above the road to give orientation to the reader. The squared-in areas the author has drawn are to highlight the small clearings at the end of the branch roads so clearly defined and written about in his text on pages 257 and 259. This is the reported agriculture village west of the city ruins. The section labeled, as “courtyards” is identical to the area on page 260 of his book and is implied as a second village area on page 261 of his text. The reader is lead to believe that the intent of the author, through both text and photos, is to convey the idea of two separate village areas, (the courtyards of page 260 of his book and also the clearings at the ends of the branch roads seen in this photo).

In the summer of 1989, Kelly Rock Limited constructed an access road across the old fire access area and further on out along the mountain. They were proposing to develop a large ocean-side aggregate quarry at the Kelly’s Mountain area. This was one of the roads they constructed to carry on drill testing of the rock quality of the mountain and to carry on various other testing such as ground water well monitoring. Kelly Rock Limited rebuilt the old fire access road to the small fire pond of the 1968 fire, constructed new roads west of the old fire sites and cleared the ground with bulldozers in order for the consulting engineers and other professionals to set up monitoring drill well sites at the locations Mr. Chiasson reports these in his book to be ancient courtyards of a village related to the alleged Chinese city. Details of this construction work along with the archaeological report prepared at the time are contained in the Environmental Assessment Report prepared by Nolan, Davis and Associates, dated November 1989 and registered with the Nova Scotia Government. In my employment with the Province of Nova Scotia I monitored this project. For this article I have consulted with Lynn Baechler MSc.. who was the hydro-geologist on this project. These new roads and drill sites do not appear in the aerial photography until the 1993 flight line.

The aerial photo on page 260 of his book has the photo reference number of A3471 – 24 and is from June 15, 1931 (the reference number can be seen on the photo of page 260 but his reference number listed in his illustrations at the back of the book is A3471 – 15 and most likely is a typo error). This aerial photo and all other photos of this location show a portion of the large granite outcrop that exists on the St. Ann’s Bay side of the Cape Dauphin area. The features, which Mr. Chiasson reports as a second area of courtyards, are the exposed bedrock areas of this location. The actual site is a high granite knoll clearly seen in aerial photos, topographical maps and when one physically walks the site. Some portions of the area have a thin veneer of soil where ground plant species and stunted trees exist but for the most part it is exposed rock surfaces with mosses and lichens. This site is extremely dry and the rock is highly weathered.

In areas other than the granite knolls where the plant species thrive on top of the bedrock, they have formed a thick root mat that inhibits the growth of tree species. This root mat can best be described as very fibrous and is susceptible to disturbances such as construction or fire. If this mat is removed the site usually converts to exposed bedrock or wet areas if contained in a hollow and nature takes a long time to replace the first plant species associations. If there is a reasonable amount of soil remaining, the site will begin to regenerate in a mixture of tree species (usually hardwood and balsam fir) and the various ground plant species. The upland bogs of this area exist on the hollows of the bedrock. These are some of the “agriculture fields” reported in the book.

A special note should be made of the photo on page 260 of his book. A careful comparison of this photo and the lower photo on page 258 indicates that the courtyard and road closest to the small lake are absent in the photo on page 260. This is because the photo on page 260 predates the one on page 258 and predates the construction of 1989.

In his book Mr. Chiasson mentions other physical proof to support his theory and these are contained in a number of photos he has taken.

The rock walls along the roadways reported to be of Chinese origin were actually built by road construction activities of the fire roads and the road upgrading and construction of 1989. The landscape at Cape Dauphin and many other upland sites are considered to be very rocky with plenty of surface granite rocks and boulders. These rocks are pushed to the sides of the roads during construction and maintenance. They form what look to be low loose rubble rock windrows along the edges of these roads.

The feature in the aerial photos reported to be the ruins of an ancient city wall are the result of the bulldozers constructing the firebreaks in 1953 and 1968, by pushing the ground material (which on this location contained a lot of surface rocks and boulders) outward away from the fire to expose the bare mineral soil to prevent the fire from spreading.  These firebreaks with a width of up to forty feet would contain a great deal of surface rocks and boulders. This would result in low windrows of rocks around the outside edge of the firebreak. After a number of years of weathering on the site they may look like low walls to the untrained eye.

The reported platforms and other rocky features are actually rock rubble piles deposited by the glaciers and are found along the length of Kelly’s Mountain for at least 25 kilometers and also at other locations throughout the Cape Breton Highlands. The fire barren site created by the 1968 fire actually has a larger rock rubble pile then the reported town site clearing of his book. Anyone who drives along the Trans Canada Highway as it passes over Kelly’s Mountain a few kilometers west of Cape Dauphin can see similar rocky features along the highway. Much of the rocky material deposited in other locations has the same sharp edge features Mr. Chiasson shows in his photographs and these rocks are not just limited to this site. Geologists can explain how the rocks are split and fractured along bedding planes etc. Archeologists can show that there is no evidence of tooling of these rocks as reported in his book. Archeologists, lead by Mr. David Christianson (Provincial Archeologist) of the Nova Scotia Museum visited the site to examine these rocks in June of 2006. Charcoal reported on site in the book resulted from the known forest fires. While Mr. Cedric Bell may have found charcoal in one of the rock piles this is no indication that a rock pile is the remains of a smelter.

After examining the physical evidences offered in the book The Island of Seven Citieswe can find no evidence at Cape Dauphin to support Mr. Chiasson’s theory. To the contrary, the actual evidences in the aerial photographs and proper understanding of the physical and geological features along with the known and documented history of human activities of the Cape Dauphin site leads us in a totally different direction. Mr. Chiasson states that he was aware of various fires that had burned on the Cape Dauphin mountain site but yet did not attribute any of the site characteristics to these fires. He claims to have walked the roads at Cape Dauphin and even to the ends of the Kelly Rock Limited roads and yet did not recognize 15 year-old road construction nor did he mention the very obvious signs of the monitoring wells on site (plastic and metal well pipes standing in place in these clearings he reports as courtyards of an ancient village). Mr. Chiasson claims to have in his possession the same aerial photography that we reviewed. It is difficult to understand how he could have missed the plain succession of changes as seen in the aerial photography of the Cape Dauphin site. That is, unless he deliberately chose to do so. If this is the case then much else of what is written in this book must be called into question including the supposed experts (Gavin Menzies and Cedric Bell) whom he brought to this site and who are publicly supporting his theory.  This article only deals with one aspect of this book. There are other portions that would fare just the same. While well written, this book adds nothing to the historical record of Cape Breton Island and should be classified as historical fiction and nothing more.

China is only slightly smaller than the United States has however ninety-five percent of its population is concentrated in the eastern one third of its territory. Natural landscapes have a lot to do with this, people tend not to agglomerate in icy mountains or in arid deserts-but the distribution is also a matter of historical geography.

The imperial dimensions of China were indeed reached during the Mongol led "Yuan" Empire, overthrown by Zheng He's Ming, that reached its greatest dimensions during the the Qing (Manchu) reign, which commenced in 1644 and ended in chaos in 1911. The Qing rulers conquered much of Indochina, Myanma, Tibet (Xizang), Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, eastern Siberia, the Korean Peninsula, and the islands of Sakhalin and Taiwan.

But as Ross Terrill already pointed out in his book The New Chinese Empire (2003), not only is modern China the product of empire, its expansionist objectives continue. There is Taiwan, northeast India, and other actual and latent claims; there is also the question of Mongolia, a part of China during Qing times and now experiencing a strong resurgence of Chinese influence, hitherto in the economic arena but potentially in ad­ditional contexts as well.  In offshore waters, China is contesting with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia the ownership of islands whose acquisition would extend Chinese jurisdiction over vast expanses of the South China Sea. In short, China's territorial drive is far from over.

When Japan emerged in the third quarter of the twentieth century as the first economic tiger on the Asian Pacific Rim, buying ever-larger quantities of raw materials from ever-farther sources, it was part of the Ameri­can success story: stability and democracy had enabled a defeated enemy to become the world's second-largest economy. Wealthy Japanese entrepre­neurs bought Western assets ranging from movie studios to golf courses, art works to historic mansions. Australian schoolchildren by the tens of thousands took Japanese language courses as Japanese companies bought Australian commodities by the shipload. But the Japanese economy faltered, and today it is China that is on the rise on the Asian perimeter. From the mines of Australia to the forests of Myanmar and from the natural gas of Malaysia to the oil fields of Brunei, China is gobbling up unprecedented quantities of raw materials. In the process, China's political clout in these regions grows correspondingly. International observers marvel at the skills of a modern generation of Chinese business executives and diplomats who are changing the political as well as the economic climate on the Pacific Rim-and not just in Southeast Asia but in Japan and South Korea as well. Today, for all the residual postwar anger between the two countries, Japan imports more goods from China than from the United States, an almost inconceivable situation just a decade ago. And China has become South.

More to the point is China's role in competition with the United States for influence and power in the western Pacific from Japan to Australia and from the Phil­ippines to Myanmar. The United States has been the long-term stabilizing force, its postwar relationship with Japan fostering democracy there and cre­ating the setting for one of the twentieth century's great economic successes, its military presence in South Korea protecting one of the Pacific Rim's early economic "tigers" while it prospered and advanced toward democratic governance, and its special relationship with Taiwan precluding a Tibet-like rean­nexation by Beijing (and nurturing still another economic tiger). America's military presence in the Philippines until 1991, abandoned when Mount Pi­natobo's giant eruption destroyed its air and sea bases on Luzon Island even as the Philippine Senate was weighing continuation of the United States pres­ence, dissuaded China from a greater aggressiveness in its now-renounced claims to all of the South China Sea. And Washington's close relationship with Singapore has been another part of this geopolitical framework.

In this new century, however, the picture is changing. Late in 2004, President G. W. Bush announced plans to withdraw United States military forces from overseas bases including those in Japan. The Japanese, meanwhile, were bolstering their antimissile capacity in the face of North Korea's nuclear program and rocket tests. United States troops in South Korea were to be partially relocated from the shadow of the DMZ and partially with­drawn, possibly to Guam. Taiwan, its economy in difficulty, was clearly a lower priority. Meanwhile the Chinese, always complaining of the asymmetry between the United States presence in East Asia and the Chinese absence from North America's Pacific Rim, scored a coup when Panama awarded a contract to a Hong Kong company to operate and modernize the ports at both ends of the strategic Panama Canal, recently vacated by the Ameri­cans. And be prepared for other evidence of China's growing presence in this hemisphere. China has recently been forging closer ties with Venezuela as well as Grenada and Dominica, formerly supporters of Taiwan. For China, the Caribbean is full of opportunity.

Listen to Southeast Asians from Thailand to Indonesia today, and you hear an oft-repeated refrain: China is a potential bulwark against an Amer­ica whose actions and motives are troubling. The growing Chinese pres­ence combines economic stimulus with political reassurance. Unburdened by human-rights or environmental concerns, China trades actively and increasingly with Myanmar's military junta, ensuring the generals' secu­rity (raise this issue, and you will get questions about democracy in Saudi Arabia). Talk about North Korea's nuclear threat, and it is clear that fears of an Iraq-style intervention at the Pacific end of the "axis of evil" play into China's hands. China's star on the Pacific periphery is rising, and geopolitical realities are changing.

On the perilous side, there are China's expan­sive past and imperial present, its communist-authoritarian governance, its dreadful human rights record, its demographics (the one-child-only policy is creating a surplus of tens of millions of males), its world's-largest military, its fast-rising nationalism, its growing demand for global raw materials including oil, its unsettled relations with Japan, its designs on Taiwan, and its problematic role with regard to its communist neighbor North Korea with its terrorist history and nuclear ambitions. On the mitigating side, China, unlike the Soviet Union, does not overtly seek to export its communist system or ideology except to SARs and Taiwan, maintains a strictly secular society, shares with the United States a concern over Islamic terrorism, has opened its doors to economic development, has settled some territorial issues with neighbors, and has withdrawn farreaching maritime claims.

During the twentieth century, when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War that repeatedly risked nuclear conflict, Armageddon never happened because this was a struggle between superpowers whose leaderships, ideologically opposed as they were, understood each other relatively well. While the politicians and military strategists were plotting, the cultural doors never closed: American audiences listened to the music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, watched Russian ballet, and read Tolstoy and Pasternak even as the Soviets cheered Van Cliburn, read Hemingway, and lionized American political dissidents. In short, this was an intracultural Cold War, which reduced the threat of calamity. A cold war between China and the United States would involve far less common ground, the first intercultural cold war in which the risk of fatal misunderstanding is incalculably greater than it was during the last.

For example the above 1763 map, on which the book "1421" is based shows North and South America, is obviously a fraud in spite of the fact that it "claims" it is a copy of "another" map made in 1418.....

The map was bought for about $500 from a Shanghai dealer in 2001 by a Chinese collector, Liu Gang. According to the Economist magazine (published in Hong Kong), Mr Liu only became aware of the map's potential significance after he read a book by British author Gavin Menzies. The map is now being tested to check the age of its paper and ink, with the results due to be known in February. The mapmaker's claim that he copied if from a 1418 map, rather than from a more recent one, is clearly a fraud.

But given the fact that the map was created during the time when China wanted to be a colonial power competing with France and England, the map could in fact have been politically motivated.

In the early 18th century China started by incorporating Taiwan and by 1720 made Tibet a protectorate. Britain seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, renaming it New York. France's Louis XIV reorganized New France, following Jacques Marquette's and Louis Joliet's exploration of the Mississippi in 1673. In 1757 the Qianlong emperor restricted Western traders to a district in Canton through the trading season ending in the spring. Traders returned to Macao until early fall. Forbidden to learn Chinese from locals, they had to use  Hong merchants' as linguists, hence, rarely met the literati.

During the 1756-63 crisis precipitated by the English defeat of France in the Seven Years' (said to be the first truly ‘world’-) War, Louis XV even asked  one of his favorite ministers, Henri-Léonard Bertin, how respect for the monarchy might be improved. Bertin replied: “Sire, we must inoculate the French with l'esprit chinois”.  (L. Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident: le commerce à Canton au XVIlle siècle, 3 vols., Paris, 1964, i. 22. 2 In his Essai sur les moeurs, p. 38.)

One could argue that  Europeans were also not always that objective when it came to maps, take for example,  the Mercator world map stild found everywhere today - from world atlases to school walls to airline booking agencies and boardrooms today. If one looks at it in detail one will quickly notice that for example where Scandinavia in reality about a third the size of India, they are accorded the same amount of space on the map. And Greenland appears almost twice the size of China, even though the latter is almost four times the size of the former, and so on.

In fact the actual landmass of the southern hemisphere is exactly twice that of the northern hemisphere. And yet on the Mercator, the landmass of the North occupies two-thirds of the map while the landmass of the South represents only a third!