China, the World System and Brazilian dystopia

By Fábio Reis Vianna for the Saker Blog When Admiral Cheng Ho ordered the retreat of his naval fleet around the year 1424, he left, in the words of the anthropologist Abu-Lughod, “a huge power vacuum”. The first great Chinese expansionist project, started during the Ming Dynasty, was prematurely interrupted there. After impressive naval expeditions that reached territories as far away as the Indian Ocean and the coast of Africa,