Was it China That Discovered America?

Zheng He, a Muslim Eunuch working at the Ming Dynasty court of Imperial China had sailed the high seas from the Indian Ocean in 1405 to discover the world. He sailed not once but 6 times. The old map of the world in this write ups was drawn to show the perilous journey of Zheng He. If I remember it right, he was also the one who introduced Islam in Indonesia and even built a masjid where he settled temporarily.

In one of his journey's, he reached as far as the Americas. If this is true, then it superseded Christopher Columbus claim and Europe's pride as the first circumnavigator of the world. The difference though between Columbus' expedition was for commercial purposes while Zheng He's expedition was for diplomacy, where takes back with him royalties from new discovered territories to pay homage to the Emperor of China. Zheng He's expedition took him to the African, Asian and American continents.

This historical assertion of China is being refuted by some European scholars and they even labeled the Chinese drawn map as a copycat of an 18th century map drawn by European.

In the Philippines, historically, the Chinese, as merchants, came and discovered the Philippine archipelago hundred years earlier than Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese working for the Spanish crown, long before it became a republic and granted independence by the US. And many of the earlier Chinese families had decided to stay for good to continue with their business in the Philippines.

But in world history books, the European scholars and historians hijacked the honor that Christopher Columbus was the first man to circumnavigate the world and Magellan discovered the Philippines, even if the Indonesians and the Malay Datus came much earlier, settled and ruled many parts of the present Philippine archipelago. When the Chinese came for commercial purpose, they were dealing with the Malay Datus and Rajahs that ruled over the aboriginal inhabitants of the Philippines.

And those few Chinese families that came and stayed in different parts of the Philippines, through their descendants, now control more or less 60% of the Philippine economy, from banking & finance, commerce and trade, real property, tourism and other industries. In fact, among the Top Ten Richest Families of the Philippines, 8 of them are Chinese Filipinos and only two are Spanish Filipinos.

What do you think?