Para estimular as relações Portugal-China: New Book Presents Evidence Proving Pre-Columbian Chinese Maritime Survey of the World: Author Anatole Andro spent two-and-a-half years evaluating Chinese and European historical documents pertaining to the alleged Ming Chinese circumnavigation of the world one hundred years before the great European explorations. The author found that not only did such evidence exist, historians and investigators had knowledge of it. Many even commented on some of the evidence, then provided tenuous explanations for it, ignored it, or supplanted it.
Such historical records are not common, but neither are they obscure. However, because of the passing of time, their meanings have become blurred. For these the author provides explanations. An example is the reason of Portugal's leadership in Renaissance exploration.
It has been long held that Portugal's motive in going to sea was to seek a trade route to the Orient's spice sources. Through detailed analyses the author convincingly argued that the real cause was simply that the Portuguese learned that it could be done, and the impetus could only have been furnished by the Chinese.
The reason we are mostly ignorant of the Chinese maritime programs, according to the author, is that the events took place at a time when European knowledge of the Orient was scant and imprecise.
