For starters they'd need that one emperor to not go "Fuck exploration, we are the Middle Of The World for a reason" and scrap his entire navy.

File: Lanfang Republic.png (55.7 KB)

>>18517719
>>18517776
For this to happen, Asian powers need to start out as peripheral out of the way states cut off from the great trade routes of the world, which would motivate them to explore random routes to connect them to these routes.

THAT SAID: East Asians were pretty much a bunch of colonizers themselves. Instead of state-backed enterprises like Europeans though, private adventurers like merchant clans, mercenaries, pirates, founded colonies of Chineses & Japaneses from Taiwan to random Southeast Asian Islands and Locales.

Southwestern Borneo for example was colonized by a bunch of Chinese miners & merchants who sent relatives to live permanently outside of China in privately owned "Republics" (the first of their kind in Asia) to go around the Canton System during the Qing Dynasty (where only sanctioned Cantonese merchants were the only ones permitted to participate in maritime trade). In Thailand there was an Expat colony of Japanese soldiery who created a self governing community there that swore fealty to the Thai King.

But notice how settlement patterns ALWAYS followed major trade routes.

>>18517779
There’s also Kapitan Cina (Official representatives of chinese communities in colonial regions in Southeast Asia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapitan_Cina

It should also be noted that these Kongsi Republics were setup due to invitation by sultans for resource extraction and that the Merchant classes in traditional chinese society is close to the lowest of the low for not contributing anything material.

Also, there are Makassan and possibly Chinese merchant contact with Northern Australia due to the Chinese elite’s interest at that time to delicacies of the sea cucumber, encouraging a blossoming trade route there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassan_contact_with_Australia

All in all, even including Taiwan/Formosa, overseas Chinese communities from the Ming onwards were driven by various political (usually instability) and trade related needs and were rather passive in their expansion, driven mostly by the lower of classes of society without much political backing.

Probably need to change the lean towards political and social conservatism after the Mongol conquest or even before the collapse of the Tang dynasty which did involve many foreigners in their governance.

Maybe an earlier point of diversion would be the slight restructuring of their military structure, beating the Caliphate onto their expansion of influence in central asia, or even helping the Sassanids reconquer their homeland and maintaining political influence all the way there.

After that, predicting history would be difficult though.

>>18517790
>even including Taiwan/Formosa

Actually maybe exclude that, that happened mainly for political reasons and was much older than the other examples given.

>>18517719
the thing is there wasnt really any incentive to expand outwards because there was always more work and land inside of china. china wasnt really overpopulated until the 1800s, they had huge tracts of uncolonized farmland inside their borders, usually in the interior.
unlike Europe which achieved a very high population density early on because of climatic restraints and extensive agriculture (wheat and barley being one of the shittest grains for productivity per acre)