At a minimum the Vikings, the Irish, the Welsh, the Spanish and the Portuguese all reached North America before the English, and yet you posted that comment in English. China isn't planning a vanity photo op, but a permanent base.
You ought to read up on how from the 17th-19th centuries the Chinese reflexively dismissed everything that wasn't Chinese as inherently inferior because they could not conceive that something that wasn't Chinese wasn't inherently inferior, The read up on how that worked for them.
“but a permanent base.”
I say to the Chinese: Good luck with that! They will not be successful without Western engineering/technology which they are stealing from us.
“The Chinese reflexively dismissed everything that wasn’t Chinese as inherently inferior because they could not conceive that something that wasn’t Chinese wasn’t inherently inferior,”
I am reminded of, “The King And I” where the ‘king’ of Thailand just KNEW that his country was the biggest, greatest on the planet. All countries of any substance feel that way so that the Chinese culture does not differ from any other in that regard.
Their ‘closed door’ policy worked for them but not for the world. The world wanted them to ‘open the doors’. They simply wanted to be left alone but the world did not want that. They have now opened the doors and the ‘negative’ influences of the rest of the world are now ‘corrupting’ their society. I find it unfortunate even though I was the representative of the first American company to sign a very large contract with the Chinese government in 1975 so that I have hands-on, first-hand knowledge of the Chinese culture.