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What if China had a 100-year head start on European colonial dominance—and threw it away?

In 1405, nearly a century before Columbus, Chinese Admiral Zheng He commanded 317 ships and 27,800 men. His fleet was the largest in human history. His flagship was five times bigger than the Santa Maria. He reached East Africa, mapped the Indian Ocean, and built trade networks across three continents.

Then, within years of his death, bureaucrats burned the maps, dismantled the ships, and made it illegal to build ocean-going vessels. Europeans who came later weren't discovering new routes—they were following maps China had abandoned.

This is the story of Zheng He: a slave who rose to command the greatest fleet in history, built infrastructure that should have lasted centuries, and watched it all get destroyed by the very people he served.

In this episode, we explore six timeless investing lessons from Zheng He's treasure fleet:

• First-mover advantage compounds (but only if you maintain it)
• Scale changes the nature of negotiations
• Trade beats conquest—better economics, sustainable relationships
• Information asymmetry is alpha
• Systems outlast individuals (if you let them)
• Political risk can destroy everything you build

Whether you're a real estate investor, private equity professional, or building generational wealth, Zheng He's story reveals what separates wealth that compounds from wealth that dissipates.

This is part of our Builders Series—exploring great builders of past and present to make ourselves better investors and more understanding of timeless principles.

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