Zheng He's voyage to the West embodied what kind of maritime consciousness of the Ming people

Resource consciousness, diplomatic consciousness, maritime consciousness.

The Zheng He's voyage to the West as a prelude to the Great Age of Sailing, together with the geographical discoveries of the European explorers afterward, opened a new stage of the maritime exchanges between the East and the West. The scope of East-West exchanges was unprecedentedly enlarged by the Age of Sail, and indirect and intermittent exchanges were transformed into direct and frequent exchanges. Zheng He's voyages to the West Ocean connected the separated regions of East Asia and the South Seas, and opened up a vast sea area for the subsequent European explorers' journeys to the East. The Great Geographic Discovery made the isolation of the East and the West begin to dissolve, the West and the East jumped out of the limitations of the Mediterranean Sea and the East Asian sea respectively, and faced the whole world of the old and new continents. After the age of navigation, the scope of the world's knowledge of land and sea, from the original about 50 million square miles, expanding to 310 million square miles, the East and West of the traditional regional maritime trade, which evolved into a global trade for the world market.

As a prelude to the Age of Sail, Zheng He's voyages to the West made the Ming people gradually realize the importance of sea routes. The sea routes were conducive to linking the isolated regions of the East and West into an indivisible whole. Governance of domestic is important, but can not ignore the cause of marine transportation, the east and west shipping routes are smooth, not only about the Ming Dynasty's "state-building", but also related to the social stability of neighboring countries along the coast and the economic boom and bust. Zheng He went to the Pacific and Indian Ocean shipping routes, for the end of the Ming Dynasty, thousands of Western missionaries came to China directly after the preparation of transportation, the missionaries brought the new content of the overseas world, but also for the Ming people to re-understand the world, knowledge of the sea laid the foundation. The stage of civilization is limited to the pattern of the Asian and European continents came to an end, the East and the West began to enter a new period of mutual understanding, civilization clash and mingling penetrated into all spaces of the globe.