after its defeat, but First Citizen Gromov has rebuilt its industry and plots to export revolution throughout the world. Ming-3 Ming-3 is a parallel universe almost entirely dominated by a Chinese empire whose fleets of exploration under Zheng He (Jeng Ho in the text) were never scrapped as they were in our history; the scenario credits the mother of the Xuande Emperor with having persuaded her son to put a final end to his voyages (her husband, the Hongxi Emperor, having opposed them during his short reign), and posits a plague that ended her life and her influence over Xuande. The plague also forces the imperial household to remain in the southern port city of Nanjing instead of moving to Beijing; accordingly, Zheng He's fleets were sustained, reached every corner of the Indian Ocean and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Amphibious delivery of soldiers and supplies was developed out of necessity during a war with Annan province (Vietnam), which stood China in good stead when it found the need to pacify the lands in its naval trading sphere: Indonesia, the Malay Peninsula, southern India, various Arabian ports, and the eastern coast of Africa from Mogadishu to Mozambique. When Portuguese vessels entered the Indian Ocean and seized the port of Goa in defiance of Chinese authority, a fleet was sent to round the Cape of Good Hope, captured European ports on the west coast, and landed at Lisbon in 1519. War with Portugal led to war with Spain under King Charles I which ended in victory for the Chinese and the seizure of Spain's Mexican possessions and their gold. The kings of France became the Holy Roman Emperors, but their dominance in Christian Europe came to an end when Emperor Louis II attacked what he believed to be a weakly garrisoned Iberian province. Louis and the French could not sustain the war economically; a similar fate befell England after its ships raided a Mexican silver shipment. The "current year" is 1859; Nanjing is the effective capital of the world, the vassal realm of Datsin controls Europe from Poland to the Pyrenees, southern Africa is a de facto independent nation and a cosmopolitan outpost of Chinese culture on the edge of relatively unexplored central Africa, and the Americas are increasingly being populated with Asian rather than native subjects of the Empire. Unfortunately, imperial control is beginning to break down and many