The Portuguese were the first Europeans to settle the China coast and although there were scattered communities of a few isolated individuals along the Guangdong shoreline from the early 1500s it was at Ah Ma Gao that the Portuguese established a viable community in 1557. But long before any Portuguese explorer had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, seen the Indian Ocean or found the Spice Islands, the great Chinese fleets of exploration and trade had reached as far west as Mogadishu in East Africa. The high point of Chinese maritime discovery was from 1400-1450 when fleets of up to 100 vessels and carrying 28,000 men sailed systematically to Mogadishu in East Africa, to Calicut and Goa in India and to Bantam and Moluccas in the Spice Islands. By contrast, when the Portuguese came to the Pacific they had perhaps five vessels and at most 300 men. Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, Vasco da Gama reached Goa in 1497 and Calicut in 1498. And it took Alvares until 1513 to reach Lintin and then Canton.Chinese maritime activity was in decline from 1450 so that the Portuguese only met Chinese navigators for the first time, not in the Persian Gulf or at Calicut, but at Malacca in the East Indies.
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