Thank you. That's relatively recent though. And after the angmohs already discovered the Americas. Our ah tiu insists that they stole the map from China in the 15th century to discover the Americas which I find not plausible.
It's actually much harder for the Ming dynasty to discover the Americas. The Pacific ocean is much wider than the Atlantic. Also, there were very much fewer trade routes across the Pacific oceans, so seafaring ships on a discovery mission from chinkland to America would find it very much harder to resupply.
For the angmos, prior to discovering the Americas, they already navigated much of western africa and have established trading bases and resupply ports around Guinea.
More likely the Chinese stole the map from the angmohs. I just went to go and read the wiki entry. It was Matteo Ricci's map that the Chinese wanted copied. As a result, he created this.
To be fair to the Ming dynasty, they didn't steal anything. The 1602 world map was officially commissioned by the Wanli emperor. Chink emperors, despite some of them being notorious for womanizing and idiots, they were not thieves. Chink emperors viewed themselves as the 'Son of Heaven' and usually behaved as such. They were not western monarchs of the 15th century who would issue Letter of Marques for pirates, nor were they moslem sultans whose religious piety grew with the scale of banditry raids.
The chink 'Son of Heaven' was above pirates and thieves and bandits. They were however, notorious for being tax collectors.
It wasn't on horseback. Columbus via the Portuguese and the Spanish discovered the new world. But I check out gavin menzies and come back to you ok?
Gavin Menzies wrote that book to cocktease chink audience, who would pay him handsome for public speeches and book royalties sales.
There has been a lot of discussion about who discovered America first, was it the Vikings or Cheng Ho?
Borrowing from the Marvel MCU, it was Columbus' discovery that was the "nexus" event of the history timeline. Over the next few decades, the world got to know of this new continent based on Columbus' discovery. The world certainly didn't learn of the Americas from the Vikings or from the Ming dynasty.