You see that tiny little ship there in front of the treasure ship? That's a to-scale rendering of Christopher Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria. Jung Ha wasn't an explorer. The Indian Ocean trade routes were already known to him and to other Chinese sailors. He visited Africa, India, and the Middle East, and in a way, his journeys were trade missions, but not in the sense of filling his ships up with stuff to be sold later for higher prices. At the time, China was the leading manufacturer of quality goods in the world, and there wasn't anything they actually needed to import. What they needed was prestige and respect so that people would continue to see China as the center of the economic universe.