The Ming government also failed to peg taxes to inflation and spent too much on defense, notably the Great Wall. And by the 17th century, the Ming were overthrown by the Fu Manchus. Oh, it's just the Manchus? Gah! History always disappoints me. As the historian Dennis Flynn put it, a significant hunk of the GDP of China, then the world's biggest economy, was surrendered in order to secure a white metal that was produced mostly in Spanish America and Japan. Think about what else those resources could have been used for.