The Chinese do not believe Menzies' theory! His book is not being sold in China! This reference was sent to me by Professor Jin Guo Ping,  from Lisbon, Portugal

BEIJING China  (AP) -- Forgive Gavin Menzies for feeling a little defensive. His book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America," may be selling briskly in the United States, but his extraordinary theory that Chinese explorers reached the New World decades before Christopher Columbus is proving a tougher sell to academics -- even here in China.

"Nonsense," declares China 's Zheng He Association, which celebrates the exploits of Zheng He, the very explorer Menzies says directed ships around the globe a century before Ferdinand Magellan.

But Menzies isn't fazed. "I don't see how any fair-minded person who reads the evidence can come to any other conclusion other than the Chinese did get to America before Europeans," he said in a telephone interview from New York , where he was promoting his book.

If only it were that simple.  China in the early 15th century was a great seafaring nation. No dispute there. Huge Chinese ships bearing silk, porcelain and other treasures made epic expeditions at the emperor's behest. Commanded by the admiral Zheng He, the ships traveled from China down to Indonesia , west to India , and as far as East Africa.

Many Chinese authors have presented similar theories over the years. Some even argue that Chinese settled the Americas 3,000 years ago, Wang said. But most tales mix fact and legend. "In ancient times, there were a lot of fairy stories," he said.

Science fiction'

 Still, legends of Chinese supremacy underpin the country's fierce nationalism.  Sinophiles like to point out that Chinese invented everything from fireworks to spaghetti and made significant contributions to modern mathematics, agriculture and astronomy.

" China discovered America first? I already knew that," said a Beijing store clerk who gave only her family name, Han. " China has been a country of advanced culture since ancient times."  Others aren't so sure. "I read about this theory in a newspaper, but I don't believe it," said Li Xuehui, a 30-year-old office worker. In ancient times, she said, "they didn't have the concept that the world was round."

At Peking University , archaeologist Lin Meicun says that in 20 years of studying ancient Chinese migration, he has found no convincing signs of China 's early settlement of the Americas . Such talk, he said, "is not science. It's science fiction."

Menzies, who lives in London , had sailed the routes of Columbus, Magellan and other European explorers when he was a naval officer.  He writes that his knowledge of maps and using the stars for navigation led to his theory, and that his research took him to 120 countries and every major port of the late Middle Ages.

He is hardly the first to challenge the story of discovering America . There is evidence of Viking settlements in North America 500 years before Columbus . And humans are believed to have walked from Asia across the Bering Strait when it was covered with ice to become American Indians.

Columbus ' achievement was not so much to discover America as to open it to European conquest and competition to settle the New World . And China , by the middle of the 15th century, had isolated itself. Its treasure-bearing ships were summoned back, and the emperor forbade overseas travel. China had halted all exploration, leaving the world to Europe.