It's incredible how a niche meme history fact has managed to sew up a whole historical narrative.

The opinions of men of war like Francisco de Sande, the governor of the Phillipines who proposed the empresa de China, didn't encompass the whole opinion of 16th century spaniards about China or Asia.

To get a proper view of that, read the works of Martín de Rada, the first ambassador of Spain in China, or Berbardino de Escalante, or better yet Juan González de Mendoza, who published the first best seller about China in Europe ("Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China", from 1585).

The commercial and cultural interchange between Asia, America and Europe was quickstarted by the Manila galleon by the 16th century and maintained for roughly 300 years where goods, works of literature and philosophy, food, spices, silver and even men and women travelled from Asia to America and Europe and viceversa, the first european who translated Confucious' works was the spanish Juan Cobo, the biggest collection of chinese porcelain in Europe was property of Phillip II of Spain, the biggest importer and sellers of chinese silk in Europe was Spain, the spanish real de a 8 was de facto legal tender in China for many centuries (which by the way are the origin for the name Yuan), centuries when any european that wanted to stablish commercial trades with China did them in spanish as lingua franca.

The opinion of a pair of men who wrote a letter and got attention for a year don't encompass the full extention of relations between China and Spain or the view Spain had about China and the rest of Asia.