Spain: the World's Most Powerful Empire in 1585??????

Epic movies are bound to be full of historical errors which in most cases are understandable and enjoyable for entertainment purposes. Most factual errors already listed on this site, e.g. Mary Stuart's last moment at Fotheringhay, are rather picky for a movie.

However, I found one factual error too obvious and unacceptable:

Big caption at the beginning of this movie says: Spain was the most powerful empire in the WORLD. This is too much. Hollywood could have just said "the most powerful empire in Europe." That alone is enough to emphasize late 16th century Spanish power and is historically accurate.

For some 2000 years, the most powerful empire in the world was always China until it lost the Opium War to the British in the 1830's-40's. At the height of Spainish expansion as well as the Elizabethan Renaissance, the Chinese Ming empire was still way ahead of the rest of the world both in terms of gross economy and military power.

Hollywood often tends to forget: the world is not just a western world. They made similar mistake in Alexander already. His ragged army was not the strongest at that time, his conquests not the greatest either...