Zheng Chenggong

Chinese pirate leader

• Born: August 28, 1624
• Birthplace: Hirado, near Nagasaki, Japan
• Died: June 23, 1662
• Place of death: Taiwan

Zheng was a sea lord who fought for the failing Ming Dynasty against the conquering Manchus. Seeking a secure base of operations, he seized Taiwan from the Dutch and established traditional Chinese political and cultural institutions on the island.

Early Life

Zheng Chenggong (juhng juhng-goong) was born in the declining years of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The Ming were steadily losing ground against the expanding Manchus, who would soon take control of China, establishing the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Zheng Chenggong’s father, Zheng Zhilong (Cheng Chih-lung), was born in 1601 in the coastal province of Fujian (Fukien). Like many Fujianese, Zheng Zhilong took to the sea; he lived in the Portuguese colony of Macao, where he was baptized and known to the Europeans as Nicholas Iquan. Asian waters were dangerous, and there was a thin line between commerce and piracy. Zheng Zhilong controlled a pirate fleet of Chinese and Japanese adventurers and built a trading empire.

Zheng Chenggong was born August 28, 1624, in Hirado, Japan, where his father had a Japanese wife of the Tagawa family. He lived with his mother until he was seven, learning Japanese culture to such an extent that the Japanese would later adopt him as a cultural hero, describing him as “a Japanese with a Chinese father.” Meanwhile, his father was becoming an important political figure at the Ming court. Initially attacked as a pirate, he was so powerful that the court had no option but to grant him office. In return, he agreed to defend the southern coast against other pirates.

Now more secure, Zheng Zhilong brought the seven-year-old Zheng Chenggong to live with him in China. The boy studied the classical writings that were the focus of Confucian education. Zheng Chenggong was a talented, diligent student, who took his first degree at fifteen, entering the Imperial Academy in 1644. Had he lived at another time, he might have become a major Confucian scholar or a holder of high office within the civil bureaucracy, the ultimate goal of many Confucian students. The Ming Dynasty was collapsing before the Manchus, however, who were expanding southward from their ancestral home in Manchuria.

The Manchus were a vigorous, seminomadic warrior race who had learned Confucian ways through longstanding ties to China. Even many Chinese saw their rule as preferable to that of the Ming, who had grown corrupt and oppressive. The Ming lost their capital, Beijing, and their last formally recognized emperor to the Manchus in April, 1644. The Ming successor to the throne founded a second capital at Nanjing (Nanking), which fell in June, 1645; a third successor founded another capital at Fuzhou (Foochow), Fujian.

Life’s Work

Fujian was virtually controlled by Zheng Zhilong, a fact that made his eldest son and heir, the young Zheng Chenggong, even more important. Zheng Chenggong was presented to the Ming emperor, who made him a member of the imperial clan. He was known at court as Guo Xingye (Kuo Hsing-yeh), or “lord of the imperial surname,” from which Europeans would derive his Latinized name, Koxinga. Zheng Chenggong’s father was ordered to guard the main pass into Fujian against the Manchus. Zheng Chenggong himself was drawn into the military defense of the failing regime and given the court rank of earl and the military title of field marshal in 1645.

His father foresaw the fate of the Ming Dynasty, which had little legitimacy after losing two capitals and two emperors. The Manchus, presenting themselves as reformers rather than conquerors, offered office and rewards to any Chinese who joined them; Zheng Zhilong came to terms with the invaders and abandoned the pass. The conflict between family ties and loyalty to the state has traditionally been quite strong for the Chinese, and Zheng Chenggong must have felt torn between his father and the Ming court. The traditional version of his life has it that he remonstrated with his father, calling him a traitor. Certainly, the young man came to a decision that marked a turning point in his life: He decided to stay with the Ming. With the critical pass unguarded, Fuzhou fell to the Manchus, and the third refugee emperor killed himself in 1646. Zheng Chenggong left Fujian with a small band of followers (legend says ninety men) and sailed for the southern province of Guangdong (Kwangtung), centered upon the great international port Guangzhou (Canton).

Within a year, Zheng Chenggong commanded a major fleet, whose forces, when operating on land, formed a formidable army. Considering that he was only twenty-two years old, this was a remarkable achievement. Part of the explanation for this achievement lies in Zheng’s personal abilities and magnetism. As a successful scholar and court figure, he was much admired, but he was also a man of action. He was physically impressive and inspired awe in even the prejudiced Europeans who would meet him later. Many of his father’s forces also saw the elder Zheng’s defection as immoral, deserted Zheng Zhilong, and rallied to Zheng Chenggong.

Zheng understood well the importance of traditional cultural models to the historically minded Chinese and always presented himself within the established tradition of loyalty in the face of adversity. This adversity heightened when his mother, who had come to China some time earlier, died at the fall of Xiamen (Amoy) in Fujian. With his new fleet and army, Zheng now operated against the Manchus in Fujian, retaking lost territory. There was now yet another refugee Ming court, in Guangdong, and Zheng pledged loyalty to this fourth refugee emperor.

In Zheng’s later life, there is often confusion between his commitment to the Ming and his commitment to self-interest. One event that highlights this ambiguity is Zheng’s murder of his cousin, Zheng Lian (Cheng Lien), while retaking Xiamen. Later, he also executed an uncle. Removing these potential competitors gave him control of the Zheng family’s land and sea empire, including southern Fujian and islands off Guangdong.

With this base, Zheng began to operate in the key Chang (Yangtze) River Valley of central China, even trying but failing to retake Nanjing in September, 1659. After mopping up other Ming loyalist forces, the Manchus turned their entire attention to Zheng and began to take his mainland bases. He decided that it was necessary to relocate to continue the fight. He turned to the island of Taiwan, across a narrow strait from Fujian. Taiwan had been largely ignored by the Chinese. Its small population was split about equally between aboriginal tribal peoples of Malayan descent and Chinese immigrants from Fujian, attracted to the island’s rich agricultural resources. The Portuguese had been the first to recognize the island’s importance as a base for trade and had given it its European name, Formosa. The Dutch saw it as an important adjunct to their base at Batavia in the Indonesian islands and had seized it in 1624.

The Dutch had occupied the island easily, suppressing several local uprisings, and as a result, they had grown contemptuous of the abilities of Chinese warriors. The Dutch holdings on the island were therefore only lightly defended when Zheng’s fleet of about one thousand ships appeared out of the morning mists on April 3, 1661. Several hundred Dutch infantrymen marched out to meet the battle-hardened veterans of the Manchu wars. Zheng’s men “discharged so great a storm of arrows that they darkened the sky,” in the words of a Dutch observer. The Dutch stubbornly defended their fortifications, which fell months later. The siege was savage, and many Dutch civilians died, including missionaries, women, and children. This siege made Zheng, or as he was now known, Koxinga, an exemplar to the Europeans of the ruthless Asian warlord, in the tradition of Attila and Genghis Khan.

The Zheng family’s control of Taiwan was a positive one, as Zheng and his descendants encouraged Chinese immigration and founded a Chinese educational and administrative system. Zheng did not live to see these successes, however; he died, probably of malaria, in June, 1662, at the age of thirty-seven. When the Manchus finally took the island from his heirs in 1683, it was indisputably Chinese, and it became a Chinese province. In 1949, Taiwan became the bastion of another refugee regime, the Nationalist Chinese, who had been defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces. Under their administration, Taiwan grew to become the second strongest economy in Asia after Japan.

Significance

Zheng was at the center of the events of the seventeenth century, which saw a major realignment in power relations in East Asia, affecting China and the Western powers. These were violent times, and Zheng had the necessary qualities to thrive in them, including ruthlessness, martial talents, and immense self-confidence. As he told the Dutch negotiators when they surrendered to him in Taiwan: “If I wish to set my forces to work then I am able to move Heaven and Earth; wherever I go, I am destined to win.” Although he was one of the few Chinese to be known by a Latinized name, showing his stature in Europe, his reputation was to remain a dreadful one until the more accurate historical portrayals of the twentieth century. To the Japanese, he became a model samurai, adventuring in romantic China. To the Chinese, however, Zheng was always to exemplify loyalty and perseverance in the face of certain defeat. Eventually, he was made a protective deity of popular religion in Taiwan, the island that he was the first to incorporate into China.

Bibliography

Coyett, Fredric. Neglected Formosa. Translated by Inez de Beauclair. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1975. These are the memoirs of the last Dutch governor of Taiwan. They are a key source for the battle of Taiwan and were the primary influence upon European attitudes toward Zheng.

Croizier, Ralph C. Koxinga and Chinese Nationalism: History, Myth, and the Hero. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. Considered the standard analysis of Zheng’s life and its meaning for later Chinese, both Communist and anti-Communist, as well as for the Japanese and Europeans. An analytical bibliography of sources in Chinese, Japanese, and English is included. Well written and balanced in its interpretations.

Davidson, James W. The Island of Formosa, Past and Present: History, People, Resources and Commercial Prospects, Tea, Camphor, Sugar, Gold, Coal, Sulphur, Economical Plants, and Other Products. London: Macmillan, 1903. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. This work is not only a useful history of Taiwan but also the first positive Western account of Zheng.

Hummel, Arthur W., ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 1644-1912. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943-1944. The standard reference for the lives of Zheng Chenggong and for his father, Zheng Zhilong.

Hung, Chien-chao. A History of Taiwan. Rimini, Italy: Il Cerchio, 2000. Includes information about Zheng’s takeover and administration of Taiwan.

Keliher, Macabe. Out of China: Or, Yu Yonghe’s Tales of Formosa—A History of Seventeenth-Century China. Taipei, Taiwan: SMC Books, 2003. In 1696, the Chinese empire’s gunpowder supply was depleted by an explosion at Fuzhou. Chinese officials asked Yu Yonghe to travel to Taiwan and obtain the sulphur needed to replenish their gunpowder stores. Keliher uses Yonghe’s diaries to create this account of the trip and describe life in seventeenth century Taiwan.

Willis, John E., Jr. “Seventeeth Century Transformation: Taiwan Under the Dutch and the Cheng Regime.” In Taiwan: A New History, edited by Murray Rubinstein. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. This book of essays includes Willis’s historical account of Taiwan during the seventeenth century.