Someone once asked me this question: Ming Zheng has successfully recovered Taiwan, why does Kangxi have to recover it again. I told him that Kangxi had never confiscated Taiwan. To explain this issue clearly, we may wish to first review and sort out Taiwan's history. What is Taiwan? What is a Taiwanese? Here we need to explain three concepts that are both related and not identical: Taiwan Island, Taiwan Province, and Taiwan. The so-called Taiwan Island refers to China's largest island with an area of about 35,800 square kilometers, while Taiwan Province is composed of Taiwan Island, Penghu Archipelago and surrounding subsidiary islands (an area of about 36,000 square kilometers).
The Taiwan region refers to the areas currently under the actual control of the Taiwan authorities: Kinmen and Matsu are subordinate to Fujian Province in terms of administrative divisions, and the Dongsha Islands are subordinate to Guangdong Province in terms of administrative divisions, but due to historical reasons, these areas are actually under the control of the Taiwan authorities. As of 2019, the demographics of Taiwan are 23.6 million. Of these, 98 percent are Han Chinese immigrants from Chinese mainland, and the other 2 percent are indigenous people who settled here before han Chinese moved to Taiwan. The Han chinese residents of Taiwan are divided into two major groups: people from their own provinces and people from other provinces. In fact, the people in this province and other provinces are from Chinese mainland, but there is a difference in the time of migration to Taiwan.
The so-called Taiwanese natives refer to the Han residents who have successively moved into Taiwan since the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The people of this province are divided into two major groups: minnan people naturally move in from the southern region of Fujian, they account for about 70% of the total population of Taiwan; the Hakka people mainly move from the eastern region of Guangdong, accounting for about 14% of the total population of Taiwan. Of course, within the Minnan people's group, they can be subdivided into different groups such as Zhangzhou and Quanzhou according to the specific ancestral place. The so-called Taiwanese from other provinces refers to people who migrated to Taiwan after 1945 from Chinese mainland provinces with the Kuomintang regime, and the descendants of these people now account for about 14% of the total population of Taiwan.
During the Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, Taiwan was connected to the mainland. A large number of mammals from north and south China came to Taiwan via land bridges, and hunters in prehistoric times followed in the footsteps of their prey. The earliest human activity sites in Taiwan were found in the Eight Immortals Cave in Changbin Township, Taitung, which borders the Pacific Ocean. This proves that humans arrived in Taiwan at least 30,000 years ago. In 230 AD, Sun Quan ordered Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhi to lead ten thousand people to float in such a large ship to seek Yizhou (Taiwan), which is the first time that the ancestors of Chinese mainland opened up Taiwan in history. The Three Kingdoms Eastern Wu Danyang Taishou Shen Ying's "Linhai Soil Chronicle" details the production and life forms of Taiwan at that time.
During the Sui Dynasty, Zhu Kuan, Chen Ling, and others were sent to Liuqiu (present-day Taiwan) three times. From the 9th to the 10th century, at the end of the Tang Dynasty and the beginning of the Song Dynasty, Han Chinese began to settle in Penghu. In the middle of the 12th century, the Southern Song Dynasty placed Penghu under the jurisdiction of Jinjiang County (present-day Jinjiang, Fujian) and sent troops to defend it. On this basis, the Yuan Dynasty also set up the Penghu Inspection Department for jurisdiction. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, the Penghu Archipelago had basically formed a population pattern dominated by Han residents, compared with the development of Taiwan's main island at this time. The passage of time to the great geographical discoveries of the 15th century has made the world increasingly linked into a whole: the history of the world before that was actually the history of the various regions of the world, after which humanity really entered the stage of global history.
However, when Europeans began to move towards the distant sea of stars, the Ming Dynasty of China promulgated a policy of sea ban, but the sea ban could not completely block China's connection with the sea. The southeast coastal provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and other provinces have formed a tradition of relying on the sea to eat the sea since ancient times. Even after the promulgation of the sea ban policy, the merchants on the southeast coast still resisted the pressure to go to sea to trade. When the imperial court retreated from the sea, Chinese merchants were widely involved in the international trading system of the Age of Discovery: merchants on the southeast coast brought back nearly half of the silver from Spanish America to China through trade with the Spaniards, and japanese silver was imported into China in large quantities through trade with Japan, the world's second-largest silver-producing region at the time.
In the late Ming Dynasty, silver replaced copper coins as the main circulating currency in the Chinese market, and in the southeast coast, Mexican eagle coins and Spanish silver coins also became common currencies, and China began to integrate with the world from the monetary field, so that China at that time was regarded as a "silver empire" by Westerners. At that time, there was no clear line between maritime merchants and pirates: if the sea ban policy was severe, it would force normal trade merchants to become pirates; if the sea ban policy was relaxed, then pirates could also transform into merchants. For these people who eat by the sea, everything is for survival, and the issue of identity has never been their concern. In fact, in the official context of the Ming Dynasty at that time, these maritime merchants were called "thieves".
From the late Ming Dynasty to the apocalypse, the maritime merchants along China's southeast coast have been in a state of "bandits", but most of them are vassals of Western colonists, and it is difficult to become a climate alone. It was not until the appearance of Yan Siqi that a Chinese hero finally ushered in the late stage of the magnificent Era of Navigation. Born in 1589 in Haicheng County, Fujian Province (present-day Qingjiao Village, Haicang, Xiamen), Yan Siqi was physically strong and proficient in martial arts, and from an early age, he had a "big brother style", and he beat the servants of the officials' families to death one day. Yan Siqi, who was beheaded according to the Ming Law, fled all the way to Hirado, Japan. Japan was in the early days of the Tokugawa shogunate's rule, and Hirado's merchant travel as a treaty port was booming, and Fujian's hometowns were everywhere.
Yan Siqi opened a tailor shop here. Yan Siqi, who was bold by nature, soon gained a foothold in a foreign country, and after some hard work, became a big merchant across the sea. After Yan Siqi's rise to fame, twenty-eight Chinese merchants and righteous knots Jinlan regarded him as their boss, including Zheng Zhilong, the father of Zheng Chenggong, a national hero who later recovered Taiwan. Dissatisfied with the japanese forces' oppression of Chinese businessmen, these Chinese merchants planned to capture the port of Hirado. Unexpectedly, before the incident, everyone was drinking for a brother's birthday celebration, and one of them was drunk and inadvertently leaked the plan, which attracted the officers and soldiers of the shogunate to surround and suppress. Yan Siqi, who had been informed, fled to the sea with his brothers in a hurry. Yan Siqi, who escaped death, had no other way but to go to Taiwan.
In 1624, Yan Siqi led his fleet to dock at Bengang (present-day Beigang, Taiwan). The island of Taiwan is fertile and watery, and a large wilderness is waiting to be reclaimed. Yan Siqi was determined to do something here: he led everyone to cut down wood and build a squatter village, while at the same time appeasing the indigenous people of the island, agreeing on boundaries, and not invading each other. After the overall situation was initially decided, Yan Siqi sent his subordinates to lead a fleet of ships to recruit immigrants in their hometowns of Zhangzhou and Quan, and more than 3,000 people went to Taiwan before and after. Yan Siqi divided the reclamation into ten villages, distributed silver two and cultivated cattle, agricultural tools, etc., and began the earliest large-scale reclamation activities in Taiwan. Reclamation requires capital investment, so Yan Siqi selected a group of Zhang, Quan and People with navigation experience to use the original 13 large ships to carry out maritime trade with the mainland using the convenience of sea transportation.
At the same time, Yan Siqi also organized sea fishing and island hunting, and developed the mountain and sea economy to solve the material needs of migrant production and life. In 1625, when Taiwan had a bumper grain harvest, the excited Yan Siqi dragged the brethren into the Zhuluo Mountains to hunt. After returning, Yan Siqi fell ill and died a few days later at the age of 37. Yan Siqi's life was like a shooting star, but his feat opened a new era in Taiwan. Since then, a large-scale migration has come: every year a large number of people cross the strait into the island of Taiwan, where they cultivate and multiply. It can be seen that Taiwan was discovered, pioneered, and first strategized by the Chinese.
However, Taiwan and the mainland are separated by a vast Taiwan Strait. The degree of development in ancient Taiwan, where navigation technology was not yet developed, was quite low. Until the arrival of Yan Siqi's fleet in Taiwan in 1624, the island was inhabited only by some indigenous tribes, and the writing, currency, clothing, and institutional civilization of the Central Plains had almost no impact on Taiwan. Taiwan's isolated overseas geographical pattern led to the Central Plains Dynasty's jurisdiction over Taiwan was often beyond the reach of the whip at that time, but this isolated overseas island was a treasure island with rich resources and a prominent strategic location. Such a treasure island to be exploited naturally attracted the attention of European colonists who were expanding into East Asia at the time.
After the Dutch East India Company troops landed on Taiwan in 1624, they continued to expand and infiltrate the island, and during the same period the Spaniards also occupied some areas in northern and eastern Taiwan. In 1642 the Dutch completely monopolized Taiwan after driving out the Spaniards from the island. In September 1652, the Guo Huaiyi Rebellion against Dutch colonial rule broke out in Taiwan. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Han Chinese (about a quarter of Taiwan's han population at the time) participated in the uprising. Although the rebels were numerically superior, most of them were armed only with sickles, and the 12-day uprising was suppressed by the Dutch, armed with muskets.
Nine years later, the Dutch entrenched in Taiwan encountered an even more formidable enemy: in the spring of 1661, Zheng successfully led more than 25,000 officers and soldiers to cross the sea in more than 300 boats of various types and recovered Taiwan, which had been occupied by Dutch colonists for 38 years. Zheng Chenggong died of illness only 4 months after the reconquest of Taiwan. After Zheng Chenggong's death, his son Zheng Jing and grandson Zheng Ketuan ruled Taiwan for 21 years. During this period, the Zheng regime in Taiwan, which was under the banner of the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty on the mainland formed a state of confrontation across the sea. The Qing Dynasty on the mainland, the year of Zheng Chenggong's death, had just undergone a power change: the 23-year-old Shunzhi Emperor had magically passed away, and the 8-year-old third prince Xuan Ye became the second emperor after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs.
Since the day he ascended the throne, Xuan Ye had made the settlement of the Taiwan issue an important goal for him, but not all of the ministers of the DPRK and China had the same idea as the emperor. At that time, the DPRK and China did not necessarily have three opposing attitudes regarding the use of force against Taiwan, such as not having to take it, not daring to fight, and not daring to use it. The so-called "no need to take" is to believe that the imperial court is not worth making a big fuss about the land of Taiwan's projectiles. The question of Taiwan is today a rigid principle of national territorial integrity, but the territorial changes of ancient countries are not as rigid as we are today: remember that today's Mongolia, Vladivostok, northern Vietnam, northern Myanmar, and parts of Central Asia were once Chinese territories in history.
Xuan Ye was the second emperor after the Qing Dynasty entered the Customs. At this time, the Qing Dynasty was actually in a period of transition: some far-sighted enlightened people in the upper echelons of the Manchu ruling clique had tried to create a unified empire that encompassed han, Manchu, Mongolian, Hui, and Tibetan nationalities, but at the same time a considerable number of people in the ruling class still considered themselves conquerors. Among these conquerors, those who consider themselves conquerors believe that the land of the Central Plains was originally laid down by the Eight Banners of Manchuria. Now that most of the territory of the Ming Dynasty in the past has been returned to the Qing court, the remaining land of Taiwan is really not worth the effort. In fact, there were not a few people in the imperial court at that time who held this idea.
Although the Qing Dynasty on the mainland was skilled in bows and horses at that time, naval warfare was not what the Qing army was good at. As early as before Kangxi's pro-government, Aobai had clearly stated: "Taiwan's ocean is dangerous and far-reaching, the wind and waves are unpredictable, and it is difficult to drive and win, and it is difficult to calculate completely." This psychological shadow was further exacerbated after the failure of the three military operations of Kangxi and the three military attacks on Penghu in the fourth year of Kangxi. Many of the front-line generals who received the edict when Kangxi issued an edict to suppress and use it expressed their opposition. At that time, Wan Zhengse, the admiral of the Fujian Marine Division, said: "Taiwan is difficult to attack, and there is no need to attack", and Ninghai general Lahada also said that "it is absolutely undesirable". These objections can be summed up in essence, which is actually a lack of courage to fight.
In fact, Kangxi himself also considered the shortcomings of the Qing army that were not good at naval warfare, so he decided to use Shi Lang, who was attached to the Zheng clique. Shi Lang, known as the "Sea Thunderbolt", was indeed a rare talent for naval warfare, but the Manchu Dynasty Wenwu generally believed that Shi Lang could not be appointed—to put it bluntly, they could not believe in this surrender from the Zheng clique. Despite so many objections, the Kangxi Emperor never changed his resolve to unify Taiwan. There is a reason for Kangxi's persistence on the Taiwan issue: The Zheng family in Taiwan, under the banner of opposing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty, is in the eyes of the Qing court an out-and-out remnant of the Southern Ming Dynasty.
After the Qing army entered the customs, the anti-Qing forces in various parts of the mainland have gradually been suppressed one by one, but Taiwan, which is across the sea, still carries the banner of the Ming Dynasty. Taiwan's Cheng clique is not only an armed regime, but has also become the hope of anti-Qing and restoration activists all over the world. In Jin Yong's "Deer Ding", the master of the Heaven and Earth Society, Chen Jinnan, is actually based on Zheng Chenggong's adviser Chen Yonghua. Zheng Chenggong, as the King of Yanping and the Duke of Yanping who was crowned by the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty, had a high prestige among the remnants of the Ming Dynasty. In fact, at that time, many non-governmental anti-Qing secret associations were under the orders of Taiwan's Zheng clan. The elimination of Taiwan's Cheng clique was a political imperative for Kangxi to rehabilitate the Qing and Restore Forces and maintain stability in The Country.
Strictly speaking, as long as the Taiwan Zheng clique under the banner of the Ming Dynasty is not eliminated for a day, then at least nominally, the Ming Dynasty has not perished. This brings us to a question of political legitimacy: it is said that after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs to replace the Ming Dynasty, it automatically inherited the status of the Ming Dynasty as an orthodox dynasty, but at this time, the Ming Dynasty, as an orthodox dynasty that once ruled the Central Plains, did not really perish - the Ming Dynasty lost its country on the mainland, but there was still a corner of Taiwan. So who is the orthodox ming and qing at this time? As the saying goes, "if the name is not correct, the words are not smooth, and if the words are not smooth, things will not be accomplished." The ancients attached great importance to this legitimacy of political legitimacy.
If the Qing Dynasty only wanted to stay in the Central Plains for decades as a conqueror like the Yuan Dynasty and then return to its hometown to fish and hunt, then this political legitimacy legitimacy was of little importance to the Qing government. If the Qing Dynasty is to become a long-term unified empire that encompasses the Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Hui, and Tibetan ethnic groups, it must pay attention to this political legitimacy legitimacy. The Eight Banners nobles, who considered themselves conquerors, did not have such a long-term vision: they came to The Middle With a robbery mentality. They just want to grab as much profit as possible in the Central Plains Han Dynasty, and once they can't stay in the future, they will return to their hometown outside Guanwai to live a life.
Since they even have this attitude toward the Central Plains, it seems that Taiwan, which is separated by the strait, does not need to be taken. However, Kangxi's philosophy was different from theirs: Kangxi was planning to go through the Central Plains for a long time, rather than running away with a single sum. In order to maintain the long-term peace and stability of the dynasty, it is necessary to obtain nominal legitimacy and to eliminate all anti-Qing revival organizations that may pose a threat to rule. To achieve such a goal, it was necessary to eliminate the Zheng clique in Taiwan, so Taiwan's reunification was a single-choice question for Kangxi with no other options. What remains is only a question of the way to unify: is it to eliminate taiwan's Cheng clique by force? Or is it to win the initiative of the other party to submit in a peaceful way?
In fact, before the "San Francisco Rebellion", Kangxi had long adhered to the policy of "peaceful reunification". The Qing government held peace talks with Taiwan's Cheng Group on several occasions. In the process, Zheng Jing had stated that he could be subordinate to the Qing Dynasty, but he proposed that Taiwan should follow the examples of Korea and Annam as a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty. Kangxi's reply to this was: "If Zheng Jing stays in Taiwan and does not want to abandon it, he can also do whatever he wants." As for the fact that North Korea does not shave its hair and is willing to pay tribute and surrender, it is inconvenient to allow it. The Koreans have never been foreign, and Jeong Ching is a Chinese man." It can be seen from this that Kangxi was quite resolute on the issue of reunifying Taiwan from the very beginning, but in terms of the method of reunification, he basically still tended to adopt a relatively moderate and peaceful method of reunification.
In 1673, the San Fan Rebellion broke out on the mainland: Wu Sangui, the king of Pingxi who was guarding Yunnan, killed Zhu Guozhi, the governor of Yunnan, arrested the disobedient officials who were following the envoys, and then rebelled against the Qing in the name of the xingming general. After Wu Sangui raised his army, he sent letters to Pingnan, Jingnan Erfan, and the old generals in various places, and also contacted Zheng Jing of Taiwan to jointly raise troops. During the "San Francisco Rebellion", the Taiwanese Zheng clique was united with the Geng Jing loyal soldiers who rebelled in Fujian and would fight one side, thus posing a great threat to the southeast region of the Qing Dynasty at sea. Taiwan's geographical location determines that it can attack any point on the mainland's long coastline at will.
If Taiwan were to be occupied by a foreign country or become an independent separatist regime, China's southeastern sea frontier would be completely unsettled. The provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian on the southeast coast were the capital and grain taxes of the Qing Dynasty. During the "San Francisco Rebellion", the response of Taiwan's Cheng clique posed a huge threat to the southeast coastal region, so it once affected the financial security of the entire country, so after the San Francisco Rebellion, Kangxi was determined to completely solve the Taiwan issue. Although Kangxi had been striving for the peaceful reunification of Taiwan, he had never given up using force as a backing—Kangxi's strategy toward Taiwan had in fact always been to suppress and appease and use both.
Before the San Francisco Rebellion, Kangxi was more focused on political pacification of Taiwan's Zheng clique, but at the same time he did not relax the construction of the coastal defense system. After the San Francisco Rebellion, Kangxi began to prefer "suppression of Yufu": using military pressure as a backing to force the Taiwan authorities to accept his own conditions. History at home and abroad throughout history has shown that if one side does not have strong military pressure in a state of confrontation between two regimes, it is impossible for the other side to easily take the initiative to surrender. Using war to promote peace and fighting to promote talks is a realistic means of solution. On March 17, 1681, the 40-year-old Zheng Jing died in Chengtianfu, Taiwan.
After Zheng Jing's death, his retainer Feng Xifan staged a coup d'état and assassinated Zheng Kezang, the overseer, and subsequently made Zheng Jing's second son Zheng Ketuan the Prince of Yanping County. Taiwan's civil unrest provided Kangxi with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unify Taiwan. On July 8, the 22nd year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1683), the Qing government sent The Fujian Admiral Shi Lang to lead more than 20,000 land and water officers and men and more than 200 warships from Tongshan to Penghu and Taiwan. The Qing naval division commanded by Shi Lang first won a major victory against the Taiwanese naval division at the Battle of Penghu, thus forcing Zheng Chenggong's grandson Zheng Ketuan to lead the crowd to submit to the Qing government. Just when the Zheng clan surrendered and the Qing court celebrated its victory, there were absurd remarks within the imperial court to abandon Taiwan.
Many ministers believed that the attack on Taiwan was to eliminate the remnants of the Southern Ming Dynasty and show the prestige of the Qing Dynasty. Now that this goal has been achieved, there is no need to waste time and energy in that barren land. The development value of Taiwan alone overseas is not great. If at least tens of thousands of troops are sent to Taiwan, it will cause a huge financial burden, and the soldiers who have been stationed on the outer islands for a long time may also be divided again, and it will be difficult to rescue once the foreign enemy attacks. In response to these erroneous understandings in the DPRK at that time, Shi Lang, a platform hero, presented the Kangxi Emperor with the "Gongchen Taiwan Abandonment". In this note, Shi Lang made a detailed analysis of the situation in Taiwan and the strategic significance of the country.
At that time, Western colonists had begun to be active in the sea, and the Dutch had once occupied Taiwan. Taiwan's "north connection to Wuhui and south to Guangdong" is a barrier to the southeast of the motherland, which is directly related to the safety of the southeast, and once Taiwan is invaded by foreign enemies, the consequences will be serious. Taiwan is rich in fertile fields and rich products: rich in sulfur, water vines, sugar cane and other materials. Taiwan's geographical location is very conducive to overseas trade, and its economic prospects and strategic position cannot be ignored, so Shi Lang pointed out: "Taiwan is a fertile area and a city of danger and obstacles." If you want to achieve self-sufficiency in Tuntian, Taiwan, you can achieve self-sufficiency, thus greatly reducing the financial pressure of the imperial court. The imperial court's garrison in Taiwan should implement a 3-year-to-1 change of defense system: you can keep enough troops and do not have to worry about starting another division.
In the 23rd year of the Qing Dynasty (1684), the Qing government established one prefecture and three counties in Taiwan: the administration of Taiwan was located in present-day Tainan, under the jurisdiction of Taiwan County (present-day Tainan), Fengshan County (present-day Zuoying, Kaohsiung), and Zhuluo County (present-day Chiayi). Now let's go back to the beginning of the whole text: Why do I say that Kangxi never confiscated Taiwan? Please note that I only mention in the whole text that Kangxi unified Taiwan and Shi Lang pacified Taiwan, and I never said that Kangxi and Shi Lang recovered Taiwan. Those who say what they recover must be taken from a foreign country, and only within a country can they be unified. Zheng Chenggong's recovery of Taiwan from the Dutch can be called a recovery, but Kangxi's pacification of Taiwan's Zheng clique cannot be called a recovery.
Taiwan's Cheng clique is not a foreign colonialist, but a local separatist regime within China. The Kangxi platform was essentially a war of national unity like Cao Wei's annihilation of Shu Han, western Jin's destruction of Eastern Wu, Sui Dynasty's Pingnan Chen, and Northern Song's annihilation of Southern Tang, but it was not a reconquest of lost territory from foreign colonists. Since our history books do not refer to the historical events of Cao Wei's annihilation of shu Han, the western Jin Dynasty's destruction of Eastern Wu, the Sui Dynasty's Pingnan Chen, and the Northern Song Dynasty's destruction of Southern Tang as the recovery, then naturally the Kangxi platform cannot be called the recovery of Taiwan—it can only be said that it is the reunification of Taiwan or the pacification of Taiwan. So what can the Kangxi platform give us today?
The Kangxi platform effectively avoided the further division of Taiwan and created a safe and stable environment for China's southeast coastal areas. At the same time, this has further promoted the unity and unification of the Chinese nation and effectively proved that Taiwan has been part of China's territory since ancient times. Although it was true that a considerable number of ministers in the DPRK at that time advocated abandoning Taiwan, the Kangxi Emperor never wavered in his position on this issue. The Kangxi Emperor of that year could not have abandoned Taiwan, and today's Chinese people are even more unlikely to give up Taiwan. The reunification of the two sides of the strait is an issue of unquestionable principle, and the only issue facing the two sides of the strait is only the question of the means of reunification.
The means of reunification are nothing more than peaceful reunification and reunification by force. On the Taiwan issue, the Kangxi Emperor at that time adhered to the strategy of focusing on peaceful reunification while not giving up the support of force. In fact, we are still adhering to the same strategy in dealing with the Taiwan issue: peaceful reunification is of course the common well-being of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait -- fighting a war is to kill people and destroy the economy, so we should strive for the hope of peaceful reunification to the greatest extent possible. However, it is naïve to abandon the use of force as a backing. If all attempts to achieve peaceful reunification fail, reunification by force becomes a last resort.