Sea Control - Sea Control 583: Shaping the Blue Dragon with Ronald Po

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Links1. Dr Ronald C. Po profile.2. Shaping the Blue Dragon Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, by Ronald Po, Liverpool University Press, 2024.3. Dr. Xing Hang on the Zheng regime in Taiwan.4. Dr. Ling-wei Kung  on the Manchu's maritime awareness prior to establishing their capital in Beijing

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hi, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. I'm your host, Jonathan, and my guest today is Ronald Poe, Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and the author of Blue Dragon, Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Welcome, Ron, and why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself? Yeah, hello. Hi, Jonathan. Very nice to be here, and thanks again for having me. So, as you said, I'm a Chinese maritime historian, and particularly I'm interested in the history of early modern China.

And what I find intriguing is that, I mean, how to bridge the 18th century with China and the maritime world together. Because traditionally, it seems like the distance between these two sort of aspects is kind of far away from each other. And so what I really want to do is to find different perspectives to try to link these two aspects closer and to perhaps let us know how did China during this late imperial era was shaped by the maritime war. Thank you. And as a reminder, the views expressed here are our own and not associated with any institutions that we may be affiliated with. So let's just get started. We traditionally think of China as a land-based power, but your book argues that this ignores the rich history of China as a maritime nation. Could you tell us where this idea of China as an exclusively land power came from and why it's wrong? Right. Of course, of course. Well, actually, that's a good question to start off, I think.

well it is a common assumption that china was always a land-based empire or power as you mentioned and and that's exactly the kind of idea i i wanted to question in the book that we're going to talk about today the shaving the blue dragons and it was i would say so going back to your question is that i would say parts of this image that china was always land-bounded as a land-based power comes from Chinese official writing traditions which emphasised agriculture,

internal stability, and frontier defence, inland frontier defence particularly, especially against the nomadic incursions from the north and also from the northwest. So the sea, by contrast, was often seen

as unruly or morally suspect And so it didn't feature prominently in orthodox or those authentic accounts in the official records. So that's the first, I would say, the first layer contributing to this kind of assumption. There's also another layer, which I would say is like a Western layer to this kind of myth, that China came to be seen as a war kingdom because of the Great War, especially after its several defeats in the 19th century.

Most of those defeats were naval encounters between the Qing Empire and those Western Seafaring Empires, such as the First Opium War, the Second Opium War, the First Sino-Japanese War, and so forth. So those losses cast a long shadow, I would say reinforcing the impression that China had no meaningful maritime vision at all so these two layers I would say are the major

sort of like contributing factors to such assumption that China didn't care about the sea. So what I argued in Shaving the Blue Dragons, the book that we're going to talk about well actually not just in this book I would say but also in my earlier work is that what I try to argue is that this perspective is historically shallow. So from the Ming Dynasty all the way to the Qing Dynasty, the sea was very much part of China's political, economic, and symbolic world. So the state, either the Ming, the Han Chinese Ming, or the Manchu-led Qing Empire,

they didn't ignore the sea. They managed it, they mapped it, they taxed it, And even now and then, I mean, they feared it, but they never simply turned away from it. So to suggest that the late imperial Chinese government were indifferent to the maritime world, I would say it's misleading. And the idea that China's naval defeats in the 19th century were the inevitable outcomes of centuries of maritime neglect doesn't quite hold up to me. But I should make it clear here, because I'm not arguing that the Qing or the Ming were sea powers in the European sense. What really interests me is how a land-based empire like Imperial China engaged with the maritime world, especially along its own coastal frontiers on its own terms. So that's how I would shape this way.

yeah yeah um now your book covers both the uh ming and qing dynasties how did china's engagement with the sea change with the macho led uh qing versus the han led ming well that's a very good question actually and it is one that i true i try to unpack throughout the Well, it is true that the Qing Empire inherited many aspects of the main maritime systems, such as coastal forts or fortifications, the suppressions of piracy, and even the basic naval structure in which the Qing used as a framework and refined it over time. But they didn't simply copy in what came before. So, for example, when it comes to the logic of blocking the sea, in Chinese, what we call the haijing. So meaning that whenever troubles arise and the state would shut down all maritime activities to contain external threats. This particular idea is what we call the haijing policy, blocking the sea.

So such conceptions was very much something that the Qing, I would say, inherited from the Ming, because the Ming government had imposed these sea bans on and off for about 268 years altogether. And the Qing drew from that same, I would say, ideological playbook to sort of impose some sea bans for a significant period of time. But the Qing court couldn't enforce it in quite the same way as the main government did. It's very much because by the 18th century, the China's economy was far more entangled with maritime trade. And the coastline of China had become too active and too vast to manage through simple kind of prohibitions. so while the impulse to close the sea was still there i would say the the circumstances had fundamentally changed so that's why the chain it seems like the chain followed the main's logic to block the sea but in actuality they couldn't do it as the main did it in such a harsh way

and another example is worth mentioning is that while the main government largely ignored many of the offshore islands, the Qing court incorporate them much more systematically into what we might call their maritime frontier, or I would say the blue frontier. And the Qing court also invested heavily in sea charts, not just those kind of like grand atlases or the grand maps, but local diagrams as well so the reason why they invest heavily in those z-charts is because they need to set up a plan to help police and control the coastal waters more effectively so so here we can also see that it seems like the Qing is copying something from Ming Dynasty but they also have something new like sort of like invented and formulated so actually we often assume that the

Manchus being land-based and known for its land-based warfare, and they have no maritime visions. But that's not quite accurate. Even before they crossed the sea mountain pass, the Shanhai Pass, and established their capitals in Beijing, the Manchus were already aware of Southeast Asia's trade routes and benefits from them. Here I would like to point out a recent study, a latest research by a scholar, a Taiwanese scholar, his name is called Konglin Wei, at Academia Sinica. According to him, before they established capital in Beijing, the Manchus already imported products such as pepper and some types of tropical hardwoods from Southeast Asia to Manchuria.

So they were engaging with maritime commerce well before they gained control of China proper. The Manchus also used sea merchants for gathering intelligence, especially from Japan, before they established the capital in Beijing. So they were not maritime novice by any means, I would say, or ignorant by any means. and another important point is that when it comes to the Ming-Qing comparisons I would like to make is that the broader context has changed so as I briefly mentioned earlier

by the mid-18th century so maritime trade had become far more central with Chinese goods flowing out in huge volumes so to manage this I mean the Qing court had no choice but to establish four custom offices in southern China as early as 1618-4, so just after the annexations of Taiwan,

the year just after that. So if we return to your original questions, yes, the Qing built on the main foundations in formulating some of their maritime tactics. That leads pretty naturally into my next question, which is what's the Canton system and how do they contribute to Chinese maritime interactions with the outside world, especially with the European nations?

Well, the Canton system. Oh, yeah, of course. So the Canton system was essentially a trade arrangement the Qing court put in place in the 18th century to manage foreign commerce. So from 1757 onward, all Western trade was confined to the port of Canton. which is modern-day Guangzhou, and had to go through a pay system

which was, like, administrated by a group or cluster of licensed Chinese merchants known as the Konghong merchants, okay? So this is what we call the Konghong system, too. I mean, that's another way to call the Canton system. So foreigners or foreign traders, I mean, couldn't travel inland or trade freely, according to this system, they could only train Canton. Everything had to be done within this tightly controlled

framework, overseen by imperial officials as well as those called Hong merchants. And the other things, for example, is that those foreign traders, I mean, they have to leave Canton during winter time and they couldn't learn Chinese when they were on the Chinese soil, so they were

forbidden. So this is our general understanding of the Canton system. But here's the thing, because we often think of the Canton system from a China-centric perspective, as if it was simply imposed by the Qing state. For example, what I just told you, they're all Sinocentric. They're all like from the Chinese perspective, when you sort of look at the system itself. Well, yes, no doubt it was the Qing policy, of course. But what I want to say is that, in reality, the Canton system was, to a substantial extent, a negotiated outcome.

What do I mean by that? It's that because European traders, especially the British, they were actually quite happy to operate within this system for much of the 18th century. and even at the very beginning when Canton was being picked as a port city to conduct these kind of like western European trade the Europeans they were quite supportive of this idea because Canton had everything they need like such as warehouses the reliable merchants and experienced call home merchants and and perhaps most importantly the the skilled interpreters Because to do this kind of trans-regional trade, you need interpreters. Particularly, those foreign traders were not allowed to learn Chinese officially, so they need to rely on interpreters.

So from their perspective, I mean the European merchants' perspective, there wasn't much need to sail further north if all the business could be completed efficiently in one place. So because we shouldn't forget that in the age of sale, by selling an extra miles, I mean, means that I mean, you are actually like investing more in your journey, investing more in your like sort of enterprising journey. So you have to make sure that every single miles will be worthwhile of like worthy of like selling. So if they couldn't see any benefits in that, so why would they do it? So going back to my response, the Canton system, even though it was restrictive, the Canton system became a dynamic zone of exchange. I mean, not just for goods like we all know those Chinese commodities, such as tea, silk, porcelain, but also for ideas, technologies, and diplomatic gesture. so the Qing if we try to look at the Canton system

simply from what we have been arguing for centuries the Qing it seems like they were isolating themselves they were using one port to deal with all kinds of foreign matters but it wasn't that accurate because the Qing wasn't

isolating themselves they were actually managing the terms of engagement within their perimeters, again on their own terms and the foreign troopers for a time at least in the second half of the 18th century at least they were willing participants

in that arrangement so they didn't really complain that much about the system until George McCartney arriving in the King Empire in the late 18th century but between the time when the canon system

was established in the middle of the 18th century and late 18th century well in most cases we can see harmony we can see like the system was working fairly well and it was quite practical and functional so that is something that i feel like we we should also bear in mind when it comes to the the stories and the history of the canton system so um to back up a little bit you talked about the qing dynasty um incorporating offshore islands can you tell us a little bit about the Zhang regime there

and how this affected the Qing's policy towards the sea. Oh yeah, the Zhang regime. Yes. Oh, but by the way, when I was mentioning the offshore islands earlier, I simply just mean those

islands in larger sizes, like Taiwan, in which I will be going to talk about, or the Hainan Islands, or even the Nana Islands. What I'm trying to say is that those smaller offshore islands off the coast of China in which the main government in most cases they ignore most of those offshore islands off the coast of China

but in which the Qing included almost all of them in a comprehensive and systematic way so that is something that I that's a point that I would like to argue when it comes to my so-called offshore islands arguments but coming to your questions on Jiang regimes in Taiwan, it is absolutely central to understanding how the early Qing or the Qing empire throughout the long 18th century thought about the sea or administrated the sea or imagined the maritime frontier. So after the fall of the Ming, the story goes like this. There's a guy called Zhang Chenggong, better known in the West as Gong Shinga, he established an out-of-maritime regime

based in Taiwan. And it wasn't just a pirate haven, or as a loyalist outpost, I would say. It was a highly organized sea-facing state that controlled key trade routes, commanded a formidable navy, and even minted its own currency. I mean, they called themselves the Dongning kingdoms. So at this height, the Jiang's regime in Taiwan posed both a military and symbolic threat to the Qing. But coming back to Jiang's Taiwan, the challenge it posed to the Qing court when

it forced the Manchus to take the maritime frontier seriously in ways that the Ming never quite did. Here comes another kind of comparison between the Qing and the Ming dynasties. For example, the Manchus, they imposed harsher sea bans, although they didn't really have that kind of 200-something years of

sea ban policies sustained. But during that era of the Qing maritime bans policy, the sea bans was clearly harsher because there was also coastal evacuation policies by saying that all the coastal populations has to be forcefully moved inland, and so to be relocated to some other cities.

And also the Qing had poured resources into the naval suppressions campaigns, and that is something which is phenomenal, I would say, at the time, according to the early modern naval standard. And so the Qing clearly came to realize that simply by turning away from the sea wasn't viable. I mean, they couldn't just simply rely on the sea blockade policy to fight against the Jiang Suoju in Taiwan. They also have to do some proactive measures. So they need to defeat the Jiangs in order to consolidate their maritime frontiers. So this kind of importance or the need to defeat the Jiangs' family in Taiwan pushed the Qing to expand coastal administrations, they strengthened their naval presence, and also rethink how maritime governance should work.

And just as importantly, their encounter with the Jiang regimes remained a powerful reminder because eventually of course we all know that Taiwan was being annexed by the Qing court so the Jiang family was eventually being defeated in 1683 but this encounter I mean wasn't simply like part of the Qing history and that's all it remained a powerful reminder throughout the long 18th century to the Manchus simply because the Manchus couldn't risk letting another maritime challenge like the Jiang families rise in Taiwan. So what I will argue is that Taiwan was never ignored or marginal in Qing maritime policy. It was, in many ways, central to how the Qing imagined and managed their seaward frontiers. So that's why I was

mentioning at the very beginning of my answer or response that Taiwan is absolutely central for us to understand how the Chinese court managed, administrated, governed, imagined its blueprint here since the late 17th century all the way to the early 19th. Yeah, yeah.

I'd like to jump back a bit because I want to discuss the Wu-Kang pirate threat, which is how you open up your book. We kind of jumped ahead of that. But if you could tell the listeners who they were and

How did the Ming respond and, you know, how that changed Chinese administration in the maritime domain? Of course, of course. Well, by the way, everybody likes pirates. The Wokou is definitely one of them. So what does it mean by the Wokou? Wokou are often described as Japanese pirates during the Ming dynasty. And even in the Qing, some Japanese pirates were still being labeled as Wokou. But that's only part of the story, I would like to remind our listeners, because, I mean, by the mid-16th century, many so-called war coal were actually Chinese smugglers, traders, and even some, like, frustrated military men, and joined by some even Portuguese and Southeast Asians traders. And so War Couple, we have to understand that it became a catch-all label that the main state used to criminalise American activities it couldn't control.

So what we're really looking at is a world of shadow trade, violence, and unofficial exchange that challenge the main visions of the coastal order. That's what we call war coal. But I would say, like, how did the main coal respond to this war coal crisis? I mean, of course they tried to suppress it, but repressions alone didn't work. Because ironically, I would say the crisis, it seems like it has shaken the foundation of the Ming court in many ways. That's true. But at the same time, ironically, I would say the crisis, the war code crisis, also forced the Ming state to engage more seriously with the maritime world. For example, the military commanders, because of the war code problem, they began to design new coastal defense measures.

And some scholar officials, they start studying the pirates in earnest, trying to understand the network and propose plans to mitigate the crisis. So it's just like they feature the characters in one of my chapters in the book. It's called Gemelot. And so he was one of those officials who really tried to study those pirates in detail in order to save the empire. So the main court, all I try to argue is that it was inevitably drawn into a debate over, or they were even drawn into a debate over whether to open a sea in order to better manage the world cold problem. So in the end, a port city called Moon Harbor, Yuegang in Fujian, was opened as a controlled outlet for trade, but only for a short period of time. But it doesn't matter that at least. I mean, those are local problems. They stimulate the main court to have such debate. So in a strange way, the local ends up pushing the main court towards a more sophisticated, if still ambivalent, maritime policy. So it didn't just simply pose some threat to the main government, but it also pushed them to think about it more carefully, more sophisticatedly, more effectively.

So that's a very interesting dynamic between the walkout crisis and the main administrations when it comes to their maritime engagements. Well, unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. Ron, where can our listeners find you and what are you working on next? Oh, well, yeah, so I'm now working on another project, which is about the cultural history of shark fiends consumption. It was a brutal process. I mean, it's something that has to be come down for decades. But the reason that, I mean, it's very strange when we try to look at the population of sharks over the past few 20 years, the numbers still dwindling. and then so although i mean we there are many many countries already began to block shark finnings and these kind of things but how come the population of sharks was still like in dangers

so one of the reasons for that is because of the consumption of shark fin soup in china and beyond so because of these kind of figures and i try to question so how come we were still so kind of obsessed with these sort of like chaffing consumption as kind of luxurious marine delicacies. That sounds like a really interesting

project, and once you have something, we'd love to have you back on to talk about that. I hope to come back again. Please invite me. I would love to. But yeah, thank you for being here, And to our listeners, we'll see you next time.

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