Most people know that Zheng Chenggong (also known as Koxinga) expelled the Dutch from Taiwan. Some know his title "Lord of the Imperial Surname" (Guoxingye, from which the Western name "Koxinga" derives). But very few have examined him through the lens of 17th-century global maritime competition. Zhang Peizhong's 550,000-character biography Red Heart Lifting the Sea: The Biography of Zheng Chenggong, sixteen years in the making, presents a figure far more complex than the textbook portrait — China's first forceful response to Western maritime expansion in the Age of Sail.
More Than "Restore the Ming, Expel the Qing"
The textbook version of Zheng Chenggong's story usually ends in 1662, with the Dutch expelled from Taiwan. But the man is far more layered than this narrative allows.
His entire life was lived in conflict — cultural conflict, the conflict between father and son, the conflict between loyalty and filial piety, between emotion and reason. His father, Zheng Zhilong, surrendered to the Qing with a fleet of 100,000 men. The 26-year-old Zheng Chenggong chose instead to burn his scholar's robes and take up arms. He repeatedly pleaded with his father not to capitulate. His father went ahead anyway, and eventually the entire family of eleven was executed in the capital.
He was a man of flesh and blood, not merely a heroic portrait on a wall. During the northern expedition to Nanjing, he grew overconfident after a string of victories, fell for the Qing army's stalling tactics, and saw his campaign collapse at the brink of success. After retaking Taiwan, exhausted and ill, he learned that his eldest son Zheng Jing had committed a grave indiscretion — he flew into a rage, vomited blood, and issued arrows of command ordering his son's execution. On his deathbed, "he clawed at his own face with both hands and died" — those four characters in the historical record still send a chill through the reader, even 360 years later. A life of 39 years, ending with a man destroying his own face.
The biography's author spent sixteen years visiting every place Zheng Chenggong had ever been: the Kisai-in temple in Hirado, Japan; the Xianxia Pass in northern Fujian; the waters off Zhoushan, Zhejiang, where 8,000 of his soldiers perished at sea; the mouth of the Taijiang River in Tainan — imagining the breathtaking spectacle of his fleet threading the Lu'ermen channel on the astronomical tide. He also commissioned rare documents from the Harvard-Yenching Library, translated Japanese source materials, and amassed nearly a thousand historical references.
Shi Zhanjun appraised the biography with six "greats": "great upheaval, great complexity, great nation, great hero, great vision, great effort."
The Forgotten Maritime Dimension
The most easily underestimated aspect of Zheng Chenggong is his maritime vision.
He was not merely fighting a guerrilla war on land. He was waging a trade war, an intelligence war, and a diplomatic war against the most powerful maritime empire of his time — the Dutch East India Company (VOC). When negotiations broke down, he imposed a total trade blockade on Taiwan that lasted two full years, until the Dutch were forced to capitulate. This is the logic of a modern maritime power state, appearing in a 17th-century Chinese commander — a fact that deserves closer examination.
Zheng Chenggong's trade blockade against the Dutch East India Company was, in essence, a modern seapower operation — using economic strangulation to replace a direct naval confrontation, cutting supply lines to break the enemy's will. This strategy was remarkably超前 ahead of its time in 17th-century world naval history.
The campaign to retake Taiwan is itself a textbook in naval warfare: the Lu'ermen landing — commanding over 300 warships to thread through a channel the Dutch had neglected to guard; the battle of Taijiang — Zheng's wooden ships against the West's most advanced cannon-armed vessels, sinking the Dutch flagship Hector; then a nine-month siege, combining frontal assault with agricultural colonization, holding out through food shortages and dwindling supplies.
At a time when Western colonial gunboats were running rampant across the world, Zheng Chenggong proved with a decisive victory that the Chinese could fight naval battles, that the Chinese were not without seapower consciousness.
The Irony of History
After Zheng Chenggong's death, the Qing court enacted the coastal evacuation and maritime ban, deliberately sealing off China's coastline. Two centuries later, when Western gunboats finally pried open China's doors, the lost window of opportunity was recalled with bitter hindsight.
Li Jingze, Vice Chairman of the China Writers Association, commented: "Zheng Chenggong's significance transcends the category of traditional national hero. He represents the Chinese nation's first forceful response to Western impact in the Age of Sail. This book belongs not only to history, but to the present."
Re-reading Zheng Chenggong's story more than 360 years later carries meaning beyond remembrance. On the seas where he once fought bloodily, he reminds us of something: the ocean is not merely a boundary — it is power itself. He understood this in the 17th century. It took his countrymen two more centuries to grasp it again.