A Chinese Invasion Fleet Conquered Taiwan – In 1683

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If China invades Taiwan tomorrow, it won’t be the first time. More than 300 years ago, a Chinese fleet captured Taiwan. 

The parallels with today are uncanny. In the late 17th Century, a new dynasty had taken over China.. The remnants of the old empire retreated to Taiwan. After decades of fruitless attempts to seize the island, an ambitious admiral – aided by foreign weapons – managed to subdue Taiwan.

In 1949, it was the Communists under Mao Zedong who defeated Chaing Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government. When the remaining Nationalist forces retreated from the mainland to Taiwan, Communist China spent years trying to capture the island. Today, China has massively modernized its armed forces, with reports that China’s leader Xi Jinping has ordered the military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

Whether the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will be ready by 2027 is debatable. Yet if nothing else, China’s leaders have a sense of history. In fact, at one point there were reports that an aircraft carrier would be named after the admiral who captured Taiwan in 1683.

A Taiwan History Lesson 

The story begins in the mid-1700s, when the decaying Ming dynasty was overthrown by the Manchus – an ethnic group from the Manchuria region of northern China. While the Manchus captured Beijing and established the Qing dynasty, some Ming forces held out, including the powerful Zheng clan which controlled Taiwan. 

The Zheng fleet was commanded by an admiral named Koxinga, who battled the Qing and had also ejected Dutch traders from Taiwan. One of Koxinga’s captains was Shi Lang, a skilled and ambitious sailor who ultimately defected to the Qing after Koxinga ignored his advice.

Despite suspicions over Shi’s loyalty, the Qing took advantage of his knowledge of the Ming, and made him a naval commander. “In spite of opposition from within the Beijing court, which argued that Taiwan was too remote, too unproductive, and too expensive to maintain, the emperor eventually authorized Shi Lang to conquer Taiwan for the Qing,” wrote China expert Grant Rohde in a new book on Chinese amphibious warfare for the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.

In July 1683, a fleet commanded by Shi Lang left the southern Chinese port of Fujian and sailed to the Penghu Islands, about seventy miles from the mainland and 30 miles from Taiwan. Compared to a potential PLA armada that would likely include thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Shi’s invasion force seemed small: 300 junks and 21,000 men.

Nonetheless, the Zheng fleet was not expecting an invasion during typhoon season. “After the delay caused by hurricane-force winds, the Qing forces made a devastating naval attack on the Ming naval forces in the Penghu Islands,” Rohde wrote. “Bolstered by superior guns the Dutch had provided, the Qing navy sank 169 Zheng junks with a loss of twelve thousand Ming naval men, thereby shattering the Zheng clan’s naval superiority, while Shi Lang’s forces suffered little harm. A Qing landing cohort completed the takeover of the islands.”

With the Penghu Islands as a secure base, Shi’s forces quickly landed in Taiwan against minimal opposition. Shi offered generous terms to the Zheng, which sapped any potential holdouts. He also persuaded the Ming rulers to annex Taiwan, which became a prefecture of mainland Fujian province.

What Can China Learn? 

Much has changed in 300 years. One significant difference is that the climactic point of the 1683 campaign was Shi’s destruction of the Ming fleet in the Penghu Islands. With the Qing enjoying naval supremacy and a secure base, capturing Taiwan itself was easy. 

A Chinese amphibious force today would encounter fierce opposition from Taiwanese forces armed with advanced weapons such as F-16 jets, M1 Abrams tanks, submarines, mines and a variety of drones and anti-ship missiles. Equally important, the Chinese fleet would likely have to battle a coalition defending Taiwan, including the U.S., Japan and Australia. 

On the other hand, China can derive some comfort from the 1683 campaign. “As Chinese political and military leaders envision conquering Taiwan, their predecessors’ earlier seizure of the island is likely to inform their thoughts, whether consciously or unconsciously,” according to an essay by RAND Corp. researcher Scott Savitz.

Xi and the PLA will take note that the Qing Empire ultimately conquered Taiwan by first seizing mainland Chinese ports and then the islands offshore of Taiwan, thus undermining Taiwan’s economy. The Qing invasion also benefitted from political turmoil within the Ming garrison on Taiwan.

Chinese PLA Tank. Image: Creative Commons.

“Today’s China may aim to achieve a victory without mounting a potentially costly invasion,” Savitz argued. “Some combination of bombardment, assassinations of key leaders, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, severing of communications, and other measures could potentially induce rapid surrender.”

Can modern China replicate the success of the Qing? “In China today, the question remains whether there will be a latter-day commander similar to Shi Lang who will succeed in attaching Taiwan to the mainland as Shi did in 1683,” Rohde concluded.

About the Author: Defense Expert Michael Peck 

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn