The South China Sea by Bill Hayton Read Free Book Online Page B

vast majority of the voyages were to Southeast Asia but Zheng became famous because his ships went much further – around the Indian Ocean. Wade argues that the voyages were not peace missions but clear shows of force. Each expedition – of between 50 and 250 ships – carried over 20,000 troops armed with the most advanced weapons of their time. The purpose was clearly to shock and awe. On the first voyage, ordered in 1405, Zheng stopped in Palembang on Sumatra where he chased down a fugitive from the Ming court, Chen Zu-yi. Five thousand people were reported killed in the fighting. On the same voyage Zheng's armada fought an army in Java, which Wade believes probably belonged to Majapahit, China's rival for supremacy in the South China Sea at the time. On another voyage, in 1411, Zheng invaded a Sri Lankan city, destroyed its military, appointed a puppet ruler and took the king back to China. In 1415 he intervened in a civil war in Sumatra and there are also suggestions that his forces committed atrocities on the Arabian Peninsula. 15
    Wade argues that the fact that so many rulers and ambassadors were transported to China on board Zheng's ships suggests they must have been coerced into travelling and that this coercion gave the Ming Dynasty access to ports and shipping lanes. In 1405 the admiral established a garrison in Malacca (Melaka in Malay), a city established just three years before, which enabled Ming forces to control the Straits in which it sits. He awarded the ruler a kingship in return. The overall purpose of the voyages appears to have been two-fold: to control trade routes and to give the usurping emperor legitimacy at home through the enforced paying of homage to him by foreign rulers. This is a long way from the official picture of the ‘outstanding envoy of peace and friendship’ promoted by Beijing. In theend, this ‘gunboat diplomacy’ lasted just 30 years. Jealous court officials curbed the eunuch's powers. Policy priorities turned inwards: Zheng's maps were burned and his boats left to rot away. China didn't possess another naval ship capable of reaching the islands of the South China Sea until it was given one by the United States 500 years later.
    But the Chinese Communist Party knows that myth is stronger than history and Zheng the kindly diplomat still sets sail whenever ‘maritime cooperation’ needs to be discussed in Southeast Asia or an investment deal celebrated in East Africa. ‘Official history’ plays a vital role in Communist China generally, as even a brief visit to the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square will attest. It buttresses the Party's right to rule and denigrates rivals. Once a particular historical narrative becomes Party dogma, challenging it becomes a career-limiting act of dissent. Supporting it with evidence brings rewards.
    In 1986, China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage created an Underwater Archaeological Heritage Centre (UWARC) to be managed by the National Museum. The decision was prompted, in part, by a fear that China was losing its ‘ownership’ of faraway shipwrecks to well-financed foreign excavators. But it also had another purpose. UWARC's first open-water expedition was to the Chinese-occupied but Vietnamese-claimed Paracel Islands. In March 1999 the centre's director, Zhang Wei, announced that his divers had recovered 1,500 relics dating from 907, ‘proving that the Chinese were the earliest inhabitants’ of the Paracels. Less partisan archaeologists guffawed. In 907 the Tang Dynasty had just fallen so it is conceivable that the wreck could have been from one of the very first ships ever to sail from the newly independent state of Minnan. However, it's much more likely that the vessel was Malay or Arab. Chinese pottery was traded all around the region, and beyond. The presence of pottery on any shoal is no more proof of Chinese historical possession than the presence of thousands of cowry shells in a Bronze Age tomb in the