Empresa de China
[1][2][3] Military conquest of China appeared viable by the reports of Christian missionaries and ambassadors, who described the Ming population as demobilized, inefficiently administered and easy to sublevate against their own governors, offering a situation similar to those of the Aztec and Inca empires where control of the territory could be wrested away.
Once conquered, the plan included mass evangelizing activities and the promotion of mestizaje between Iberians and Chinese, hoping to turn China into a source of strength to extend Hispanic control and Christianity across all of Asia.
[4] The enterprise was formulated by several figures of the Hispanic Monarchy, but its main driving force would be a sector of the Society of Jesus led by Alonzo Sánchez, who clashed against other churchmen over the Vitorian legitimacy of a new conquest.
[5] The project was fruitless, after which the governor of the Philippines, Francisco de Sande, opted to send letters to King Philip II proposing to attack China,[7][8] claiming that 4,000-6,000 soldiers would suffice and that the effort would be helped by the tyranny to which the Chinese were subjected.
[9] The Empresa de China received a religious and political push from the Manila Synode, and in particular of the controversial Jesuit and diplomat Alonzo Sánchez,[10][6] who visited the country in 1582 to confirm the loyalty of Macau after the dynastic union of Spain and Portugal.
[5][11][2] Salazar gave also strategic suggestions, proposing to draw the help of Japan through their local network of Portuguese Jesuits, as well as confiscating the Chinese merchant ships in Manila to fund the initial war effort.
[5] The plan involved to gather an armada led by the governor of the Philippines, containing 10,000-12,000 Iberian soldiers, 6,000 Visayans and 5,000 Japanese recruited in Nagasaki, assisted by Jesuits due to their knowledge of the lands, and endowed with a purse of 200.000 pesos to strategically bribe mandarins and pay mercenaries.
[17][2] Ricci and Ruggieri would be previously recalled to serve as consultants and negotiators with the Chinese authorities,[18] and the submission of the latter would be surveyed under the Vitorian policies of preventing unnecessary violence and abuse of the civilian population.
[19] Success would mean an enormous advance for the Hispanic universal monarchy, as a Spanish China would become an invaluable base to extend their control across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, lending forces to subdue and Christianize Cochinchina, Siam, Kampuchea, India, Borneo, Sumatra, Moluccas and other lands, to the point of making it possible to gather regional allies against the Ottoman Empire and opening an eastern front against it.
[4][20] Sánchez' and Salazar's project, however, found opposition in another Jesuitic current headed by Alessandro Valignano and Superior General Claudio Acquaviva, who saw the Empresa de China as an unjustified violation of the Christian rule of evangelizing peacefully.
[21][5] The protests, added to Sánchez's own actions in New Spain, where he worked to stop a cadre of Dominican missionaries from reaching China in order not to have them obstructing the warring effort, ended up driving a wedge between Salazar and him.
The priest Martín de la Ascensión proposed an equally complex plan to invade Japan, where native allies could be easily found too, and whose armies, once pledged to the Hispanic Monarchy, could be used in campaigns against China and other nearby lands.
