[4] Breech loading swivel cannons from Portugal entered the Chinese weaponry after a Ming fleet defeated the Portuguese at the Battle of Xicaowan in 1521 and captured their guns as war booty.

[5] Yu Zigao, commander of Zhejiang and Fujian, ordered several "red-barbarian cannon" in 1624 prior to his expedition against the Dutch outpost on Penghu Island in the Pescadores.

[8]see also : Gonçalo Teixeira Corrêa Several Ming officials who supported the use of the new technology were Christian converts of the Jesuit mission, such as the influential minister Xu Guangqi and Sun Yuanhua in Shandong.

After the fall of Guangning (now Beizhen in Liaoning), Ignatius Sun's extremely thorough memorials on the superiority of Western cannon and fortification attracted attention at the highest levels of the War Ministry.

"[14] Chinese gunsmiths continued to modify "red barbarian" cannons after they entered the Ming arsenal, and eventually improved upon them by applying native casting techniques to their design.

[16] According to the soldier Albrecht Herport, who fought for the Dutch at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia, the Chinese "know how to make very effective guns and cannons, so that it’s scarcely possible to find their equal elsewhere.

"[17] Soon after the Ming started producing the composite metal Dingliao grand generals in 1642, Beijing was captured by the Manchu Qing dynasty and along with it all of northern China.

The Manchu elite did not concern themselves directly with guns and their production, preferring instead to delegate the task to Chinese craftsmen, who produced for the Qing a similar composite metal cannon known as the "Shenwei grand general."

[19] Although the southern Chinese started making cannons with iron cores and bronze outer shells as early as the 1530s, they were followed soon after by the Gujarats, who experimented with it in 1545, the English at least by 1580, and Hollanders in 1629.