Wang Zhi (pirate)
Originally a salt merchant, Wang Zhi turned to smuggling during the Ming dynasty's period of maritime prohibitions banning all private overseas trade, and eventually became the head of a pirate syndicate stretching across the East and South China Seas, from Japan to Thailand.
[3] Owing to the lax regulation on maritime trade in Guangdong, Wang Zhi and his associates were able to build great seaworthy junks, which they used to carry contraband goods such as saltpeter, silks, and cotton to the markets of Southeast Asia and Japan.
[6] On 23 September 1543, Wang Zhi accompanied some Portuguese men on a ship to Tanegashima, a Japanese island to the southeast of Kyushu, in a voyage that marked one of the first times Europeans set foot in Japan.
[11] Since Japan was undergoing a protracted period of civil war, the lack of an effective central authority (neither the emperor nor the shōgun held any real power at the time) made Wang Zhi free to enter patronage agreements with the regional daimyō who wielded actual control over territories.
[4] Wang Zhi's connection with Japan quickly proved useful to the Xu brothers when in the same year, a Japanese ship on an unofficial tribute mission to China passed by Tanegashima and landed in the Chinese port city Ningbo.
This Japanese ship did not carry the proper documents and was refused by the Ningbo officials, and Wang Zhi was able to convince the emissaries to barter their goods illicitly in nearby Shuangyu instead.
The local residents of Shuangyu looked up to Wang Zhi and willingly aided the pirates, since the smuggling trade brought considerable wealth to the island.
On a stormy night in June 1548, a fleet under the veteran general Zhu Wan razed Shuangyu to the ground and filled its harbour with stones, rendering it permanently unusable.
[4] The destruction of Shuangyu disrupted the relatively orderly system of illegal trade previously centered around the port, and the smugglers scattered across the Chinese coast, with some becoming pirate raiders in the process.
[17] For his part, Wang Zhi re-established himself at Ligang (瀝港, also named Liegang 列港, on Jintang Island) and continued expanding his consortium.
[19] In a bid to have the Ming government lift the maritime prohibition and legitimize his illicit trade, Wang Zhi portrayed his expansion as keeping the peace on the coast.
Despite these efforts, the Ming authorities tightened the restrictions later in 1551 by banning even fishing boats from going out to sea, and Wang Zhi was only rewarded 100 shoulder-loads of rice for his trouble.
[20] The Ming responded by sending the military general Yu Dayou with several thousand war junks to dislodge Wang Zhi from Ligang in 1553.
The wokou attacks started as swift raids on coastal settlements to obtain provisions and goods for trade, then returned to their ships and left.
[27] Wang Zhi might have hoped that by such a show of force the Ming government could be intimidated to legalize private overseas trade, while he always maintained that he never led a raid in person.
Unlike his hardline predecessors like Zhu Wan, Hu Zongxian was open to liberalizing trade in order to put an end to the piracy.
Hu Zongxian sent envoys to Japan for the dual purpose of requesting assistance from Japanese authorities, and to establish contact with Wang Zhi to entice him to surrender.
[30] Wang Zhi and Mao Haifeng met the envoys on the Gotō Islands where they explained that there was no single authority in Japan that could command the Japanese pirates to cease their activities.
On the other hand, they were enticed by the opportunity for their trade to be legalized, and offered to fight other pirates for the Ming in return for a pardon of their crimes and the permission to present tribute.
[31] Hu Zongxian relayed the message to the imperial court in Beijing, who responded with skepticism and indignation: tributes could only be presented by foreigners so Wang Zhi's request had seditious implications to the Ming government.
[36] Hu Zongxian was prepared to send a memorial to the throne about Wang Zhi's petition, but the political climate had quickly changed against opening trade.
[43] Wang Zhi left behind a difficult legacy, as he was at the same time a merchant who fostered maritime trade and a "pirate king" who was at the top of a violent enterprise.
[49][46] The affair was widely reported as national news in China, bringing the debates surrounding Wang Zhi into public attention and sparking a new wave of research on the Jiajing wokou raids.
