Maritime Frontiers, Territorial Expansion and Haifang 89
no changes in regulations should be considered”.^129 John Robert Shepherd
also points out: “In its frontier administration, the Chinese state had two
overwhelming concerns: control and revenue.... By preventing Chinese
migration and permanent settlement, the state hoped to reduce ... its
control costs on strategically important peripheries.”^130 The restriction
was also a measure to prevent disturbances on the frontier.^131
Beneβicial Frontiers: The Economics of
the Maritime World
The anti-opium champion Lin Zexu (1785‒1850) once said,
The reason for allowing foreign trade (hushi) in Guangdong during
the past two hundred years was to extend favors to foreign lands
and show universally the kind treatment [of this empire] to warm
their hearts. It has not been acquiescing in the reliance of this
land on trade as a source of its livelihood. It is even less so for the
beneβit of customs duties.^132This claim was mere empty rhetoric. The relations between imperial
China and the maritime world beyond its frontiers had always been
colored by a strong economic element. Since Han times, references to
local products had dotted the passages on the Nanhai states in both
ofβicial and private writings, underlining that the Nanhai region had
always been a source of rare and sought-after commodities.
D iscourses about the economics of maritime endeavors can be found,
for example, in a well-known mid-sixteenth-century work by a Ming
scholar of statecraft, Tang Shu. The author stated explicitly that,
China and the barbarian countries have their respective
unique products; therefore trade between them would be difβicult
to terminate. Where there is proβit, people will certainly pursue
it.^133- Qing shilu: Shizong/Yongzheng chao 清實錄：世宗朝 [Veritable records of
the Shizong/Yongzheng Reign] (hereafter QSL: SZ), juan 61, in TWWXCK, no.
167, p. 20. - John Robert Shepherd, Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier,
1600–1800 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 408, 409. - Ibid., p. 137.
- A memorial cited in HGTZ, 49: 15a–b.
- Tang Shu 唐樞 (1497–1574), “Fu Hu Meilin lun chu Wang Zhi” 復胡梅林論處
王直 [On how to handle Wang Zhi’s case—a reply to Your Excellency Hu Meilin
(Hu Zongxian)], in TWWXCK, no. 289, p. 48; see also MJSWB, 270: 3a–9b.