Chapter 1295: New Financial Clique vs. Old Warlords

Hearing his son Zheng Sen's reminder, Zheng Zhilong merely gave a cold laugh and looked at him. "Damu, don't you wish Wu Sangui would drop dead? If he were gone, who else in that Wu family of bumpkins could step forward? Could Wu Sanfu? Could Wu Guoyong? Could Wu Yingxiong?"

Zheng Sen shook his head. "Those three certainly can't compare with Wu Sangui, nor with me or Second Brother. But... don't forget the Empress, and don't forget the Crown Prince!"

Zheng Zhilong sneered. "The Empress is aging and her charms are fading—how much longer can she keep the Emperor's favor? As for the Crown Prince... the Crown Prince bears the surname Zhu! And this dynasty forbids cousin marriage, so the Crown Prince cannot take a daughter of the Wu family as his consort. My granddaughters, on the other hand, have a very good chance!"

Zheng Zhilong had a large brood of sons, so naturally he had plenty of granddaughters. Moreover, apart from Zheng Jiangong, who had married a princess, all his other sons had taken daughters of famous Jiangnan literati families as wives—so among Zheng Zhilong's granddaughters, the proportion of top scholars was very high!

Zheng Zhilong said with a smile, "I have already seen the preliminary examination results for the Jinling Women's College. Among the top one hundred talented young ladies, eleven are girls from my family—not counting the daughters born to Second Son and the Princess—and another eighteen are related to my family by marriage or kinship. That is nearly thirty percent! Old Wu's family, by contrast, has only one, Wu Ake, who made the list, ranked ninety-third—worse than all eleven of my granddaughters."

As Zheng Sen listened to the old man's words, he did not know whether to laugh or cry. Did the old man really think choosing a consort for the Crown Prince was like sitting the top scholar's examination?

Still, the Wu family had indeed come off worse in the open competition. Wu Sangui, Wu Sanfu, Wu Sanfeng, Wu Guogui, Wu Guozheng, Wu Guoyong, and the others all had plenty of daughters, yet only one—Wu Ake—had placed within the top hundred in the preliminary examination. If the cutoff were loosened to three hundred, then one more would be added: Wu Guogui's daughter Wu Ahuan. Beyond three hundredth place, in theory one was no longer qualified to sit the second examination. Even if one forced one's way in, it would only be as an also-ran, with absolutely no chance of entering the Women's College. After all, the first class of Jinling Women's College would admit only one hundred students.

"Father," Zheng Sen said, his brow tightly furrowed, "everyone at court knows our family and the Wu family are at odds, but with a great enemy bearing down on us, you must never say such things in front of outsiders. You must not say them even in front of our own people!"

"I know, I know—your father isn't senile yet!" Zheng Zhilong waved a hand dismissively, then added, "Damu, it's getting late. You should come with me to the palace to see His Majesty and your sister Chagu. I expect His Majesty will discuss with you the matter of relocating the Dongning garrison. Have you thought about how you will answer?"

"I have," Zheng Sen said. "It would be best if the garrison could be withdrawn. Our family already has many people in the navy, the Yiguan Trading Company is flourishing more and more, and we have a foothold in the United Provinces of Xinzhou. We no longer need to hold a garrison command. For our family, the Dongning Garrison is not a source of strength but a burden."

The Zheng family's Dongning Garrison was divided into two parts: one was Quanzhou Prefecture, the other the Taiwan Regional Military Commission. Quanzhou Prefecture was of course a money-making prefecture, with wealth pouring in from every direction—the "cash cow" of the Dongning Garrison. But the Taiwan Regional Military Commission was a bottomless pit. Zheng Sen had poured hundreds of thousands of taels into it every year for twenty years, and still had little to show for it.

Because Taiwan's commercial value was truly too low, Zheng Sen could only carry out armed settlement by establishing guard posts. He set up the Taiwan Regional Military Commission, and beneath it established four guards—Taizhong, Taitung, Tainan, and Taibei—each guard in turn commanding five chiliarch posts, and below those, centurion posts.

In addition, at the seat of the Zheng family's Taiwan Regional Military Commission—the former Dutch Fort Zeelandia—the Zheng family established Dongning City as the central city of the island of Taiwan.

After twenty years of immigration and land reclamation, the total number of Han military households on Taiwan—armed peasants, in reality—had reached nearly thirty-six thousand households, with a population of over two hundred thousand. That number might seem small, but it was the result of Zheng Sen's years of effort and the millions of taels of his own capital he had sunk into it!

The reason it had been so difficult came down to four main factors.

First, the tropical diseases on Taiwan were simply too deadly.

Second, Taiwan was not a trade entrepôt. In this day and age, merchant ships of every nation passing through the Taiwan Strait all put in at Anping Harbor or Xiamen Harbor in Quanzhou Prefecture; no one went to Dongning Harbor on Taiwan.

Third, the treasured island of Taiwan actually held no treasures. Plains were scarce, and its only specialty was deerskin.

Fourth, there were simply too many other places to go!

If one did not fear dysentery taking one's life, the Jin'ou Army, the Kingdom of Siam, the Western Ocean Army, the Twelve Duchies of Malacca, and the island of Temasek were all fine destinations—why go to Taiwan?

If one could not endure the heat and dysentery, one could go to Liaoyang, to the Heilongjiang Garrison, to the Andong Garrison, to the United Provinces of Xinzhou—especially the United Provinces of Xinzhou, where the climate was comfortable, the land fertile, and there were sable pelts and gold, two goods that made men's mouths water!

So the fact that Taiwan had been built up at all depended entirely on the Zheng family pouring in money and the Zhu Emperor's unending stream of convicts sent to the island.

Hearing his son's wish to shed the burden, Zheng Zhilong smiled and shook his head. "Since Taiwan is a burden, then our family must carry it! Quanzhou Prefecture we can do without, but the Taiwan Regional Military Commission we must keep in hand—and we must keep investing money to develop it!"

"That means losing several hundred thousand a year. The money—"

"Our family will pay it!" Zheng Zhilong said. "When you lose your own money, only then can you be meticulous... only then can you split every copper coin in two before losing it! If our family were not the ones losing the money, and the court were losing it instead, even ten million taels sunk in would not have produced the Taiwan we have today!"

That was certainly true!

Is losing the state's money the same as losing one's own?

And in all the Great Ming, when it came to the art of losing money, Zheng Sen was absolutely among the best. The only ones who could surpass him were the mere handful: Zheng Zhilong, Zhu Cilang, and Shen Tingyang.

"Then we'll keep carrying Taiwan..." Zheng Sen sighed. "Let Zheng Jing take charge of the Dongning Garrison and keep losing money!"

"We'll also need a piece of land," Zheng Zhilong said. "One out, one in—so it doesn't look as though the court is taking advantage of our family."

"Where?" Zheng Sen asked.

"The Ryukyus!" Zheng Zhilong said. "After the Shang family left, the Ryukyus have had no master, and the court doesn't know how to take them over. Dongning might as well ask for the Ryukyus and establish a Ryukyu Prefecture."

"Can a Ryukyu Prefecture make money?" Zheng Sen asked.

"It can't," Zheng Zhilong said, shaking his head with a smile. "But it won't lose money either."

"Eldest Senior Brother, do you really want the Ryukyus? That place is nothing but chicken ribs—how can it compare with Quanzhou?"

Inside the Wanghai Hall in the Eastern Lake Palace, where Imperial Noble Consort Zheng resided, Zhu Cilang—who was speaking with the Zheng father and son—was indeed delighted when he heard Zheng Sen propose exchanging Quanzhou for the Ryukyus.

He of course knew that Quanzhou Prefecture was the Dongning Garrison's source of revenue, while the Ryukyus were a place of no more value than chicken ribs, utterly incomparable.

Zheng Sen's proposal was, in effect, to shoulder the burden himself and hand the benefit to the Zhu Emperor. This was what a loyal subject looked like!

Zheng Sen said with a smile, "The Ryukyus and Taiwan are originally one body. With the Ryukyus, Taiwan's value doubles. Moreover, the Ryukyus are already developed land, far easier to build up than Taiwan. For Dongning to trade Quanzhou for the Ryukyus looks like a loss in the short term, but the long-term benefit is considerable."

The Zhu Emperor nodded. "How will the short-term shortfall be covered? How much subsidy does the Dongning Garrison need from the court?"

"The court need not subsidize anything," Zheng Sen said with a smile. "Taiwan now has some income. With a little frugality, it can cover its various expenses; the shortfall is not great. The Ryukyus should show a small surplus, which will just make up Taiwan's deficit."

"Then what about the Taiwan Regional Military Commission's deficits over the years?" Zhu Cilang asked again.

"Those were all immigration expenses," Zheng Sen said.

"You won't send immigrants to Taiwan anymore?"

"We will still send immigrants!" Zheng Sen said. "But we won't use the Dongning Garrison's funds to do it. Our family will pay."

"Then isn't your family taking a loss?" Zhu Cilang pressed, determined to get to the bottom of it.

Zheng Sen still answered with a cheerful smile. "No loss, no loss... When we arranged the earlier immigration, we made preparations. The immigrants were not concentrated around Dongning City but spread like a net, with the various chiliarch posts and centurion forts distributed along Taiwan's coastal regions. In the Tainan Guard and Taizhong Guard areas, where there is more flatland, there is a great deal of open ground between the posts and forts—just right for establishing sugarcane plantations. That is a profitable business, not a bottomless pit. There will surely come a day when it turns a profit."

(End of Chapter)