Restoring the Celestial Empire: Zeng China
It has been a long and very hard road but China is once again unified [1] under native rulers, the Zeng dynasty. It is an accomplishment that has been disgustingly absent for the past several centuries. In fact, not since the days of the Tang seven centuries ago has China seen such a thing. The Song even at their start had to deal with the Liao and later the Jin. Then came the Mongol conquest and then the divided China of Shun and Wu, which were at least native Chinese, but were both swept aside by the Tieh invasion.
Even as the Zeng bask in the glory of having destroyed the Tieh and sent the Later Yuan Mongols back to their felt tents, this obscenity is far from forgotten. The seven centuries of humiliation, painful as they are, cannot be argued away or ignored. They must be understood, so that such a thing will never ever happen again. This imperative is why the Chinese are already, despite still recovering from the wars of reunification, meddling so vigorously in Central Asia.
This resulted in the contact with the Ottomans, which had not been intended but quickly seized upon. While the Chinese consider all foreigners to be barbarians, there are varying degrees of barbarians. The Ottomans are rather civilized as barbarians go and are far preferably to the likes of the various steppe nomads. (The Khazars, especially under Theodoros Laskaris, with their odd mix of ‘civilization’ and nomad, were further down on the civilized barbarian scale. Plus their sheer power under that monarch made the Zeng nervous.)
Even as the Zeng prepare for the future, they are looking back to the past. The memory of the Tang, the last time when China was united under a native ruler (leaving aside any questions regarding the ancestry of the Tang themselves), is incredibly intoxicating and there is a conscious effort in the Zeng court to replicate those days.
The Zeng originally began in the south, but they chose for their capital the ancient city of Luoyang, seat of Chinese monarchs as far back as the Eastern Zhou over two millennia ago. Chang’an was the capital for most of the Tang period, but Luoyang’s still impressive pedigree plus easier logistics and better strategic position helped it to win out. The court dresses in ceremonial garb dated back to the Tang period while those who can trace their ancestry back to Tang notables gain prestige from their genealogies.
Although the complete reunification of China is a very recent accomplishment, southern China has been under uncontested Zeng control for decades. This fact gives the Zeng substantial economic clout, more than might be expected for a China recovering from years of infighting. Aside from the plentiful rice harvests that undergird the whole structure, Chinese production of tea and silk is supplemented by growing exports of ceramics. The famous blue-and-white porcelain that is the poster child of ‘chinaware’, while long present in the Middle Kingdom, makes its debut on the world stage at this time, traded for silver in Pyrgos.
The Zeng are conflicted when it comes to Pyrgos. Although the Zeng came to the aid of the Romans at the time of the Great Siege, in fact providing the bulk of the relief armada, relations with the Romans have never been good since that time. Zeng rulers in the south wanted to control trade, principally so that it could finance their wars in the north, while Roman Ship Lords tried to avoid customs duties and official monopolies. More fair-minded Romans considered Roman behavior at this time as akin to Italian merchants in the Roman Empire in the 1100s, with the Romans reprising the Italians and the Chinese standing in for the Romans, with similar results.
Romans traded with the Zeng, with at times crucial saltpeter imports. But they also smuggled incessantly, frequently shooting it out with customs agents who caught them in their nocturnal forays. This diverted Zeng efforts from the reunification effort. Plus the Romans were quite happy to trade with the Tieh or Later Yuan; many times Zeng forces have found themselves on the receiving end of weaponry obtained from Roman sources.
(The sale of cannons is forbidden save by special permission from the Katepano. However Ship Lords frequently ignored such rules. Ironically the proximity of the Zeng powerbase of southern China to Pyrgos meant that it was relatively easy for the Katepano to block unauthorized weapons sales to the Zeng. Meanwhile Ship Lords trading in northern China with enemies of the Zeng were mainly unsupervised. The Zeng, ignorant or choosing to be ignorant of such details, perceived this trend as the Katepanoi favoring their enemies, which considering the Great Siege, was the height of ingratitude.)
Another issue is the Roman import of opium, which the Romans acquire from several sources. Some comes from Anatolia, where poppies are grown in certain areas. More comes via the Ethiopian outpost on the Indus, which receives opium grown in Afghan territory. The third main source was Bengal. Under Spanish rule it was easy for Roman Ship Lords to trade for Bengali opium but under Triune management this has become much more difficult.
The difficulty in acquiring Bengali opium due to Triune monopolist desires has had the unintended side effect of lessening Roman imports of opium to China in recent years, but the memories of illicit Roman drug smuggling does not fade quickly. Plus it is still happening, just in lesser amounts.
Despite all the issues with the Romans though, the Zeng support the trade via Pyrgos, also for several reasons. The Zeng want the goods the Romans have to offer, the pepper and other spices of Island Asia, the tropical forest products, and especially the shiny flow of Japanese and Mexican silver. Already that supply of bullion has become critical in Zeng financial planning and Luoyang has no desire to disrupt that trade.
That trade could take place somewhere other than Pyrgos, such as Guangzhou for example, but Luoyang much prefers having it take place on Roman territory despite the inconvenience it poses to Chinese merchants. Firstly, said Chinese merchants still have to pay export and import duties on their goods as they leave and enter Chinese ports, so it is not as though the Zeng lose much in the ways of customs revenue.
The main reason for wanting all trade to take place in Pyrgos is to resolve the smuggling issue. Having all the trade with China be funneled through the Katepano’s capital naturally means much income for him. Every smuggler that goes to trade directly with the Chinese along the China coast will be cutting directly into his customs revenues, incentivizing him to actually do something about those smugglers, whereas before he didn’t care.
Another purpose is to keep all those pesky barbarians a little farther away. While not absolute, the restoration of China to full nativist control after so many years of turmoil and division and foreign subjugation has led to an upsurge in xenophobia. The Yuan in both iterations plus the Tieh all used many foreigners in their administration due to distrust of the Han Chinese which has bred much resentment. The Zeng are quite willing to sell porcelain to the barbarians for their silver, but would much like it if those barbarians would, for once, stay out of the Heavenly Kingdom.
The Zeng are eager to restore the Heavenly Kingdom back to the heights it enjoyed during the fullness of Tang. To restore battered northern China, settlers are brought in from southern China to empty settlements and farmlands. This is an opportunity to indulge in some land reform as the death of landlords allows vacant land to be distributed to poor peasant families. More settlers as well as resources are poured into Luoyang to restore to the level of a true Imperial capital. By 1635 it has already passed the half a million mark, well beyond Constantinople and only outmatched by the City of Victories.
In most foreign areas Chinese prestige is also on the uptick. The fortuitous collapse of the Khazar Empire has opened a power vacuum into which the Zeng eagerly and capably rush. On the eastern steppe the Mongols have been decisively humbled and will never pose a threat to China again, although no Zeng official will ever look in that direction again without discomfort. The reports of Khazar trappers and traders to the north raise some eyebrows but are not nearly substantial enough to cause alarm.
To the west, Tibetan raids can still be irritating. However the highland dwellers have also been driven back into their mountain fastness, unable to take advantage of Chinese disunity for a bit of plundering. Zeng forces are unable to strike into the Tibetan plateau, but vigorous defensive measures mean that by 1650 even the residual threat still remaining in 1635 will dissipate.
To the south the collapse of the Cham Empire is equally welcome. Although Dai Viet is stoutly against becoming a Chinese province, the Viet monarchs are willing to pay tribute to the Zeng court. Due to Viet distrust of outsiders and Chinese influence because of its support of the anti-Cham rebellion, Dai Viet is effectively a Chinese satellite. The remaining Champa Kingdom also pays a small tribute to Luoyang, out of respect for Chinese magnificence. Aside from that token gesture, Champa can hardly be described as a Chinese satellite, but in terms of prestige that token gesture is good enough for Luoyang.
The good situation on all other frontiers is most beneficial to the Chinese court. Because the layout in the northeast, with the Jurchens, Koreans, and Japanese, is decidedly more difficult.
[1] With one notable exception which is about to become very important.