Taiwan or Hainan?

Where should they cross over to? This was very important for establishing their base of operations on the other side. The three all loved to play strategy games, and they all knew that choosing a good base location to start was very important. For them, the base must meet the following criteria:

1. It must have a good agricultural foundation to ensure a steady supply of food
2. There must be a substantial pre-existing population base that can meet the labour needed for industrialisation
3. Abundant and easily accessible natural resources
4. Located close to the coast with accessible and safe harbours
5. Could not be close to the core area of Ming rule
6. Could not be close to where any major wars broke out.^[1]
7. Have defensible geography such as mountains and rivers.

Obviously, for the time period they were going into, there were not many locations that could satisfy these requirements. This question was posted to the bulletin board. The options that everyone proposed online were three: Taiwan, Hainan, and Australia.

Australia received a lot of initial support, but was also the first to be vetoed. Fundamentally, it was just impossible to get hundreds of modern-day people to Australia with their current situation.

Taiwan was a key contender in the discussion. The geography and location of the island was outstanding, and the abundant local resources presented great development opportunities. Taiwan was also largely outside the control of the Ming regime, and although the Dutch and Spanish had built some settlements, they were more or less isolated to small corners of the island. Most of Taiwan remained in a power vacuum. However, tropical diseases such as malaria were rampant in Taiwan, which hindered immigration to the island in the late Ming. As such, the infrastructure of the island was ill-developed and the population was sparse. That would make building a large-scale industrial base difficult.

In contrast, Hainan had more favourable conditions for industrialisation. Since its initial settlement in the Liu Dynasty^[2] by the end of the Ming dynasty it was a southern county which hundreds of thousands of people called home. In the the tenth year of Yongle^[3] there were 90,000 Han Chinese households, and about 400,000 people in total living there. As for agriculture, by the 43rd year of Wanli^[4] state and private owned farmland on the island totalled some 4.1 million mu.^[5] What made the island even better was that the natural resources available were not only rich but also fairly complete. There were some 88 different minerals (including sub-types) available on the island, with 67 of these minerals known to have industrial use. Of these, gold, high-grade iron ore, ilmenite and zircon were the most common on the island.^[6]

While diversity of natural resources was one thing, what was even more crucial for industrialisation was large quantities of iron and coal. One of China’s few large-scale iron ore mines, Shilu Iron Mine, was located on Hainan island.^[7] The average iron content of the ore was 51%^[8] and the mine had an estimated reserve of some 400 million tons. The deposit also had trace amounts of other minerals. Remarkably, the Shilu iron deposit could be mined by open-pit methods.^[9] The topsoil could be stripped to directly access the ore without needing to resort to costly underground tunneling.

Coal deposits in Hainan itself only contained lignite.^[10] However, right across the Gulf of Tonkin was the Quang Ninh coal mine in Vietnam.^[11] Back during the Ming dynasty this deposit would still have at least 200 million tons of high-quality anthracite coal^[12] easily accessed through open-pit mining, and perhaps even a few billion tons further underground. The deposits themselves were close to the shoreline, and so transporting coal by sea would be easy enough.

With access to coal and iron, large-scale steel production was on the horizon. And with steel, the full mechanisation of industry could be accomplished, allowing for large-scale batch manufacturing of products. The societies of the past may have been able to produce works of art passed down for generations, but they certainly could not compete with the tidal wave of goods that an industrial society could bring about.

The only downside of Hainan island as a base would be that it was too close to the mainland. Apart from where the Hlai people^[13] lived in the interior of the island, most of Hainan was still firmly in the control of the emperor. There was no way that the Ming government would bow over and give up on Hainan prefecture, and it was more than likely that Ming armies would come full force to drive out these outsiders, be it from Brunei, Australia, or another space-time. The moment they landed in Hainan they would have to stand their ground against the local and Guangdong garrisons.

Hainan also had a long history of conflict between the Hlai and Han people. Since the Yuan Dynasty there had been one Hlai rebellion every three years. Less than thirty years before their arrival, in the 27th year of Wanli (1599), the Hlai people in Ding’an county revolted, and the Ming government mobilised an army of 100,000 soldiers to quell the unrest. The question of how to peacefully live alongside the local Hlai would be another problem that required careful deliberation.^[14]

Finally, Hainan was famous for its history of rampant piracy. Many cities in Hainan wouldn’t even have a gate on the north side.^[15] The South China Sea of the late Ming era was a stage where both Chinese and foreign merchants and pirates would show off their skills. Be it ‘merchant’ or pirate, no one would hesitate to plunder an ill-defended target. Consequently, the main naval trade routes in Hainan suffered for a long time. It was not hard to imagine how all the modern tools and technology arriving there would be like bringing a fat sheep into a den of wolves.

On the balance of all things, it seemed that although Hainan provided better opportunities for development, there would be much more pressure to bear.

“In that case, it’s better to go with Taiwan.” In the online meeting, after listening to the Executive Committee’s presentation on Hainan, someone suggested. “Although Taiwan has malaria, we can bring quinine,^[16] and we can also bring cinchona saplings.^[17] We can also alleviate the population issue through immigration. There were so many refugees at the end of the Ming Dynasties, by offering food and land to them, it wouldn’t be hard to gather hundreds of thousands of people.”

Immediately, someone else raised a question. “You make that sound easy, planning to transport hundreds of thousands of people from the mainland. How would you do that?”

“Ships of course, we can load a large ship with supplies and people, and bring that over. We would be able to rule the entire sea. Even without cannons, we can just ram into anyone who stands in our way.”

“You think you can run the engine on baijiu and charcoal?”^[18]

“We can build our own sail ship, Taiwan has high quality timber.”

“That’s good and all, but what about sailors?”

“We can train some on our own. We can go to Macau and recruit some foreign sailors as instructors.”

“Are you kidding me? Were Zheng Chenggong’s ships manned by foreigners^[19]? What’s up with you people and worshipping foreigners?”

“Cinchona trees can grow in Taiwan.”

“Mentioning that, you can’t grow rubber trees in the Leizhou Peninsula. How do you plan to grow cinchona then?”^[20]

“I’m here talking about Taiwan! Is Leizhou and Taiwan even in the same dimension?!”

---

When the discussion point had somehow progressed through a debate about whether treasure ships^[21] displaced 10,000 tons, if mugworts can cure malaria, and then finally to if Chinese medicine was pseudo-science or not, Wen Desi stopped the passionate but rapidly derailing conversation. Xiao Zishan motioned to speak.

“I think it would be better to go to Hainan.” Xiao Zishan had not joined in the previous conversation. Since the start he had been preferring Hainan, but didn’t want to take a firm stance yet and listened to the points made by everyone else. Balancing the advantages and disadvantages in his mind, he went on to provide an explanation for his opinion.

“The reason why Hainan is more suitable than Taiwan is that we must consider the requirements for the location of our base mentioned before. On several key points Taiwan is indisputably inferior to Hainan.”

“The first is the agricultural base. Farming in Taiwan only started when Zheng Chenggong captured Taiwan and used it as a base in his fight against the Qing, meaning in the mid to late 17th century. We are crossing over in 1628. At that time there would be scarcely any agricultural development except for small patches reclaimed along the coasts. In Hainan, there would have been at least 3.8 million mu of farmland, with dozens of irrigation infrastructure elements. And this is only the official number recorded in the census: a considerable amount of farmland was ‘off-the-books’ in the Ming dynasty.”

“Secondly, population. There were very few Han Chinese in Taiwan in 1628. All of the industrial and agricultural projects we would need to undertake would require a lot of labourers. The local Taiwanese population would definitely be insufficient, so we would have to import workers from the mainland. Recruiting such people and relocating them across thousands of miles would be a logistically complex and politically difficult project. We would have to wrangle with all levels of officials in the Ming government—who among us has such experience and ability?”

“And even if it were possible to move enough people to Taiwan, the work afterwards would be just as hard. We would have to feed, cloth, vaccinate and house them. Even moreso, we’d also have to find seeds and farming tools for them. Where would all these supplies come from? With our initial strength it would be impossible. In contrast, Hainan has a population base of easily 400,000 people, which would be more than enough to carry us through our initial development plan.”

Before Xiao Zishan spoke, the irrational ideas coming out of a few had been quite off-putting, but after Zishan gave his well-reasoned speech, most people had been convinced. After a quick vote, the location of their future base was determined.

Hainan at the end of the Ming dynasty was known as Qiongzhou prefecture. Under it were three states and ten counties. The ten counties were: Qiongshan, Chengmai, Lingao, Ding'an, Wenchang, Lehui, Huitong, Changhua, Lingshui, Gan’en. The three states were: Danzhou, Wanzhou and Yazhou. If you were to consult the Yuan/Ming chapters of a Chinese historical atlas, you would find that the state of Hainan wrapped around the whole coast of the island. Originally, Hainan island was split with a Hlai state in the south and a Han state in the north, but after the Song Dynasty it became Han on the exterior and Hlai on the interior. Among the ten counties, Qiongshan, Chengmai and Lingao three counties were the most developed. About half of the island’s Han population had gathered in these counties.

Narrowing down on these three choices, Qiongshan County, also the seat of Qiongzhou prefecture, had the best foundation. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, Qiongshan accounted for almost a quarter of the entire island’s 3.83 million mu of farmland, and had nearly 90,000 registered taxpayers. However, it was also the political and economic bastion of the Ming on Hainan, and a large number of troops were garrisoned there. The loss of such a political symbol would be a huge shock to the Ming court, and would no doubt arouse a large-scale military response. Similarly, because Chengmai was right next to Qiongshan, it was too close to the Ming government. Thus, Lingao became their first preference.

The Lingao of modernity is an obscure and small county of Hainan, far less well-known than Haikou or Sanya. Its economy was underdeveloped, had almost no tourists, and was almost unknown to the general public.

Although Lingao was not very well-known, it ｗａs still nonetheless a county with a thousand years of history. Its establishment can be traced back to the fifth year of Wude in the Tang Dynasty.^[22] It was one of the earliest areas of the island that the Han Chinese had migrated to. Although Lingao was not as populous as Qiongshan, by the 45th year of Wanli^[23] there were 25,000 registered people. The fertile plains on either side of the Wenlan river were already fairly developed by this time: Lingao was already the ricebasket of Hainan.^[24] If they could supplement this with further irrigation infrastructure, the agricultural potential of this land was great.

Finally, Lingao was separated from Qiongzhou by Chengmai county between them, so if there were any troubles, they were not directly exposed to pressure from the Ming government. To the armies of old crossing an entire county or state would be a matter of months. And for a place like Hainan probably even longer because of the tropical climate.

After this issue had been decided, several other topics were successively raised and discussed. However, Lingao, as the location of their starting base, was no longer disputed. In Wen Desi’s summary of the meeting:

‘There was unanimous agreement that this was a conference of unity, success and victory.’

---

Later, within the history textbooks of the New World, the conference was called “The First Time Travel Congress”, or just the “First Congress” for short. Because there were so many attendees, and because many of them chose to stay in the Old World, the full list of delegates can only be found in the ‘Old World Cathedral.’ No access to this list is allowed.

---

1. Raw says ‘four wars’ specifically. I’m not sure which. ↩︎

2. 220-589 CE ↩︎

3. Yongle reigned 1403-1424 CE, so the tenth year of his reign would be circa 1413 CE. ↩︎

4. 1616 CE ↩︎

5. One mu = one fifteenth of a hectare = 666.67 square meters. So, 4.1 million mu = 2,730 square kilometers. The island of Hainan (in modern day) is measured to be about 33,210 km sq. I also haven’t had time to dig into where this demographic data has come from. ↩︎

6. I cannot find anything to back up the actual numbers, but if you are happy with wikipedia as a reference the natural resource availability is qualitatively evidenced. ↩︎

7. The particular mine that the author mentioned is this one. See also this paper for geological details; it’s behind a paywall, but you can find it on scihub. lmenite (FeTiO3) is a titanium ore, and is one of the main sources of titanium dioxide, which is used fairly widely in the light industry. Zircon (ZrSiO4) I can’t find all that many uses that a layman might know. There is also a (Chinese) wiki page. It’s closed now as it’s been mined out, and has been turned into a national park. ↩︎

8. According to the entry in the above footnote, the deposit is rich in sedimentary metamorphic hematite. Presumably that means something to someone somewhere. ↩︎

9. A way of mining ore deposits close to the surface, quite cheap and doesn’t require much technology. See here. ↩︎

10. Lignite is the lowest grade of coal, with carbon content in the 25-35% range. This means that for the same mass of coal, burning lignite would yield the least amount of heat. ↩︎

11. From what I can tell, coal mining in the area didn’t start until about the end of the 19th century, well after the French had taken Vietnam as its colony; see wiki entry on the area. ↩︎

12. Anthracite is the highest grade of coal. Also, a hundred footnotes in 8 chapters? I’m yapping way too much. ↩︎

13. The Hlai are one of the 56 minority groups recognised by the PRC. In modern Chinese Pinyin they are called the Li people. The English name used here is closer to the Middle Chinese pronunciation. See wiki for more details. ↩︎

14. In the same wiki article on the Hlai people, there is some mention of Hlai revolts (though not the particular one the author described). ↩︎

15. Lots more shipping in the north of the island closer to the coast, where waters would be calmer. Hence more pirate attacks/banditry would happen from the north side. ↩︎

16. Drug used to treat malaria. ↩︎

17. A tree whose bark contains quinine, which is used as an anti-malarial drug. ↩︎

18. Baijiu is a type of Chinese distilled alcohol. ↩︎

19. Was a Ming Dynasty general. ↩︎

20. Leizhou Peninsula is in the southernmost part of Guangdong province. Closest part of the mainland to Hainan, separated by the Qiongzhou Strait. ↩︎

21. Baochuan, A type of large Chinese junk. They are most famously known as the ships used by Zheng He; see wiki. ↩︎

22. About 623 CE ↩︎

23. 1617 CE ↩︎

24. English metaphor should be ‘breadbasket’, but this would be a little…jarring, wouldn’t it? Seeing that the Chinese didn’t really have bread as a staple. ↩︎