The story of the man who would become China’s greatest sailor and explorer begins inauspiciously. A prisoner of war, Zheng He was captured and castrated at the age of 10 after his father was killed fighting against the Ming. Sent to the court of his captors, he was placed in the service of the man who would become the Yong Le Emperor.

Zheng He would forge a close relationship with the then prince. After Yong Le overthrew his father’s designated heir in 1402, he was hesitant to rely on the former regime’s court officials, turning instead to his eunuch loyalists. Eunuchs had long existed within the Chinese imperial system as an alternative power structure to the Confucianist civil service bureaucrats. Reliant solely on imperial favour, they acted as de facto ministers who could pose no dynastic ambitions themselves. Yong Le’s eunuch officials may have been dependent on him personally for their position, but they proved to be amongst his most capable civil and military administrators. Chief amongst them was Zheng He, who flourished, first as a strategist in Yong Le’s rebellion, and then as the admiral the new emperor chose to lead his fleets.

How the prince and eunuch became so close is unclear. However, Zheng He would be loyal to the emperor for his entire life. He consistently ensured that his imperial patron took credit for Zheng He’s own military, commercial and exploratory successes. In turn, Zheng He commanded the loyalty of a coterie of admirals and eunuchs who led detachments of the fleet.

Before departing on what would be his final voyage, Zheng He erected stone tablets at the port cities from which his ships had sailed. Inscribed with both his and his commanders’ achievements, the inscriptions reflected both his subordinates’ value to him and his own loyalty to Yong Le.  

Projecting power

After defeating the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Empire was the first time in a century that ethnic Chinese ruled China. The re-establishment of Chinese cultural and political superiority over its neighbours was a central tenet of early Ming policy. In addition, Yong Le, who had usurped his predecessor, needed to legitimise and promote his own rule in relation to his father’s, the dynasty’s founder.

These two factors coalesced into the tribute system, whereby China’s neighbours would send emissaries to the Ming court to pay tribute to the emperor via a codified series of rituals.

Yong Le’s decision to launch his fleets was motivated, argues Dr Rana Mitter of the University of Oxford, by a need to project Ming China’s power. Although the ships were heavily militarised, there was no colonial imperative.

Instead, the fleets were a projection of China’s military and cultural superiority. Their most important function, says Dr Julia Lovell, from Birkbeck College, the University of London, was to bring back emissaries. The acknowledgement by foreign powers, even superficially so, of Chinese sovereignty demonstrated to a domestic audience that the Yongle Emperor’s mandate stretched beyond China’s borders and across the seas – something none of his imperial predecessors had ever achieved.  

Commercially astute

Loaded with the unique treasures of China, including silk, jade and ceramics, the fleets had a commercial aspect too. While the Ming ships would eventually reach as far as East Africa, the initial voyages were destined for Middle Eastern city-states. The Ming identified the Gulf – where trade routes had been ravaged by the Mongol hordes – as an opportune market opportunity.

Both Zheng He’s father and grandfather had completed the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and Yong Le recognised that Zheng He’s own Islamic faith and his cultural and religious familiarity with the region were diplomatic assets. Yong Le was obviously confident in Zheng He and the other Muslim senior officers’ loyalty to him personally, even when dealing with their religious or ethnic compatriots.

Likewise, Zheng He delegated to capable deputies and leveraged their skills and abilities. Zheng He tasked one of his admirals, the eunuch Hong Bao, with sailing the furthest west, as far as the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. In turn, Hong Bao appointed the Chinese-Muslim convert and translator, Ma Huan, as the Ming emissary to Mecca, where his Arabic language skills would be best utilised. This top-down delegation created a loyal, trusted meritocracy who were empowered to act tactically within the overall Ming strategy.  

Religiously inclusive

Although many of the fleets’ senior officers were Muslim, the majority of the crew were southern Chinese who held a variety of beliefs. Consequently, both altars to the indigenous Chinese goddess of the sea, and imams – Islamic leaders and teachers – were common aboard the ships of the fleet.

Similarly, noting that Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka, comprised diverse faiths, Zheng He commissioned a stone tablet to be erected on the island. Inscribed in Chinese, Tamil and Persian, it praised Buddha, Shiva and Allah, and recorded the offerings made by the Chinese to all three deities. Few contemporary accounts survive of how the Ming fleets were received by the communities they encountered. However, the ships were travelling along well-established trade routes, and luxury goods, such as Chinese ceramics, were in demand amongst Asia’s elites.

The discovery in a Ming official’s tomb of a gold ingot from “across the Western Ocean” reinforces the view that China and the outside world viewed relations through a commercial rather than a colonial paradigm.

The 317 ships of Zheng He’s maiden voyage in 1405 was so large a fleet that it would be 500 years and the advent of World War I before it was surpassed in size. In comparison, 87 years after Zheng He’s first voyage, Christopher Columbus would cross the Atlantic to reach the Americas with only three ships and 90 crewmen.

The Ming fleets would cross both the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, to reach countries as far afield as present-day Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Yemen, Kenya and Somalia. These were the largest ships ever built. The 1962 excavation in Nanjing of an 11-metre rudderpost of a Mingera ship indicates an ocean-going junk measuring over 122 metres in length and 46 metres wide.

Again in contrast, the Santa María, Columbus's largest ship, was a mere 27 by nine metres. Operating across such distances required that Zheng He establish a series of supply bases to support his fleet. Some had advantageous features, such as the natural port at the city of Changle in southern China, while others, like his regional base at Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, were geo-strategically located.

However, Dr Hum Sin Hoon from the National University of Singapore identifies one constant in where logistical bases were established: each had a “personal relationship with Zheng He or with the Ming Court.”

Through the tribute system, Zheng He could both cultivate clients and secure regional bases for his ships. To ensure that the supply chain in Southeast Asia remained secure, he placed the strategically important city-state of Malacca under the emperor’s protection.

Menaced by the power of Siam to the north, Malacca would remain one of Ming China’s most enduring client states. Even after Zheng He’s death in 1433, the Sultan of Malacca travelled personally to China to pay tribute to Yong Le’s grandson, the Xuan De Emperor.

When his supply chains were threatened or local rulers refused to pay tribute, Zheng He responded with overwhelming force. Ming forces defeated a recalcitrant local ruler in Ceylon, smashed a Sumatran pirate fleet, and put down a rebellion against the ruler of modern-day Aceh in Indonesia to ensure the fleets’ staging post there remained in friendly hands.

While the fleets were not sailing into the unknown, the sheer size and numbers involved were unprecedented. Zheng He responded to this challenge, argues oceanic scientist Dr Jin Wu, through “highly sophisticated techniques of organisation and planning.”

His ships utilised a flag, lantern and instrument-based signalling system that allowed the oft-dispersed fleet to communicate.

Zheng He is rightly celebrated as a mariner and explorer, but it is the logistical ability that brought thousands of men safely home to China that is perhaps his crowning achievement. Zheng He’s legacy is a complex one. He personifies the cosmopolitanism of the Ming era, which saw a eunuch from an ethnic and religious minority rise on merit and imperial favour to become the emperor’s most trusted leader.

His military achievements were important enough to him personally that he had them documented for posterity. Yet the majority of his foreign interactions were conducted peacefully, though always accompanied by a show of overwhelming force. He established partnerships that saw nations across Asia enter into the tribute system.

But these would not long survive his own death and the political manoeuvring that saw China become politically and culturally inward-looking.

What the outcome would have been had China not literally burnt its ships and turned its back on further ocean-going exploration remains one of the great historical ‘what-ifs’.

Today, Zheng He is alternately portrayed as a precursor to China’s own partnership-based foreign relations, particularly with the developing world; a paragon of religious and cultural tolerance and inclusivity; or a forerunner of Chinese ambitions to dominate Asia. Along with his imperial patron, Zheng He dominated his time like few other leaders, and he occupies a unique place in the annals of Chinese and world history.

This article was first published in HQ Asia (Print) Issue 04 (2012).