Is Zheng Chenggong a national hero?

For the Chinese, Zheng Chenggong is a name that resonates with the ears. When I was very young, I heard about his heroic deeds. There are two main images he left to the world: one is a minister who assisted the Ming Dynasty royal family, and he is a famous anti-Qing righteous person; the other is a national hero who recovered Taiwan.

Regarding the first point, after listening to Gu Cheng's version of Nanming History, I couldn't help but have deep doubts. In fact, the doubt did not start today. We know that the Zheng family has actually taken refuge in the Qing Dynasty since Zheng Zhilong. (In Quanzhou, apart from Zheng Zhilong, the traitor who took refuge in the Qing Dynasty also had a famous Hong Chengchou, as well as Shi Lang and other generals.) Of course, Zheng Chenggong played a pivotal role in the fight against the Qing army in Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong. However, after the Yongli Emperor, Zheng Chenggong and the others never established a new emperor. That is to say, although Zheng Jing and Zheng Kechang after Zheng Chenggong regarded the Ming Dynasty as Zhengshuo, at this time there were no emperors of the Ming Dynasty. They don't even have a nominal leader. In essence, the Zheng family just wants to separate the region and dominate it alone.

Zheng Chenggong wanted to maintain a relative independence between the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the idea of separatist locality was vividly displayed in the battle of Li Dongguo who invited him to cooperate with the Qing Dynasty. Li Dongguo originally wanted to conquer Guangdong with Zheng Chenggong, so he specially invited Zheng Chenggong to send a large army to Xinhui in the southern part of the capital of Guangdong province to fight against the Manchus. However, Zheng Chenggong refused to reply, and the army sent in the end was mainly to search for food and salaries, and did not really intervene in the battle between Li Dongguo and the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which eventually led to the defeat of Li Dongguo.

If Zheng Chenggong perfectly followed Li Dongguo's invitation, he would have defeated the Qing army in Xinhui. The Qing army may withdraw from Guangdong. In this way, the forces of Guangxi and Yunnan in Nanming can be integrated with Fujian and Guangdong. And Nanming ZTE is also promising. Zheng Chenggong considered such a result, which was not beneficial to their Zheng family. Because after they are connected together, it means that the orders of the imperial court can easily reach them (after all, there was a Manchu and Qing Dynasty in the middle before, and the influence of the Yongli imperial court on them was not so great), Zheng Chenggong thinks that he will suffer more in this way. Constraints. Therefore, Zheng Chenggong did not proceed from the interests of the Ming Dynasty, but completely beat his own little Jiujiu. In fact, the survival of the Ming Dynasty was not the most important thing to him at all. From this perspective, it would be an exaggeration to say that Zheng Chenggong was a loyal minister of the Ming Dynasty.

According to our general understanding, Zheng Chenggong is a general in the south, and a warrior who rose up against the Qing Dynasty. He should be widely supported in his hometown and in the south. But in fact it is not so. Because of his looting of people's fat and ointment, he even engaged in massacres (learn about the battle of Ou Ting), massacred more than 60,000 people in Ou Ting, Jieyang. Even in his hometown of Quanzhou, the ground was scraped three feet. Therefore, the local people did not leave much good impression on him.

In fact, the recovery of Taiwan is not based on national justice. But he no longer has many bases in the mainland. He must find a base in order to survive. At that time, he only had Kinmen, Xiamen and other places as bases. He fought against Taiwan, of course, with the Dutch colonists. However, Taiwan has not been officially included in the Chinese territory before this. So there is no way to talk about recovery. It can only be said that he made a certain contribution to the expansion of China's territory later. But that was by no means his subjective will.

Therefore, Zheng Chenggong cannot be regarded as a very pure national hero. At least not subjectively. If we have to say yes, we can only say that objectively, his anti-Qing behavior in the late Ming Dynasty (and he did not completely resist the Qing Dynasty), and his behavior to recover Taiwan; objectively, there are elements that meet the needs of our nation. Based on this, we gave him the title of "national hero". But the truth of history has been covered up because of this.