Chapter 1617 Collecting Intelligence
Fei Cexian was sent as envoy to Haihan this time. In addition to negotiating with Haihan on various disputes that still existed between the two countries, he also had an important task to collect various intelligence information about Haihan. Organize and restore a relatively comprehensive and true social situation of Haihan and Han Dynasty, write it down and submit it to the imperial court.
This is different from what Jin Yiwei and Dongchang did. The intelligence information Fei Cexian wanted to collect mainly came from public fields and channels, such as daily social life, official announcements from Haihan, newspapers and other publicity media. News etc. Moreover, because of his special status, he has far more access to high-ranking officials in Haihan than those intelligence officers who lurk in Haihan incognito. He has correspondingly more opportunities to understand the upper class and ruling class of Haihan society, and this information is of great significance to Haihan. For the Ming Dynasty, it may be more useful than how many warships Haihan deployed in a certain place.
The imperial court did not have very detailed requirements for Fei Cexian's mission, because after all, he was not a professionally trained espionage officer. He had been just a diplomat responsible for dealing with foreign envoys for the past ten years. Fei Cexian had a high degree of freedom in his actions during his stay in Haihan, and he could decide all matters on his own, including how to collect military, political, and business-related intelligence about Haihan. As for which area to focus on specifically, it is Fei Cexian’s decision.
Of course, the Ming Dynasty gave Fei Cexian this kind of freedom. It was actually a helpless move. After all, Hainan Island is thousands of miles away from the capital. It is impossible to ask his superiors for instructions on everything. He can only give Fei Cexian full autonomy and let him Here in Haihan Kingdom, we can assess the situation and make our own use of it. Moreover, Fei Cexian's loyalty to the court and professional ability were also deeply trusted by his superiors. Otherwise, how could he be qualified to undertake such an important task if he was only a seventh-rank official.
However, Fei Cexian's intelligence professional ability is indeed only at the level of a beginner, and this is the result of more than ten days of training by people from Jinyiwei and Dongchang before departure. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty did not set any specific goals for Fei Cexian to collect valuable intelligence from Haihan. They just hoped that he could judge the trend of Haihan's external expansion based on the changes in the situation in Sanya, especially for the Ming Dynasty. Will attitudes change?
Although Haihan has not shown obvious hostility towards Ming in recent years, the entanglement in trade and immigration has become deeper and deeper, and the possibility of war between the two countries has become smaller and smaller. However, Ming did not dare to relax its attitude towards Ming. Haihan's surveillance. The combat effectiveness of this South China Sea country has become increasingly astonishing in recent years, and its tentacles have even extended to the Liaodong Peninsula, which is thousands of miles away from its homeland. This means that Haihan can project his troops to any part of the Ming Dynasty via sea routes at any time. coastline.
The combat effectiveness of the Haihan Army is not at the level of civilian armed organizations such as pirates and Japanese pirates. Its performance is enough to put regional powers like the Ming Dynasty to shame. And the facts of the past few years have also proved that if the Haihan Army deploys troops to the coast of the Ming Dynasty, it will basically Everything went very smoothly and we settled down there. Not to mention Fuzhou and Guangzhou, which have long been infiltrated by the Haihan army, the same is true for Zhejiang and Shandong further north. Although the local government and garrison in Shandong have also tried to resist and drive away the Haihan army, the results are not ideal. .
For the Ming court, the presence of the Haihan army in coastal areas was like a knife on Ming's neck. It was the Haihan people who had the final say whether and when to take action. Naturally, the Ming Dynasty is not willing to remain in this passive situation, and it does not want its territory to be encroached by Haihan year by year. However, the Ming Dynasty is currently in a lot of troubles, so it naturally does not want to get too stiff with Haihan. If they break up, The only one who will suffer in this situation will definitely be Daming.
But Ming could not sit back and watch Haihan get on top of him bit by bit, and still wanted to find ways to resolve Haihan's overwhelming military advantage. These islands outside the mainland, including Qiongzhou Island, are lost if they are lost, and there is no need to rush to get them back for the time being. However, the area occupied by Haihan on the mainland makes Ming Dynasty feel on pins and needles, even if it is clear that Haihan will not They will take the initiative to launch a war, but who can feel relaxed after seeing the military facilities in occupied areas such as Shandong and Liaodong?
But in order to expel Haihan's army from the country, Ming was unlikely to use force with little hope of victory. He could only settle for the next best thing and see if he could catch Haihan's weak points, or find the right one that Haihan had no time to take care of. time to recover these occupied areas. It's just that it's not easy to do this. It requires the support of a powerful intelligence system, especially an understanding of the latest trends of the Haihan Army. If there is a lack of intelligence information in this area, then all judgments made will be just words on paper. .
Although the Ming Dynasty currently has full-time intelligence personnel lurking in Haihan, they are definitely not as convenient as Fei Cexian, the Ming envoy. Therefore, although Fei Cexian is not a professional, he still takes on the task of collecting all aspects of Haihan intelligence for the Ming Dynasty.
Whether it was Zhang Qianzhi, the tour guide sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the staff at the Guesthouse with whom he had daily contact, Fei Cexian regarded everyone around him as a potential source of information. Although the information these people can provide may not be confidential, Fei Cexian is convinced that after sorting and analyzing the information, he should get something valuable. For example, from Zhang Qianzhi, Fei Cexian learned a lot about Haihan's methods of bribing Ming officials. No matter what the purpose Zhang Qianzhi told him was, after sorting out this information and sending it back to Ming Dynasty, the court might find ways to deal with it. Haihan's methods of corrosive means.
After seeing it with his own eyes, Fei Cexian had to admit that Haihan's economic and military advantages indeed made it difficult for Ming to catch up. Although Haihan seems to be a small country with a population of only more than 300,000, its national strength is completely out of proportion to its population. In particular, its military deterrence can reach thousands of miles away from the mainland. This is probably only the case of the Ming Dynasty in its heyday. can do it. While Fei Cexian was vigilant, he could not help but feel a little envious and jealous. After all, it was impossible for the Ming Dynasty to have such majesty. During the Liaodong negotiations, even followers like North Korea had their positions shaken by the appearance of Haihan.
In addition to the most direct source of intelligence information, which is contact with the Haihan people, Fei Cexian's other main source of intelligence is various local newspapers published in Sanya. This thing is actually not unfamiliar to Fei Cexian, because Ming Dynasty also had an official Di Bao.
The imperial court even set up a special yamen called "Tongzhengshisi" for this purpose. There was one official of the third rank of Tongzhengshi, who was responsible for accepting internal and external regulations, filing memorials and refutations. There is one person in charge of general administration on the left and right sides of the fourth rank, who keeps the internal and external regulations in hand and the subjects' sealed documents for appeal. There are also official positions such as left and right counselors, experience department, and governor. At present, the Dibao issued by the imperial court has abandoned the hand-copied or woodblock printing method and changed it to movable type printing due to its large circulation.
However, there is a completely different difference between Ming Dynasty's Dibao and Haihan's newspaper, which is the scope of circulation. The Ming Dynasty Dibao basically did not circulate to the public, and the content that occasionally spread to the public was just copied. Haihan's newspapers are published publicly and can be viewed by all people. Many decrees and policies are even made known to the public through newspaper propaganda. There are also many public places in Sanya city that hold related propaganda activities. Even storytellers in restaurants will tell the public the contents of newspapers from time to time to ensure that the key information above can be disseminated in the shortest time. . The benefits of this are obvious. Haihan's official decrees can be quickly conveyed to the people. Even illiterate people can obtain information as soon as possible through a variety of propaganda methods. As for whether the issuance fees can be earned back through sales, Fei Cexian did not consider this commercial issue. He focused on the political significance of this form and did not care too much about its commercial use. .
Like most foreign envoys who first arrived in Sanya, Fei Cexian quickly sent someone to buy a copy of various newspapers on the market. During the day when he was supervising the work on the embassy construction site, he would make a pot of tea and sit there slowly. Look through. Occasionally there would be something in the newspaper that I didn't understand, so I would ask Zhang Qianzhi nearby and let him explain it.
When he finished work and returned to the Guest House in the evening, Fei Cexian wrote down all the issues he had thought about during the day, and then selected the valuable parts to compile and collect them, and later wrote a memorial and sent it back to Beijing.
Haihan didn't seem to be eager to start diplomatic negotiations with Fei Cexian during this period. Except for Ning Qi who occasionally came to the construction site to take a look, other senior Haihan officials never visited him again. However, Fei Cexian thinks this is not surprising. For him, a seventh-ranking deputy of the Ministry of Etiquette, it would be really unreasonable if high-ranking officials from Haihan came to visit him every three days.
On the other hand, envoys from other countries stationed in Sanya came to the Guest House to visit Fei Cexian one after another. Even Annan, who had always had a rift with the Ming Dynasty, also came to see him. Fei Cexian only knew this after meeting several people. This is also one of the traditional activities of foreign embassies, that is, taking turns to visit new envoys in order to promote understanding between countries. Fei Cexian thinks this is a good arrangement, at least it can have a certain positive effect on maintaining regional peace. Of course, it would be better if the organizer of this event was not Haihan - this kind of leading brother role should have been played by Daming It's only right to perform, but now all the limelight has been stolen by Haihan.
But Fei Cexian also knows that Haihan has extremely high authority and influence in the South China Sea. The so-called South China Sea Business Alliance is actually an international political organization led by Haihan, and many of them have already cooperated with Haihan. A military alliance was concluded. The role Haihan played in the South China Sea region was to replace the international political functions that Ming Dynasty was responsible for in the past. Considering that very few vassal states from the South China Sea have come to Beijing to pay tribute in recent years, it is not difficult for Fei Cexian to imagine the role Haihan played in this.
But from Fei Cexian's point of view, although he is dissatisfied with Haihan's actions, there is no sufficient reason to accuse Haihan of doing something wrong. After all, it is precisely because Ming Dynasty has been declining in recent years that it gave Haihan The opportunity for Han to rise on the shores of the South China Sea.
After contacting envoys from other countries, Fei Cexian also noticed that not all countries are aligned with Haihan. For example, Western countries such as the Netherlands and Portugal claim to be Haihan's trading partners, but they have little regard for Haihan. However, Han is the most vigilant, especially in terms of control of key waterways and competition in the shipping industry. These countries, which are as good as Hai Han in expanding their sphere of influence through the sea, are not only Hai Han's trading partners, they are also competitors.
In the process of communicating with the envoys of these two countries, Fei Cexian could clearly feel that they were uneasy about the situation of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Ming Dynasty and Hainan, because these two countries are first-rate powers in the Far East, with a vast territory and a large population. Another country with strong military strength and good economic and trade operations. The establishment of diplomatic relations between two countries with such highly complementary conditions may not be a good thing for countries outside the region.
But compared to these Westerners with deep eyes and high noses, Fei Cexian feels closer to Haihan. After all, the citizens of Haihan are all descendants of Han people, and they are even immigrants from the Ming Dynasty. Haihan officials have always emphasized that they share the same roots and ancestry with the Ming Dynasty and share weal and woe. This is undoubtedly a very popular approach.
Therefore, Fei Cexian carefully avoided the topic when envoys from Western countries tried to build relations during the conversation. Although the envoys from both countries expressed that they could provide military assistance to the Ming Dynasty, Fei Cexian knew very well that both countries had The defeated generals who were once defeated by Haihan also received military assistance, but of course the one provided by Haihan was more reliable and reliable. What's more, Haihan has several well-equipped military bases on the coast of the Ming Dynasty. It can deliver combat troops to the Ming Dynasty by sea in a very short time. This is a condition that Western countries cannot compare with.
The Ming Dynasty also counted on Haihan to delay Hou Jin's march south in Liaodong. If he bypassed Haihan and chose other military cooperation partners at this time, it would undoubtedly make the Haihan people dissatisfied. Offending Haihan was not among the political options of the Ming Dynasty, and Fei Cexian would not make such a stupid mistake, so although the envoys of the two countries even hinted that they could give him some personal benefits in exchange for the Ming Dynasty opening trade ports to it , Fei Cexian finally did not take the move.
Only then did Fei Cexian begin to realize that his mission to Haihan was not just about dealing with the Haihan people, but he also had to deal with various countries to win more benefits for the Ming Dynasty. It's just that there are not many exchange conditions that Ming can offer at present, and Haihan's feelings have to be taken into consideration, so it may be difficult to win over other allies in a short period of time.
(End of chapter)