As the previous page demonstrates, merchant boats around the Wenzhou water either equipped themselves with weapons for self-protection purposes or resorted to governments and influential organizations if they were robbed or attacked by pirate boats. Yet, in some cases, local governments could only take limited measures and even failed to intervene in piracy incidents. The strong firepower of the pirates, the wide networks of the smuggling business, and the vast water space for the fugitives to hide had posed significant challenges to the government's investigation. Moreover, while both police boats and pirate boats were armed with ammunition and kept suspicious of other boats, many boats misrecognized each other and the cases of mistaken identity happened in the vast water space. 

The cases of mistaken identity, as well as the blurred boundary between bandits and soldiers, were not uncommon in late imperial and modern China. As David Robinson argues, during the sixteenth century the “patronage network” of violence had been built between imperial court and local society. As Philip Kuhn also noted, the “parallel hierarchies of militarization” had become an apparent trend throughout the late Qing period in which “the same kinds of linkages and the same levels of organization would be visible within both the orthodox, gentry-dominated Confucian culture and the various heterodox, secret-society–dominated sectarian subcultures.” Similarly, in the practice of piracy and smuggling, as Robert J. Antony points out, "there appear no firm distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate in the actions of what we and others label pirates and smugglers. It is better to think in terms of a continuum, with activities that are completely legal on one end, those that are completely illegal on the other end, and most activities somewhere in between." "[T]he aid that pirates and smugglers received from coastal residents, including fishermen, sailors, merchants, soldiers, and officials, factored significantly in their success."

In May 1906, a merchant boat filled with iced yellow croakers passed by Wenzhou’s port. The Smuggling Prevention Corps was waiting there, already aiming to capture salt smuggling boats. When they saw the merchant boat sailing in the nighttime, loaded down with heavy cargo, they thought that the boat was shipping smuggled goods. The Corps then turned off their lights, paused their telegram signals, and followed the boat. When they failed to catch the boat in time, they opened fire in a threatening manner. Their subsequent attack made the merchant boat believe that the Corps was actually a bandit boat. The merchant boat was heavily armed with weapons, so it fired back aggressively at the Corps’ boat. In the end, one Corps member was killed and one was injured. No one on the merchant boat was killed.

According to a news report in Shen Bao, November 1923, many merchant boats encountered pirates on their routes between Wenzhou and Shanghai. Partly due to poor harvest and famine, many coastal residents, as well as retired policemen, joined the pirates around Taizhou and Jiangsu. These pirates looted, killed, and kidnapped ordinary people. Some of them sailed with the boats they stole, pretending that they were merchants or fishermen and luring other boats into their trap. 

3. [19381021_海盜冒懸水警旗幟 (good!)]