Ming Dynasty loyalists under the leadership of Zheng Chenggong (also known as Koxinga), had battled the Manchus for two decades.

The Zheng family having now surrendered, the Qing Dynasty has annexed Taiwan, ruling it as a prefecture.

The Qing government orders coastal regions to be repopulated, and to encourage settlers, gives a financial incentive to each settling family.

The Qing authorities seek to limit immigration to Taiwan, however, and bar families from traveling here to ensure the immigrants will return to their families and ancestral graves.

Illegal immigration will continue, but many of the men, having few prospects in war-weary Fujian, will marry locals, resulting in the idiom "mainland grandfather no mainland grandmother".

The Qing attempt to protect aboriginal land claims but also seek to tax the aborigines.

So as not to engage with the non-taxpaying highland aborigines and incite rebellion, the government bars Chinese and tax-paying aborigines from entering the wilderness that covers most of the island.

To discourage illegal land reclamation, the Qing government constructs a border along the western plain, built using pits and mounds of earth, called "earth cows".

Immigration controls will not be relaxed until the 1760s.