As early as when Zhou Lang had just gained a foothold in Fengshan County, he had already started frequent trade with Manila, and after the founding of the Great Zhou Dynasty, the scale of trade with the Philippines expanded to the peak of history, expanding every year, and creating new records every year.

While it was mainly China that used Manila as a springboard to transport Chinese goods to the rest of Spain's colonies, the Philippine trade itself was expanding rapidly.

The Philippines was a colonial economy, and the Spaniards, in addition to cultivating a group of monopolistic merchants in Manila, also built a number of large plantations in the Philippines. Basically, it was the same system that they adopted in the Americas, forcing the indigenous people to do labor on their plantations, to serve in the Catholic Church, and so on.

However, with the opening of China's trade, the sugar, rice, indigo, tobacco, hemp and dried coconut meat produced by the plantations poured into the Chinese market, and the Spanish plantation owners opened up plantations and even opened up new plantations.

The status of the Chinese in the local area was also improved, or guaranteed, because Spain refused to allow China to send diplomats to its colonies, and Zhou Lang directly appointed the local Chinese leader, giving him the official position of director of Manila, and letting him manage all the local Chinese, although the Spaniards were dissatisfied with this, refused to recognize the appointment, and even forcibly confiscated the appointment documents that Zhou Lang had brought with him.

However, the local Chinese recognize, because most Chinese do not settle down for a long time, but go back and forth between their hometown and the Philippines, and live in the Philippines for a long and short time, and some have been doing business for decades.

The situation also angered the Spaniards, who saw the Chinese as "annoying, unreformable infidels" who were taxed the heaviest, but who remained tenacious and became an integral part of the Philippine economy.

Since the "imperial court" in the minds of the Chinese appointed a local overseas Chinese chief, they naturally rallied around this chief, and did not care whether his appointment papers were taken away by the Spaniards. With the support of the state, with the leader as a banner, the Chinese were much more united than before, and this leader, with continuous domestic support, began to dare to fight for the power of the local Chinese and protest against unfair taxes. And when the Spaniards wanted to attack him, the Chinese government would protest, so although the Chinese were still suffering from harsh taxes and restrictions under the harsh rule of the Spanish colonizers, they were much better off than before.

The improvement of the situation, coupled with the expansion of trade between China and the Philippines, has led to the growing business of these Chinese. Some Chinese businessmen transport their goods to Manila for sale, but they are not familiar with the local environment, so they rely on local overseas Chinese compatriots to help them sell goods, buy cash crops, and export local products. Overseas Chinese businessmen gradually became intermediaries. With the continuous expansion of the scale of trade, overseas Chinese who bear hardships and stand hard work, can adapt to the tropical climate, and dare to go deep into the poor countryside have become the most suitable intermediaries. This extensive and penetrating business network in rural Philippines is known as the head-to-customer system.

The Spaniards also imposed restrictions on this, for example, they forbade Chinese merchants to sell goods directly in the Manila market, but handed them over to the Filipino monopoly merchants, and the Royal Philippine Company authorized by the King of Spain to assume the role of this monopoly merchant, but it was only a direct connection between Chinese businessmen and overseas Chinese, which turned into a situation in which overseas Chinese obtained goods through Philippine companies, and even developed to the point that Philippine companies slowly only extracted certain benefits from them, playing a nominal monopoly role. By default, there was direct trade between the Chinese and the overseas Chinese, and in just ten years, the overseas Chinese had established a commercial network all over Luzon.

The number of local overseas Chinese merchants has also increased greatly, and with the addition of craftsmen and other service personnel, the number of Chinese in Manila has reached 10,000, but there is still a big gap compared with the number before the Spanish massacre during the Ming Dynasty.

Recently, Huang San, a local overseas Chinese leader, received an order from China, instructing him to prepare for the capture of Manila by the Great Zhou, suggesting that he could organize his men and horses to capture one or two gates when the army attacked Manila, or that he could buy off the defenders of the Krabi fortress.

This is a difficult task to complete, and after reading the order, Huang San directly burned the order, and then buried everything in his heart, pretending that nothing had happened.

Although he, the leader of the Chinese, was officially appointed, supported by the local Chinese, and occasionally said a few words for the Chinese, he still did not dare to let him negotiate with the Spanish officials with his neck bent like a European diplomat.

He felt that if this order in the country was spread, he would die without a place to be buried, and he did not dare to tell anyone, because he did not dare to guarantee that the secret would be kept.

But this matter is reality after all, so that he began to sleep and eat, he considered whether he wanted to run, once the fight started, it was too dangerous to stay here, he has made a lot of money as a middleman in recent years, and has a good relationship with the Spaniards and Chinese businessmen, even if he returns to China to hide first, the money he earns is enough for him to eat for the rest of his life, but I am afraid that he will not be able to come back in the future, and he is also worried that the government will clean him up, and if he does not listen to the orders of the government, he will let the government treat him, and he has no bottom in his heart.

Unlike Huang San's worries, Zhu Li, who had been a pirate, was much more natural, he was not afraid of the Spaniards at all, but was very interested in fighting the Spanish colonies. Willing to have only one, the Spanish colonies have silver. It used to be Peru, now it's Mexico, and tens of millions of taels of silver are dug out of the mines every year. It is a good deal to exchange silk and cloth for this silver, which is worthless here, but if you can rob the Spaniards of the mines, it can be more attractive than doing business.

Before, he was worried about the lack of strength, and last year he sent a ship back to report the emperor's situation, and this year the emperor sent 3,000 soldiers.

With these 3,000 veterans who have been tempered in the flames of war for more than ten years, Zhu Li is confident that he will occupy the Mexican port. The emperor also promised to send more men after the war, but asked him to take the ports of Mexico so that his troops could land later.

With these soldiers and horses, Zhu Lian didn't even bother to take care of Chen Zhouquan's people. As this year's galleon trade has gone bankrupt, there is hardly any cargo on the ships bound for the Americas, and almost all of them are people, except for necessary supplies. Zhu Li's ocean-going fleet has expanded rapidly in recent years, and with his fleet in the past, it has exceeded 100 ships, and this time in addition to transporting 3,000 soldiers, he also sent nearly 10,000 immigrants to Chen Zhouquan.

Zhu Mian himself also recruited 2,000 people, it is not easy to recruit people, it is much more difficult than Zhu Mian imagined, he thought that those poor people who can't survive, as soon as they hear about the land allocation, they are willing to do anything, but after they are asked to become soldiers, there are fewer people who are willing to come.

In the end, he had to give up recruiting soldiers, and pulled a few boats of peasants to open up the wasteland, where there was no need for more peasants in the Laoge River, these people would be placed in San Francisco, Zhu Ting had long been optimistic about this bay, and if he built a port, he would need peasants to provide grain and vegetables.

The Emperor's instructions were also clear, supporting him in the development of San Francisco, which was obviously impossible to return to Spain.