Cornelis Reijersen was a fleet commander of the Dutch East India Company. In 1622 Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen sent him north with orders that were plain enough: take Portuguese Macau; failing that, find a base on the China coast and force the Ming to open trade.

He attacked Macau in June and was driven off. On 11 July the fleet turned into Penghu. Penghu lay inside the Ming realm, and he knew it. From August he built a square bastioned fort at the tip of the Fengguiwei peninsula, using Chinese labourers seized from the Fujian coast and passing junks — fourteen to fifteen hundred of them. When the work was done, those still alive were shipped to Batavia and sold.

For the next two years he sent envoys to negotiate in Fujian while his ships raided the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou coast, trading harassment for terms. The talks went nowhere. At the end of 1623 Nan Juyi became governor of Fujian; the Ming side lured the Dutch envoys at Xiamen into a trap, seized them and burned their ships. Delay had turned into war.

In 1624 Martinus Sonck replaced him. That August a Ming army of ten thousand surrounded the fort, and the Dutch signed a truce, pulled down the walls and withdrew to Tayouan. The stone he had raised at Fengguiwei went into the walls of Fort Zeelandia.