For generations, the narrative of New Zealand’s human settlement has held that Polynesian voyagers – the ancestors of the Maori – arrived and settled the islands in the 13th century, followed by European explorers in the 17th century.

This timeline underpins New Zealand’s history and its political model.

The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between the British Crown and about 540 Maori chiefs, served as New Zealand’s founding document, paving the way for Britain to claim sovereignty and incorporate the country into the British Empire.

Outside the halls of universities and government institutions, two independent researchers are on a quest to discover pre-Maori Chinese presence in New Zealand.

Citing underwater shipwrecks, carbon-dated structures and anomalous artefacts as evidence, scholar and author Sheng-Wei Wang has proposed a theory that a Chinese “treasure ship” fleet met its end there around 1435-1436 owing to the impact of a meteorite.

Wang also contends that Chinese mining and trading activities date back to 190BC, challenging the accepted 13th-century Maori settlement timeline and suggesting that these pre-European contacts have been overlooked or suppressed.

While mainstream academics and Maori groups voice scepticism, Wang and others argue that acknowledging this lesser-known history could reshape New Zealand’s national identity and improve its relations with China.

Speaking this month at the Commonwealth of World Chinatowns conference in Penang, Malaysia, Wang raised the question of whether fleet leader Zheng He died in New Zealand during his final voyage.

Zheng was a Chinese admiral who led seven massive naval expeditions across the Indian Ocean during the early Ming dynasty.

While Zheng is widely believed to have died in 1433 in Calicut, or today’s Kozhikode, a coastal city in southern India, after setting sail in 1431, his exact fate was still unverified, Wang said.

“We know that Zheng disappeared during the seventh voyage.

There were different kinds of proposals about what happened to him.

“Could he [have died] while he visited the Americas? Or in India near Calicut – he was ill, and because the weather was so hot that his body couldn’t be brought back to China? Or just like in this case that he died because of the unexpected tragic event?” Wang said a meteorite was believed to have crashed in the Tasman Sea, southwest of New Zealand.

“My estimate of the date is around 1435 or 1436, when a squadron of the Ming Treasure Fleet reached New Zealand after they explored the Americas during their seventh voyage to the Indian Ocean and beyond,” she said, adding that the impact carbonised all the ships in the harbour.

“One of the possibilities is that the whole fleet disappeared there, which may have included Zheng because there is no satisfactory evidence to show where or when he died,” she said.

“There was no convincing record, so I am proposing that.” Wang’s research draws on field surveys by the late independent British surveyor T.C.

Bell, who used magnetic anomaly surveys to detect underwater and buried structures throughout New Zealand.

The method measures local variations in the Earth’s magnetic field to locate metal objects.

“When Bell went to New Zealand for surveys in 2003, 2006 and 2017 … he was able to detect 78 shipwrecks of various dimensions,” she said.

“Twenty-four of them are of the super-junk or treasure-ship size.

They are around over 100 metres (328 feet) in length, about 40-something [metres] in width, and all these large ships are characterised by their unique double-fluke anchors.” The specialised Chinese anchor consisted of a central wooden bar connected to two huge rocks, Wang said, and was designed to cut into the sea floor to secure the ship in place.

She proposed a route for Zheng’s last voyage that “went to America for several months and came back by rounding the southern part of South America, Cape Horn.

They followed the Humboldt Current, then the [South] Equatorial Current and they could have gone to Asia”.

“Naturally they would have been brought westward to New Zealand.” Wang described the seventh fleet as on its way back to China.

Carbon dating results indicated a Chinese presence in New Zealand predated the seventh Ming voyage, extending from as early as 190BC through 1600, Wang said.

She pointed to a “scrub-covered, small-moated Chinese fort platform” at Governors Bay, South Island, which was carbon-dated to 190BC, and the years 800 and 1600.

“In my opinion, in Bell’s opinion, [New Zealand] became the headquarters of Chinese business trading ships.” “There were already many Chinese who had lived there for thousands of years,” Wang said, explaining they were attracted by “coal mining and other metallic ores in New Zealand”, including “very rich ores” of gold and silver.

She also noted the presence of canals, smelter sites and barrack blocks that she believed bore Chinese characteristics.

“It is clear that a Chinese presence in New Zealand started at least from 190BC and lasted until the tragic [meteorite] event took place,” she said.

“The next wave of Chinese immigration started in the 19th century.” Wang also cited stone carvings as possible evidence, with a massive gateway rock on the North Island bearing an elephant petroglyph and linear script.

“New Zealand does not have native elephants, and the Maori had no history of carving elephants either,” she said.

“Even the Europeans did not do much elephant carving.

This is very interesting.

But the Chinese knew elephants.” However, according to Li Yuelin, president of the Seven Seas....