Beginning in the early 1600's, pirates from countries in Asia attacked European and other trading ships in many Asian waters. For example, Arab pirates operated off India's Malabar Coast, and Malaysian pirates attacked ships in the South China Sea. Pirates from Taiwan and the mainland of China sailed in the waters off China and Japan.

The less known but also very active were pirates of the Far East. Pinyin Zheng Zhilong (XVII century), was a Chinese pirate leader who achieved great power in the transitional period between the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties. As a boy, Cheng found employment with the Europeans in the Portuguese settlement at Macau, where he was baptized and given the Christian name of Nicholas Gaspard. After leaving Macau, he joined a pirate band that preyed on Dutch and Chinese trade. In 1628 he was induced by the government to help defend the coast against both the Dutch and the pirates . He soon acquired great wealth and power.

Another notorious pirate Cheng Ch'eng-kung (also known as Koxinga), controlled the island of Formosa (Taiwan), and refused to surrender to official forces for long period of time.

By the mid-1800's, however, with the growth of a strong central power in Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867) and in China under the Ch'ing dynasty, and the presence of the navies of Britain and other countries most of the piracy was eliminated.