1563. In any case, Hu Zongxian's supreme commander position overseeing three provinces was considered too powerful especially since the wokou had moved away from the crucial Jiangnan region, so the position was abolished after Hu Zongxian left office — grand coordinators became the paramount figure in those provinces again. Later, in November 1565, new evidence arose incriminating Hu Zongxian of trying to bribe Yan Song's son, and Hu died shortly after while in prison. In Fujian, Wang Zhi's followers from Zhoushan took over Kinmen and made that island their base to raid up and down the coast in alliance with Cantonese pirates. In December 1562, the prefectural city Xinghua (present-day Putian) was taken after a month-long siege, along with many major towns surrounding it. The general Qi Jiguang was made vice commander while his fellow wokou-fighter Tan Lun was made the Grand Coordinator of Fujian in 1563. Qi Jiguang had by this time assembled his own army from able-bodied farmers of Yiwu and devised the mandarin duck formation (鴛鴦陣) to counter the formidable Japanese contingents among the wokou. This army proved successful in successive battles, and Qi continued to train Fujianese recruits the same way. With his highly disciplined troops, Qi Jiguang retook the city of Xinghua and destroyed the last major pirate base in Fujian by May 1563. Those pirates who had managed to escape and to sail farther south were gradually killed or captured in a series of campaigns conducted in southern Jiangxi and Guangdong between 1564 and 1566. Through these campaigns, the mountainous region between Guangdong, Fujian, and southern Jiangxi, which had been a haven for bandits since the early years of the sixteenth century, was brought under imperial control. By 1567, piracy was no longer seen as a serious threat on the Chinese coast. Legalization of foreign trade While military action suppressed the pirates, a change in Ming maritime policy allowing overseas trade was instrumental in keeping them from rising again. As early as 1530, the maritime prohibitions had in fact been lifted in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, where non-tribute trade was taxed. Provincial authorities had hoped that by opening trade, the economically marginalized of Guangdong would have legitimate livelihoods and would not need to descend into piracy. Indeed, Guangdong was spared from the brunt of the pirate raids during the peak years of wokou activity, and those who had invaded Guangdong were put