Lanfang (officially the Republic of Lanfang) is a civilized nation in Southeast Asia starting in the state of Pontianak in western Borneo. Lanfang is one of the nations that can form China. Lanfang borders Brunei to the north and Kalimantan to the east.
Lanfang has a fairly difficult start because of the fact that it only has one accepted culture, Tionghoa. Until you get the decision to accept the Borneans much later on you are going to have only one focus. Tionghoa are a severe minority in all of your starting provinces and even in Borneo as a whole, so focusing on cultural tech and passing education reforms is a must to get the assimilation rate as high as possible. Malay pops are going to be 50%+ of your nation well into the late game, but unfortunately, there is no way to gain Malay as an accepted culture.
By during the mid-late game you should notice that your pops have slowly assimilated to Tionghoa, eventually the whole island of Borneo can be converted, so that there is about a 50/50 split of other cultures, and Tionghoa
Economy[]
Lanfang's only decent starting RGO is coffee, this won't be very profitable unfortunately. You'll have to either tax your population, making them very upset or defund almost everything you can, either way this will not be good for Lanfang. Overall your economy at the beginning of the game is very poor.
If you can manage to conquer all of your neighbors, your economy should be sustainable, you may have to keep taxes somewhat high, but you shouldn't need tariffs or defunding of anything. Several good RGOs spawn later, like rubber, sulpher, oil and iron, so you can built up a decent industry on the island too.
Expansion[]
Effective Starting Objectives[]
The colonization of Borneo should be your primary objective, and because you have regulars right off the bat the nearby Malay kingdoms should be easy to subdue. Be careful with your soldier POPs, and switch focus to encourage soldiers for a while if you take serious losses. Otherwise, your focus should be on clergymen/intellectuals, and then bureaucrats in the new Bornean states once you have conquered them. Once you have colonized all of Borneo you should have a decision to core it, take it as soon as possible.
The starting RGOs in Borneo are very good and you should be making money hand over fist at this point, focus on literacy and choose your next objective. Malacca is a good choice, as it has multiple precious metal RGOs and a chance to get rubber later on. It also has some of your accepted POP as minorities in its states. Makassar is also a good choice, as there is a coal RGO which will help later if you want to industrialize a bit. Be careful about taking on too many Malay POPs, Java for instance is a very dangerous choice because of potentially huge revolts later on.
Great Powers[]
With enough gumption, you could potentially get Lanfang to become a Great Power. Japan will come knocking quickly, and you will probably be sphered by them. This can be useful if you want to take Scandinavian possessions like the Moluccas or Singapore, as they will roll over most of the Scandinavian armies before they can get reinforcements from Europe. Burgundy is big and dangerous, don't stir them up too much without backup from Japan or Russia. The Dual Monarchy shouldn't be aggressive to you, just maintain good relations with them.
Colonization[]
All of Lanfang's possible cores (without forming China)
Lanfang has a good position to build a large naval presence and colonize Polynesia very quickly. Just get liferating techs and watch the islands closely, and you should be able to take several out from under the GPs noses. Africa is also an option, but you will have a hard time outcompeting Scandinavia and Burgundy without a base in the Indian ocean.
Expansion in the Arabian Peninsula is always possible. Other GPs seem to ignore this area and instead opt for Africa and India. You can annex both Oman and Yemen very easily and then slowly move up the peninsula, you can even take out the Funj Sultanate if they still exist. It is also possible that the land you conquer in Arabia will slowly assimilate to Tionghoa.
Forming China[]
Lanfang is one of the many Chinese colonies littered around the pacific, this means that it can form China and become incredibly powerful. But it is the hardest nation to form China with because its so small and has a very small population compared to the other former colonies. A good option is to take out nations on the Arabian Peninsula like Yemen and Oman and then recruit soldiers from them to conquer China. Then your armies will just snowball once you recruit from Chinese land instead
