Under Mo Tianci, The Port continued to thrive as a resource exporter, emporium, and monetary center. In fact, it expanded beyond its immediate surroundings of the water world and Cochinchina, stimulated by commercial growth, social change, and official policies within the regional powers of China, Japan, and the VOC. As a result, The Port played an essential role in the offshoring of the Chinese economy, attracting surplus laborers from China to Southeast Asia and supplying them with goods from Guangzhou. The Port’s expanded jurisdiction after the late 1750s also allowed for a greater specialization of functions. Bassac and other minor ports handled trade with maritime East Asia and received support from the Hong merchants of Guangzhou. The urban center focused more on finance, influencing the money supply of Cochinchina and becoming a center for copper and silver in Southeast Asia. The Port’s fortunes got a further boost when the fall of Ayutthaya to the Myanmar forces removed a major competitor along the Gulf of Siam littoral.

The Port, which had thrived off of its ambiguity and the smooth functioning of translocal networks, faced threats from growing nativism among its multiethnic constituency and the emergence of territorially focused regimes in its neighborhood. However, Mo Tianci was presented with several contingent opportunities to dominate the thrones of Siam and Cochinchina and forge his own state. But he lost on both occasions and ended up an exile in Siam, where he took refuge with his former rival, the half-Chaozhou Taksin. Suspecting him of trying to seize the throne, Taksin imprisoned him and his retinue, eventually resulting in his suicide. However, his descendants managed to play on the continued rivalry between Siam and Vietnam to ensure the survival of The Port as a distinct entity well into the nineteenth century, beyond its prime.