China-Tibet Threads

[Officer of Engineers]

Originally Posted by devgupt

Why should things be so?Why shouldn't there be universities offering courses in Tibet.

Mainly, no one will pay for it, not even the Tibetans.

Originally Posted by devgupt

Is China not a part of global economy?

It's as simple as working with your collegues and in this case, your collegues all speak Mandarin.

Originally Posted by devgupt

At a time when there is a craze for English in mainland China u feel it is not beneficial for Tibetans

To prosper in China, you need Mandarin. There is no two ways about that. And Tibet is part of China no matter how many chants the Dali Lama sings. You may learn English on top of that but you will not prosper without the national language.

Originally Posted by devgupt

And regarding industrialization part, it is much easier to start a service industry than a mining industry.And in a much lesser time frame.Guess why IBM hacked off its PC business and is concentrating on providing services

You want to know who makes good miners? People who knows the land. No one knows that land better than the Tibetans.

[devgupt]

I had also asked a question in my last post regarding the survival of a minority language. Please give ur views on that. Because I believe if a minority language is not able to survive in a country then its people have strong reason to feel aggrieved

[astralis]

devgupt,

Because I believe if a minority language is not able to survive in a country then its people have strong reason to feel aggrieved

unless the language is outright banned, then the survival of a minority language depends on how interested the minority is in keeping it alive.

if they're not interested in keeping it alive, and it dies- then they have no one to blame but themselves (assuming that they even care- but if they did, why would the language die?).

[Ray]

Originally Posted by astralis

devgupt,



unless the language is outright banned, then the survival of a minority language depends on how interested the minority is in keeping it alive.

if they're not interested in keeping it alive, and it dies- then they have no one to blame but themselves (assuming that they even care- but if they did, why would the language die?).

Educated that you are in foreign affairs and which I respect, please remember what happened to the Manchus and their language!

They were interested, but the Middle Kingdom ensured the demise of the Manchus, their culture and their language!!

Also check how the culture and even the language has been eroded with the Southern minorities.

[Aniki]

Originally Posted by Ray

Educated that you are in foreign affairs and which I respect, please remember what happened to the Manchus and their language!

They were interested, but the Middle Kingdom ensured the demise of the Manchus, their culture and their language!!

Also check how the culture and even the language has been eroded with the Southern minorities.

the manchus were a different story. them losing the language didnt come after their leadership being overthrown, but long before that. by the time of 6th manchurian emperor qianlong, he already had to decree manchus maintain their language and lifestyle, and the govt will be giving incentives to those doing that. they lose the language becos:

a, they were the ruling party, controlling a populace 150-200x of their own nationwide. they had to switch to the common mandarin in order to rule effectively. it is not sensible to ask the general populace switch to manchurian cos it cannot be achieve in a short time but they still have to run the country in the meantime. tibetan needs only to run their own backyard, they dont have to care about the rest of the general han chinese populace.

b, the manchurian wanted the general chinese populace to view them as legitimate sinec the beginning, and not some foreign invaders. so the first few manchurian emperors tried hard to diminish that difference by presenting themselves as chinese culture admirers and are also well-versed in the language. as chinese saying goes, the people on top likes it, the people below followed.

c, manchurian itself is not a single ethnicity in the beginning. the word 'manchurian' and 'general populace' is not an ethnic distinction but a social class distinction. the core of the manchurian class is the 8 banner system, which includes 8 ethnic manchurian banners, 8 ethnic han banners, who joined the manchurian since their emergence and were given differential treatment from the rest of the han chinese, and 8 mongolian banners, same thing as the han chinese who joined the manchurian early. they enjoyed certain tax and legal rights above the 'general populace'. so even manchurian themselves is a split entity. they only get to see themselves as one after the 1911 revolution. by then the downfall of the manchurian language had already been going on for more than a century.

[Deltacamelately]

Originally Posted by astralis

unless the language is outright banned, then the survival of a minority language depends on how interested the minority is in keeping it alive.

In case of Tibetans, this doesn't hold water.
Interested as much as they might be, but with the CCP, through mass migration of the Han Chinese in their territory, overwhelming them culturally and literally, absence of Tibetan as one of the core subjects available for higher academics, restricted use of Tibetan in administrative circles is sufficient to kill the language, if not in a generation than probably two.

if they're not interested in keeping it alive, and it dies- then they have no one to blame but themselves (assuming that they even care- but if they did, why would the language die?).

Because of the reasons stated above.

[Officer of Engineers]

Originally Posted by Deltacamelately

In case of Tibetans, this doesn't hold water.
Interested as much as they might be, but with the CCP, through mass migration of the Han Chinese in their territory, overwhelming them culturally and literally, absence of Tibetan as one of the core subjects available for higher academics, restricted use of Tibetan in administrative circles is sufficient to kill the language, if not in a generation than probably two.

You won't find too many Han-Chinese or Hui in the rural areas, in fact, you won't find any where there are no electicity. The Tibetan language is safe.

[Ray]

The Tibetan language is slowly being eroded in Tibet as is their culture and religion.

There is a serious electricity shortage in Tibet which even the Chinese accept.

Here is the same from People Daily of 13 May 2008

Tibet's power grid has not been connected with the mainland main power grid, which leads to the serious power shortage in Tibet especially in winter, and the "electricity insularity" situation is expected to end in 2010.We learned that the State Development and Reform Commission recently launched a project to build a network to transmit electricity to Tibet or a Qinghai-Tibet power line.

Qinghai-Tibet power line recently launched - People's Daily Online

[Aniki]

Originally Posted by Deltacamelately

In case of Tibetans, this doesn't hold water.
Interested as much as they might be, but with the CCP, through mass migration of the Han Chinese in their territory, overwhelming them culturally and literally, absence of Tibetan as one of the core subjects available for higher academics, restricted use of Tibetan in administrative circles is sufficient to kill the language, if not in a generation than probably two.


Because of the reasons stated above.

that is, at least from the surface, only a western media assumption. tibetan takes up more than 90% in tibet all the while, and the percentage is not changing yet, no specific trend.

of course, one couldnt really know how many among the 'tibetan population' are true tibetans, and how many are actually 'others/tibetan' offsprings. but at least on paper, other ethnicities are really overwhelmed by tibetans down there.

[Ray]

Monday, March 19, 2007
The Manchu language fades into history


Interesting article in yesterday's NYT on the Manchu language in China (hat tip: Kate Merkel-Hess). In the village of Sanjiazi, in Heilongjiang near the border with Inner Mongolia, 18 residents, all octogenarians, represent China's last native speakers of Manchu.

With the passing of these villagers, Manchu will also die, experts say. All that will be left will be millions of documents and files — about 60 tons of Manchu-language documents are in the provincial archive in Harbin alone — along with inscriptions on monuments and important buildings in China, unintelligible to all but a handful of specialists.

“I think it is inevitable,” said Zhao Jinchun, an ethnic Manchu born in Sanjiazi who taught at the village primary school for more than two decades before becoming a government official in Qiqihar, a city about 30 miles to the south. “It is just a matter of time. The Manchu language will face the same fate as some other ethnic minority languages in China and be overwhelmed by the Chinese language and culture.”

Perhaps some in China will wonder, "So what? The Manchus became Chinese a long time ago."

It's a common myth and a necessary one because the PRC relies, in part, on the "Chineseness" of the Qing Dynasty to justify its claims to the territorial legacies of the Qing. But research by Mark Elliot, Evelyn Rawski, and Pamela Crossley, among others, has shown that the Manchus were not as completely assimilated as many Chinese textbooks would have one believe. A point noted in another NYT article published on Saturday:

Recent study of the Manchu archives has led to a revision of some widely held views of the Qing period. Chinese historians have long argued that the Manchus were almost immediately sinicized, losing their identity and governing as de-facto Chinese rulers in the long-established Confucian tradition.

But the view that the Manchus were quickly swamped by Chinese culture has been challenged in recent years as research in the archives has revealed the importance the Qing elite attached to preserving a distinct identity that drew on their military prowess, nomadic hunting traditions and different cultural tradition.

In fact, the use of the Manchu language in documents continued to the end of the dynasty and throughout the period of Manchu rule there were--literally--tons of documents that the Manchus did not translate into Chinese. The Chinese were, after all, one of many subject peoples in the great multi-ethnic Qing empire.

That said, not everyone got the memo. As Kate and the NYT noted, almost immediately upon the consolidation of their dynasty, the Qing court began fretting about Manchus losing their cultural identity by speaking Chinese and hanging out with the "soft" Han population. Manchu as a spoken language, even among the Manchu banners, was all but a thing of the past by the early 20th century. Though as Pamela Crossley has shown, in the 19th and early 20th century Manchu identity still remained strong.

The number of untranslated Manchu documents means that there is rich mine of sources available for the enterprising Qing historian who wishes to crack up on his or her Manchu language skills. Sadly, the number of people actively studying Manchu is still quite small, even in China:

“If 100 people spent 100 years translating this archive they would still be unable to finish,” said Zhao Aping, director of the Manchu Language and Culture Research Center at Heilongjiang University in Harbin.

The Chinese government has allocated money to Qing historical research in recent years but very few students are interested in mastering a language that has little use outside the archives. Fifteen students are enrolled at Heilongjiang University’s Manchu language program, about half the total studying the language in China.

Personally, one of the goals I set for myself upon entering graduate school was to learn Manchu. I don't have any illusions that I could rival someone like Mark Elliot for his extensive knowledge of the language but it seemed to me that one couldn't really study the Qing and not know a little bit of the language of the ruling elite. I carried a copy of the Gertrude Roth Li textbook around with me for years before the UC Davis library decided they wanted it back. I'm still working toward my goal, but it's a slower process right now.

Needless to say, sadder than the dearth of Manchu in the academy is the death of yet another of the world's languages.

“The spoken Manchu language is now a living fossil,” said Zhao Aping, an ethnic Manchu and an expert on Manchu language and history at Heilongjiang University in the provincial capital, Harbin. “Although we are expending a lot of energy on preserving the language and culture, it is very difficult. The environment is not right,” he added.

Despite the predictions that it is now only a matter of time before Manchu falls silent, in Sanjiazi, Ms. Meng [an older villager] clings to hope. “I don’t have much time,” she said. “I don’t even know if I have tomorrow, but I will use the time to teach my grandchildren. “It is our language; how can we let it die? We are Manchu people.”


I know I'm a historian and a bit of a romantic, as well as prone to tacky and sappy sentiments, but I do feel that when a language dies, we lose a window into a culture. Linguistic theorists may or may not disagree with me...certainly I have no background or training in this field. But throughout the world, not the least of all China with its enforced policy of Mandarin in schools and in the broadcast media, languages are passing away as the last native speakers grow old and leave us.

花崗齋文集 Collected Writings from the Granite Studio: The Manchu language fades into history

[Ray]

A NEW ‘SHINING’ KASHGAR
By Ruth Ingram (06/06/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The Kashgar railway station is a potent symbol of Chinese subjugation in an
already beleaguered Xinjiang. The glistening, marble-clad monolith at the end
of a sumptuous two-lane highway in the outskirts of the city, is another sign
for the so-called ‘minority’ race that the end is near for their predominance in this remote homeland. Completed only last year, the rail link between the capital Urumqi and this strategic southern Uyghur city, is another nail in the coffin of their hopes for independence and signifies the determined Chinese commitment to swamping southern Xinjiang with the Han majority population.

As part of a plan to settle more than 55 million Han in Xinjiang over the next 25 years and to promote a ‘Go West’ mentality, China pushed ahead with one of its most ambitious railway projects yet, in order, many feel, to ship in record numbers of Han to swell the already mushrooming community and
to open up one of the most remote corners of China. A three-day bus ride used to be the norm for anyone determined enough to make the 1500-plus kilometer Urumqi-Kashgar pilgrimage. Sleeper buses have halved this to 36
bone-displacing hours, but the brand new double-decker train has revolutionized the journey in terms of both comfort and speed and hundreds of Han Chinese make the trip every day in a pain-free 24 hours.

The terminal itself speaks volumes for Han intentions in the area. Designed for a majority Chinese clientele; Chinese kiosks, Chinese signs and Chinese staff predominate. One Uyghur restaurant hidden in a far corner of a 40-strong Chinese cafe-complex, exists as a sop to the eating preferences of Uyghurs who refuse to eat with the Chinese. But in fact Uyghur faces are a rare commodity on the trains. Most cannot afford the luxury of train travel and prefer to haggle on the bus. The train, hot off the Chinese press, with Chinese signs, Chinese staff , 24 hour piped Chinese music, Chinese announcements and Chinese food, is not for the likes of the average Uyghur citizen. ‘These trains are for Chinese and foreign tourists,’ said Ibrahim, an Uyghur tour guide. ‘The Chinese are the rich ones round here. Our people like to negotiate a fare but there’s no negotiation on the train. The only Uyghurs you find at the station are touts buying up tickets to re-sell-but even that’s being knocked on the head by the Chinese authorities.’


The stunning ride cuts a swathe through the edge of the Tienshan mountain
range on one side and the Taklamakan, one of the world’s cruelest deserts,
on the other. Plagued by sand storms, ferocious winds and frequent
derailments, the payoff for the Chinese can be measured in terms of the
dramatic changes already taking place in the landscape of Kashgar, one of the
former silk-road trading posts. Fifteen years ago, Chinese faces were a rarity
in this Muslim city. Low, mud-walled houses lined narrow, un-paved streets
along which streams of donkey carts clattered, driven by small boys in peaked
caps. Life in the ancient city spilled out onto the sidewalks as people plied
their centuries old crafts. Kashgar was home for the Uyghur people.


A big push during the past five years, accelerated since the arrival of the
train last year, has meant Han population arriving in droves to settle in a
now flourishing Chinese community. Vast tracts of the old city have been
bulldozed for two-lane highways which are now bordered by Hong-Kong style
high-rise developments. Artists’ impressions of 21st-century Kashgar
decorate street hoardings and many Uyghurs are worried by rumors that the
entire old city is earmarked for destruction. ‘They say our houses are
unsafe and by re-housing us all they are doing us a favour,’ said Uyghur
teacher Rahim Mahmudov. ‘But our houses have withstood many tests for
centuries and their construction is perfect for our conditions. Their real
motive is to break up our strong bonds and to scatter us. We don’t trust
them,’ he added bitterly. Wide roads now separate parts of the old city, carving up the tightly knit communities and mowing down traditional housing. The latest assault on the community since the railway station road destroyed a Uyghur village, has been the destruction of a chunk of the city wall to make way for a giant Ferris wheel which now dominates the skyline. ‘No one knows where it will stop,’ said Rahim. ‘We listen to the rumors, see the evidence and are afraid for our people.’ ‘You cannot say you have seen the Silk Road until you have visited Kashgar,’ trumpets a Technicolor billboard teetering on the edge of a new Chinese roundabout where old houses used to stand. ‘Kashgar has taken on a new look. Silk Load (sic) is even more shining,’ boasts another.


But few tourists would fight to visit a ‘shining’ Kashgar and the Uyghur
people themselves are bitter and terrified about the changes taking place
before their eyes. Kashgar has seen turmoil and political intrigue in its
lifetime, and its history is peppered with assaults of every description. Few,
however, can have been more destructive or more far-reaching than the assault it is experiencing today. And from this assault it seems, there will be no turning back.


A NEW ‘SHINING’ KASHGAR | Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst

Tibet and Uighurs are the modern Manchus!

[Ray]

Aniki,

This one is for you


The Manchus


The Manchus were a stock of the Jurched tribe who lived in Manchuria. In the twelfth century, they founded a dynasty in Manchuria called the Chin ("Gold") dynasty; this dynasty was the first major threat to China as the Chin challenged the supremacy of the Southern Sung In the thirteenth century, the Chin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols and throughout the Yüan period, the Manchurians were under Mongol control. During the Ming period (1368-1644), however, the Manchus regained much of their independence when they were divided into three commanderies:Chien-chou, Hai-hsi, and Yeh-jen.

The Jurched lived north of Korea and east of Liaotung, which was a Chinese province just north of Pyongyang, Korea. While the Jurched represent a separate, nomadic cultural tradition for most of their history, during the Ming they increasingly adopted Chinese culture, eating habits, and living habits. In the sixteenth century, Chinese crossing over from Liaotung taught the Jurcheds how to build forts and how to farm. The importation of technology and agriculture converted the Jurcheds from a largely nomadic culture to a sedentary one.

The stage was set for the emergence of the Jurcheds as a major cultural force in Asia. The new Jurched tribes, having traversed several hundred years of development in a single century, awaited a single catalyst to erupt on the scene. That catalyst was Nurhaci (1559-1626), who led the Jurched on a series of conquests that would eventually position the Jurched, which his son, Abahai, renamed as "Manchu," to conquer the whole of China. Thus began the last imperial dynasty of China, the "Ch'ing" or "Pure" dynasty. It was to last over two hundred and fifty years; all during its life, however, it was bitterly resented as a foreign, occupying dynasty. The last imperial dynasty of China was not Chinese.

Establishment of the Empire

Led by the dynamic and brilliant leader, Nurhaci (1559-1626), the Jurched slowly became consolidated through a series of raids into a single political unit. In 1607, he had become so powerful in the north that the Mongols gave him the title, Kundulen Han, or "Respected Emperor." In 1616, with the Jurched tribes consolidated under his rule, he declared a new state, the Chin, to have been established with himself as emperor. He claimed the Mandate of Heaven and set his sights on the whole of China, but died in 1626.

He was succeeded by Abahai (1592-1643), his second son, who first attacked Korea and then marched on China. After looting Beijing, Abahai set up a civil administration modelled after that of China; this administration, however, was slightly different from the Chinese model. Each ministry (or board) was not administered by a president and vice-president, but rather by a Manchurian prince. Beneath Manchurian prince were five assistants of which at least one was Mongol and one was Chinese. This, called by historians the Manchu-Mongol-Chinese rule, became the model for Ch'ing government until 1911.

Abahai also renamed his people, "Manchu," rather than "Jurched," and renamed the dynasty from "Chin," which had bad connotations in China, to "Ch'ing," meaning "Pure." When Abahai died in 1643, the crown fell to his son, Fu-lin, who was only six years old. The government, then, fell into the hands of the regents, Jirgalang and Dorgan.

In the late 1630's, Abahai attacked North China; by this time, China wsa falling apart with rebellion. The major rebel leader was Li Tzu-ch'eng (1605-1645); he attacked Beijing in late April of 1644. Without much resistance, he entered the city on April 25 and the last Ming emperor, the Ch'ung-chen emperor, hanged himself. The glorious Ming dynasty, so promising at its start, died on that afternoon.

Dorgan, meanwhile, proceeded towards Peking at the head of an army, presumably to aid the Ming. Li burned part of the forbidden city down and fled. Dorgan made a big show of burying the Ch'ung-chen emperor, but his real scheme was to place Fu-lin on the throne of China. Li was eventually hunted down and killed in 1645, but before then, Dorgan placed Fu-lin on the throne. Thus began the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history: the Ch'ing or Manchu dynasty.

[Ray]

The Ch'ing State

Ming Loyalism

Immediately upon the establishment of the Ch'ing dynasty, a loyalist movement sprang up around the Ming Prince Fu. In 1645, they declared him Emperor in Nanking, which had been the secondary capital of the Ming. Fu, however, was little interested in government and rebellion and abandoned himself to his own pleasures. After this movement peetered out, other loyalist movements sprang up all over the country. These movements were motivated not so much out of affection for the Ming rulers, but out of bitterness over a foreign dynasty ruling China. All of these movements centered around one of the Princes of the imperial house. None of these movements coordinated with one another and they were soon defeated by both Chinese and Manchu forces.

The greatest threat to the Manchu hold on China came from the loyalist movment of Cheng Ch'eng-kung, who is better known in the West by his Dutch name, Koxinga (1624-1662). By 1655, Koxinga managed to control most of Fukien province along the central coast of China. Had he proceeded prudently, he probably would have reconquered China for the Ming; in 1659, however, he unwisely attacked Nanking and suffered a disastrous defeat. In 1661, he attacked and conquered Taiwan and began a series of coastal raids on China, but this last shred of hope for the Ming died in 1662 at the age of 38. With him went the Ming cause; when the Ch'ing conquered Taiwan in 1683, the Ming cause had effectively terminated.

Shun-chih

The first emperor of the Ch'ing dynasty was Fu-lin, who styled himself the Shun-chih emperor (1644-1661). At his accession to the imperial throne, he was only seven years old. The imperial power, then, fell to his uncle, Dorgan, who had been so successfuly in conquering the Empire. Dorgan was effectively the absolute power in China until his death in 1650; he set all policies and kept all the imperial seals. He saw the importance of maintaining Ming institutions and bureaucratic practices so he appointed large numbers of Chinese officials into the new Ch'ing government. Each ministry, however, was headed by a Manchu prince; there was no question where the power lay.

Dorgan was chauvinistic about Manchu culture and sought to impose it on the Chinese. He seized Chinese lands and ceded them to Manchu princes. His most bitterly hated policy, however, was the compulsory wearing of pigtails, which was the Manchu fashion of wearing hair.

Shun-chih took over the government in 1651. He retained Dorgan's policy of hiring Chinese officials, but he introduced several innovations in order to make government more efficient. He added several sub-chancellories to the office of the Grand Secretary who was the single individual who ran the government. He abolished the Ministry of the Imperial Household, which was run by the eunuchs, and replaced it with thirteen imperial household departments; this was his effort to curtail the power of palace eunuchs which had proven so disastrously meddlesome during the Ming period.

K'ang-hsi

When the Shun-chih emperor died in 1661 of smallpox at the age of twenty, he was succeeded by his third son, Hsüan-yeh, who styled himself the K'ang-hsi emperor (1662-1722). He was only eight years old, so the government fell to four regents. However, in 1667, at the age of thirteen, K'ang-hsi assumed the leadership of the government and expelled the regents. From this very early age, K'ang-hsi was one of the strongest and most dynamic of the Ch'ing emperors.

Like the Hong Wu emperor at the start of the Ming dynasty, K'ang-hsi was tireless in his administration of government. On a typical day, he would rise long before sunrise and by five AM would begin holding audiences to receive officials; his day rarely ended before midnight. In Chinese versions of history, K'ang-hsi is considered one of only a handful of emperors that fit the ideal pattern. He was brilliant, energetic, moral, and tirelessly devoted to the administration of the government.

Conscious of the bitterness that Dorgan and the Shun-chih emperor had raised by giving away Chinese lands, K'ang-hsi ended that practice and began returning lands to native Chinese. He greatly increased the number of Chinese in high official positions and greatly increased the efficiency of revenue collection by appointing Chinese servants to oversee provincial financial, textile, and judicial commissions. He increased his own power by creating out of this network a secret, personal bureaucracy; added to this personal bureaucracy was his creation of a secret and personal intelligence-gathering bureaucracy.

K'ang-hsi believed that his power rested solely on the welfare and good will fo the common people. In order to secure that good will, his most common political practice was to remit or reduce taxes. He strove to create new confidence in imperial government by cleaning out corruption with a severe hand. He also believed that learning was the foundation of government and became one of the most profligate sponsors of learning in Chinese imperial history. He himself would sit through hours of academic lectures every day and demanded high levels of learning from his officials.

It was K'ang-hsi who completed the wars of conquest started almost a century earlier by Nurhaci. His greatest conquest was the suppression of the Three Feudatories. The Ch'ing had come to power through the help of Chinese generals who had defected to their side. In reward for this service, they granted each of the major generals their own territories; these nearly independent territories were known as the Three Feudatories. While Shun-chih tolerated these semi-autonomous states, K'ang-hsi strove to curtail their power. When they broke out into open rebellion in 1673, K'ang-hsi managed to conquer all three territories by 1681.

K'ang-hsi's biggest threat, however, came from the Mongols and the Russians in the north. Beginning in the late 1500's, Russians began to aggressively expand their territory. They moved west into Europe, south into Ottoman territories, and gradually expanded east across Asia. By the 1640's, the Russians had conquered Siberia and were making raids into Manchu and Chinese territory. K'ang-hsi feared an alliance between Russians and Mongols, so he aggressively attacked the Mongols and seized territory in Turkestan. He then turned on the Russians and defeated them soundly in 1685. This led to the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, which was China's first treaty with a European power. With the Russians out of the way, K'ang-hsi defeated the Mongols in 1696 and in 1697, he incorporated Outer Mongolia and Hami into the Chinese Empire. By 1750, under the leadership of Emperor Ch'ien-lung, the Ch'ing conquered all of Turkestan, making the Ch'ing empire the largest Chinese empire in history.

Yung-cheng

At the death of the K'ang-hsi emperor, Yung-cheng, at the age of 45, became emperor of China. Although he ruled for only twelve years, from 1723 to 1735, he greatly modified Ch'ing government. Deeply suspicious by nature, he concentrated power into his own hands. He seriously curtailed the feudal powers enjoyed by Manchu princes and then he took away their military power; all military power, which had been shared by the earlier Ch'ing emperors, was now concentrated in the hands of the emperor.

Like that of the Hong Wu emperor, the administration of the Yung-cheng emperor worked effectively because he was absolutely tireless in his administration of government. He kept all his officials on a very short leash and punished incompetence, insubordination, and corruption with an unmatched fury. He expanded K'ang-hsi's personal intelligence-gathering network into a secret police feared by every government official. He did not fight corruption with just a heavy hand; he also rewarded officials for not being corrupt by setting up an "integrity nourishing allowance." This allowance rewarded virtuous service and partially eliminated the temptation to charge surtaxes or to take bribes.

His most significant innovation in the conduct of the state was the creation of the Grand Council in 1729. This Council was designed to help directly the Emperor in the drafting of edicts and to serve as the primary advisory council in matters of state and military government. This was the most far-reaching and efficient innovation of the Ch'ing period, for the Grand Council, which usurped the powers of the Grand Secretary, was able to formulate policy quickly, efficiently, and privately. So efficient was it that it was retained for most of the Ch'ing period.

Ch'ien-lung

The last great emperor of the early Ch'ing was Hung-li, who styled himself the Ch'ien-lung emperor (1736-1795). His reign was awesomely long; at a length of fifty-nine years, it is second only to K'ang-hsi's reign, which lasted for sixty-one years. All during his boyhood, Ch'ien-lung had been prepared for the throne. He was rigorously trained in the Classics, in Confucianism, the ethics and practice of government, and in Manchu military arts. By the time he became emperor at the age of twenty-five, he was perhaps the best trained individual for the job in all of Chinese history.

He announced that the rule of his father had been too strict, while that of K'ang-hsi, his grandfather, had been too lenient. He announced a "middle course" for his own government and, with two brilliant assistants, the first decade and a half of his rule was marked by peace and unprecedented prosperity.

He was one of the greatest military emperors of the dynasty. He finally conquered the Mongols in 1759 and, by the next year, had annexed all of Turkestan. In 1770, he subjugated Burma and again, in 1789, he brought Annam beneath his rule. The Ch'ing empire had now become the greatest empire in Chinese history and possibly the world.

But while the Ch'ing empire reached its highest point under the Ch'ien-lung emperor, both Chinese and Western historians date the decline of the empire to the same figure in history. At the age of sixty-five, growing increasingly senile and decrepit, Ch'ien-lung fell for a handsome palace guard named Ho-shen (1750-1799). He was first made Grand Councillor and then a minister of the Imperial Household. Assured of the Emperor's constant good graces and increasingly in control of the senile old man, Ho-shen was free to do whatever he pleased whenever he pleased. He was unabashedly corrupt and demanded bribes with complete abandon. His practices spread throughout the government and into the provinces; by the 1790's, the imperial government had become hopelessly corrupt. Ch'ien-lung retired in 1795, but he still controlled the government. It wasn't until his death in 1799 that Ho-shen was finally executed. The damage to the government, however, was so extensive that the imperial administration never regained the same level of integrity and efficiency it had enjoyed under the early Ch'ing emperors.

[Ray]

Ch'ing China

The Europeans

The Ch'ing period was the era in which China came into conflict with Europe. Spreading around the globe, Europeans more and more confidently asserted economic monopolies and political power all around the globe, from the Americas to Africa to India and, eventually, to China itself. As the Ch'ing dynasty wore on, Europeans increasingly began to enforce their economic and political will through the use of arms; this practice would eventually be called "gunboat diplomacy" in the nineteenth century. The history of conflict between Europe and China slowly developed over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; by the middle of the nineteenth century, Chinese and European relations had so degraded that England sent warships in order to preserve its despicable trade in opium to the Chinese people.

The relationships between Europeans and the Chinese did not begin auspiciously. The Portugese had reached Canton in 1516 and the Chinese, accustomed to peaceful trading with Islamic traders, freely granted the Portugese access to the markets. But the Portugese soon began to attack and rob Chinese ships; to the Chinese, they were no better than pirates. Because of their predation on Chinese shipping, the Chinese dubbed Europeans, "the Ocean Devils."

The pressures exerted on the Chinese government by foreign powers were certainly exacerbated by the lack of any official mechanism for dealing with foreign powers. Despite its complexity and efficiency, the Chinese imperial administration had no ministry of foreign affairs. Its only formal mechanism for dealing with foreigners was the Office of Border Affairs, whose primary task was relations with Mongols (and later Russians). Commercial relationships with other Asian countries were managed by the Ministry of Rituals. However, foreign countries could only trade in China if they formally entered into a subservient role under the emperor. Even then, trade with foreign powers only took place in Canton during the winter months.

By 1740, the British East India Company had become the largest international corporation in the world. It controlled directly and indirectly vast amounts of land in India and was steadily conquering more land. Sensing profits to be made by trading not just with Europe but with China as well, the East India Company persuaded the British government to negotiate for trading rights with China. The British delegation arrived in Canton in 1793 under the leadership of Lord George Macartney. The Chinese, though, demanded that Macartney present England as a "tribute nation" to China (which was required of all commercial delegations) and to perform rituals of obeisance to the emperor. Even though Macartney refused, he was allowed to see the emperor. The emperor, however, was not pleased by the British behavior and, after politely listening to Macartney, the emperor refused every one of his requests. Thus was set the pattern for European and Chinese relationships over the next two hundred and fifty years. The Macartney mission was a failure because both cultures could not understand the other; this communicative failure still characterizes relationships between European countries and China. More than anything else, however, both cultures believed themselves to be superior both militarily and culturally. Neither would cede to the other on this account, and the history of European and Chinese relations went downhill from there.

Christianity

The Chinese had always had an uneasy relationship with Christianity. The Nestorian mission set up in 635 was driven out of China in the ninth century and the Franciscan mission begun in 1289 was largely driven out by the Yüan. The third active Christian mission was begun by the Jesuit priest, Francis Xavier; when he failed, the Jesuit, Matteo Ricci targetted the imperial court and met with profound success. The Jesuits continued their activities in the imperial court after the establishment of the Ch'ing, but the Manchus were primarily interested in their mechanical devices, such as telescopes and clocks. Still, they respected the learning of the Jesuits, particularly their learning in the Chinese Classics and Confucianism, so they granted them respect and a certain amount of liberty. The Jesuits openly attacked both Buddhism and Taoism, but they felt that Confucianism was a rational philosophy completely in accord with Christianity.

There were, however, other Christian missions led by Dominicans and Franciscans. Jealous of the success that their Jesuit brothers were enjoying, the Dominican and Franciscan missionaries reported to the Pope that the Jesuits were promoting Confucianism. After a bitter series of debates, the pope issued two bulls, one in 1715 and another in 1742, that condemned Confucianism and prevented Chinese Christians from participating in any of the Confucian rites. The Ch'ien-lung emperor banned Christianity from China. All Christian churches were seized, the European missionaries were expelled, and Christianity slowly died out in the Empire.

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Prelude to Modern China

World Cultures

©1996, Richard Hooker

For information contact: Richard Hines
Updated 7-14-1999