Aisin Gioro Yinzhen

Biography

Family Background and Early Years

Yinzhen was born at the hour of the tiger on December 13, 1678, the thirtieth day of the tenth lunar month in the seventeenth year of Kangxi, in Yonghe Palace of the Forbidden City in Beijing. His birth mother, Lady Uya, came from the booi of the Bordered Yellow Banner. She first served as a palace woman and was later promoted to Consort De. After Yinzhen became emperor in 1722, she was honored as Empress Dowager, later known as Empress Xiaogongren. Under early Qing palace practice, a birth mother did not necessarily raise her own son, and after his first month Yinzhen was raised by Empress Xiaoyiren of the Tonggiya clan. She was a daughter of Tong Guowei, a duke of the first rank, and a niece of Empress Xiaokangzhang. As she had no surviving son, she raised the son of Consort De.

In 1683, the twenty-second year of Kangxi, Yinzhen entered the imperial school. He studied the Four Books and Five Classics under Zhang Ying and Manchu under Xu Yuanmeng. Among his tutors, he was closest to Gu Badai, whom Yinzhen later praised as upright in character and sound in learning. As a youth he was strictly supervised by his father and teachers, with the Four Books and Five Classics forming the core of his studies. During this period he wrote poems including “Reading in Spring” and “Reading in Summer.” The Kangxi Emperor once described the young Yinzhen as “uncertain in joy and anger,” but at Yinzhen's request this assessment was removed in 1702, the forty-first year of Kangxi. Because Yinzhen was quick-tempered and forceful, the Kangxi Emperor admonished him with the phrase “guard against haste and practice forbearance.”

As he grew older, Yinzhen accompanied the Kangxi Emperor on inspection tours and was entrusted with government assignments. In 1693, the thirty-second year of Kangxi, he accompanied the third imperial son Yinzhi to offer sacrifices at the Temple of Confucius in Qufu. In 1696, the thirty-fifth year of Kangxi, he joined the Kangxi Emperor's campaign against Galdan and took charge of the Plain Red Banner camp. Although he did not personally enter battle, he wrote poems praising his father's achievements. He later went to the temporary enshrinement hall at Zunhua to offer sacrifices to Empress Xiaozhuangwen. In 1698, the thirty-seventh year of Kangxi, the twenty-one-year-old Yinzhen was made a beile. In 1700, the thirty-ninth year of Kangxi, he accompanied the Kangxi Emperor to inspect the Yongding River works and verify construction quality. He later accompanied his father to Mount Wutai and on southern tours to Jiangsu and Zhejiang, inspecting Yellow River and Huai River projects. These tours and assignments exposed him to regional economies, water conservancy, local customs, and the realities of official administration, providing practical experience for his later rule.

Yinzhen was born on the thirtieth day of the tenth month of the seventeenth year of Kangxi, that is 13 December 1678, the fourth son of the Kangxi emperor, his mother being the empress Xiaogongren, née Uya, then a consort of the first rank, and he was born in the Yonghe palace of the Forbidden City in Beijing. He was made a beile in 1698 and raised to the rank of prince of the first degree with the title Yong in 1709. As a prince he repeatedly accompanied the Kangxi emperor on his progresses and was sent out to transact government business, his travels covering the chief regions of the country, so that he had occasion to learn the economic products, the rivers, mountains and waterworks, and the customs of each place; he also returned to the capital to take part in reviewing the examination papers of the tribute scholars, at the winter solstice performed the sacrifice to heaven in the southern suburb on the emperor's behalf, and the following year inspected the granaries of the capital and of Tongzhou and again sacrificed at the winter solstice. These experiences made him familiar with the concrete details of government and gave him direct knowledge for his later rule.

In his years as a prince he styled himself the layman Who Has Broken the Dust and master of the Garden of Perfect Brightness. In the preface to his collection of poems written in the princely residence he wrote that he had then counted himself the idlest man in the empire; not idle in the manner of one who withdraws from the world among bamboos and trees, but idle in circumstance, since he lived when the state was at its height, the three rebellions had been put down and all quarters were at peace, and he was cherished by the emperor his father, served him with joy, and, though ranked among the imperial princes, had nothing to do after attending at his parents' door; and idle in feeling, since by nature he disliked ostentation, had no need to be anxious for wealth and honor nor to grieve over poverty, and asked only to melt away cleverness and so be content wherever he was; and that it was through his father's deep kindness in educating him that he had been able to live at ease as an idle man for forty years. The passage is the most direct record of his frame of mind in those years: to call himself idle was at once to show his father that he sought nothing and to express a temperament that genuinely disliked display.

From youth he also liked to read Buddhist books and associated with monks, wrote a work of a hundred questions on Buddhist doctrine, and took the names of the layman Who Has Broken the Dust and the layman of Perfect Brightness; early in his reign he even compared himself to a master of the Buddhist law and used the monk Wenjue in secret counsel. At the same time he took an early interest in Daoist alchemy and pursued it while still a prince, writing a poem on refining cinnabar which speaks of lead ore mixed with drugs, pines and cypresses about the altar, the fire of yin and yang worked in the furnace, and the elixir both within and without. He was also adept at divining his father's wishes: he had court painters prepare a set of pictures of plowing and weaving, modeled on the woodblock set printed in the Kangxi period, and presented it to the emperor, in which the chief figures, the farmer and the silkworm woman, were given the features of Yinzhen himself and his consorts, something unique among such sets in earlier dynasties. The emperor was delighted and his regard for his fourth son grew. To present himself as an idler and a layman and at the same time to court his father's pleasure: both sides belonged to his years as a prince.

There is also a story of his going about in disguise, recorded in a Qing collection of anecdotes. As a prince he is said to have traveled incognito to Hangzhou, where outside the Yongjin gate he saw a scholar selling his calligraphy, whose brushwork was rather fine, and had him write a couplet. Among the characters was one for autumn, in which the scholar put the fire element on the left; the prince asked whether that was not a mistake, and the scholar, unperturbed, said it was not and brought out a book of model calligraphy for comparison. The prince asked why, being so learned, he did not seek a degree instead of selling calligraphy for a living, and the scholar said his family was poor and could not feed his wife and children, so he sold his writing and never dreamed of wealth or rank. The prince then generously took out several ingots of gold from his purse and said that as his own trading had prospered he might as well help the man to a degree, asking only that he not be forgotten when his ambition was achieved. The scholar thanked him and took it, sat for the examinations and rose to the Hanlin academy. By then the prince had ascended the throne, and one day, seeing the scholar's name on a roster, he recalled the visit to Hangzhou and summoned him. He wrote on impulse a character meaning harmony, deliberately putting the mouth element on the left, and had it shown to the scholar, who, not knowing why, said it was wrongly written; the emperor smiled and said nothing. The next day he sent the scholar with an edict to the governor of Zhejiang, and when it was opened it ordered him to go back and sell calligraphy at the Yongjin gate for three more years before taking office. Only then did the scholar understand.

Role in the Succession Struggle

In the summer of 1708, the forty-seventh year of Kangxi, the Kangxi Emperor deposed Crown Prince Yinreng for the first time. During the subsequent discussion over a new heir, Yinzhen supported restoring Yinreng while maintaining good relations with the eighth imperial son Yinsi. Yinreng was restored in 1709, the forty-eighth year of Kangxi, and in the same year Yinzhen was created Prince Yong. The imperial princes meanwhile formed factions in pursuit of the succession, and rivalry became intense.

After Yinreng's restoration, his conduct again led to his deposition in 1711, the fiftieth year of Kangxi. Competition among the imperial sons then intensified. The eighth imperial son Yinsi continued his political activity and was repeatedly reprimanded by his father. The fourteenth imperial son Yinti cultivated men of talent and built connections, and in 1718, the fifty-seventh year of Kangxi, was appointed General-in-Chief for the campaign in the northwest, greatly increasing his reputation. The third imperial son Yinzhi was placed in charge of the Mengyang Studio, where a circle of scholars gathered around him, and he too hoped for the succession.

Yinzhen was adept at keeping a low profile in this struggle. He showed respect for Buddhism and Daoist learning, called himself “the foremost idle man under Heaven,” maintained outward harmony with his brothers, and at the same time cultivated close relations with Nian Gengyao and Longkodo. He also displayed filial devotion toward the Kangxi Emperor and won his father's trust. His subordinate Dai Duo praised him to Grand Secretary Li Guangdi as possessing both talent and virtue and as combining favor with authority, with the capacity for great achievement. In the succession contest, Yinzhen advocated correcting entrenched abuses and pursuing energetic government, in contrast to Yinsi's emphasis on benevolence and righteousness, in order to win support. He was skilled at presenting different faces to different opponents so that rivals did not regard him as their principal threat, and he ultimately prevailed.

In 1721, the sixtieth year of Kangxi, Yinzhen was ordered to Shengjing to report at the ancestral tombs. After returning to Beijing he took part in reviewing the examination papers of successful metropolitan examination candidates. At the winter solstice he was ordered to sacrifice to Heaven at the southern altar on the Kangxi Emperor's behalf. The following year he inspected the Beijing and Tongzhou granaries and again represented the emperor at the winter-solstice sacrifice. These assignments gradually made him the prince who performed major rites and government business on behalf of the aging Kangxi Emperor and helped prepare the way for his accession.

Accession and Consolidation of the Throne

On the thirteenth day of the eleventh lunar month in 1722, the sixty-first year of Kangxi, the Kangxi Emperor died at Changchun Garden north of Beijing. On the twentieth day of the eleventh lunar month, Yinzhen ascended the imperial throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony under the Kangxi Emperor's testament and adopted the era name Yongzheng. He was the first Qing emperor to ascend the throne under a testament associated with the secret succession system.

After accession, the Yongzheng Emperor first ordered Yinsi, Yinxiang, Maci, Longkodo, and others to supervise government affairs in order to stabilize the situation. He then summoned Yinti, General-in-Chief in the northwest, back to Beijing and removed his military authority, while sending Yintang to Xidatong in Qinghai. Because the Qing had lacked an effective and stable succession system and disputes over the throne had repeatedly arisen, the Yongzheng Emperor formalized the secret succession system, sealing the testament naming his heir and placing it behind the “Upright and Bright” plaque in the Palace of Heavenly Purity.

After Qinghai was pacified in March 1724, the second year of Yongzheng, the emperor's position strengthened and he moved more forcefully against the Yinsi faction. In April he publicly condemned Yinsi, stripped him of imperial clan status, confined him, and renamed him Akina. Yintang was likewise stripped of clan status, confined, and renamed Seshe. The tenth imperial son Yin'e was confined, while the fourteenth imperial son Yinti was first sent to guard an imperial mausoleum and later confined. The twelfth imperial son Yintao was demoted, and the third imperial son Yinzhi was also stripped of rank and confined. In May, Beile Sunu was stripped of his title, and in July the emperor composed the Discourse on Factions, further attacking supporters of Yinsi. In 1726, the fourth year of Yongzheng, Yintang and Yinsi died in confinement, Yinti was moved to Jingshan in Beijing, and other members of the Yinsi faction were punished, bringing the group that had operated for more than twenty years to an end.

In 1725, the third year of Yongzheng, the emperor accused Nian Gengyao of arrogance and factional conduct and ordered him to commit suicide. He also stripped Longkodo of the title of Grand Preceptor and later confined him until death. These actions also led to the Wang Jingqi Notes from the Western Campaign case and the Zha Siting examination-question case.

Government and Reform

From the beginning of his reign, the Yongzheng Emperor made clear his determination to correct accumulated abuses. In the month of his accession he instructed grand secretaries, ministers, and vice ministers that if they clearly understood policies that should be implemented or abolished for the benefit of state finance and the livelihood of the people, they should submit secret memorials. On New Year's Day of 1723, the first year of Yongzheng, he issued an edict to civil and military officials at all local levels calling for reforms to promote benefits and eliminate abuses for the sake of state finances and popular livelihood.

The emperor's political program contained several core elements. First, he opposed passivity and perfunctory government. He believed that when he came to the throne, official habits had long grown lax and abuses were everywhere, and he advocated deliberate investigation and correction rather than the Kangxi-era preference for avoiding unnecessary action. Second, he sought to reorganize the bureaucracy for the benefit of the people. In his edicts he criticized officials who pursued reputation in name while enriching their households in fact and announced a campaign to rectify official administration. Third, he opposed factionalism. From personal experience he considered political factions highly destructive and declared his intention to wash away habits accumulated through the Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming and reverse centuries of political decline at its root.

In specific policy, in 1723, the first year of Yongzheng, he accepted the proposal of Shanxi governor Nomin and implemented the return of surcharge revenues to the public treasury together with integrity stipends, increasing central fiscal income while limiting arbitrary local exactions. In 1724, the second year of Yongzheng, in response to serious arrears in provincial tax remittances dating from the late Kangxi period, he ordered strict investigations and confiscation of corrupt officials' property to recover deficits. In the same year he promoted the fusion of the poll tax with the field tax, reducing the burden on peasants with little or no land and encouraging population growth. He also abolished hereditary degraded-status registers. From the first through the seventh years of Yongzheng, groups such as entertainers in Shanxi, so-called degraded households in Zhejiang, and boat people in Guangdong were successively registered as ordinary commoners and permitted to own property, settle permanently, and take examinations.

In the southwest, beginning in 1726, the fourth year of Yongzheng, the emperor employed Ortai to carry out transforming chieftainships into district administration on a large scale, abolishing hereditary native chieftain offices and replacing them with appointed officials, thereby strengthening Qing control over minority regions. In 1727, the fifth year of Yongzheng, the office of the Amban in Tibet was established. In 1724, the second year of Yongzheng, the Xining Amban was established to administer Qinghai affairs.

The Yongzheng emperor's reform of officialdom began with public reproofs at the very start of his reign. In the fifth month of 1723, his first year, he issued eleven edicts cataloguing the abuses of officialdom and charging the officials of every rank with greed, incompetence and hollow display, repeatedly calling for clean government; the corruption of the last Kangxi years had by then become a grave threat to Qing rule, and in the years that followed he purged it with dispatch. He first dismissed among the provincial governors those who were corrupt or too weak for their posts, personally ordering the removal of the governor of Jiangxi Wang Qiqing, of Huguang Zhang Liandeng, of Zhili Zhao Zhiyuan, of Shanxi Sukji and of the river commissioner Zhao Shixian among others; he then required the governors and governors-general to discipline their subordinates, impeaching the rapacious and dismissing the incompetent. They did not dare disobey: the governor-general of Zhejiang and Fujian, Manbao, reported that he had already impeached many officials under him and that further impeachments would leave no one to do the work, and the governor of Hunan, Wei Tingzhen, reported that more than half his subordinates had been impeached and asked leave to continue the inquiry. In the fourth month of 1725 he told the governors that weak and incapable ones, when they did impeach anyone, would explain to everyone that unless they impeached it would not accord with the imperial wish and others might impeach them to their hurt, as if impeachment were a way of courting his favor, and he admonished them to judge every matter by principle and never to harbor a thought of courting favor. In the eleventh month of 1726 he reduced the staffs of the ministries, saying that among the Chinese secretaries of each ministry only one or two were really capable and the rest were idle and useless, a mere superfluity; the heads of each ministry were to sift their secretaries carefully and report all those of ordinary ability, useless now and unlikely ever to be promoted, together with those who should be kept, for his decision.

With the personnel measures went three prohibitions. First, the abolition of departmental fees: in the first month of 1723 he forbade the taking of such fees and set up the board for auditing accounts to clear those of the revenue ministry, saying that the great abuse lay in provincial accounts, since without a fee even a clear and orderly set of documents would be rejected on one pretext or another, while with a fee even a million in wasted grain and money would be approved, so that he had no choice but to set the matter straight. Second, the abolition of seasonal gifts: he held that the practice must never be allowed and that the bribes of subordinates must not be accepted, and forbade all such gifts. The reports of local officials show good results: Nian Xiyao, on becoming governor of Guangdong, refused all the customary gifts of his subordinates, the governor of Guangxi Kong Yuxun on taking office likewise refused all gifts at his office, and the Guangxi provincial treasurer Liu Tingchen did not accept a single item from those under him. Third, the prohibition of contributions from salaries for public works: salaries being small, some officials, to win a good name, would lead their subordinates in contributing salary toward construction, which merely shifted money from one place to another and in the end fell on the common people, so he ordered that the practice of requesting such contributions cease forever. When the governor of Gansu, Shi Wenzhuo, reported that contributions were unavoidable and could not be stopped, the emperor called him utterly shameless.

For information he developed a denser system of secret memorials than any before. He required the censors and remonstrating officials at court to submit a secret memorial every day, each dealing with one matter only and reporting the facts whatever their weight; local officials from provincial treasurers and brigade commanders upward could likewise memorialize in secret. All local conditions, the diligence or idleness of a province's officials, whether a superior was public-spirited or private, which subordinate was good and which bad, whether the troops were in order, even weather, flood and drought and the people's livelihood could be reported, and anything startling might be sent in on hearsay without waiting for certain knowledge. Secret memorials were not to be discussed with others or disclosed, and had to be written by the official's own hand and sent straight to the capital: those of governors went to the memorial office in the palace, and those of Manchu and Chinese officials below them were forwarded to the emperor by Prince Yi Yunxiang and the Chinese ministers Zhang Tingyu and Jiang Tingxi for his reading and endorsement. From the memorials he learned conditions in every region, and he also employed secret agents to watch officials' words and conduct, reporting even the small affairs of daily life, so that in some cases an official's own servants were the emperor's agents. Officials stood in fear and did not dare act at will — a system of mutual checking and surveillance that put his stern style into administrative practice.

Clearing the arrears of revenue was another major task the Yongzheng emperor took up on his accession. Financial arrears had grown severe in the last Kangxi years; less than a month after taking the throne he put the matter on the agenda and opened a sweeping audit. He formed a capable body, the board for auditing accounts, to examine the submission of revenue accounts, with Prince Yi, Yunxiang, in charge of its affairs, and he also put Yunxiang over the three treasuries of the revenue ministry in order to set the finances straight. In his view the arrears arose chiefly from the extortion of superiors and the embezzlement of the officials themselves, and he accordingly warned officials at every level not to extort from the people, to settle the arrears within the time fixed, and to expect severe punishment otherwise. The audit began in the central government and was carried out generally in the provinces as well.

In 1724, in view of the severity of the arrears in the last years of Kangxi, he ordered a strict investigation: corrupt officials were to have their property confiscated to make good the loss, while for arrears owed by the people at large annual installments were set for repayment over a short term. The policy was that wherever a locality had arrears they must be made good in full within three years, with heavy punishment if the term expired with the sum unpaid. He also increased the penalties on officials in arrears: all were to be dismissed, and each was personally liable to repay. In the eighth month of 1724, holding the sentences in the relevant cases too light, he made the penalties heavier: transfer of ten thousand to twenty thousand taels was punished by service in the frontier guards, and above twenty thousand, even if only a transfer, was punished as theft of revenue with death. Against officials who had caused arrears by extortion or embezzlement he showed no mercy: any who offended were dismissed and their property confiscated to make good the loss, and he set up a special sealed treasury in which all confiscated sums and surplus silver were kept, so that by the end of the reign it held more than thirty million and the state's funds were ample.

Through years of effort the arrears inherited from the Kangxi reign were largely recovered, and officials were so deterred that they did not lightly defy the law. The treasury changed accordingly: from eight million taels of silver at the beginning of his reign it rose to more than sixty million, with funds sufficient and granaries full, enough to last more than twenty years. This accumulation was not merely a figure on the books; it gave him the material means to send troops into Qinghai, to manage Tibet, to replace hereditary native chiefs with appointed officials, and to campaign against the Zunghars. With confiscation as the instrument, the audit board and the sealed treasury as the machinery, and the three-year limit with dismissal and repayment as the rule, the financial gap inherited from the Kangxi years was filled piece by piece and the habit of perfunctory accounting among local officials overturned with it.

The Yongzheng reign may be called the high tide of Confucius worship in the Qing. Two chief motives lay behind it: the crisis of legitimacy he faced on accession, and his claim to be continuing the work of the Kangxi emperor. To carry on his father's undertaking and to dissolve the political crisis, he multiplied the means of honoring Confucius to a degree that nearly touched the limit: funds were specially allotted to repair the temple and the cemetery at Qufu, the five generations of Confucius's forebears were ennobled as princes, the use of his name in writing was forbidden, his birthday was sacrificed to, the ritual for his worship was raised, and tablets and ritual vessels were granted by imperial gift — measures far beyond those of earlier emperors. Above all, his large-scale restoration and expansion of the list of scholars admitted to the sacrifices in the Confucian temple showed his concern to construct a genealogy of the Confucian orthodoxy. When the temple at Qufu was rebuilt he forbade officials to contribute to the cost, wishing to keep the credit for repairing the sage's temple to himself; yet when the building of temples in remote regions was discussed, he refused on the ground of preserving the Manchu inheritance to build one in Jilin, the cradle of the dynasty, while approving them elsewhere. The same act of veneration could be handled in opposite ways at Qufu and at Jilin, which shows that the criterion was not edification but the balance of rule.

In his principles of government he followed his father's and grandfather's policy of revering Confucianism and honoring the Way: he honored Confucius, held daily lectures and the classics colloquium, and valued the role of traditional learning, especially the Cheng-Zhu school of principle, in political rule. At the same time he held that the three teachings should be given equal weight, and by substituting sincerity for principle he modified the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy. This took two forms: first, attention to the edifying function of traditional learning, above all of the school of principle; second, the use of heaven-and-man correspondence and of the "divine way" as instruments of political rule. From youth he had also liked Buddhist books and associated with monks, early in his reign comparing himself to a master of the Buddhist law and using the monk Wenjue in secret counsel, which drew objections from his ministers; he denied that monks were taking part in government but kept the Buddhist establishment within bounds, and in his later years held assemblies in the palace, took disciples himself, restored famous monasteries, granted titles to monks, supported one faction within Chan Buddhism and wrote a treatise on distinguishing the true doctrine from the false, intervening in disputes inside the Buddhist order. Equal weight to the three teachings and veneration of Confucius were the two wings of his cultural policy.

More deeply, the series of measures he initiated to honor Confucius was meant to use the cultural authority symbolized by Confucius to consolidate his own political authority — that is, to sustain the "rule of governance" of the throne by the "orthodoxy" of the Confucian way. These measures were therefore at once an important means of resolving the crisis of legitimacy of his own rule and a key link in the efforts of the early and middle Qing emperors to construct the legitimacy of Qing rule as such: by the posture of revering the orthodox tradition he displayed a rule conforming to the Chinese line of succession, thereby dissolving among the higher scholar-officials the doubts about his accession. This is where his veneration of Confucius differs in purpose from that of merely learned emperors before him.

In military and frontier affairs the Yongzheng emperor worked on two fronts at once. In the northwest he sent troops into Qinghai in 1723 and the following year put down the rebellion of Lobsang Danjin, bringing Qinghai under more direct control; the struggle with the Zunghars continued at intervals, ending in the Qing's direct exercise of sovereignty over Tibet. In the southwest he replaced the hereditary native chieftainships with appointed officials, extending Qing political control into wide territories that had nominally accepted the court's rule while in fact being governed by non-Chinese tribal leaders. The measure helped to lighten the oppression and exploitation suffered by the peoples of minority regions and was of great importance for unified rule and national unity, but in carrying it out the Qing relied too heavily on force and crushed resistance in some regions with such cruelty as to bring disaster on some of the peoples of the southwest. The southwestern frontier that the Qianlong reign faced was formed in the Yongzheng years.

The affairs of the Miao regions were the heaviest burden. In the fifth month of 1735, when the Miao of Guzhou and Taigong in Guizhou rose, he appointed Ha Yuansheng general of awe-inspiring power to lead troops from four provinces against them, and put Prince Guo, the fourth and fifth imperial sons and the grand secretaries Ortai and Zhang Tingyu in charge of Miao frontier affairs; the minister of works, Batai, was dismissed over it, and the minister of justice Zhang Zhao and the deputy censor Deshishou were sent to investigate. In the same month Ha Yuansheng reported that the rising Miao had been dealt with and that Huangping and Shibing were wholly pacified. In Tibet the post of resident minister was increased and reduced from time to time, and at first the three-year rotation proposed by Yue Zhongqi was not followed, the court not having laid down any clear rule of rotation; later the resident ministers entered a new rotation, and fearing that newcomers would not be familiar with Tibetan affairs the court had Mala return first while Sengge remained to assist. In the long view the most enduringly important of all the policies of the Yongzheng reign were the military operations that began in the mid-1720s: they should not be seen as parts of a coordinated plan of expansion and had no consistent objective, yet Qing territory was extended along two frontiers at once, one in the northwest and one in the southwest, and the results were the exercise of sovereignty over Tibet and the extension of political control over lands under native chieftains.

In religion, Yinzhen's involvement with Buddhism and Daoism ran through his whole life. From youth he liked to read Buddhist books and associated with monks, wrote a work of a hundred questions on Buddhist doctrine, and took the names of the layman Who Has Broken the Dust and the layman of Perfect Brightness; early in his reign he compared himself to a master of the Buddhist law and used the monk Wenjue in secret counsel, which drew objections from his ministers. He denied that monks took part in government and held the Buddhist establishment in bounds, but in his later years he held assemblies in the palace and took disciples himself, restored famous monasteries, granted titles to monks, supported one faction within Chan Buddhism, and wrote a treatise on distinguishing the true doctrine from the false, intervening in disputes within the Buddhist order. He was also much interested in Daoism, and particularly favored Lou Jinyuan, a Daoist priest from Mount Longhu resident in Beijing, granting him the fourth rank as superintendent of Mount Longhu and abbot of the Qin'an hall and adding the title of Perfected Man of Wondrous Rectitude. He had taken a keen interest in alchemy while still a prince, chiefly in order to show his father that he sought no throne and thought only of refining cinnabar, and had written a poem on the subject which speaks of lead ore mixed with drugs, pines and cypresses about the altar, the fire of yin and yang worked in the furnace, and the elixir both within and without. In his devotion to elixirs he may be called the last emperor in Chinese history to favor Daoist priests and dote on cinnabar.

In Western objects, his taste contrasted oddly with his prohibition of foreign religion. In his leisure he most liked to drink grape wine. Many Western missionaries came to China to preach, and like other emperors he opposed the missions in order to keep his rule secure, yet unlike others he greatly enjoyed the Western goods they brought in, wine among them. One Western physician at court is recorded to have given him three kinds of grape wine — a rosemary medicinal wine, a cinnamon wine and a peach-kernel wine — which he treasured and was reluctant to drink. Spectacles reached China late and were still a rarity in the Yongzheng period; he is said to have set up a department in the palace to make spectacles for him alone, making many suggestions to those who made them and demanding the best both in material and in design. His liking for them was no affectation, for his eyes had indeed failed and he needed them. According to incomplete counts, the imperial workshops made him no fewer than thirty-five pairs of spectacles, of crystal, tea-crystal, ink-crystal, glass and other kinds; he kept them everywhere, so that wherever he went he could take one up, in the palaces where he usually lived and in the Garden of Perfect Brightness, and even in his sedan chair; and he issued spectacles to the workmen of the lime-kiln office as a practical welfare benefit.

Later Years and Death

In 1729, the seventh year of Yongzheng, the emperor established the Grand Council to assist with military affairs in connection with the campaign against the Dzungars. The Grand Council initially had no permanent statutory officials or formal yamen. It included grand councillors and military secretaries drawn from grand secretaries, ministers, vice ministers, and imperial nobles, including Prince Yi Yinxiang, Grand Secretary Zhang Tingyu, Minister of Revenue Jiang Tingxi, and Ortai. It was located inside Longzong Gate near the emperor's residence at the Hall of Mental Cultivation, enabling rapid consultation whenever the emperor summoned its members.

The Yongzheng Emperor also strengthened ideological control and expanded literary inquisitions. In 1729, the seventh year of Yongzheng, Lu Shengnan, a former secretary in the Ministry of Works who had been sent to serve in a northwestern military camp, wrote seventeen essays titled Discussions on the Comprehensive Mirror, dealing with matters such as enfeoffment, succession, and military institutions. The Yongzheng Emperor accused him of using ancient affairs and statements as a pretext for venting personal resentment and ordered his execution at the army front. Supervising Censor Xie Jishi, who had been accused of attacking Cheng-Zhu learning in notes on the Great Learning, was ordered to be placed beside Lu at the execution as a warning.

At midnight on the twenty-third day of the eighth lunar month in 1735, the thirteenth year of Yongzheng, the Yongzheng Emperor died at the Old Summer Palace at the age of fifty-eight. He received the temple name Shizong and the posthumous title Emperor Jingtian Changyun Jianzhong Biaozheng Wenwu Yingming Kuanren Xinyi Ruisheng Daxiao Zhicheng Xian. He was buried in the Tailing Mausoleum of the Western Qing Tombs.

The assessment in the Draft History of the Qing was that where the Kangxi emperor governed with magnanimity the Yongzheng emperor succeeded him with strictness, and that writers compared the two to the emperors Wen and Jing of the Han; only in brotherly feeling was he thought wanting, though the lord of Huainan was insolent and brought it on himself, so that it was not wholly the emperor Wen's lack of kindness. It also records that he studied the art of government and was especially concerned at the hardship of subordinate officials, and that when a close minister told him the prefectures and counties took in much and their intake should be trimmed, he retorted that the man had never been a prefect or magistrate and could not know their difficulties — a saying later writers thought showed a grasp of the essentials of government. Later judgment falls broadly into several lines. One looks at his manner and the temper of the age: that he was firm and penetrating, a politician to the core, ruling by law and prizing honesty, so that officialdom was clean, the treasury full and the world at peace; that had his years been prolonged he might have given Chinese politics a positive character and swept away centuries of muddled inactivity, so that society would not have stagnated, but that, never at leisure and too eager for good government, he could hardly win society's understanding, which gave rise to the tales of his sudden death. The same line adds that his early government was thorough and did not flag, so that the Yongzheng period had a character of its own; that though he reproved much he did not lightly kill or disgrace, nor did he regard all court officials as his inferiors and take all wisdom for his own, so that he was far superior to the Qianlong emperor. Another line looks at his temperament: that he was hard, truly hard, but not without kindness; cold, truly cold, but not without feeling; that the saying no official in the Yongzheng reign was not clean may be exaggerated but is a fair judgment of his government; and that he was undeniably a man of strong character and an outstanding figure, rich in feeling, strong of will, firm in temper, sharp of eye and full of enterprise.

Another line of judgment concentrates on his harshness toward his own flesh and blood and his political enemies. One writer says that Yinsi and Yintang had merely plotted for the succession in Kangxi's lifetime, yet the Yongzheng emperor, having won the throne by stratagem, regarded them as thorns in his eye: first temporizing with them, then constantly rebuking them, not only rebuking but imprisoning them, not only imprisoning but secretly killing them, and changing their names to Acina and Seshe; that to disgrace one's brothers is no different from disgracing oneself, or from disgracing one's ancestors, and that however glib the arguments, they only reveal a cruel and unnatural heart. Another weighs his merits and faults together: that the legitimacy of his accession is not beyond doubt and his treatment of opponents excessively cruel, extending even to his brothers by the same father, the eighth, ninth, tenth and fourteenth sons, whom he maltreated, secretly killed or stripped of rank and imprisoned, so that his reputation suffered and his opponents fastened on him ten great crimes, of plotting against his father, hounding his mother, murdering his brother, slaughtering his brothers, delighting in killing and destroying the loyal; that in his thirteen years he made many mistakes and some of his harmful measures were widely resented; but that on the whole he remains an outstanding ruler, bold in advance, removing abuses and of notable achievement. He had great ambitions and real courage for reform, wishing to shake off the decadence of centuries and wash away the habits accumulated through the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming, so as to achieve clean government, a settled people and lasting peace.

A further line argues from his manner of rule. One writer holds him a man of strong sense of mission, seeking efficiency and solving problems, whose officials shared those qualities; that he encouraged innovation and perfected the memorial system to bypass the inherent conservatism of the outer court, which explains what the reign achieved; but that the great irony of his rule was that, distrusting the bureaucracy, he failed to build institutions able to guarantee steadily stronger government and economy, and that a system depending on the emperor's hand in everything could not meet the challenges China faced a century after his death. Another writer says that with Kangxi indulgent and Qianlong lax, but for Yongzheng's discipline the Qing might long since have declined; that his thirteen years of unremitting toil in public business are a fact, as is his contribution to government; but that his reign was too short and his death too sudden, leaving tasks unfinished, and that even of what was carried out, since the man died and his measures died with him, some produced abuses instead of benefits — as his own testament said, his aspirations were unfulfilled and he could not but feel regret; that had he lived as long as his father, eleven years more, the political scene would have differed, and had he lived as long as his son, thirty-one years more, the political changes would have been great indeed. Two observations by missionaries then in China may be added: that though the Yongzheng emperor seldom appeared a supporter of Catholicism, he was tireless in his devotion to public business, working day and night to reform abuses for the welfare of all his people, and that the greatest pleasure one could give him was to propose a measure improving the people's welfare and easing their burdens, which he would at any cost put into practice as soon as possible; and that the new emperor loved law and the public good more than his father had, and that among emperors none did more to encourage agriculture. Qing sources also record that he issued regulations all tending to instill respect for the farmer, and that besides plowing and sowing with his own hands as an example he ordered the governors of every city each year to select the diligent, honest and capable farmers of their districts and raise them to the eighth rank, with high repute and corresponding privileges.

Major Activities

Political Reform

During his thirteen-year reign, the Yongzheng Emperor carried out a series of major political reforms. He first reorganized official administration. From the outset of his reign, he strictly investigated provincial tax deficits and ordered corrupt officials' property confiscated to recover missing funds, requiring local deficits to be made good within three years on pain of severe punishment. He also implemented the return of surcharge revenues to the public treasury and integrity stipends, bringing locally collected surcharges into the public treasury and redistributing them as official stipends, thereby increasing central revenue and limiting arbitrary local exactions. He promoted the fusion of the poll tax with the field tax, reducing the burden on peasants with little or no land. He also abolished hereditary degraded-status registers and registered groups such as entertainers in Shanxi, so-called degraded households in Zhejiang, and boat people in Guangdong as ordinary commoners.

In administrative institutions, the Yongzheng Emperor established the Grand Council as the central body assisting the emperor in military and government affairs, replacing part of the functions formerly exercised by the Council of Princes and High Officials. He also refined the secret memorial system, allowing officials to report confidentially and directly to the emperor and strengthening imperial supervision and control. He formalized the secret succession system as well, sealing the testament naming his successor behind the “Upright and Bright” plaque in the Palace of Heavenly Purity so as to prevent a repetition of the succession struggles of the late Kangxi reign.

The struggle over the succession in the last years of Kangxi is the background against which Yinzhen's accession must be read. After the heir apparent Yinreng was restored, he again took high-handed steps to secure his position and offended the emperor, who deposed him a second time in 1711. Thereafter courtiers kept working for his restoration and were punished by the emperor, and the princes schemed in earnest for the succession: the eighth son, Yinsi, continued his maneuvers and was rebuked by his father once more, while the fourteenth son, Yinti, cultivated a reputation for honoring the worthy, made contact with men of every party, and, as the record puts it, had designs of his own. Yinzhen's conduct in these years was described as having no private letters, no faction and no courting of reputation, holding to principle and upright in his own person: he accompanied the emperor on his progresses and carried out the sacrifices and grain inspections on his behalf, while showing no trace of forming a party. On the thirteenth day of the eleventh month of the sixty-first year of Kangxi, that is 1722, the Kangxi emperor died at the Changchun garden north of the capital, and Yinzhen succeeded to the throne, changing the reign title to Yongzheng the following year.

Once on the throne he instituted the secret designation of the heir. The emperor would not publicly announce his successor during his lifetime but would place two copies of a decree naming the heir, one behind the tablet inscribed with the words of the Hall of Mental Cultivation and one about his person, and after his death the ministers charged with proclaiming it would open the decree together and establish the new ruler. The first copy, kept behind the tablet in the main hall, served for verification and the second was carried by the emperor himself, the two being compared before the announcement. The device gave the succession a fixed procedure and went far to prevent the recurrence of the factional struggle among the princes that had marked the last years of Kangxi. Corresponding to this arrangement, he never named an heir apparent publicly during his reign, so that the succession remained undisclosed until his death, when the ministers proclaimed it in public. Whether his own accession accorded with Kangxi's intention is one of the great unsolved questions of Qing history, debated to this day.

Whether Yinzhen's accession was legitimate has divided historians and remains one of the great unsolved questions of Qing history. Popular accounts say the Kangxi emperor's testament originally read that the throne passed to the fourteenth son, and that the fourth son changed one character to make it read that it passed to the fourth; others say that when Kangxi lay gravely ill at the Changchun garden Yinzhen seized the moment to give him a bowl of ginseng broth, after which Kangxi died, whereupon Yinzhen took the throne, hounded his own mother to death and imprisoned Yinti, whom Kangxi had favored. The opinions formed around this fall into two groups: the usurpation theory, and the theory of a lawful succession.

Those holding or leaning to the usurpation theory rely chiefly on the form of the testament and the manner of the succession. Scholars publishing in the twentieth century on the Yongzheng emperor's seizure of the succession and on the Kangxi testament followed Meng Sen in holding that many signs indicated Kangxi intended the fourteenth son, Yinzhen by his earlier name, later changed to Yinti, as his heir. A researcher who studied the photographic reduction of the Manchu-Chinese copy of the Kangxi testament discovered in the 1980s in the First Historical Archives concluded that neither the Chinese original nor the bilingual original was written according to Kangxi's intention, but was manufactured after Yongzheng's accession and translated into Manchu from the Chinese. Others hold that Kangxi most probably died of poison, and that his sudden and unexplained death, with the "testament" merely heard and proclaimed by Longkodo, shows that Yinzhen's usurpation is historical fact. Yang Zhen, in her study of Qing imperial succession, argues from the sequence of events that Yinzhen, on receiving Longkodo's secret report of Kangxi's death, decided on the instant and, while strictly sealing off the news, used the fact that Kangxi had never named an heir to promulgate a so-called testament and take the throne with Longkodo's troops behind him, while Yunti, whom Kangxi had carefully groomed, became a prisoner.

Those holding the theory of lawful succession argue from Kangxi's employment of and trust in Yinzhen during his lifetime. One scholar, examining Yinzhen's plans and activities, the circumstances of Kangxi's death and the situation before and after his accession, and the claim that the throne was left to Yunti, concluded that given the regard Kangxi showed Yinzhen it is entirely possible that on his deathbed he decided to pass the throne to him and summoned him from his retreat to the Changchun garden to succeed. Japanese scholars likewise hold that in his last years Kangxi passed the throne to Yinzhen out of affection for his grandson Hongli. Wu Xiuliang, in his account of the succession struggle at the Kangxi court, holds that the fourth son best understood Kangxi's wishes and worked hardest to gratify them, and so became the heir Kangxi personally chose. Another scholar, in a study of Ming and Qing history, holds that the fourth son, through the extraordinarily bitter and complex intrigues among the princes, played to Kangxi's preferences, gradually won his trust, and at the end obtained the testament naming him. Li Guorong and Zhang Shucai, in their plain account of Yongzheng, find signs that Kangxi passed the throne to Yinzhen and conclude that he was the heir designated on his deathbed and that his accession was lawful, not usurped as the unofficial histories say.

His sudden death has drawn as much comment as his accession. One private record states that the Yongzheng emperor bled from the seven openings of the head, to the recorder's utter horror. His death was sudden and the official books give no cause, which naturally raised doubts, and since many tales and opinions about his character were current, suspicion was the more easily aroused and numerous explanations sprang up. With neither the accession nor the death attested by unimpeachable official record, Yongzheng has become the Qing emperor most discussed after his death.

Along with reforming officialdom, the Yongzheng emperor regarded factions as a direct threat to the ruler's authority. In an edict at the start of his reign he said he had heard of men of opportunistic temper who had long formed factions for private gain and at the year of reckoning drew one another in with requests and intercessions, and who, when they met a law-abiding man who would not join in their frauds, turned on him together with slander and false accusation, a tendency that must never be allowed to grow. In 1724 he issued a special treatise on factions, analyzing their harm and condemning them in terms of the proper relation between ruler and minister.

The case of the examination clique that followed is best seen in the entanglement of Li Fu, Tian Wenjing and Xie Jishi. In 1726 Li Fu was recalled from the governorship of Guangxi to be governor-general of Zhili and passed through Kaifeng, where Tian Wenjing, governor of Henan, came out to meet him; Li Fu rebuked Tian Wenjing for deliberately trampling on men of learning, and Tian Wenjing reported it in secret, adding that Li Fu and Huang Zhenguo had passed the examinations in the same year and that Li Fu meant to avenge him. At his audience Li Fu said that the charges against Zhenguo, Wang Xian and Shao Yanlun were all unjust and that the magistrate Zhang Qiu was the worst of officials while Tian Wenjing shielded him. The emperor, having first taken in Tian Wenjing's account, let the matter rest; Zhang Qiu having first been referred to the board over a robbery case, Tian Wenjing then admitted his fault and impeached him. That winter the censor Xie Jishi impeached Tian Wenjing for seeking private advantage at the state's expense and for ten counts of greed and lawless cruelty, again touching the wrongs done to Zhenguo, Yanlun and Xian and the protection of Zhang Qiu, all matching what Li Fu had said. The emperor held that Xie Jishi was in league with Li Fu and meant to ruin Tian Wenjing, issued a stern edict of reproof, stripped Xie Jishi of office and sent him to the army, condemned Zhenguo and Xian to death, and sent Yanlun and Chen into frontier exile. The case showed the emperor that among the examination-bred officials of the dynasty there were not only serious practices of intercession and mutual protection but also men discontented with Qing rule and with his own policies, and under the name of attacking the examination clique he launched a broad campaign against such officials. The Xie Jishi case was its first climax; the second came in 1729, when Xie Jishi admitted at Altai to his association with Li Fu.

The other line was the case of Nian Gengyao and Longkodo. Among the crimes published against them, an important category was that of greed — eighteen counts of embezzlement against Nian Gengyao and sixteen of rapacity against Longkodo. By giving wide publicity to this aspect the emperor made the punishment of the two and their partisans appear wholly justified, and at the same time gave a great push to the reform of officialdom. By cutting away the following of Yinsi, Yintang, Nian Gengyao and Longkodo, and by frequent transfers from the ministers of the central boards down to provincial governors, treasurers, judges and military commanders, a number of time-serving and rapacious officials fell into the net when their patrons lost favor, so that the corrupt elements of the ruling upper class felt the blow first, together with Nian and Long. Using the punishment of corruption as the instrument of centralization, he cleared away factions and at the same time directed the edge of his reform straight at the upper levels of the bureaucracy.

In the system of taxes and labor service the best-known reforms were the return of the meltage fee to the public account and the institution of the honesty allowance. In the traditional collection of taxes the people paid in broken silver, and the melting of it into ingots involved loss, so a fee for meltage was levied over and above the regular quota. In practice officials levied it at will, adding several tenths of a tael to one, and since it did not enter the regular accounts they embezzled from it freely until the practice became an established abuse of officialdom. In the last Kangxi years officials in every region extorted and pocketed under this name without limit. In the course of clearing the accounts, the governor of Shanxi, Nuomin, and the provincial treasurer petitioned that the meltage fee be returned to the public account: the fee formerly levied privately by the prefectures and counties was to be remitted to the government, part to make good the arrears and part allotted to the prefectures and counties as a supplement to their officials' pay. The regular gifts from prefectures to superiors had been an open illegal bribe; once the superior allotted money to the subordinate, the sum became a lawful "honesty allowance" over and above the salary. After Shanxi the other provinces followed, and in 1727 he required each governor to deliberate on local conditions and report, whereupon the amount was fixed by regulation. The reform thus became an institution, known as the return of the meltage fee and the honesty allowance. It turned a half-open gray income into an accountable fixed sum, closing the door to arbitrary local surcharges and giving the reform of officialdom financial support; later discussion of its significance has found in it something akin to modern fiscal budgeting and fiscal management.

Alongside it went the rule that gentry and officials should alike perform labor service and pay grain tax. In the traditional system the gentry and officials belonged to the ruling class and were exempt from service and tax; under the new rule they too were to pay and serve, not in fact by shouldering military or labor service, which could be commuted in silver, but by paying. Because it touched gentry interests it was hard to carry out. In his view the temporary sacrifice of the scholar-official class was necessary to consolidate the dynasty, and that sacrifice would be repaid with greater benefits once the dynasty was secure. Further, to lighten the burden on peasants with little or no land and to encourage population growth, he put the poll tax into the land tax so that it was collected together with the land assessment, and he abolished the system of base registration, freeing those long enrolled in base households. The common tendency of these measures was to shift burdens away from those with little or no land and to bring into the state's hands a portion of the revenue formerly divided between local government and the great families. Their merits have been debated since, but each became a fixed element of Qing fiscal and household administration, and they are counted with the two-tax system of the Tang and the single-whip reform of the Ming among the important stages in the development of Chinese systems of taxation and service.

The institutional creations and reforms of the Yongzheng reign are generally grouped in later judgment under a few items of lasting effect. First, the perfection of the memorial system and the general use of secret memorials, which allowed the emperor to bypass the inherent conservatism of the outer court and learn conditions in the provinces directly, an important reason for the reign's administrative effectiveness; second, the institution of secret designation of the heir, which gave the succession a fixed procedure and went far to prevent a recurrence of the factional struggle of Kangxi's last years. Third, fiscal and tax reform: the return of the meltage fee to the public account and the honesty allowance turned a half-open surcharge into an accountable fixed sum and have been thought to have the character of modern fiscal budgeting and management; the merger of the poll tax into the land tax solved the long-standing problem of the Chinese head tax and has been called an innovation of the first order; and the rule that gentry and officials alike pay grain tax and perform service brought part of the previously exempt burden back into the state's finances. It has been argued that whereas Liu Yan's two-tax system in the Tang and Zhang Juzheng's single-whip reform in the Ming are much praised, the Yongzheng emperor's economic policies surpassed them both.

The results left their trace in figures: the treasury rose from eight million taels at his accession to more than sixty million, funds were ample and the granaries full with stores enough for over twenty years, which gave him the material means to send troops into Qinghai, manage Tibet, replace native chieftains with appointed officials and campaign against the Zunghars; the corruption of officialdom was markedly reduced, the burden of taxes and service more evenly spread and lightened, public morals improved with it, the economy developed and the population grew. In the long arc of Qing rise and decline, the Yongzheng reign stands between what came before and after: succeeding Kangxi and preceding Qianlong, it sustained the continuous development of the three reigns and marks the period in which the politics, economy and culture of traditional Chinese society reached their height; Qianlong's rule was built on Yongzheng's reforms, and considering how brief his reign was relative to the number and scale of his achievements, his task was the harder. His limitation lies in the same place: a system depending on the emperor's hand in everything could not guarantee steadily stronger government and economy and could not meet the challenges China faced a century after his death; and ruling only thirteen years while too eager for results he left much unfinished, some of what was done producing abuses once the man died and his measures with him. That the Qianlong emperor on his accession at once reversed the severity and adopted a policy of leniency tempered by strictness, redressing unjust cases and releasing large numbers of prisoners, shows precisely how hard it is for rule resting on one man's temper to last.

Military Activities

In 1723, the first year of Yongzheng, the emperor appointed Nian Gengyao General-in-Chief and sent him to Qinghai to campaign against the rebellion of Lobsang Danjin. The rebellion was suppressed in March 1724, the second year of Yongzheng, and Nian Gengyao was advanced to duke of the first rank. In 1729, the seventh year of Yongzheng, in response to the Dzungar problem, the emperor appointed Yue Zhongqi as Ningyuan General-in-Chief of the western route and Furdan as Jingbian General-in-Chief of the northern route. The Qing armies suffered repeated defeats. The emperor imprisoned Furdan, repeatedly replaced commanders in the northern-route army, and the two sides later entered negotiations.

Frontier Administration

In 1724, the second year of Yongzheng, the Qing established the Xining Amban to administer Qinghai affairs. In 1727, the fifth year of Yongzheng, the office of the Amban in Tibet was established to strengthen Qing control over Tibet. Beginning in 1726, the fourth year of Yongzheng, the emperor employed Ortai to carry out transforming chieftainships into district administration on a large scale in the southwest, abolishing hereditary native chieftain offices and replacing them with appointed officials, thereby strengthening Qing rule and assimilation in minority areas.

To strengthen actual frontier defense the emperor expanded the Chinese Banners, or Green Standard troops, along the borders of Zhili and Shanxi. The move had several purposes: first, military pressure required guarding against a Zunghar advance southward; second, the potential threat of the Mongols beyond the border, the Chahar in particular, had to be met, and while reorganizing the Chahar population the Qing added Green Standard units and repaired the border wall, a policy with the implication of using Chinese troops to check the Mongols; third, it protected the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, who had moved south from Outer Mongolia to Dolon Nor to escape Zunghar raids. The method was to recruit soldiers in the garrisons of Xuanhua and Datong to fill the ranks and to send officials on frontier inspection to determine how many men each pass should receive, while repairing the wall from Dushikou in the east westward. In 1731 the Zhangjiakou brigade added two hundred men and the route command three hundred; the following year four hundred and twenty were added to the three forts of Wanquan and Shanfang under the Zhangjiakou brigade, so that Zhangjiakou gained nine hundred and twenty in all, one hundred and twenty above the original plan. The Green Standard troops of Zhili increased by six thousand and fifty-five, of whom four thousand five hundred were added in 1731. The Xuanhua garrison added three thousand nine hundred and fifty-five, in the proportion of four mounted to six on foot; at Dushikou, for example, of six hundred and five new men two hundred and forty-two were mounted, and on that reckoning Xuanhua added more than fifteen hundred mounted men, bringing the mounted force to over twenty-five hundred, two and a half times the original, and greatly strengthening its mobility. Shanxi was more complicated: at Datong the increase came after the third month of 1732, recruited in the same proportion, and by the local gazetteer the garrison added seventeen hundred and eight, one hundred short of the plan, its three battalions becoming four; at Shahukou six hundred and four were added, with four hundred and four more recruited in four battalions and three forts under it, a thousand and eight in all. Together the three garrisons added ten thousand three hundred and twenty-six men, equivalent to a new major garrison. The increase had three features: the dispositions were thorough, and after the adjustments of 1732 many posts and forts that were vital but thinly manned were reinforced; the reinforcements went to key points, the original plan placing eighty-seven and seventy-three hundredths of the total at important garrisons and passes; and the mounted force grew sharply, Xuanhua and Datong recruiting in the four-to-six proportion so that their mounted strength exceeded seventy-five hundred, more than enough for a campaign.

Posts and military farms were the other half of the system. In the Kangxi period five postal routes had been built in the north beyond the desert to strengthen the link between the capital and the Mongol peoples, and in 1718 walled garrisons were established at Khovd and Ulan Gom beyond the desert to protect the Khalkha, with post stations from Shahukou to those places. In the Yongzheng reign further post stations were built in the north and northwest, to command the Mongol troops of the four Khalkha aimags and to manage the affairs of the Zasagtu and Sain Noyan aimags as well; the Qing also opened military farms in the northwest, decreeing that convicts due to be sent to Heilongjiang and elsewhere be sent instead to arable land near the northern army camps to reclaim it. The following year the farms at Barkol and Hami harvested more than sixty-one thousand three hundred piculs of highland barley and wheat. The building of walled posts and farms strengthened the defenses of the north and northwest.

Foreign Relations

In 1727, the fifth year of Yongzheng, the Qing concluded the Treaty of Kyakhta with Russia, defining the northern frontier of Mongolia. The Yongzheng Emperor also sent formal missions to Moscow. On January 26, 1731, Tuoshi's mission was received in the Kremlin by Empress Anna I of Russia to congratulate her on her accession, and Dexin's mission visited St. Petersburg the following year. In religious policy, the emperor strictly prohibited Catholic missionary activity. Regarding maritime restrictions, he enforced the maritime ban strictly, but later, considering the livelihood difficulties of the people of Fujian, permitted a limited relaxation; in 1724 he issued an order allowing people from Guangdong to migrate to Taiwan.

In foreign relations he followed a policy of contraction together with vigilance. In religion, in 1724 he issued an order forbidding Catholicism throughout the empire and refused to recognize the permits the Kangxi emperor had given the missionaries. He also received the missionaries in Beijing and stated the policy to their faces: that lately in Fujian certain men of the West had disturbed his people and slighted his laws, that the Fujian authorities had reported it and he must stop the disorder as a matter of his own state's business, and that he would answer for enforcing it; that he knew it was their wish to make all Chinese Christians, but that if this came about what sort of men should they then be, whether they would not become the subjects of their emperor instead; that Christians would know only them, and that if trouble came on the frontier the people would obey only their orders, and though there was no need to fear it now, if a thousand warships came to his coast the harm would be great; that to the north of China lay Russia, not to be slighted, to the south the Western states, more to be feared, and to the west the Muslims, whom he wished to keep from entering and disturbing China; that the Russian envoy had asked for trade in the provinces and he had declined, allowing it only in Beijing and at the frontier; and that he now permitted them to live in Beijing and Guangzhou without going deeper into the provinces, so what had they to complain of. In closing he said that having ascended the throne his one duty was to govern for the state. More than fifty missionaries in the provinces, with five bishops, were expelled; in 1732 the thirty-five missionaries gathered at Guangzhou were driven to Macao by the governor-general of the two Guang.

Vigilance against Japan was especially strict. On the first day of the eighth month of 1728 the governor-general of Zhejiang and Fujian, Li Wei, reported that Japan had been a scourge at sea in Ming times and that it was now heard to be gathering Chinese vagabonds, teaching them archery and the use of weapons, and building warships, with designs not to be guessed. The emperor endorsed the memorial with the instruction that the garrisons, brigades and battalions be strictly ordered to put their firearms in order and patrol constantly, and that any traitorous merchant who enticed the poor to Japan be found and punished. He then tightened control of Chinese merchants, ordering all the coastal provinces to comply, and sent Li Wei's men to Japan to gather information, his vigilance against Japan being deeply rooted. As for the sea ban, though foreign merchants came to trade in growing numbers, he would not let Chinese merchants go abroad, raising every kind of obstacle and declaring that in the matter of the sea ban it was better to be strict than lax and that he had no better policy; in the end, at the repeated request of the coastal provinces, the ban was slightly relaxed but many restrictions remained, and toward Chinese traders and laborers long resident abroad he said plainly that those who let the term pass and chose to settle in foreign parts deserved no pity and would not be allowed to return. At a time when the advanced states of the West were encouraging overseas trade, even an outstanding Chinese emperor lacked a world view and restricted foreign intercourse, and China was left behind in the international current.

Toward neighboring states he preferred conciliation. As relations with Korea grew settled, in judicial cases involving frontier people crossing the border the Qing, while guarding its own sovereign interests, applied a more lenient policy than before, one of the concrete expressions of its conciliatory approach to the Korean court: in 1735 some thirty men, the Korean Li Yinli and the Chinese Wang Qi among them, were caught digging ginseng together on the bank of the Yizhou river, and the Qing authorities took them into custody and dealt with them differently, interrogating its own subjects Wang Qi and the rest severely while sending the Korean Li Yinli back to Korea and asking only that his government punish him according to law. Toward Annam there was the cession of territory: when a boundary dispute arose and the frontier officials urged sending a punitive expedition, the emperor said he could not bear to destroy the state and restore the old Han and Tang boundaries, and that to grant the king those few tens of li would cost nothing in dignity and would rather display his benevolence. When the king of Annam afterwards sent a memorial of respectful language, the emperor said that in the king's knowing his duty the emperor could show grace, that the forty li were his interior land in Yunnan and Annam's outer dependency as well, with no difference between them, and that the land should be granted to the king to hold in perpetuity. On the sixteenth day of the sixth month of 1727, amid the ceremony of three kneelings and nine prostrations, the grant was completed. Conciliating neighbors while guarding against distant powers, tightening at home and relaxing abroad, valuing land over sea: this orientation long persisted in the Qing's external posture.

The Sino-Russian negotiation on the northern boundary proved the most enduring episode in his foreign relations. In the summer of 1725 the Russian tsar formally appointed Count Sava Vladislavich as ambassador plenipotentiary to China to negotiate trade, boundaries and missions. On being notified, the emperor prepared for boundary talks and on the twenty-first day of the first month of 1726 appointed the former president of the colonial office to deal with the Russians. Through its activities in Beijing the Russian side obtained knowledge of the Qing government's decisions and intentions, giving it the initiative in the talks; to break the deadlock the Qing itself made concessions on trade and other matters, and on the tenth day of the third month of 1727 the two sides reached ten preliminary agreements on points of principle, Russia gaining many advantages while the boundary question, which China most wanted settled, remained unresolved. On the fourteenth day of the intercalary third month the Russian party left Beijing for the frontier, where the boundary talks opened in the fifth month. There Longkodo demanded that Russia return the large tracts of Mongol land it had seized, holding firmly to his position. Savva in response bribed an informer named Galdan to steal quantities of Chinese secrets, and applied military pressure, strengthening the frontier forts, moving the garrison regiment of Tobolsk to the border, and writing to the Mongol princes that Longkodo's attitude might cause lasting enmity between the two empires, openly declaring that Russia's war in Europe was over and its attention could now turn to this frontier. The Mongol princes reported these moves to the emperor; Tulisen too reported that Longkodo was obstinate, and forwarded Savva's letter to the Chinese emperor, which likewise complained of his firmness; Savva also used the Jesuit Paremin and others to work in Beijing, having Maci urge the emperor to give way. Learning the situation on the frontier and unwilling to see the talks break down, the emperor decided to concede; and just then Longkodo, already under investigation, was further compromised by the discovery that he had kept a private copy of the imperial genealogy. The deliberative ministers held that since Longkodo was negotiating the boundary he should be allowed to finish before being dismissed and arrested, but the emperor ignored them and on the eighth day of the sixth month issued an edict recalling him, making Celing chief Chinese negotiator. He yielded to Russia and quickly reached agreement on the boundary as the Russian side proposed, and Longkodo's efforts on behalf of Qing interests came to nothing. The two sides concluded treaties on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. These treaties brought the region southeast of Lake Baikal and the upper Yenisei north of the Tannu Uriankhai into Russian territory and granted Russians generous treatment in trade and religion; on the other hand China checked further Russian encroachment on Mongol land, defended its territorial sovereignty, and prevented Russia from joining hands with Zunghar separatists, thereby steadying the northwest frontier.

Cultural Measures

During his reign, the Yongzheng Emperor introduced a series of reforms to the imperial examination system. He established the practice of examinations for selecting examiners, changed procedures for choosing examination officials, revised examination content and emphasis, added examination subjects, broadened candidate eligibility, created reexaminations such as the court examination and a major examination for translation Hanlin officials, and modified the practice of determining a candidate's entire career through a single examination. He also adjusted recruitment policy by using multiple channels in order to reduce overreliance on examination graduates.

The Yongzheng Emperor authored poetry collections including Collected Works from the Yong Princely Residence and Collected Works of the Four Suitable Halls, compiled reading notes as Collection for a Delighted Mind, and wrote numerous essays, prose pieces, and edicts. He selected portions of memorials bearing his vermilion rescripts for compilation as Vermilion-Rescript Edicts, while Yūnlu and others recorded his instructions to officials in compilations such as Edicts to the Grand Secretariat and Edicts to the Eight Banners.

Personal Relations

• Father: Kangxi Emperor Xuanye
• Mother: Empress Xiaogongren of the Uya clan (Consort De)
• Foster Mother: Empress Xiaoyiren of the Tonggiya clan
• Brothers: Yinzhi, Yinreng, Yinzhi, Yinsi, Yintang, Yin'e, Yinxiang, Yinti, and others
• Full Brother: Yinti, the fourteenth imperial son
• Empress: Empress Xiaojingxian of the Nara clan
• Sons: Honghui, Hongyun, Hongshi, Hongli (Qianlong Emperor), Hongzhou, and others
• Mother of his fourth son Hongli: Lady Niohuru (later Empress Xiaoshengxian; then a concubine in the princely residence)
• Zhang Ying: tutor in the imperial school who taught the Four Books and Five Classics
• Xu Yuanmeng: tutor in the imperial school who taught Manchu
• Gu Badai: the tutor closest to Yinzhen
• Yinxiang (Prince Yi): his most trusted brother and senior official; served as a leading grand councillor
• Nian Gengyao: governor-general of Sichuan and Shaanxi and General-in-Chief; later ordered to commit suicide
• Longkodo: Minister of Personnel and commander of the Beijing garrison; later confined until death
• Zhang Tingyu: grand secretary and grand councillor
• Ortai: grand secretary and grand councillor who directed transforming chieftainships into district administration
• Li Wei: favored official
• Tian Wenjing: favored official
• Yinsi (Akina): political rival; stripped of imperial clan status and died in confinement
• Yintang (Seshe): political rival; stripped of imperial clan status and died in confinement
• Yinti: full brother and political rival; confined
• Yin'e: political rival; confined
• Yinzhi: political rival; stripped of title and confined

Historical Assessment

Qing and Contemporary Assessments

• The Yongzheng Emperor described himself as follows: “Since succeeding to the great foundation, I have at every moment kept official administration, military affairs, and the people in mind.” This statement presents the reorganization of government and the livelihood of the people as central concerns of his rule. (Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Qing, vol. 13)
• The Qianlong Emperor assessed his father by saying: “During the thirteen years of my imperial father's rule, he labored day and night, and not a single day passed without concern for state finance and the livelihood of the people,” praising Yongzheng's diligence in government. (Veritable Records of Emperor Gaozong of Qing)
• Qing historian Zhao Yi wrote: “Shizong governed above all through strict clarity; even imperial relatives and nobles received no special indulgence,” emphasizing Yongzheng's rigorous and impartial enforcement. (Miscellaneous Notes from the Yanpu)

Late Qing and Republican Period

• Late Qing scholar Xia Xie wrote that during Yongzheng's reign, administrative discipline was rectified and accumulated abuses were eliminated, and that his firmness and decisiveness deserved praise. (Ming Tongjian: Critical Notes)
• Republican-era historian Meng Sen argued that the Yongzheng Emperor ruled subordinates harshly but that his reorganization of official administration and cleanup of government finance laid the foundation for the prosperity of the Qianlong reign. (Lectures on Qing History)
• Republican scholar Xiao Yishan wrote that Shizong pursued active government through severe methods and, though harsh and ungenerous, achieved accomplishments that could not be denied. (General History of the Qing Dynasty)

Modern Assessments

• Historian Feng Erkang described the Yongzheng Emperor as one of the most diligent emperors of the Qing, whose reforms were exceptionally broad and forceful among Qing rulers. (Biography of the Yongzheng Emperor)
• Historian Yang Qiqiao argued that the Yongzheng Emperor's establishment of the Grand Council and use of the secret memorial system pushed imperial autocracy to an extreme. (The Yongzheng Emperor and His Secret Memorial System)
• Scholar Dai Yi argued that Yongzheng's reforms laid a solid foundation for the prosperity of the Qianlong reign and that policies such as the fusion of the poll tax with the field tax and the return of surcharge revenues to the public treasury were historically significant. (A Concise History of the Qing Dynasty)