Manchu Emperor Qianlong / Keen Lung / Kien Lung - 1735-1796
Hung-li, the fourth son of Yung Cheng, ascended the throne under the title of Ch'ien Lung. The royal name, bestowed according to the Chinese custom, after death, was Kao Tsung. Although twenty-five years old, he at once appointed four regents upon whose counsel he might rely. At first this was taken to imply that he was disinclined to the cares and responsibilities of rulership, and desirous rather of devoting his days to the studies to which his father's wishes, as well as his own leanings, disposed him.
The marvelous energy which he displayed just as soon as he did assume the reins of government quickly dissipated these apprehensions and, although his early devotion to study continued throughout life, it was but as one of many means for equipping himself for the tremendous task laid upon him. His accession was marked by a striking act of clemency, rare enough in Oriental annals. The princes of the royal family, who, under the previous reign had been banished or degraded, were restored to their dignities and given the privilege of wearing that badge of close relationship, the yellow girdle.
After AD 1747 the Christian missionaries were unmolested for a generation, but in 1784 a new inquisition was ordered through the discovery that priests were still abroad in disguise. Eighteen of these were captured, of whom six succumbed to the hardships of imprisonment, nine left the country and three entered the service of the Emperor. It is worth remembering that this was "the last general crusade officially undertaken against foreign propagandists."
Shortly after the accession of Ch'ien Lung his mettle was tried by a formidable rebellion which broke out in the southwest provinces and extended to Hunan and Kwangsi. General Chang Kwang-sze was sent to the seat of disturbance and prosecuted the campaign with such success that the trouble was over in four months. Unfortunately, the general was not able to repeat his success when the aborigines of Szechwan, under Salopan, revolted in 1746. General Chang and a fellow-general quarreled, and in consequence failed. The penalty of failure was a polite invitation from the Emperor for each to commit suicide, and the laurels of the new campaign were reaped by General Fu-ti, who was himself destined in later years to repeat the tragedy of the famous soldier he had superseded. Solon's aphorism "Let no man be called happy till his death " is abundantly applicable to the great names of China.
Yung Cheng's policy of retreat from Central Asia proved unfortunate and the reestablishment of Chinese authority cost Ch'ien Lung an immense sacrifice of blood and treasure. The nobles of the court strongly advised him to leave Central Asia to its own dissensions. The campaign was planned by the Emperor to work out with the precision of a game of chess, but the plans miscarried for a time, and the Chinese statesmen were all the more anxious to give up the enterprise. With the pacification of Kashgaria accomplished Ch'ien Lung, leaving his "far-flung" frontier to the west as it had been in the glorious times of the Han and T'ang dynasties, was enabled to turn his attention to other problems.
In AD 1768 trouble arose with the kingdom of Ava or Burmah, and the Emperor handled the situation with his usual thoroughness. Raids across the border had long tried the patience of the Chinese governors, and fugitives, dissatisfied with the government on either side of the line, were only too ready to promote complications. Such complications, however, made it necessary to put an army in the field. Several notable victories were won by the Chinese forces, and the Burmese commander so little distinguished himself that his master sent him a woman's dress to wear, as more suitable than the garb of a soldier.
Ch'ien Lung was greatly desirous to reduce the brave mountaineers of Szechwan to submission, and the pretext of brigandage was as good as any other. The reduction was almost an extermination, for the Miaotsz made for the space of a year and a half, a desperate defense of their lives and homes. Even the women fought and every rock was defended to the last foothold. In the end the last fortress was stormed and the captured chiefs were sent to Peking.
A still further experience in campaigning was necessitated by the condition of affairs in Tibet. The campaign was conducted with remarkable skill and success, and the Gurkhas were expelled. The Tibetans acknowledged themselves vassals of China and "from that day to this tribute missions, in compliance with this treaty, have without fail wended their weary way through the wastes of Tibet to Peking, at the stated intervals agreed upon."
The island of Taiwan, or Formosa, had always been a problem for the statesmen of China, and most rulers preferred to leave the island severely alone, or to see it in the occupation of another power. But a local chief named Lin had defeated a small Chinese force which had landed there, and, Ch'ien Lung's pride being at stake, an army of a hundred thousand men was dispatched to bring the troublesome dependency again under Chinese rule. The work was done, somewhat perhaps on the principle of making a desert and proclaiming peace. The victory provided the top-stone for Ch'ien Lung's pyramid of military fame.
Ch'ien Lung, like the English Henry the Eighth, had been trained rather for scholarship than for a throne, and on attaining sovereignty kept his interest in literature. He earnestly labored for the perfecting of his mother tongue, the Manchu, and had many translations made of Chinese books. He took pains to have the Imperial eloquence perpetuated in monumental inscriptions, and in this way also commemorated his victories in Central Asia and elsewhere.
From the commencement of commercial intercourse, the balance of trade had always been in favor of the Chinese, and great quantities of bullion accumulated in China. China had little use for what England was selling - tin, lead, copper, wool, and cotton. Europe on the other hand had a tremendous appetite for China's exports of silk, porcelain, and especially tea. As England's power and global influence grew, and trade with China increased, the British became dissatisfied with the restrictions at Canton and sought at various times to establish more formal diplomatic relations and more favorable trade terms.
George Macartney, Earl Macartney (1737-1806) was one of the foremost British diplomats andproconsuls of his day. In 1792 the Earl Macartney arrived with a large suite and at once prepared for the visit to Peking, attempting to regularize Sino-British trade. Of course, the Chinese could hardly appreciate the importance of intervention in a mere matter of trade. It was well-nigh unthinkable to the high officials at Peking that matters of state could be associated with commerce. Nevertheless, the Emperor was grateful for the moral support England had given in the affair of the Gurkhas, and Lord Macartney was most hospitably received. The Emperor entertained his visitors most lavishly, and it is estimated that $830,000 was spent on the various entertainments. Though he received a rare audience with the Emperor, in the end the effort was unsuccessful.
Above ail, from beginning to end the kotow issue dominated the proceedings. The kowtow had been controversial in 1793, when the Earl of Macartney refused to perform the kowtow, as the Russians had done several decades before and the Dutch had agreed to do around the time of the Macartney mission. The ceremony involved prostrating oneself before the Chinese emperor and knocking one's head on the ground and was an integral part of the tribute system, into which the Chinese tried to fit Western nations. In Chinese eyes it was simply a ceremony designed to acknowledge the Celestial Empire's centrality and pré-éminence. In 1793 the emperor allowed Macartney to approximate the procedure.
The Qianlong Emperor issued two edicts that he sent back to Britain with Macartney. The edicts are often quoted as indicating China's view of its place in the world order, and its opinion on the prospects of European trade: "Our dynasty's majestic virtue has penetrated unto every country under Heaven, and Kings of all nations have offered their costly tribute by land and sea. As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures."
With age comes sadness, and Ch'ien Lung was no exception. He had lost his mother, to whom he had always given the profoundest reverence, in 1777. The loss of his eldest son, in whom fine qualities had been discerned, followed soon after. The death of a trusted prime minister added a further blow. All this was an intimation to Ch'ien Lung that his own work was done.
The primary reason, however, for his abdication was his unwillingness to trespass upon a cycle belonging to a successor, or to pass beyond the years of the reign of K'ang Hsi, his illustrious grandfather. The abdication took place quietly and Ch'ien Lung lived three years longer to watch over the early career of his successor. The reign thus brought to a voluntary close is unquestionably one of the greatest in all Chinese history and its successes were due quite as much to the genius of the Emperor as to his good fortune.
He was indefatigable in his attention to business and often, at the age of eighty, rose in the middle of the night, however rigorous the season, for the holding of audiences, a practice which some of the missionaries and foreign ambassadors were honest enough to acknowledge inconvenient. He made great efforts to avert the mischief caused by the rising of the Huang-ho, visited the southern provinces six times, was generous in the remission of taxes during periods of public calamity, and severe in his punishment of unfaithful officials.
He was prejudiced against the Muhamadans of the northwestern provinces and is said to have contemplated at one time a general massacre. Nevertheless, he had a Muhamadan wife and loved her so well that he built for her a dwelling of two stories so arranged that she might face both the mosque across the street and her native Turkestan at one and the same time. Ch'ien Lung also took some measures, ineffectively, as it happened, for the suppression of the secret societies which had become especially troublesome about AD 1793. In the words of the Chinese proverb he "stirred the cane-brakes and roused the snake." From this halfmeasure his successor was destined to suffer severely.
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