Kangxi Emperor

• 1. Introduction

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  The Kangxi Emperor was born on the 4th of May 1654 in Jingren Palace, deep inside the Forbidden City in Beijing. He would go on to reign for 61 years, making him the longest-reigning emperor in all of Chinese history. Yet the story of how he got there begins not with triumph, but with a seven-year-old child placed on a throne while four powerful men held the real levers of power.

  Sinologist Herbert Giles, drawing on sources from the emperor's own time, described Kangxi as fairly tall, well-proportioned, and pitted with smallpox from an early age. He loved hunting and devoted three months each year to it. Large, bright eyes were one of his defining features. But it was what went on behind those eyes that would shape China for the next six decades.

  Before this reign was over, Kangxi would suppress a rebellion that lasted eight years, defeat the Dzungar Mongols on campaign in person, bring Taiwan under Qing rule, negotiate a treaty with Russia, and commission the largest dictionary of Chinese characters the world had yet seen. He would also watch his chosen heir disgrace himself beyond redemption and refuse to name a successor until the very night he died.

  How does a boy emperor, constrained by regents and surrounded by rivals, turn a dynasty still consolidating its grip on China into a realm whose treasury would grow nearly fourfold during his lifetime?

• 2. The Regents and the Boy

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  On the 7th of February 1661, Xuanye was enthroned at the age of seven. His father, the Shunzhi Emperor, had nominated four men to govern in the child's name: Sonin, Suksaha, Ebilun, and Oboi. What followed was not orderly stewardship but a naked contest for dominance.

  Sonin died after his granddaughter became Empress Xiaochengren, leaving Suksaha exposed. Oboi moved against him in a fierce power struggle and had Suksaha put to death. By the time the young emperor might have exercised real authority, Oboi had seized it entirely as sole regent.

  The court acquiesced. Kangxi himself acquiesced. But he was watching. In 1662, the regents ordered the Great Clearance, evacuating entire populations along the southern seacoast to cut off support for Ming loyalists operating from Taiwan under the general Zheng Chenggong, also known as Koxinga. The displacement was sweeping and brutal.

  Then, in 1669, Kangxi moved. With the help of his grandmother, Grand Empress Dowager Zhaosheng, who had raised him, he had Oboi arrested and began exercising personal control of the empire for the first time. He immediately named three concerns that would shape his early decades: the flooding of the Yellow River, the state of the Grand Canal, and the rebellion stirring in the south.

• 3. Revolt of the Three Feudatories

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  After the Qing takeover of China in 1644, large portions of the south and west had been handed as fiefs to three Ming generals who helped the Qing conquer the country. By 1673 those fiefdoms were held by Wu Sangui, Geng Jingzhong, and Shang Zhixin. Kangxi decided, against the advice of most of his advisors, to force these princes to give up their lands and retire to Manchuria.

  The rebellion that followed lasted eight years. Wu Sangui's forces overran most of southwest China. Kangxi employed generals including Zhou Peigong and Tuhai to suppress the uprising, and granted clemency to common people caught up in the fighting. He wanted to lead the armies himself but his subjects persuaded him not to.

  One of the more revealing aspects of the campaign was Kangxi's choice of soldiers. He relied mainly on Han Chinese troops from the Green Standard Army to do the fighting, while the Manchu Banners largely stood back. The revolt ended in victory for the Qing in 1681.

  For years afterward, Kangxi blamed himself in part for the deaths the revolt had caused. He had provoked the crisis and he knew it. That willingness to sit with his own miscalculations was not common among emperors.

• 4. Taiwan, Russia, and the Borders

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  In 1683, Qing naval forces under the admiral Shi Lang defeated the fleet of the Kingdom of Tungning off Penghu with around 300 ships. Koxinga's grandson, Zheng Keshuang, surrendered the island a few days later. He moved to Beijing, received the title "Duke Haicheng," and was inducted into the Eight Banners.

  Among those who surrendered were the rattan-shield troops, Tengpaiying, who specialized in fighting with rattan shields and swords. They would soon prove their value again on an entirely different frontier. The Prince of Ningjing and his five concubines chose suicide rather than surrender; their palace was repurposed as Shi Lang's headquarters, and at his suggestion Kangxi converted it into a temple for the goddess Mazu. The emperor promoted Mazu from "heavenly consort" to "Empress of Heaven" as a gesture toward quieting resistance on Taiwan.

  Russia was pressing from a different direction. In the 1680s, Russian forces again invaded the northern frontier along the Amur River. Kangxi sent the same Tengpaiying rattan-shield troops, 500 of them under a former Koxinga follower named Ho Yu, to defend the fortress at Albazin. According to the account, these troops defeated Russian forces traveling by raft without suffering a single casualty. Negotiations that followed culminated in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, which established an agreed border between Russia and China. Jean-Francois Gerbillon and Thomas Pereira served as translators for those talks.

• 5. The Dzungars and Tibet

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  The Dzungar Khanate, a confederation of Oirat tribes based in what is now Xinjiang, represented the most persistent military challenge of Kangxi's later reign. In 1688 their chief, Galdan Boshugtu Khan, attacked the Outer Khalkha Mongols from the west and drove the Khalkha royal families across the Gobi Desert, where they sought Qing protection in exchange for submission to Qing authority.

  At the Battle of Ulan Butung in Inner Mongolia in 1690, Qing forces defeated the Dzungars. Kangxi pressed the advantage personally: in 1696 and 1697 he led campaigns into the field himself, and the western section of his army defeated Galdan's forces at the Battle of Jao Modo. Galdan died the following year.

  The Tibetan desi, or regent, Sangye Gyatso had concealed the death of the 5th Dalai Lama in 1682 and only informed Kangxi in 1697 while quietly maintaining contact with the Dzungar enemies of the Qing. This provoked great displeasure. Sangye Gyatso was eventually toppled and killed by the Khoshut ruler Lhazang Khan in 1705, whom Kangxi rewarded by appointing him Regent of Tibet.

  The Dzungars returned. In 1717 they invaded Tibet with a force of 6,000 and took Lhasa, killing Lhazang Khan. A Qing army sent in 1718 was defeated at the Battle of the Salween River. Kangxi did not recover Lhasa until 1720, when he sent a larger expedition that finally drove the Dzungars out.

• 6. Jesuits, Dictionaries, and the Western Curiosity

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  Thomas Pereira taught the Kangxi Emperor how to play the harpsichord. Karel Slavicek, a Jesuit at the court, played the spinet, and the emperor later played it himself. These were not idle diversions for a man who also commissioned Slavicek to make the first precise map of Beijing.

  Jesuits occupied a unique position at court. With their knowledge of astronomy, they ran the imperial observatory. They provided innovations in gun manufacturing and artillery, which directly helped the Qing defeat the Kingdom of Tungning. Kangxi was grateful for their many languages and their restrained manner; he noted that they wore the silk robes of the elite and spoke Chinese well.

  In 1692, when Thomas Pereira requested tolerance for Christianity, Kangxi issued the Edict of Toleration, recognizing Catholicism, barring attacks on churches, and legalizing Christian missions and practice across China. The arrangement did not hold. A dispute arose over whether Chinese Christians could continue taking part in Confucian ceremonies and ancestor worship. The Jesuits argued for tolerance; the Dominicans did not. Pope Clement XI sided with the Dominicans and sent Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon in 1705 to communicate the ban on Chinese rites. Kangxi refused the pope's demand to place his own representative in Beijing to oversee Jesuit activities. On the 19th of March 1715, Clement XI issued the papal bull Ex illa die, formally condemning Chinese rites. Kangxi's response was to officially forbid Christian missions in China, calling them "causing trouble."

  The Italian priest Matteo Ripa worked at court from 1711 to 1723 as a painter and copper-engraver. When he returned to Naples in 1723 with four young Chinese Christians, the school he founded to train them as missionaries became the Collegio dei Cinesi, later sanctioned by Pope Clement XII. That institution eventually grew into what is now Naples Eastern University, the first school of Sinology in Europe.

• 7. The Succession War Within

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  In 1674 the Kangxi Emperor's first spouse, Empress Xiaochengren, died while giving birth to his second surviving son, Yinreng. The boy was two years old when Kangxi named him crown prince, following the Han Chinese custom of securing the succession during a time of instability in the south.

  Kangxi personally oversaw Yinreng's upbringing, grooming him for the throne while leaving the education of his other sons to others. The investment did not produce what the emperor had hoped. Over the years Yinreng was said to have beaten and killed subordinates, to have had sexual relations with one of his father's concubines, and to have purchased children from Jiangsu. His supporters, led by a faction known as the Crown Prince Party, worked to accelerate his accession by any means necessary.

  In 1707, Kangxi issued an imperial edict stripping Yinreng of the title, describing his behavior as "never obeying ancestors' virtues, never obliged to my order, only doing inhumanity and devilry, only showing maliciousness and lust." He placed his oldest surviving son, Yinzhi, in charge of house arrest, but Yinzhi promptly called for Yinreng's execution and recommended the eighth prince Yinsi as successor. Kangxi stripped Yinzhi of his titles in response, then, suspecting Yinreng had been framed, restored him as crown prince in 1709 with the support of the 4th and 13th princes.

  The restoration failed. In 1712, during Kangxi's last inspection tour of the south, Yinreng attempted to force the emperor to abdicate on his return. Kangxi learned of the planned coup, deposed Yinreng again, and announced that no son would be named crown prince for the rest of his reign. He placed his written succession decision inside a sealed box in the Palace of Heavenly Purity, to be opened only after his death.

• 8. Death, Legacy, and a Disputed Will

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  On the evening of the 20th of December 1722, the Kangxi Emperor called seven of his sons to his bedside: the third, fourth, eighth, ninth, tenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth princes. Shortly after, he died at the age of 68. His official a Longkodo then announced that the sealed will named the fourth prince, Yinzhen, as successor. Yinzhen ascended the throne and became the Yongzheng Emperor.

  The question of whether this was the emperor's true choice has never been settled. Debate continues over whether Kangxi had actually intended to name the 14th prince Yinti, and whether Yinzhen had forged the will in his own favor, or whether Yinzhen ascended legitimately. No definitive answer has emerged.

  The Kangxi Emperor was entombed at the Eastern Tombs in Zunhua, Hebei. His posthumous name was a vast string of honorifics beginning "Emperor Hetian Hongyun Wenwu Ruizhe," later extended still further in the first year of his grandson Qianlong's reign.

  The reign he left behind had rebuilt the national treasury from roughly 14,930,000 taels in 1668 to approximately 50,000,000 taels in the years between 1702 and 1709, before military expenditures and corruption began drawing it down again. In 1712 he froze the land tax and corvee altogether, a decision that stabilized his era but locked the dynasty's fiscal system in place so firmly that later emperors found it nearly impossible to adjust. The Kangxi Dictionary, the Complete Tang Poems, and the beginnings of the Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China all came from his court. His Palace Memorial System, a network of locked boxes carrying secret reports between the emperor and trusted provincial officials, gave rise to the Grand Council that would govern China well into the future.