Kangxi

Emperor of China (r. 1661-1722)

• Born: May 4, 1654
• Birthplace: Beijing, China
• Died: December 20, 1722
• Place of death: Beijing, China

Kangxi, the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, is considered one of the greatest emperors of any Chinese dynasty. Blending knowledge and action in his leadership, he consolidated Manchu power and legitimated the Manchus’ rule in China.

Early Life

Kangxi (kahng-shee), the third son of the Shunzhi emperor, was born on May 4, 1654, in Beijing, the capital city of the Manchu (Qing) Empire. The Manchus, a branch of the nomadic Jurchen tribe, arose in the twelfth century in Manchuria, where they subsisted by hunting and fishing. By the sixteenth century, however, they had absorbed so many Chinese cultural, economic, and technological influences that their previously nomadic existence had been thoroughly transformed. By the early seventeenth century, the Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) had fallen into steep decline. This allowed the Manchus, who had established powerful armies, to defeat the Ming and establish the Qing Dynasty in Beijing in 1644.

Although Kangxi eventually became the fourth Manchu emperor of China, he was actually less than half Manchu; his parents were of mixed Mongol, Chinese, and Manchu ancestry. Kangxi was conscious of his multiple ethnic heritage and worked throughout his life to create a government representing all the diverse races and nationalities within his empire. As a youth, Kangxi probably had as little experience of a happy, shared family life as any imperial prince of his time. His father took little interest in him, his daily care was entrusted to wet nurses, and palace eunuchs attended him in nearly all of his activities. It was impossible for him to be alone, and he rarely saw his mother and father. As a youngster, Kangxi survived smallpox, one of the most dreaded diseases of the time, and this virtually ensured that he would lead a long life. This may have been the main reason for his being named the heir apparent. When his father died in 1661, Kangxi assumed the throne at age seven.

A four-man regency, headed by the powerful Manchu general Oboi, ruled in Kangxi’s name for the next eight years. Oboi used his position to secure a nearly impregnable hold on the imperial court. Kangxi’s tutors, meanwhile, used these years to prepare him to rule the empire. A voracious reader from the age of four, he eventually committed large sections of the Confucian classics to memory. He studied calligraphy, composed poetry, and later experimented with Western science and music.

Life’s Work

Two court controversies in the late 1660’s offered Kangxi the opportunity to wrest control of the throne from Oboi and the other regents. The first involved the making of the dynastic calendar. To the Chinese, a correct calendar was more than a method of reckoning time; it was a powerful symbol of imperial authority. An appropriate calendar would help to legitimate Manchu authority in the eyes of the Chinese. Early in the dynasty, the Manchus employed a German Jesuit missionary, Adam Schall, to prepare an official calendar. Schall created an astronomically correct document, but in doing so, he relied on Western methods and unwittingly violated certain key elements of court etiquette. This exposed him to attacks by court factions opposed to Western influence.

Oboi took advantage of the calendar controversy to embarrass the Jesuits and solidify his own position. Kangxi recognized Oboi’s strategy, however, and conducted his own investigation of the matter. In time, he vindicated the Jesuits, who thereafter served as important advisers to him. Oboi’s critics welcomed Kangxi’s independent actions and began to attack Oboi openly. Kangxi, in turn, used the anti-Oboi factions to reshape the balance of power in the court to a point where, on June 14, 1669, he was able to arrest Oboi and take personal control of the government. Oboi died in prison shortly thereafter, and Kangxi remained the uncontested ruler of China until his own death in 1722.

Kangxi’s long reign of sixty-one years was characterized by courage, sagacity, and decisiveness. Under him, the Manchu state stabilized, the people prospered, and both the territories and the administrative infrastructure of the empire expanded to an unprecedented extent. Kangxi completed the military conquests begun by his Manchu predecessors and laid the foundations for the largest empire China had known, save for that of the Mongols. To consolidate Manchu control of China, though, he had to overcome threats from both the south and the north.

In the south, Kangxi was confronted by three Chinese generals who had helped the Manchus conquer China and then were rewarded with virtually independent control over the Yunnan (Yün-nan), Guangdong (Kwangtung), and Fujian (Fukien) provinces. Together, these vast domains were known as the Three Feudatories (San-Fan). Shunzhi had tolerated the autonomy of the Feudatories, because he felt too weak to risk a civil war. Kangxi, however, was determined to put an end to their independence. Consequently, he maneuvered them into open rebellion, and in 1681, after long and bitter campaigning, he narrowly defeated the three princes.

Also plaguing the Manchus in the south was a Ming loyalist movement under the control of Zheng Chenggong and his son, Zheng Jing. After fighting against the Qing in central China for many years, the Zheng forces retired to Taiwan, where they eliminated Portuguese claims to the island and continued their resistance to the Manchus until 1683, when Qing armies finally vanquished them and turned Taiwan into a prefecture of the neighboring Fujian Province. This completed the Qing conquest of the south and allowed Kangxi to turn his attention to the north.

In the north, Kangxi also confronted two threats, the Olod Mongols in the northwest and the Russians in the northeast. Both of these powers had expanded their control after the 1640’s: Russian settlers had moved into Siberia and the Amur regions of northern Manchuria, and the Olod had expanded into Eastern Turkestan and Outer Mongolia. It appeared possible that the Olod and the Russians might form an alliance against the Qing. To prevent this, Kangxi pursued a divide-and-conquer policy.

Kangxi campaigned first against the Russians, defeating them at their advance base of Albazin and then offering them a generous settlement in the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). This first modern treaty between China and a Western nation established the frontiers of the Amur region and permitted the Russians to trade with Beijing. It ensured Russian neutrality in any conflict between the Olod and the Qing. Kangxi then turned his attention to the Olod, who had expanded across Outer Mongolia as far as the Kerulen River. After many years of desultory fighting, he finally defeated them in 1696. Thereafter, he extended Qing rule to Outer Mongolia and as far west as Hami. After his death, his successors continued the westward expansion, eventually conquering Chinese Turkestan in the 1750’s.

Within China, Kangxi’s administration was marked by extraordinary energy, diligence, and wisdom. Most Chinese believe that he possessed the characteristics of the ideal emperor. He was, above all, a capable administrator who provided just and benevolent rule for all of his subjects. Unlike many later Qing emperors, Kangxi repeatedly toured his far-flung empire, assessing for himself the needs of the people and ensuring that his officials met those needs. These excursions acquainted him with local conditions and solidified the presence of the central government in even the remotest parts of the empire.

Kangxi broadened the ethnic base of his government by encouraging his Chinese subjects to take the civil service examinations and by appointing them to key bureaucratic posts. He named his own Chinese bond servants to high positions and used them as sources of information, independent of normal bureaucratic channels. To ensure the support of the masses, he reduced the land and grain taxes numerous times, set customary rates of taxation , cleaned up government corruption, built water-conservancy works, and reversed the policy that had allowed the Manchus to take good Chinese farms in exchange for inferior Manchu lands. All this and more he accomplished by dint of extraordinary labor. He typically arose at four o’clock in the morning and usually did not retire before midnight. Few of his advisers could match his prodigious energy and capacity for hard work.

Contemporaries described Kangxi as above average in height, with large ears, a sculpted mouth, and a long, aquiline nose. He had a stentorian voice, and his face was handsome, though heavily pockmarked by smallpox. His unusually bright eyes gave his features great vivacity. Physically active even in his old age, he kept himself fit by a daily regimen of exercises and by vigorous riding and hunting trips.

Kangxi was also extraordinarily cultured and learned. Well versed in the Confucian classics, he also patronized other branches of Chinese learning. As a result of his patronage, scholars wrote the history of the preceding Ming Dynasty, compiled authoritative editions of the works of the great Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi), and composed several landmark dictionaries and encyclopedias. His personal interests included painting, calligraphy, and Western learning. He studied Western music, geography, science, and mathematics with the Jesuit missionaries at his court. Although there is some doubt that he mastered these subjects, his openness to them is one measure of the remarkable breadth of his intellectual pursuits.

Significance

Kangxi was a conscientious ruler with extraordinarily broad interests. He created an integrated Manchu-Chinese government, broke down ethnic barriers, ended the civil war in the south, protected China’s northern frontiers, opened China to Western scientific knowledge, and laid the foundations for a century of peace in East Asia. Under Kangxi, Manchu rule in China became a settled fact. Kangxi was keenly aware of the richness and variety of the China he ruled. He claimed to have traveled 700 miles (1,125 kilometers) in each direction from Beijing, hunting, collecting flora and fauna, and preparing his troops for combat by shooting, enduring camp life, and practicing formation riding. Ultimately, he traveled so that he could personally gather information about his realm. He was always reluctant to credit secondhand intelligence.

Kangxi took seriously his rule over his 150 million subjects. His empire was the largest in the world at that time, and he was aware that his decisions often dictated the fates of millions. The immense suffering caused by his war against the Three Feudatories made him aware of how fateful his decisions could be. His concern for individual justice led him to review every sentence of death in the entire empire every year. In an attempt to gather accurate information from his government, Kangxi invented the palace memorial system, through which his ministers and officials wrote to him directly, thus circumventing possible censoring by other officials. He possessed an inquiring mind that was remarkably responsive to new intellectual phenomena. Although he was not profoundly philosophical, he had an irrepressible curiosity. This is demonstrated by his patronage of the Jesuits, who brought Western learning to his court, and his demand that the writing of the Ming Dynasty history conform as much as possible to the facts, even if they damaged the reputations of his Manchu ancestors.

Kangxi, despite his admirable personal characteristics, could not escape the intrigues and tragedies of court politics. In the early decades of his reign, he could postpone problems caused by the misbehavior of his sons and the machinations of the pretenders to his throne, but he could not escape these difficulties as he grew old. As he became aware of the limitations of his heirs and as court factions jockeyed for position in the succession struggle, Kangxi’s judgment faltered, and he sometimes behaved in hysterical and cruel ways. These tragedies, however, do not detract from the fact that Kangxi was one of China’s greatest emperors. He was at once a scholarly man of reflection and a man of action. He protected his subjects’ livelihoods and provided competent, predictable government in the largest empire in the world at that time. It is appropriate that he is often compared with Louis XIV and that he is remembered not only as a great conqueror but also as a conscientious, enlightened monarch.

Bibliography

Kessler, Lawrence D. K’ang-hsi and the Consolidation of Ch’ing Rule, 1661-1684. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. This thin, scholarly volume deals with the rise of Kangxi to the throne and his subsequent consolidation of power. His dealings with Oboi are clearly explained, as is his vanquishing of his internal and external enemies.

Lee, Robert H. G. The Manchurian Frontier in Ch’ing History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970. Lee’s book explains the problems the Manchus had with their northeastern frontier. In particular, Lee describes how the Qing coped with the Russians.

Lux, Louise. The Unsullied Dynasty and the K’ang-hsi Emperor. Philadelphia: Mark One, 1998. An examination of the relationship of Kangxi to the Qing Dynasty and to the Jesuits. Genealogy, bibliography, maps, index.

Oxnam, Robert B. Ruling from Horseback: Manchu Politics in the Oboi Regency, 1661-1669. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. A detailed study of the period between Kangxi’s accession to the throne and his taking over of the government. Discusses such issues as the calendar controversy and the elimination of Oboi’s regency.

Spence, Jonathan D. Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang Hsi. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. Reprint. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. This beautifully written and illustrated book makes Kangxi come alive as a man, not simply a grand historic figure. Spence presents Kangxi in his own words, describing his methods of ruling and his relationship to his sons, among other topics.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ts’ao Yin and the K’ang-hsi Emperor: Bondservant and Master. 1966. Reprint. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988. Spence here describes the way Kangxi used his Chinese bond servants as his own eyes and ears within the government bureaucracy. Reveals much about the inner workings of Kangxi’s government.

Struve, Lynn A., ed. and trans. Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers’ Jaws. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993. Personal accounts of Chinese life from the waning years of the Ming Dynasty through the Manchu takeover and eventual Qing rule.

Wakeman, Frederic E., Jr. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. This massive work is indispensable for a detailed reconstruction of Kangxi’s reign. Extremely detailed and offers keen insights into the ways Kangxi and others conceived and practiced their control of China.