Lesson 18: Consolidation and Development of a Unified Multi-ethnic State

The rule of the Qing Dynasty over the whole country

After entering Beijing, the Qing rulers made Beijing their capital city. The Qing army then moved southward, eliminating the remnants of the Ming regime and anti-Qing forces in various regions, and gradually established its rule over the whole country.

In the subsequent rule of the Qing dynasty, the political system basically followed the practices of the Chinese dynasties, further strengthening centralization and maintaining political unity; in the ideological and cultural aspects, it promoted Confucianism and inherited the cultural traditions of successive dynasties. In this way, the Qing Dynasty consolidated its rule politically and ideologically.

Zheng Chenggong's recovery of Taiwan and the establishment of the Qing Dynasty in Taiwan

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Dutch colonists took advantage of the declining state of the Ming Dynasty to invade Taiwan, our precious island, and colonized it. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Zheng Chenggong, who persisted in fighting against the Qing Dynasty on the coast of Fujian, was determined to recover Taiwan from the Dutch colonists.

In 1661, Zheng Chenggong led 25,000 soldiers in 400 warships from Kinmen, crossed the Taiwan Strait, and arrived at the southern part of the island, where he was warmly welcomed by thousands of local residents upon landing. The Dutch army counterattacked by land and water. Zheng Chenggong commanded his troops to meet the attack, sinking Dutch warships at sea and quickly occupying important ferry crossings on land, encircling the enemy in two isolated strongholds, Chih-jung City and Taiwan City. Seeing that there was no hope of holding on, the Dutch army in Chibi City surrendered to Zheng Chenggong. Subsequently, Zheng Chenggong adopted a long-term siege of Taiwan

In February 1662, after eight months of siege, Zheng Chenggong launched a general attack and the Dutch colonial governor was forced to declare his surrender. Thus, Taiwan, which had been occupied by the Dutch invaders for 38 years, returned to the embrace of the motherland. Zheng Chenggong is a national hero in China's history.

After Zheng Chenggong's death, his son continued to govern Taiwan. In 1683, 20,000 Qing troops attacked Taiwan, and Zheng's army was defeated, bringing Taiwan into the territory of the Qing Dynasty. In 1885, Taiwan was officially established as a province of China.

The Qing court's effective jurisdiction over Tibetan areas

After the Qing Dynasty entered the country, the religious leader of Tibet, the Dalai V, personally entered the capital to make a pilgrimage. The Shunzhi Emperor received him in a grand manner and officially gave him the title of "Dalai Lama", and later allocated funds for the restoration of the Potala Palace. In the Kangxi era, the Qing army entered Tibet to quell the separatist forces, stabilized the situation in Tibet, and enthroned another Tibetan religious leader as "Panchen Erdeni". Since then, successive generations of Dalai and Panchen have had to be enthroned by the central government.

In 1727, the Qing dynasty began to set up a minister in Tibet to supervise the local government of Tibet, and in 1793, the Qing dynasty promulgated 29 articles of the "Regulations on the Qin Dynasty's Tibetan Administration", which regulated the local administrative system and regulations of Tibet, marking the institutionalization and legalization of the central government's exercise of sovereignty over Tibet. The Qing dynasty clearly stipulated that the minister in Tibet represented the imperial court and administered Tibetan affairs together with the Dalai and Panchen, and that the succession of the Dalai and Panchen must be reported to the imperial court for approval. These measures of the Qing Dynasty effectively strengthened the jurisdiction over Tibet.

During the Qianlong period, the British colonialists sent an envoy to Tibet and tried to destroy the relationship between Tibet and the imperial court, but Panchen VI was unmoved and made it clear that the whole of Tibet was a place within the sovereign jurisdiction of China and that everything in Tibet was subject to the imperial court. On the occasion of the 70th birthday of Emperor Qianlong, Panchen VI travelled a long way to Chengde Summer Resort to attend the birthday celebration. The Qianlong emperor deliberately built a temple of Sumeru for his residence in the northern part of the Villa, modeled after Panchen's Zashilunpo Temple in Shigatse.

Consolidation of the northwest frontier

In the vast area south of the Tianshan Mountains in the northwest of China, there are Uyghur and other ethnic groups living in the region, as most of them believe in Islam, the Qing Dynasty called this area "Hui". During the Kangxi period, the head of the Mongolian Junghar in the north of the Tianshan Mountains, Kardan, at the instigation of Russia, launched a rebellion, crossed the Tianshan Mountains to capture the Hui, and attacked eastward, occupying many areas of Qinghai and Mongolia. In order to maintain the unity of the country, the Kangxi emperor three times at the head of his own army, in a number of battles to defeat Kardan, put down the rebellion, stabilizing the northwestern frontier areas.

During the Qianlong period, the upper nobility of the Hui tribe, the big and small Hecho rebellion, the formation of cutthroat forces. They brutally scavenged the people of all races, provoking strong discontent among the people. Qianlong emperor ordered the deployment of troops to crush, and announced that only the capture of the big, small and Zhuo, people of all races are innocent, will not be implicated. With the support of the Uyghur and other ethnic groups, the Qing army put down the rebellion that split the motherland after two years of fighting. The Qing Dynasty set up the General of Ili to govern the entire Xinjiang region, including Lake Barkash. The Qing army was stationed all over Xinjiang and set up posts to strengthen its jurisdiction over the northwest region.

Frontiers of the Qing Dynasty

During the early Qing Dynasty, China's territory spanned the Onion Ridge and Kashi Pond in the west, Siberia in the north, the Himalayas in the southwest, the Outer Hingan Mountains and the Kuril Islands north of the Heilongjiang River in the northeast, the Pacific Ocean in the east, Taiwan and its affiliated islands including Diaoyu Islands and Chiwei Islands in the southeast, and the islands in the South China Sea in the south, making it a vast, populous, and powerful unified multi-ethnic country.（1066words）