Page 243 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

11
The Ch'ing Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty was brought down by the same inexorable
laws of decay that had operated on previous occasions in Chinese
history: corruption and the power of the eunuchs at court, leading
to breakdown of the administration, large-scale banditry in the
provinces, and an enemy on the northern frontier patiently await-
ing their opportunity to pounce. In 1618 the Manchu nation had
been founded on the banks ofthe bleak Sungari River. Seven years
later the Great Khan, Nurhachi, set up his capital in Mukden, call-
ing his new dynasty Ch'ing ("pure") to parallel the Chinese Ming
("bright"). Their moment came when in 1644 the Chinese general
Wu San-kuei appealed to them for help to expel the rebel leader Li
Tzu-ch'eng, who had forced his way into Peking. The Manchus
promptly accepted, drove Li out of the city and, while Wu San-
kuei was pursuing him into the west, quietly occupied the capital
and proclaimed the rule of the Ch'ing Dynasty. Their unexpected
success left the Manchus momentarily exposed, but Wu San-kuei
waited ten years before attempting to dislodge them, and then it
was too late. But for nearly four decades he and his successors held
South China, which was not finally secured for the Manchus until
the capture of Kunming in 1 682. As a result of this long civil war
there grew up a bitter hostility between north and south; Peking
became increasingly remote and suspicious, the south ever more
rebellious and independent.
It would be wrong, however, to picture the Manchus as barba-
rous and destructive. On the contrary, they felt an intense admi-
ration for Chinese culture and leaned heavily on the Chinese offi-
cial class; but the more independent-minded of the Chinese
intelligentsia remained, as under the Mongols, a potential source
of danger to the regime, and the Manchu trust of the literati did
not extend to a sympathetic consideration for the "new thought"
of the eighteenth century. They clung to the most reactionary
forms of Confucianism, becoming more Chinese than the
Chinese themselves and strenuously resisting up to the end every
one of the attempts at reform which were made by the literati,
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