[limkh]

From the tv series <imperial court of yongzheng> we saw the good side of him, dealing very hard with corruption, his bad brother (8th, 9th, 10th and 14th ones), introduces new policy which intended to benefit the people of china.

However from some books, they said that yongzheng was actually not the real emperor. During that time, they were "wen zi yu" and historical books stated that yongzheng was very harsh towards those who seemed to be offending the qing imperial court.

So, what do u think?

[yongzheng freak]

As like anyone, Yongzheng has his good side and bad side....Admittedly, yongzheng did treat his poliical enemies ruthlessly and harshly.
From what i have read about him, he was extremely protective of his imperial powers and he can be quite mean to the officials who did not perform to his standards.
There isn't any real evidence that yongzheng usurp the throne and IMO, it's quite unlikely. During those days, edicts were written in two languages - Chinese and Manchu. While it may be easy to alter the chinese version, it's not in manchu and the two must tally.

[limkh]

ya...

i myself think that without yong zheng, qian long will have a hard time...

the policies that yong zheng introduced proves to be useful and some historians even said that because of yong zhen, qing dynasty lasted longer...

[Sephodwyrm]

Yes there are many arguments from sinologists that Yong Zheng was an effective emperor. He might have helped to accomplish tax reforms that Kang Xi ossified with the infamous 4 words "Yong Bu Jia Fu", but his sudden death and ascension of Qianlong meant that things would go the other way.

[Centaur]

I have never thought that Yongzheng was a bad emperor. He had been given bad press for a long time by Chinese authors who wanted demonized the Manchus. At least I still could remember my mother talking how bad Yongzheng was and that he had forged his father's will and how he executed many scholars. She had gotten it from the Wuxia stories she read. We know better now that this was not all true!

I suppose when the Mainland TV serial about Yongzheng came about, it kind of change the perspective of many about Yongzheng. He deserved a better lot in history.

This post has been edited by Centuar: 27 April 2006 - 08:23 PM

[Sephodwyrm]

He was actually one of the few emperors that promoted men with relatively fewer scholarly merits to positions of power.

[yongzheng freak]

Sephodwyrm, on Apr 28 2006, 09:51 AM, said:

He was actually one of the few emperors that promoted men with relatively fewer scholarly merits to positions of power.

That's true...it seems that Yongzheng do not like those scholars who are rather conformist in their thinking. He would rather promote a person who's capable than a scholar who cannot perform. A true pragmatist....

[yongzheng freak]

The thirteen-year reign of Yinzhen, the Yongzheng emperor, was a period of central importance in the maturing of the Manchu rule in China. He possessed few attractive qualities, yet he can be called the most skillful manager of the state appartus to occupy the Qing throne. Both for his critical supervision of his government and its governors and for his institutional innovations, his brief reign was one of impressive accomplishment. The brief reign of Yongzheng was stormy, complicated, and imporatnt. It was cloudy from the start. However, his short reign is also notable for his energetic attempts to introduce reforms. His reign marks an important turning point; the loose and still uncertain pattern of the dynasty's domestic governing under the long and praiseworthy rule, implacably overseen by a secretive,awesome autocrat.

Although throughout his reign, Yongzheng was troubled by charges that he was a usurper, there were little evidence that he had usurp the throne. There was, however, some evidence that showed Kangxi had trusted Yongzheng more than he had most of his sons. Kangxi and Yongzheng frequently discussed policy matters together and shared mutual entertainments. YOngzheng, for a time, ws even made jailer of his elder half-brother, the deposed heir-apparent - a delicate and dangerous task, considering the politics of the time.

Once Yongzheng ascended the throne, he introduced several reforms. he felt that his father's rule especially during the last years had been too relaxed. One of which was the succession system, which departed from both the Chinese tradition of appointing the eldest son born of an empress adn the Manchu custom of the heir being selected from the ruler's sons according to merit and with the approval of influential members of the imperial family. Now the emperor selects his heir from any of his sons and put the candidate's name into a sealed box. HIs choice would not be revealed to anyone, including the candidate himself, until the emperor's death.

Another refrom, also directed at curbing the power of manchu princes, was bureaucratisation of the banner system. The background to this measure was the sharp decline in the value of banner forces as military units and the emergence of strone cliques within the 'five inferior banners' headed by the Manchu princes. Yongzheng deprived the Princes of Control of companies by:

- Bureacucratising recruitment company captains
- Standardizing the operations of the banners
- Expanding imperial surveillance system.
- Power to adjudicate disputes and punish banner men enjoyed by banner men princes, was transfered to central government organs.
- Decentralising authority over Manchu, Mongol and Han banners.

By doing so, YOngzheng had largely freed himself from the reliance on the Manchu princes. In 1724, Yongzheng lectured the assembled Zongshi on the evils of factionalism.

During the late kangxi reign, even favoured officials were arrested and imprisoned for taking part in factional politics at court. The fallout from the succession struggle comtinued into Yongzheng's reign. In 1724m Sunu, 4th generation descendant through Nurhaci's eldest son, Cuyeng, wsa accused of creating dissention among Kangxi's sons in order to avenge his ancestor. Sunu and his descendants were expelled from the Aisin Gioro clan. He, his family, and eight of his sons were banished, while five other were placed in confinement. Even though the Jesuits believed that Sunu's crime had been conversion to Christianity, the major cause of his troubles wsa his advocacy of Yunsi. Friendship with Yunsi, whose name was changed by imperial order to Acina, a Manchu word meaning 'Cur', also resulted in the explusion of Yongzheng's eldest survivin son, Hongshi, from the imperial lineage in 1726. Longkodu was purged in1725, stripped of his honours and titles and died in 1728 while under house arrest. Apparently, Longkodo participated in the rivalry over the succession issue in the last years in Kangxi's reign. HIs control over the beijing garrison was critical when Kangxi died. The lesson to be learned from Longkodo's disgrace was clear. Yongzheng had no intention of sharing power. Yet, Yongzheng's objectives was not simply power, for he showed compassion for his subjects, notably in his efforts to emanicipate the 'mean' people, occupational groups such as prostitudes and actors, adn the Tawka or boat people of south China, who were excluded from public service and were not allowed to marry members of the 'good' population.

Kangxi had bewueath to Yongzheng a state treasury that ws nearly empty. The reason for this was not Kangxi's extravagance, nor was it excessive military expenditure, but a large deficit between the amount of tax levied and the amount received. Whereas kangxi had adpoted a relaxed attitude on fiscal matters, Yongzheng immediately instituted a crusade against official corruption. (Corruption and inefficiency were his targets; sedition was his obession)

The palace memorial system undermined the censorial system by enabling the emperor to access confidential information directly. Using rescripts added to the palace memorials as a tool of personal, confidential communication between ruler and chosen officials were started by kangxi, yet a few of his rescripts were more than ten or twenty words in lenght. Yongzheng's rescripts, however, often ran to several hundreds or more than a thousand words. The difference between the two rulers does not end here - while Kangxi had often written in Manchu, and had written Chinese slowly adn carefully, Yongzheng seemed to have preferred Chinese. His Chinese calligraphy, clearly written with great speed, was accurate and idiomatic.

The system of secret palace memorials was made to measure for Yongzheng, and he extended and coordinated the informal structure that Kangxi initiated. Other than roputine matters, which were reported, as in the past, in open memorials to the ministries and to the Grand Secretariat, the most senior provincial officials now reported confidentially to Yongzheng on the details of their administration and on each other - clearly reflecting on Yongzheng's suspicious nature. These secret palace memorials became his particular management tool. Having sole control over a strategic flow of sensitive information, very much apart from the much larger flow of routine reporting to the central government, Yongzheng possessed the instrument needed for encouraging and intimidating his Manchu nobles and Chinese bureaucracy - being able to keep them fearfully and hopefully respondsive to his directing hand. Being as meticulous as Yongzheng was, he worked long hours; spending long hours reading in detail, both secret and open memorials submitted by his officials from all over the empire - he was probably the hardest working man in the empire. During the day, Yongzheng played the typical imperial part of never ending round of governing i.e. meeting his court, giving audiences to his officials, giving out instructions to the ministers heading the outer court. Yongzheng at these times were not particularly communicative. In the long hours in the evening, however, he took on entirely different manner. He sat in his study adjoining to his bedroom deep in the inner-most confines of the imperial palace, reviewing the day's incomming memorials until late into the night. Selecting the most important of them, usually twenty or thirty a night but sometimes as many as fifty or sixty of them; he studied them carefully, checking their content against his data files and his powerful memory. With his brush dipped in vermillion ink, he wrote long rescrips or comments expressing his judgement and initiating whatever follow up action was called for at the blank spaces left at the end of the memorials.

Yongzheng's vermillion rescripts made it clear that he placed great emphasis on honesty and efficiency ion government operations. Scrutinizing confidential memorials sent to him, Yongzheng looks for evidence of weakness in his appointed administrators and for signs that structures of government were not functioning well. His confidential replies not only made judgement about the adminstrative issues but also encouraged his appointees to perform to higher standards. Yongzheng's rescripts also shows that he valued perceptive, independent-minded men who would forthrightly tell him things that he might not welcome, and who would offer their own views when they know he might be prepared to disagree. he often rebukes his memorial writers for sycophantic excesses, for lack of clarity in their analysis or failure to garner all the facts. Even with men who had gained his confidence and earned his often-exaggerated praise. Yongzheng nevertheless remained alert to signs that they were growing lax or that they might come to take advantage of their special relationship to him. Such officials might expect to receive a vermillion endorsement that deftly cut them to shreds.

Yongzheng's vermillion rescripts also reveal another side of the emperor. It showed that Yongzheng could be humourous, sardonic, and even whimisical at times. He would often use vulgar colloquialisms that he may have picked up from ordinary city people working in the palaces or even from soldiers from his palace guards. The emperor's rescripts revealed that Yongzheng became quite fond of many of his officials, albeit at a distance, he might praise them warmly and expresses concern for their health, adn constantly lavish material gifts on them. Even so, when one of the individuals who had received his praise and affection becomes a political liability, proved to have performed badly, or was found to be of questionable loyalty, he could unhesitatingly order that person's demotion or dismissal, even arrest and execution. It has been suggested that he may found, in his rescripts, the appropriate context within which to indulge his repressed human feelings, and though his emotive exchanges with distant persons he added a dimension of personal involvemetn in a life that otherwise have been emotionally thin. One can also see in Yongzheng's vermillion rescripts traces of his human falibilities. Occasionally, Yongzheng grew tired during a long night of studying memorials to frame his responses, and in his vermillion reswcripts wrote mistaken characters, left sentences unfinished, and said things in a quite unimperial manner.

[Whsie]

I would say Yongzheng is a decent emperor. Though he may have a bad reputation, but he is still critical. Yongzheng Dynasty TV series was actually right about that during the end of Kangxi's year, the treasury was nearly used up. Yongzheng made reforms that were highly effective. Yongzheng made the country rich again. Yongzheng most important of all killed the corrupt ones. He pratically set this all perfectly up for Qianlong's reign.

[yongzheng freak]

Whsie, on May 3 2006, 03:30 PM, said:

I would say Yongzheng is a decent emperor. Though he may have a bad reputation, but he is still critical. Yongzheng Dynasty TV series was actually right about that during the end of Kangxi's year, the treasury was nearly used up. Yongzheng made reforms that were highly effective. Yongzheng made the country rich again. Yongzheng most important of all killed the corrupt ones. He pratically set this all perfectly up for Qianlong's reign.

heeheehee...Yongzheng's critics have always criticise him for being tight fisted with money, among other things......