Administration of the empire

The Kangxi emperor was an accomplished military leader who was endowed with exceptional physical strength and with skill in archery; he poured his inexhaustible energy into his daily administrative duties. Under the traditional imperial system of China, nothing in the empire was too small to come under the personal scrutiny of the emperor. Kangxi read all the reports and memorandums presented to him, meticulously correcting even the smallest scribal errors, and he often boasted that he routinely took care of all the documents, even in wartime, when 300–400 arrived daily.

The Huang He (Yellow River) was one of the subjects that commanded Kangxi’s attention. Long neglected, the river repeatedly flooded the land near where it joined the Huai River, causing great damage to northern Jiangsu. In 1677 Kangxi appointed Jin Fu superintendent of riparian works; in 1683 Jin finished embanking and dredging to stabilize the flow of the river. At the same time, the Grand Canal, the important arterial waterway that connected the Huang He with the lower Yangtze River (Chang Jiang), was repaired to allow the smooth flow of large quantities of rice needed in the north from the rich granaries of the south. To inspect the results of the works and to acquaint himself with cultural and economic leaders of the wealthy south, Kangxi traveled to the lower reaches of the Yangtze six times between 1684 and 1707, financing each journey with his own private funds. In his private life, Kangxi was frugal in court expenditures, waited upon only by a small number of court ladies and eunuchs. He never raised taxes, even in wartime; in fact, taxes were reduced or exempted many times during his reign; in three years starting in 1711, all provinces received a tax relief that totalled more than 30 million taels. In 1711 Kangxi declared that from then on the number of taxpaying adults should be perpetually fixed at the present level for head-tax purposes, permanently exempting the balance of future population growth from taxation.

After the conquest of Taiwan, Kangxi lifted restrictions on coastal trade and opened four ports, including Guangzhou (Canton), to foreign ships. Foreigners brought silver to China to purchase such Chinese products as tea, silk, and chinawares. Such activities and internal peace stimulated a tremendous industrial growth, particularly in the lower reaches of the Yangtze.

Kangxi was very fond of learning. His avidity for study steadily increased with his age, to a degree that even when ill from overwork he did not stop reading books. In 1677 he opened a small study hall called the Nanshufang in the Forbidden City, where he engaged himself in lively discussions on philosophical and historical topics with the leading scholars of his time. His inclination toward the scholar Zhu Xi’s philosophy and arduous emulation of its Confucianist ideals were a most effective means for the Manchu Qing to gain the confidence of the Chinese majority.

Besides the traditional civil service examinations for recruiting Chinese officials educated in Confucian disciplines, Kangxi opened in 1678 a special channel through which persons with exceptional talents in learning and writing were admitted into his service on recommendation. The 50 men who thus won appointments at the Hanlin Academy, the famous scholar Zhu Yizun among them, worked on compilation of the Mingshi, an official history of the Ming dynasty. Other great books commissioned by Kangxi included the dictionary of Chinese characters, Kangxi zidian, listing about 42,000 characters (1716); the rhyming dictionary of Chinese compounds, Peiwenyunfu (1711); and the encyclopaedia of subject matter, Yuanjian leihan (1710). Another great encyclopaedia, the Gujin tushu jicheng, which was to consist of 10,000 chapters, was also started in Kangxi’s reign.

In the field of popular education, Kangxi issued, in 1669, an imperial precept consisting of 16 articles, a revision and expansion from the six articles issued by Shunzhi, in which he detailed practicalities of village life. The precept, expanded further by his son and successor, Yongzheng, offered moral guidelines to the Chinese peasantry for almost two and a half centuries.

Always eager to absorb new knowledge and technologies from Europe, the Kangxi emperor employed many Jesuit missionaries. He learned geometry from Ferdinand Verbiest, who became deputy director of the Imperial Observatory and compiled the official calendar of the empire. Verbiest was also responsible for the production of cannons that proved effective against the three rebellious kings and the Dzungars. Jean-François Gerbillon and Joachim Bouvet taught Kangxi mathematics. Kangxi ordered Pierre Jartoux, Jean-Baptiste Régis, and others to compile an accurate atlas of the empire; after long and laborious trigonometric surveys that covered every corner of the empire, starting in 1708, the atlas Huangyu quanlantu was completed in 1717. The famous Nouvel Atlas de la Chine, de la Tartarie chinoise et du Thibet (“New Atlas of China, of Chinese Tartary, and of Tibet”) of Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville is a French version of this original. European painting also fascinated Kangxi. Gio Ghirardini, an Italian layman brought by Bouvet, and Giuseppe Castiglione were the emperor’s favourite court artists, who influenced Chinese painting with their European-style perspective drawing and other activities.

These cultural contributions by the Jesuits endeared Roman Catholicism to Kangxi, who gave official permission for its propagation in 1692 and later gave French missionaries a residence within the imperial city and built a church for them in Beijing in gratitude for curing him of malaria. His sympathy attracted to China more missionaries from such orders as the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Augustinians. In contrast to the Jesuits, who were lenient with such traditional Chinese rites as ancestor worship and the state cult of Confucius and Heaven, these newcomers condemned the traditions as superstitions incompatible with Christian faith. The Rites Controversy raged on until 1704, when Pope Clement XI issued a decree forbidding Chinese Catholics to take part in such rites. Angered by this interference in what he considered his exclusive domain, Kangxi ordered the Portuguese to arrest Carlo Tommaso Maillard de Tournon, an apostolic legate to China carrying the papal decree, and in 1706 he expelled missionaries who would not adhere to the Jesuit line. In 1720 Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba, another legate, was ordered back home by the emperor.

The Kangxi emperor had three empresses—one a granddaughter of Sonin of the Hesheri clan, another a daughter of Ebilun of the Niohuru clan, and the third a granddaughter of Tulai of the Tong clan—in addition to many concubines; they bore him 35 sons in all. He nominated the second son, Yinreng, crown prince in 1675, at the age of little more than a year and a half; this was against the Manchu tradition of giving all sons equal rights of succession, and it resulted in vicious fights among Kangxi’s sons. The hapless Yinreng was deposed in 1708, restored in 1709, and again deposed in 1712, this time permanently. Terribly hurt by the experience, Kangxi and his successors never again tried to nominate a crown prince.

At the Chinese New Year of 1722, Kangxi celebrated his long and prosperous reign by inviting many elders to a great banquet at the court. That winter he fell ill while staying at the imperial villa of Changchunyuan, in the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, and he died in December. The next year he was buried at Malanyu, to the northeast of the capital, in a mausoleum called the Jingling. His throne was taken over by his fourth son, Yinzhen (the Yongzheng emperor).

Kangxi is usually counted among the ablest monarchs ever to govern the vast Chinese empire. He reigned for 61 years and laid the foundation for a long period of political stability and economic prosperity in China.