The History of China - #297 - Qing 32: Tea, Trade, & Thunder

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

The Qing conquest of Dzungaria did not begin with any kind of cannon-fire or musketry. Instead, it began like many wars end: with a funeral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 297 Tea, Trade, and Thunder Picture if you will, a late autumn morning in the Forbidden City. The Li's have just begun their turn to yellow in the Imperial Gardens. Within the inner court, a 24-year-old prince moves through the winding cloisters in near silence. His name is Hong Li, son of the Yongzheng Emperor, grandson of the Kangxi Emperor.

Within weeks, he'll take the throne as the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, assuming the reign title of Qianlong, meaning lasting eminence. He's fluent in both Manchu and classical Chinese. He's been trained in archery and military drills since he could walk and hold a bow. He writes poetry in the style of the Southern Song. Personally, he's charming, sharp, and he's poised now to take over completely an imperial apparatus already reaching out to stretch over the entire continent. As he prepares to ascend the throne in the year 1735, he inherits more than mere court robes and palace intrigues.

He inherits an empire in the very midst of grappling with two massively important questions. First, how do you convert costly wars against an enemy faction into a profitable peace without making yourself look weak? And second, how can a political entity rule over people as manyed and various as Mongols, Tibetans, Manchus, Muslims, and Han Chinese, as well as the step princes of Kokonor, with a single overarching ideology, and make it last? Today we're going to be looking at the story of how the Qianlong Emperor answered those questions, not just with swords and armies, although there will be plenty of those, but also with symbols, trade routes, tea caravans, and Confucian rituals. We're going to follow today the arc of his first two decades on the throne, from the

cautious diplomacy of his early years, all the way to the outbreak of war in 1755, when the Qing banners advanced westward into Jungaria and changed the map of Central Asia forever. But before we can get to that conquest, we have to discuss the calculations that went into it. Hong Li was born on September 25, 1711, in the old summer palace called Yuanmingyuan, just outside of Beijing itself. He was the fourth son of Yinzhen, who at the time was just one of many sons of the Kangxi

emperor. Yinzhen, we well know now, would later become the Yongzheng emperor and rule from 1723 to 1735. Since birth, the young prince Hongli's life was carefully engineered to balance two cultural identities in balance. On the one hand, he was most certainly a Manchu prince. That meant horseback drills, archery contests, bannermen parades, and a deep reverence for the martial traditions that had founded the dynasty itself.

On the other hand, he was also raised as an heir to a system that still fundamentally depended on Chinese-style Confucian legitimacy civil service exams, ancestral sacrifices, moral virtue, and excellence in calligraphy and poetic styling. As a boy, he studied the xiaojing, or the Classic of Filial Piety, and trained under Manchu tutors in horsemanship, Chinese poetry, and the full canon of Confucian classics. He was composing his own cup lists before he was 10, and was expected to master both the brush and the bow in equal measure. That dual expectation, the true warrior-poet ideal, would never leave him across his long life. In fact, he would later stamp thousands of imperial artworks with poems of his own, signing

them with fanciful names like Qianlong Yu Bi, meaning written by the imperial brush of Qianlong. But while young Prince Hongli was mastering his court culture, out of the border, the Qing Empire was under constant strain. To the west, in the lands we now know as Xinjiang and parts of Central Asia, a confederation we by this point know all too well had been rising in power since the late 1600s. I speak, of course, of the Zhenggar Mongols. They were descendants of the Oirats, and under the guidance of their founding leader, Galdon Baushuk Tukan, and his later successors, they'd carved out a military state that blended Tibetan

Buddhism, Mongol tribal loyalty, and a ruthless command structure. The Jungars, as we know very well, were no mere nuisance. By the early 18th century, they controlled much of Jungaria, the Ili Valley, parts of modern-day Kazakhstan, and even threatened Tibet and Qing positions in Gansu and Qinghai. And this was no mere frontier small potatoes. The Jungars were not weekend warriors. They were professional soldiers, skilled in cavalry tactics, alliance building, and step diplomacy. They were every bit the Mongol conquerors that that name implies.

As such, they were a clear and direct threat to Qing authority, not just militarily, but even ideologically. So long as a rival khanate could claim to rule the steppe, the Qing emperors, who styled themselves in the old Chinese style of the heirs of the mandate of heaven, the son of heaven himself, could not truly claim to rule tianxia, all under heaven. The Yongzheng emperor, Hongli's father, had already dealt with several costly campaigns across the northwest. In the early 1730s, Zheng'ar forces raided the borderlands of Qinghai. Qing counterattacks, while militarily effective, drained the imperial treasury.

A particularly brutal expedition in 1731 ended in retreat and heavy losses, in fact. Yongzheng's response wasn't just to send more troops. Instead it was to send accountants. In a secret memorial as of the year 1724, Yongzheng wrote, quote, Morality in office must rest on solvency, end quote. Yongzheng launched a campaign of bureaucratic reform, auditing provincial accounts, cutting redundant posts, cracking down on corruption. He believed that good governance was impossible without financial clarity,

and that warfare could only be sustained if the books stayed balanced. But he wasn't just about cutting costs. He was also thinking strategically about the peace. Around 1734, Yongzheng began what some historians now call the Tea for Tranquility policy. The idea was fairly elegant in its construction. Instead of open war, we ought to use trade to bind the Zhengars into our web of imperial dependence. Envoys were sent to negotiate with Galdon Saren, the successor and Zhengar ruler at the time. The Qing offered

tightly regulated access to imperial markets in Suzhou, the one in Gansu, not in Jiangsu, Xining, and even Lhasa for tribute missions. In return, the Zhengars would receive silk, tea, grain, and silver. If that rings a bell or sounds kind of familiar, it's because it builds on older Chinese frontier strategies dating all the way back to the Han dynasty more than a thousand years prior. The theory was simple. Transform the barbarians, or huayi, through contact and commerce, not conquest. We will make them like us. It was the sort of plan that looked great, at least on paper.

The Qing court reasoned that if Galdon Saren could be lured into a pattern of economic dependency, then he and his people would have overall less reason to fight. The Qing could then buy time to rebuild its own defenses, strengthen its garrisons, and map out the step for, you know, whatever might come next. Wink wink. By 1734, tentative border arrangements were being drawn up. Trade caravans of sheep, hides, horses, and rare furs began arriving in Gansu. In exchange, the Qing sent out bales of raw silk, tea bricks, and silver ingots. All this, Young Hongli watched from within the Imperial Court.

He wasn't in charge yet, but he was paying close attention. He read the memorials. He asked questions of his tutors. He wrote verses about the dusty books of the West Road and the moonlight on the steppe. In many ways, he was preparing to think like an emperor already. And he was beginning to understand a core truth that would come to shape his reign. Sometimes power isn't about smashing your enemy's army. Sometimes it's about making him dependent on your tea trade.

Qianlong was enthroned following the death of his father in the year 1736. But in reality, the transition of power had begun the moment that his father, Yongzheng, fell ill in late 1735. The new emperor's first months on the throne were critical. Not just because he was stepping into the shoes of his two legendary predecessors, but also because the empire itself was watching closely for signs of his style, strategy, and above all, his strength. So too were the Jungars. By this point, the Qing-Jungar relationship was in a rather delicate phase.

The previous few years had seen a slow warming of diplomatic ties between Galdon Seren and the Qing court. Caravans were traveling regularly between Ili and Suzhou. Tribute missions were tentatively scheduled. Border trade rules had been outlined. And yet, neither side could really be said to really trust the other. So, when Galdon Seren dispatched a new tribute mission to Beijing in early 1736, barely weeks after the Qianlong Emperor's enthronement,

it was nothing if not a subtle test. Would this new Emperor, young and unproven, honor the arrangements that his father had set, or would he use the opportunity to project some form of youthful dominance? The answer that Qianlong would give would prove to be carefully calculated. He chose to reject the caravan outright. Not with insults, not with threats, but in a quiet, formal response that said, in essence, it's not the right season, try again next year. To someone outside of the subtle machinations and politicking of the imperial system, a message like this might sound kind of

trivial. But within the coded language of Qing frontier diplomacy, it was calibrated and received as a clear message. This emperor would be the one to set the rhythm of the relationship, not Galdan Sarin. Tribute would be accepted on Qing terms, at Qing times, and within the structure of Qing jurisprudence. And if the Jungars wanted to benefit from the Qing marketplace, they would need to first and foremost respect the Qing rules. This was a classic Taoguang Yanghui move, conceal your own strength while biding your

time. Something that would once again become popular under the later Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Qianlong knew that he couldn't now afford to alienate the Zhengars outright. The empire quite simply wasn't ready for another major war. His logistical base in Gansu and Xinjiang was still very much under construction. Grain depots were unfinished, pack animals still insufficient, both the Manchu and Mongol troops were scattered and disorganized. So instead of escalation or power projection, he sent a calibrated message. Beijing would engage,

but only as the senior controlling partner. What followed over the next three years was a slow, careful negotiation process, often handled not through formal treaties, but through memorials, backchannel envoys, and regulated trade protocols. The ultimate result was what historians now call the Truce of 1739. It wasn't really a treaty, at least not in the Western sense. There wasn't really any ceremony or parchment. It wasn't even signatures. But the agreement was understood on both sides. The Qing would permit, first, capital tribute missions from the Jungar Khanate every four years, second, border trade at Suzhou

in the Gansu Corridor, which could occur in the off years, and third, tea pilgrimages to Lajia by Jungar nobles and Tibetan monks, so long as they registered in advance and remained under Qing military escort. The Imperial officials insisted on strict limits. A maximum of 100 envoys could be sent to Beijing. Caravans were limited to 800 animals. The length of their stay was capped at 80 days, after which they were legally required to return to the West. All goods were inspected, taxed, and recorded. The Qing wanted to know exactly

how many sheep, camels, furs, and horses were coming into Gansu, and exactly how much silver, silk, and tea was going out. There was a deeper strategy going on here, and it wasn't something based out of generosity. Instead, it was based on gaining leverage. By allowing this trade, but strictly regulating its volume, schedule, and payout, the Qing could feed the Junggar economy just enough to keep it interested, without allowing it to ever grow too strong. It was a calculated dependency. An intentional addiction.

From Governor General Qing Fu in 1739, quote, We transform the barbarians by goods of the interior. Their sheep buy our silk, their furs buy our salt, and loyalty is woven unseen in every bolt. End quote. That really does capture the essence of the policy. The frontier wasn't just being defended with walls and muskets, it was being managed through silk quotas and ledger sheets, and it was very effective. Between 1738 and 1741, recorded trade volume at Suzhou exploded. In 1731, it stood at 10,000 tails in declared transactions. By 1741, that number had jumped to 105,000 tails,

more than 10 times the volume of trade in just four years. Ching merchants and banner officials were suddenly knee-deep in jungar walls, hides, and livestock. In the 1741-42 season, the caravan brought 26,800 sheep, 545 horses, 726 camels, plus hundreds of furs and hides, dozens of forged documents, and, of course, dozens of forged documents, which the Qing inspectors easily found and quickly confiscated. Put simply, the border towns were quickly overwhelmed. Temples were temporarily converted into animal holding pins. Local officials scrambled to find enough fodder and salt.

It was messy, chaotic, and an absolute gold mine for intelligence. Every merchant was a potential informant. Every caravan could carry not just goods, but gossip. The Qing learned who was rising and falling in the Junggar court, what supplies were scarce, where internal factions might be brewing. As one Qing commander put it, quote, their camels bring news as much as wool, end quote. All the way back east in Beijing, Qianlong monitored all this with obsessive interest. He read the reports, he reviewed the ledgers, he questioned the commanders, and crucially, he began to develop his own personal style of rule, distinct from his father Yongzheng

and even that of his grandfather Kangxi. Where Yongzheng had been severe, relentless, and administrative, Qianlong was theatrical, symbolic, and strategic. He didn't just want to run the empire. He wanted to be seen embodying it. His ruling style, in fact, could be summed up very much by a contemporary of his, Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, when he said famously, Les tas, c'est moi. I am the state. He began commissioning portraits of himself, on horseback, in court robes, as a Confucian

sage, even as a Buddhist deity. These were rather in keeping with his own father's propensity towards dress-em-up, but for Qianlong, these were not just vanity projects. They were carefully calibrated signals to different constituencies across the empire – Han literati, Mongol princes, Tibetan monks, Manchu bannermen. Everyone had their own personal Qianlong emperor. He wrote poetry, hundreds of poems, and then later thousands, and stamped them across artwork and official documents.

He held ritual ceremonies with exacting precision. He began taking annual tours to southern China, not just to inspect the infrastructure, but also to perform the symbolic unity of north and south. In short, the Qilong Emperor was building a brand for himself. A brand for himself. And in the process, he was laying the ideological foundation for the military campaigns that would follow. Because when the time came to send troops west, he wanted the world to see it not as aggression, but as a righteous act by a sage ruler who'd given every chance for peace. Meanwhile, out in Ili, Galdon Saren watched all this with growing suspicion. To him, the Qing peace offers looked increasingly like a gilded cage.

Trade was profitable, but constricting. The tribute schedule was regular, but humiliating. And while Qing goods flowed west, Qing maps were quietly filling in all those pesky blank spaces of the steppe. To be clear, Galdon Saren knew that war wasn't in his best interest either. At least not yet. But he also knew that the window for Jungar independence was closing, and probably faster than anyone realized.

When he died in 1745, the empire he left behind was far weaker than it had been a decade before. And the Qianlong Emperor, watching from the Forbidden City, was already preparing for what came next. By the year 1740, the Qing-Jungar truce was well established. The trade protocols were in place, caravans were arriving, tea and silk were changing hands. But what mattered most to Qianlong wasn't just that trade was happening, it was how it was structured, how it was scaled, and most important of all, how it was controlled.

From the perspective of Beijing, the Zhars were not an ally. They were a problem to be managed. Chen Long's genius, then, in this phase, wasn't in the military conquest of Jungaria. It was in slowly, subtly, and methodically turning the Jungars into economic dependents, all the while appearing to be magnanimous and fair-minded. This wasn't passive appeasement, it was strategic attrition via ledger book, bleeding them to death from their wallets. Between 1740 and 1744, Qing records show a sharp increase in the scale of frontier commerce. To take a look at the 1742 caravan again, we had

over 25,000 head of livestock, several hundred luxury furs, at least 700 camels, most of which were used as a one-shot transport and then resold at the other end. Dozens of Jungar nobles accompanied the mission, many with forged travel documents that the Qing often caught and penalized appropriately. On paper, this was all win-win cooperation. The Jungars got access to tea, silk, and high-quality Chinese salt. The Qing government got intelligence, prestige, and the outward appearance of benevolence. But under the surface, it's hard to characterize this as anything less than war by economic means.

First, the Qing fixed prices on many frontier trade goods. Livestock from the Jungars was deliberately undervalued, while Qing's silk and tea prices were gouged. This created a permanent trade imbalance. Secondly, the Qing demanded that silver be used for any large volume transactions. That meant that the Jungars had to sell more and more animals just to afford the same quantities of goods, draining their herds and thus their internal economy. Third, the Qing restricted the duration and size of any such mission. A maximum of 100 traders, a maximum of 800 packs, a maximum time limit of

80 days. Anything larger was either turned away outright or heavily fined once infracted upon. The goal was not to stop trade. It was to keep it just small enough to be a lifeline, but not a source of strength. From Governor General In Jishan, quote, They trade useless products for the best of the Central Kingdom. End quote. In this, the governor wasn't being simply xenophobic, he was speaking strategically. He understood that this was a zero-sum equation. If the Jungars grew wealthy, they'd rebuild their armies. But if they grew

lean and hungry, they'd either come to heal and obey Qing command, or they'd shatter from within. And the Jungars, for their part, were very much feeling this squeeze. Their access to Qing goods had become essential. Local markets in Ili and Hami were flooded with Chinese salts and textiles. Mongol intermediaries, particularly the Torguts, began profiting from this trade network. But behind the prosperity was vulnerability. The entire system relied on continued Qing permission. And that permission, like all permissions, was conditional.

This was certainly no new idea in Chinese frontier policy. As I mentioned, back since the days of the Han Dynasty, the strategy of huai rou, soothing and transforming the barbarians, had been a core part of how Chinese dynasties managed powerful neighbors. But here and now, Qianlong would give it a new little twist. Whereas earlier Chinese emperors had relied on tribute and Confucian ritual, Qianlong now wrapped that approach in ideological theater. He commissioned paintings showing himself seated on the dragon throne, receiving tribute

from Turkic lords. He had court poets compose verses about the harmony of the five regions, north, south, east, west, and center, all under heaven. He issued edicts praising Jungar leaders for their peaceful intentions, while reminding them that the emperor was the source of heaven's mandate. And yet, behind all this pomp and circumstance, he continued to increase troop movements to the west. Forts in Gansu were quietly reinforced. New granaries were built at strategic points along the Silk Road.

Qing soldiers were trained in desert maneuvers and long-distance logistics. And maps, detailed, annotated, topographic maps, were produced by Jesuit and Chinese surveyors working together in secret workshops. As Qianlong played the role of philosopher-king, he was all the while preparing the imperial infrastructure once again for war. What is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of all this, in this period, is just how well it worked. The Jungar traders, many of whom were minor nobles themselves, very much began to rely

on Qing patronage. They formed connections with local officials, offered gifts to customs inspectors, and lobbied for more generous price schedules. Some even began converting their children to Confucian schooling systems inside Qing border towns. This wasn't cultural assimilation in the modern sense. It was calculated dependency. Addiction on a societal scale. Qianlong knew that the more the Jungars engaged with Qing systems, schools, temples, trade networks, you name it,

the more leverage he ultimately would have over them. At the same time, he made sure to keep his military options open. Troop dispatches from 1741 to 1744 show steady increases in supply routes to Suzhou and Urumqi. Qing soldiers were rotated regularly, officers were ordered to learn local dialects. And perhaps most tellingly, the emperor began withholding silver. While border trade grew, cash payouts shrank. Where once Jungar merchants might walk away with 20-25% of their earnings in silver, by 1744 that number had dropped below 10%. As noted by the court records in an imperial comment, as of 1743, quote, silver buys steel. We keep both, end quote. This shift hit the Jungar economy hard. Without enough silver, they couldn't buy weapons. Without weapons, they couldn't police the increasingly chaotic steppe.

And without that authority, Gaudansarin's regime began to crumble from within. To Qianlong's officials, the Jungar court still looked relatively intact. Gaudansarin was still in power after all, trade was flowing, tributes arrived on schedule. But internal reports from the border told a different story altogether. For one, the Jungar population was shrinking. Smallpox outbreaks by the early 1740s had already devastated key clans. Tribal loyalties were fraying. Banditry was increasing on the roads near Barkhall, and the question of succession,

always touchy, was increasingly a time bomb. Galdan Saren, aging and increasingly isolated, had three sons and a daughter, all vying for power in their own right. His most capable heir, Sewang Dorji Namjal, who he introduced last time, was respected by the military, but feared by the court. His elder son, Lama Darja, had the support of the clergy, but little military experience, and his cousin, Dawasi, was quietly building a power base among exiled factions.

The Channlong Emperor's court began receiving reports of factionalism, purges, even assassination attempts. But the Emperor chose patience. He issued no ultimatums. He sent no warnings. He simply watched and waited. This is because he understood something essential. That a divided and internally squabbling enemy is much easier to conquer than a united and defiant one. It must be stated that the Qing conquest of Jungaria did not begin with any kind of cannon fire or musketry. Instead, it began, like so many wars end, with a funeral.

In 1745, after more than a decade of balancing diplomacy, Gaudan Serin, Khan of the Djungars and ruler of the Ili Valley, died. His passing was not simply the death of a leader. It was the final rupture of the only center still holding the Djungar confederation together at all. Without him, the internal divisions that had long simmered beneath the surface now boiled over into open conflict. And as for the Qianlong Emperor, he was practically giddy.

This was, after all, the moment he'd been so long preparing for. But before we get to that, let's take a moment to understand what Galadon Saren left behind and why it all unraveled so quickly. The Jungar Khanate was no centralized monarchy like the Qing. It was, like just about all Mongol confederations, a patchwork of alliances among the Oirat tribes, Choros, Kohits, Torghets, among others. Each had its own noble lineage, held its own religious loyalties, and had its own internal politics.

Galdansaran had managed to hold them together through a combination of personal charisma, military prestige, and brutal enforcement of discipline. But in yet another of history's hey, don't do that's, he left behind no clear successor. As we said, he had three sons. Sebang Dorji Namjal, who was bold, impulsive, militarily competent, and utterly ruthless. Lama Darja, who was the elder, cautious, politically savvy, but disliked by the army. And Saiyan Bolek, who we won't really talk about that much because he was younger and with little real base of power. We do have to bring up, though, his fourth child, his daughter Ulan Bayar, sharp-witted

and deeply connected to elite religious circles. Then there's the fifth player in this game, lurking on the edges, Tawasi, Galdan Saren's cousin, a very clever operator who'd spent years building quiet alliances behind the scenes with disaffected nobles and military men both. What followed Galdan Saren's death was not a succession, but a power vacuum and the struggle that would ensue. Initially it looked like Sehwan Dorji Namjal had the upper hand. Backed by a significant portion of the military, he declared himself Khan within days of his

father's death. He held the steppe capital, Ili. He had the treasury, but his rule would prove to be short-lived. And something that plays out like an episode of succession, a coalition of his enemies, led by none other than his older brother, Lama Darja, and supported by his younger brother and sister, Sayan Bullock and Ulana, respectively, rose up in a swift and brutal coup. Sèwang was overthrown, imprisoned, and, at least according to the Qing intelligence, blinded with hot irons and a ritual punishment designed to prevent him from ever ruling again.

His supporters were purged from the Junggar government. Dozens were executed. Hundreds fled off into the hills, some crossing the border entirely into Qing territories seeking political asylum. This moment marked a fundamental shift. For the first time in years, the Jyungar state was no longer a united front. It had become an unstable zone of fractured leadership, disaffected military elites, and wide open vulnerabilities. leadership, disaffected military elites, and wide-open vulnerabilities. Qing governors along the Western frontier could not help but take note. From the Qing commander Yong Chang in 1746, quote, They have fallen to squabbling.

The Khan is no longer feared. We need not draw sword. They will cut themselves. End quote. In the Forbidden City, the Qianlong Emperor read all of these reports. He saw the opportunity. And he waited. Now was not yet the time to strike.

Instead, he ordered his court to continue honoring the trade protocols. Caravans would still be allowed to pass through Suzhou and Hami. Border officials were told to offer polite reception. Prices remained fair. On the surface, everything seemed tranquil and unchanging. But in the depths below, the currents had irrevocably shifted. In 1747, the emperor ordered an internal review of Western garrisons. Manchu bannermen were redeployed to key posts along the Hexi corridor. Fortresses at Urumqi and Barkol were reinforced. New military depots were constructed. Grain stores were quietly expanded.

Even more significant, the emperor authorized a covert network of envoys to engage with refugee Jungar nobles, especially those loyal to the ousted Sewang Dorji Namjol, or Tadawasi. These envoys offered protection, resources, and most critically of all, recognition should they wish to challenge the current Jungar leadership. Again, this should not be confused with magnanimous generosity on the Qing's behalf. not be confused with magnanimous generosity on the Qing's behalf. This was a chess player feeding a rival's opposition. As put in the 70 maxims of maximally effective mercenaries, quote, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less, end quote. Or as attributed to the Qianlong Emperor himself in a margin note on a frontier report in 1748,

Let their throne wobble. We will study the survivors. Among the exiles and dissidents of the Jungars, Dawasi saw this as his moment. Ambitious and charismatic, Dawasi had never accepted Lama Darja's claim to the Khanate. He saw him instead as weak, untested, a usurper backed only by court intrigue, not by any kind of step loyalty. By 1748, Dawasi had gathered a significant force of followers among the Kohits and Torgots. He then reached out to Qing officials, requesting temporary shelter and quote, protection under heaven's mandate, end quote. Chenlong declined to recognize him formally, but he allowed Qing border officials to house

Dawasi's messengers, treat his wounded men, and offer them small gifts in the spirit of peace. By 1749, Dawasi was openly declaring himself the rightful Jungar ruler. Lama Darja, of course, responded with violence, dispatching raids to the eastern frontier, attacking refugee camps and Qing-friendly border towns. These raids were small, insignificant, really, but politically symbolic. They did, after all, give Beijing all the casus belli for the pretext it needed. A court memorial from early 1750 summed it right up, quote, We no longer deal with one con, but many.

The beasts have begun to fight in their own pen. Now is not the time to shout. It is the time to load the cannon and say nothing." While the steppe descended into chaos, Qianlong built the ideological scaffolding for what was coming. He commissioned paintings depicting the emperor in Buddhist robes, seated amongst Mongol, Tibetan, and Turkic nobles alike. He had Manchu officials dispatched to major temples in Xining and Lhasa Buddhist robes, seated amongst Mongol, Tibetan, and Turkic nobles alike.

He had Manchu officials dispatched to major temples in Xining and Lhasa to donate sutras in his name. He ordered sacrifices at Confucian temples for those across the desert who have lost their way. In short, he was staging a very public moral theater. He wasn't going to announce an invasion, he was going to prepare for a rectification, a much-needed, long overdue moral cleansing of a benighted barbarian land that had clearly fallen outside of the mandate. This kind of rhetorical distinction matters. To the Chin Court, military campaigns

had to be more than just strategic, they had to also be righteous, aligning with the will of Heaven's order. From the Imperial Court Chronicle, Spring Edict, 1750, quote, When the West burns with fratricide, it falls to the sun of heaven to restore harmony beneath the skies, end quote. Over the course of the final years of the 1740s, the Qing Empire's forces constructed an effective yet invisible net. The first triad of this consisted of its maps. Jesuit cartographers working with Qing survey teams produced the most detailed topographic maps of the Ili Valley ever yet created in the empire.

Elevations, water sources, passes, and encampments, nothing was left vague. All was carefully and exactingly documented. Logistically, trade routes were expanded. Tea depots were restocked. Pack animals were purchased en masse and stationed in relay zones. Military fodder contracts skyrocketed. And finally, in terms of personnel, seasoned generals like Zhao Hui, who'd earlier served in frontier operations,

were recalled to Beijing and quietly reassigned to survey and inspect the Northwest. This was no inspection, of course. This was just pretext for staging. Meanwhile, the Qianlong Emperor kept writing his poetry, over a thousand verses between 1748 and 1750 alone. Many dealt with the concepts of peace, harmony, and the unity between heaven and earth. But hidden within them were darker lines. From the Qianlong Emperor's Verses on the Step Wind 1749, quote, a house divided is ripe for winter. Let spring's blade shear the barren limb. End quote. That's gonna be

where we leave it off today. Next time the the Qing-Zheng-Gar Cold War gets hot. And in the end, China marches west. Thanks for listening.