Qing - (1644 - 1912)

Again, the downward spiral of internal corruption and infighting coupled with a strengthening of bandits and warlords in the provinces along with a willing invader waiting in the wings led to the downfall of the Ming dynasty in 1644.

In this case the waiting invader was the Manchu leader, Nurhachi, who set up his capital in Shenyang and proclaimed his dynasty the Qing (pure) to parallel the Chinese Ming (bright). While at first the Manchurian nation could not conquer the Northern Chinese, an uprising in the northern border territories caused the Ming general Wu Sangui to ask the Machurians for help. The Manchus promptly responded and, having been invited inside the wall, they routed the rebel leader Li Zicheng from Beijing. While the Ming general pursued the rebels the Manchus set up their thrown in the capital and proclaimed the Qing dynasty. The general waited ten years to try to oust the usurpers, but by then it was too late.

For nearly forty years the general Wu controlled southern China and the Manchu rulers were unable to destroy or remove them. Finally with the capture of Kunming in 1682 the last of Wu's successors was destroyed. This long civil war, however, created a bitter hostility between the north and south; Beijing being increasingly remote and suspicious, the south ever more rebellious and independent.

The Manchus held a high regard for the Chinese intellectual class and leaned heavily upon them for their government. They, in fact, became more Chinese than the Chinese themselves and resists every attempt at change from the literati. This resistance to change eventually brought about the collapse of the dynasty.

The Empress dowager Cixi carried on a lavish lifestyle in the late Qing period and built quite ostentatious ceremonial buildings and the famous Summer Palace near Beijing. Here extravagant building of a stone warship at the Summer Palace brought about almost universal condemnation. Two year old Pu Yi was proclaimed the last Qing emperor in 1908 and in 1911 the Chinese revolution brought the end to imperial China.