The World: Manchu on the March

China

China’s Manchu Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 64, who likes to spend his afternoons writing poetry and practicing calligraphy, has just won another smashing victory on the battlefield. After five years of struggle against rebellious tribes in the mountains of Szechwan, the Emperor’s troops laid siege to the rebels’ main stone fortress, constructed cannons on the spot and in March forced it to surrender. Ch’ien-lung’s armies, which earlier defeated the Mongolians and Tibetans, have by now expanded his empire by some 600,000 square miles, notably in Sinkiang. He thus rules more land than any past Emperor.

Now at the pinnacle of his power, after a reign of 40 years, the Manchu ruler is engaged in an enormous program of cultural improvements. Some 15,000 calligraphers have been engaged to make handwritten copies of 10,000 books for the nation’s half-dozen main libraries. (No books critical of the Manchus are permitted, however.) The Emperor is also subsidizing hundreds of poets and painters to exalt Chinese achievements.

In all this military and cultural display, the Emperor appears to be ignoring a future problem. Partly because of the Manchus’ imposition of political stability, and partly because such newly introduced American foods as maize and peanuts can be grown on marginal lands, China’s population is virtually exploding. The increase in the 132 years since the founding of the dynasty: from 100 million to nearly 300 million. Just to the south of Ch’ien-lung’s empire, a new civil war is raging among the Vietnamese. Chief victors so far: the three Tay Son brothers, Nhac, Lu and Hué, who started a rebellion four years ago against the tyrannical and inefficient regime of the Nguyen family. Originally bandits in the Robin Hood style, the Tay Sons soon gathered enough peasant supporters to challenge the Nguyen armies in the field. This spring they captured the settlement of Ta Ngon (pronounced Saigon), and the eldest of the brothers proclaimed himself “Vuong” (King).

While Nguyens were fighting Tay Sons in the south, the Trinh family, which rules the north, decided to break a 100-year truce and recapture the southern region that had split away in 1613. They managed to seize the southern capital of Hué last year, but the Tay Son brothers intercepted them in Quang Nam and halted their advance. Prospect: further bloodshed and confusion.