I’ll admit it: I can be snarky.  Even in class.  And one of my favorite pieces of snark for the last eight years or so has been the occasional flippant comparison between the George W. Bush years and the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1722-1796/1799).

In his Search for Modern China, the core text for my modern history class, Jonathan Spence writes of Qianlong:

“One can trace, running through many of Qianlong’s pronouncements and actions, an undercurrent–faint yet disturbing.  It is that of a man who has been praised too much and has thought too little, of someone who has played to the gallery in public life, mistaken grandeur for substance, sought confirmation and support for even routine actions, and is not really equipped to make difficult or unpopular decisions.”

Despite vastly differences in times and circumstances, it is hard not to think of W. when reading those words.

Both were scions of powerful families who realized early on they probably were never going to live up to the past even though we must admit that  Kangxi and Yongzheng are a helluva lot more intimidating and imposing figures to follow than George H.W. Bush.  But the need for redemption in the eyes of the father burned strong in both W. and Qianlong.  W. ached to scorch Saddam, revenge for those who mocked that the elder Bush had won the war but Saddam was the one who held onto power.  Qianlong had the scholar Zeng Jing (a disseminator of anti-Manchu writings that among other things accused Qianlong’s father Yongzheng of usurpation and who, despite his crimes had been treated with leniency by Yongzheng) executed by slow-slicing.  Yongzheng might forgive the slander, Yongzheng’s son could not.*

About a year ago, in a much longer piece, I wrote of Qianlong’s rather disastrous attempts to intervene in the royal politics of Annam, at the time a nominal Qing tributary.

In 1788, when the last emperor of the Le Dynasty (in what was then Annam) was in danger of being toppled by the Nguyen family, Le called in his tributary chits from the Qianlong Emperor. Qianlong sent troops including General Sun Shiyi whose record of military and administrative incompetence probably deserves its own post. After taking the capital of Hanoi and putting Le back on the throne, Sun forgot to round up the Nguyen family, who counterattacked just after Sun sent his “mission accomplished” letter to Qianlong. 4000 of Sun’s troops were killed and the Le Family fled north. HERE’S THE DIFFERENCE: With his attempts at “regime stabilization” foiled, the Qianlong Emperor accepted–not without some equivocation at his military failure–that the mandate had passed in Vietnam, and gave his blessings to the new Nguyen family, who then ruled that country until the end of the Vietnamese monarchy. If only the Bush family could so readily admit when they’ve been beaten and move on. It took Qianlong one year to figure out that regime change wasn’t working in Vietnam, we’re well into year number four six in Iraq.

General Sun, possibly one of the worst military officers in history, wasn’t killed or even sacked, he was actually and unbelievably transferred to a new and important post.  Qing troops were battling the famed Gurkha soldiers of Nepal on the border between that kingdom and Tibet.  While the Qing forces successfully beat back the Gurkhas and forced Nepal into a tributary status which would last over two centuries,** the whole enterprise cost a fortune, much of it misspent and accounted for.  The officer in charge of finances for the operation? Sun Shiyi.  This was Qianlong’s “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie moment.”

In fact if Qianlong shared trait most in common with the outgoing president, it was this misguided sense of loyalty to the mediocre and the ethically dubious.  For Qianlong, there was the notorious official Heshen, whose rise to power was so sudden (and whose corruption so brazen) that it sparked rumors of a May-December homosexual love affair between the elderly emperor and the younger Heshen.***  While I’m assuming that W.’s relationship with Don Rumsfeld was mostly platonic, and certainly the Don didn’t have 1/10th of Heshen’s charisma.

Finally, there is the tricky issue of decline.  While in the PRC it’s customary to talk about the “Century of Humiliation” which followed the Opium War of 1842, most historians of the Qing trace the roots of dynastic decline further back into the last days of the “High Qing.”  Several books, such as Philip Kuhn’s Soulstealers, have touched on the issues of population growth, bureaucratic stasis, economic instability, and social anxiety which characterized the waning years of the 18th century.  While few living at the time would have identified the age as one of apogee and decline, looked at in hindsight the latter years of Qianlong do seem like the moment when the party started going pear-shaped…and to think that the Qing Empire’s 9/11 moment, when British steam-powered gunboats opened fire on Chinese ports, wouldn’t come until almost fifty years after Qianlong’s abdication.

Similarly those of us living in the present can’t be sure if what we are witnessing is really the beginning of the end for the American shengshi 盛世.  It certainly feels like it sometimes, and, if so, we will remember the administration of George W. Bush as the end of an era of prosperity and possibility.

Nevertheless, I still have hope.  Qianlong was succeeded by the Jiaqing Emperor (r. 1796/1799-1820) who ruled as a shell of even his father, in part because Dad kept the keys to power for the first three years of Jiaqing’s reign even as it became increasingly obvious that Qianlong had stayed too long at the fair.****

W. is being succeeded by Barack Obama.  We really have no idea what kind of president he will be, though we have gotten some sense of the man and the leader in these last few months.  Generally, I have been impressed.  I can safely say that President-elect Obama shows greater leadership potential than Jiaqing, though to be frank that’s not setting the bar terribly high. Whether President Obama is able to right the “crazy old ship” of the American state remains to be seen.

Interestingly, even as I’m comparing W. to Qianlong, Xujun Eberlein is doing the same with Obama.  I’m not sure what that says about Obama, W., or Qianlong.  As I said earlier, these kinds of historical parallels never run exact and essays like this should probably have warning tags, similar to the point spreads published in the newspaper: “Printed for entertainment purposes only…”

Enjoy the inauguration.

————-

*For more on this case, see another work by Jonathan Spence, Treason by the Book.

**For a rather spectacular example of this tributary relationship, there is an 18m tall statue of the Maitreya Buddha at the Lama Temple in Beijing.  The magnificent sculpture was carved from a single piece of sandalwood which was presented as tribute to the Qing Emperors by the Nepalese court.

***A famous account from a Korean envoy tried to delicately record this tidbit of court gossip, describing Heshen as “handsome, in a dandified sort of way that suggests a lack of virtue.”

****Reports of meetings with Qianlong during the time of his “retirement” indicate that the elderly “Supreme Emperor” (太上皇帝) tended to be increasingly forgetful and inattentive when receiving audiences.

Jeremiah Jenne - Jottings from the Granite Studio

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.