Manchu people

"Manchu" redirects here. For other uses, see Manchu (disambiguation).

"Man people" redirects here; not to be confused with Nanman.

Manchu

ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ · 满族
Wanrong, the last empress consort of China, wearing traditional Manchu clothing in 1922
Total population
10,682,263 Distribution of Manchu autonomous prefectures and counties in Mainland China
Regions with significant populations
China	10,423,303 (2020 census)
Taiwan	12,000 (2004 estimate)
Hong Kong	1,000 (1997 estimate)
Languages
Mandarin Chinese Manchu
Religion
Manchu shamanism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
other Tungusic peoples

Manchu people
Manchu name
Manchu script	ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ
Möllendorff	manju
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	滿洲 / 滿族
Simplified Chinese	满洲 / 满族
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Mǎnzhōu / Mǎnzú

The Manchus are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and Qing (1636–1912) dynasties of China were established and ruled by the Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in northern China.

The Manchus are the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the country's fourth-largest ethnic group. They inhabit 31 Chinese provincial regions. Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, and Beijing each have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population lives in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. Manchu autonomous counties in China include Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, and Beizhen, including over 300 Manchu towns and townships.

Etymology

"Manchu" (Manchu: ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ, romanized: manju, Chinese: 滿洲) was adopted as the official name of the people by Emperor Hong Taiji in 1635, replacing the earlier name "Jurchen". Allegedly, manju was an old term for the Jianzhou Jurchens, although the etymology is not well understood. The Chinese characters chosen to translate the Manchu name are 滿洲 which, like the character for "Qing" (清), include the water radical. Possibly this was done because the Ming dynasty's name (明), which means "bright", represents fire, and water extinguishes fire.

The Jiu Manzhou Dang, archives of early 17th-century documents, contains the earliest use of Manchu. According to the Qing dynasty's official historical record, the Researches on Manchu Origins, the ethnic name came from Mañjuśrī. The Qianlong Emperor supported that point of view and wrote poems on the subject.

The same interpretation was held by Qing dynasty scholar Meng Sen, who also suggested that the name might stem from Li Manzhu (李滿住), the chieftain of the Jianzhou Jurchens.

Scholar Chang Shan theorized that Manju is a compound word, formed from man, from the word mangga (ᠮᠠᠩᡤᠠ), meaning "strong", and ju (ᠵᡠ), meaning "arrow". In this interpretation, Manju means "intrepid arrow".

Other hypotheses include Fu Sinian's "etymology of Jianzhou"; Zhang Binglin's "etymology of Manshi"; Ichimura Sanjiro's "etymology of Wuji and Mohe"; Sun Wenliang's "etymology of Manzhe"; "etymology of mangu(n) river" and so on.

An extensive etymological study from 2022 lends additional support to the view that manju is cognate with words referring to the lower Amur river in other Tungusic languages and can be reconstructed to Proto-Tungusic *mamgo 'lower Amur, large river'.

History

Early history

Main article: Jurchen people

Origin

Aguda, Emperor Taizu of Jurchen Jin

The Manchus are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty in China. However, this is disputed by historians. The Jianzhou Jurchen originated in part from the Huligai, who were classified by the Liao dynasty as a separate ethnicity from the Jurchen people who founded the Jin dynasty. The same was true during the Yuan dynasty.

The Huligai lived near the lower reaches of the Songhua River and Mudanjiang. Later, they moved west and became a major component of the Jianzhou Jurchens, led by Möngke Temür, during the Ming dynasty; the Jianzhou Jurchens later became the Manchus. According to the records of Ming Dynasty officials, the Jianzhou Jurchens were descended from Mohe people who established the Balhae Kingdom. The name Mohe might refer to an ancestral Manchu population. The Mohe practiced pig husbandry and were mainly sedentary. They used pig and dog skins for coats. They were predominantly farmers and grew soybeans, wheat, millet, and rice, in addition to hunting.

In the 10th century AD, the term Jurchen first appeared in late Tang dynasty documents, referring to the state of Balhae in present-day northeastern China. The Jurchens were sedentary, settled farmers with advanced agriculture. They farmed grain and millet as their cereal crops, grew flax, and raised oxen, pigs, sheep, and horses. These farmers lived differently from the pastoral nomadism of the Mongols and the Khitans on the steppes.

In April 1019, Jurchen pirates raided Japan to kidnap and enslave Northern Kyushu residents. They killed a total of 374 Japanese, including governor Fujiwara Noritada, slaughtered 380 Japanese-owned livestock, and abducted 1,280 Japanese. Goryeo forces later captured eight ships, allowing for the return of a number of captives (variously reported as either 259 or 270). The woman Uchikura no Ishime's report was copied. Jurchen raids on Japan in the 1019 Toi invasion, the Mongol invasions of Japan, and Japanese views of the Jurchens as "Tatar" "barbarians" (adopting China's barbarian-civilized binary), may have played a role in Japan's hostility to Manchus in later centuries. For example, Tokugawa Ieyasu viewed the unification of Manchu tribes as a threat to Japan. The Japanese mistakenly thought that Hokkaido (Ezochi) had a land bridge to Tartary (Orankai), where the Manchus lived, and that the Manchus could invade Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate bakufu sent a message to Korea via Tsushima, offering to help Korea against the 1627 Manchu invasion, but the offer was declined.

Liao dynasty

Following the fall of Balhae, the Jurchens became vassals of the Liao dynasty, which was founded by Para-Mongolic Khitans. The Liao dynasty became the first state to control all of Manchuria.. The Yalu River Jurchens became tributaries of Goryeo during the reign of Wang Geon, who called upon them during the wars of the Later Three Kingdoms period. The Jurchens switched allegiance between Liao and Goryeo multiple times. Posing a potential threat to Goryeo's border security, the Jurchens offered tribute to the Goryeo court, expecting gifts in return. Before the Jurchens overthrew the Khitan, married Jurchen women and Jurchen girls were raped by Liao Khitan envoys as a custom which caused resentment. The Jurchens and their Manchu descendants had Khitan linguistic and grammatical elements in their personal names, such as suffixes. Many Khitan names had a "ju" suffix. In the year 1114, Wanyan Aguda united the Jurchen tribes and established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234). His brother and successor, Wanyan Wuqimai defeated the Liao. After the fall of the Liao, the Jurchens went to war with the Northern Song dynasty, and captured most of northern China in the Jin–Song wars. During the Jin dynasty in the 1120s, the first Jurchen script came into use. It was mainly derived from Khitan script.

Yuan dynasty

In 1206, the Mongols, then vassals of the Jurchens, revolted. Their resistance was led by Genghis Khan. The Jurchens were ultimately defeated by Ögedei Khan in 1234. Jurchen Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji's daughter Jurchen Princess Qiguo married Genghis Khan in exchange for relieving the Mongol siege upon Zhongdu (Beijing) in the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty. The Mongols then founded the Yuan dynasty. The Yuan grouped people into different categories based on how recently their state surrendered to the Yuan. Subjects of the southern Song were classified as southerners (nan ren) and also referred to as manzi. Subjects of the Jin dynasty, Western Xia, and the kingdom of Dali in Yunnan, southern China, were categorized as northerners, using the term Han. However, the use of the Han as the name of a class category by the Yuan dynasty was a different concept from Han ethnicity. To control the population of Manchuria, the Yuan Empire appointed its supporters from among the Koreans, Khitans, and Mongols as leaders of the Jurchens.

Ethnic Han people were divided into two classes in the Yuan, Han Ren and Nan Ren. Additionally, the Yuan directive to treat Jurchens the same as Mongols referred to Jurchens and Khitans in the northwest (not the Jurchen homeland in the northeast), presumably in the lands of Qara Khitai, where many Khitans lived. However, it remains a mystery how the Jurchens lived there. Many Jurchens adopted Mongolian customs, names, and the Mongolian language. As time went on, fewer and fewer Jurchens could recognize their own script. The Jurchen Yehe Nara clan is of paternal Mongol origin.

Many Jurchen families descended from the original Jin Jurchen migrants in Han areas, such as those using the surnames Wang and Nian 粘 reclaimed their ethnicity and registered as Manchus. Wanyan (完顏) clan members who changed their surnames to Wang (王) after the Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty applied successfully to the national government for their ethnic group to be marked as Manchu despite never having been part of the Eight Banner system during the Qing dynasty. The surname Nianhan (粘罕), shortened to Nian (粘), is a surname of Jurchen origin, also originating from one of the members of the royal Wanyan clan. It is an extremely rare surname in China, and members of the Nian clan live in Nan'an, Quanzhou, Jinjiang, Shishi, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Zhangpu, and Sanming, Fujian, as well as in Laiyang, Shandong and in Xingtai, Hebei. Some of the Nian from Quanzhou immigrated to Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. In Taiwan, they are concentrated in Changhua county. There are fewer than 30,000 members of the Nian clan worldwide, with 9,916 in Taiwan and 3,040 of those in Fuxing township of Changhua county.

Ming dynasty

Further information: Manchuria under Ming rule

建州毛憐則渤海大氏遺孽，樂住種，善緝紡，飲食服用，皆如華人，自長白山迤南，可拊而治也。 "The (people of) Chien-chou and Mao-lin [YLSL always reads Mao-lien] are the descendants of the family Ta of Po-hai. They love to be sedentary and sew, and they are skilled in spinning and weaving. As for food, clothing, and utensils, they are the same as those used by the Chinese. Those living south of the Ch'ang-pai mountain are apt to be soothed and governed."

— 魏焕《皇明九邊考》卷二《遼東鎮邊夷考》 Translation from Sino-Jürčed relations during the Yung-Lo period, 1403–1424 by Henry Serruys

The Ming dynasty replaced the Yuan dynasty in 1368. In 1387, Ming forces defeated the Mongol commander Naghachu's resisting forces who settled in the Haixi area and summoned the Jurchen tribes to pay tribute. At the time, Jurchen clans such as Odoli and Huligai were vassals to the Joseon dynasty of Korea. Their elites served in the Korean royal bodyguard.

The Joseon Koreans addressed the military threat posed by the Jurchen through forceful means, incentives, and military attacks. At the same time, they tried to appease them with titles and degrees, traded with them, and sought to acculturate them by having Jurchens integrate into Korean culture. The Ming government eventually ended this relationship due to their wishes for the Jurchens to defend the border. In 1403, Ahacu, chieftain of Huligai, paid tribute to the Yongle Emperor. Soon after, Möngke Temür,, chieftain of the Odoli clan of the Jianzhou Jurchens, stopped paying tribute to Korea, instead becoming a tributary to China.

Yi Seong-gye, the Taejo of Joseon, asked the Ming Empire to send Möngke Temür back, but was refused. The Yongle Emperor was determined to move the Jurchens from Korean to Chinese influence. Korea unsuccessfully tried to persuade Möngke Temür to reject the Ming overtures, and he submitted to the Ming Empire. More and more Jurchen tribes began to offer tribute to the Ming Empire. The Ming divided them into 384 guards, and the Jurchen became vassals to the Ming Empire. During the Ming dynasty, the name for the Jurchen land was Nurgan. The Jurchens became part of the Ming dynasty's Nurgan Regional Military Commission under the Yongle Emperor, with Ming forces erecting the Yongning Temple Stele in 1413, at the headquarters of Nurgan. The stele was inscribed in Chinese, Jurchen, Mongolian, and Tibetan.

In 1449, Mongol Taishi Esen attacked the Ming Empire and captured the Zhengtong Emperor in Tumu. Some Jurchen guards in Jianzhou and Haixi cooperated with Esen, but more were attacked in the Mongol invasion. Many Jurchen chieftains lost their hereditary certificates granted by the Ming government. They were forced to present tribute as secretariats (中書舍人), receiving less reward from the Ming court than they did when they were heads of guards. This was an unpopular development. Subsequently, more and more Jurchens recognised the Ming Empire's declining power due to Esen's invasion. The Zhengtong Emperor's capture led to loosening control over the Jurchen guards. Tribal leaders, such as Cungšan and Wang Gao, plundered Ming territory. At about this time, the Jurchen script was officially abandoned. More Jurchens adopted Mongolian as their writing language and fewer used Chinese. The final recorded Jurchen writing dates to 1526.

Lifestyle

The Manchus are sometimes mistakenly classified as nomadic people. On the contrary, Manchu society was agricultural, involving crop farming and animal husbandry. Manchus practiced slash-and-burn agriculture in the areas north of Shenyang. The Haixi Jurchens were semi-agricultural, the Jianzhou Jurchens and Maolian (毛憐) Jurchens were sedentary, while hunting and fishing was the way of life of the "Wild Jurchens". Han Chinese society resembled that of the sedentary farmers Jianzhou and Maolian. Hunting, archery on horseback, horsemanship, livestock raising, and agriculture were all part of Jianzhou Jurchens culture. Although Manchus practiced equestrianism and archery on horseback, their immediate progenitors practiced sedentary agriculture. Manchus also partook in hunting. They lived in villages, forts, and walled towns.

Only the Mongols and the northern Wild Jurchen were semi-nomadic. The rest gathered ginseng root, pine nuts, hunted for game pelts in the uplands and forests, raised horses in stables, and farmed millet and wheat in their fallow fields. They engaged in dances, wrestling, and drinking strong liquor.

These Jurchens, who lived in the northeast's harsh cold climate, sometimes half-sunk their houses in the ground, which they constructed of brick or timber. They surrounded their fortified villages with stone foundations on which they built wattle-and-mud wall fortifications. Village clusters were ruled by beile, hereditary leaders. They fought each other and dispensed weapons, wives, enslaved people, and lands to their followers.

Jurchens like Nurhaci spoke both their native Tungusic language and Chinese, adopting the Mongol script for their own language, unlike the Jin Jurchens, who used a Khitan-derived script. They adopted Confucian values and shamanic traditions.

Unlike their Mohe ancestors, the Jurchens began to respect dogs around the time of the Ming dynasty, and passed this tradition on to the Manchus. It was prohibited in Jurchen culture to use dog skin, and forbidden for Jurchens to harm, kill, or eat dogs.

For political reasons, the Jurchen leader Nurhaci chose to emphasize either differences or similarities in lifestyles with other peoples, such as the Mongols. Nurhaci said to the Mongols that "the languages of the Chinese and Koreans are different, but their clothing and way of life is the same. It is the same with us Manchus (Jušen) and Mongols. Our languages are different, but our clothing and way of life is the same." Later, Nurhaci indicated that the bond with the Mongols was not based on shared culture. It was for pragmatic reasons of "mutual opportunism," since Nurhaci said to the Mongols: "You Mongols raise livestock, eat meat, and wear pelts. My people till the fields and live on grain. We two are not one country and we have different languages." Nurhaci, a chieftain of the Jianzhou Left Guard who officially considered himself a local representative of imperial power of the Ming dynasty, made efforts to unify the Jurchen tribes and established a military system called the "Eight Banners", which organized Jurchen soldiers into groups of "Bannermen", and ordered his scholar Erdeni and minister Gagai to create a new Jurchen script (later known as Manchu script) using the traditional Mongolian alphabet as a reference.

Manchu rule over China

Further information: Eight Banners, Transition from Ming to Qing, Manchuria under Qing rule, and Ethnic identity in the Eight Banners

An imperial portrait of Nurhaci

When Nurhaci reorganized the Jurchens into the Eight Banners, many Manchu clans were artificially created from unrelated people, who founded a new Manchu clan (mukun) using a geographic origin name, such as a toponym, as their hala (clan name). The irregularities over Jurchen and Manchu clan origin led the Qing to try to systematize the creation of historical documents for Manchu clans, including manufacturing a legend around the origin of the Aisin-Gioro clan using mythology from the northeast.

In 1603, Nurhaci gained recognition as the Sure Kundulen Khan (Manchu: ᠰᡠᡵᡝ
ᡴᡠᠨᡩᡠᠯᡝᠨ
ᡥᠠᠨ, Möllendorff: sure kundulen han, Abkai: sure kundulen han, "wise and respected khan") from his Khalkha Mongol allies; then, in 1616, he enthroned himself and issued a proclamation naming himself Genggiyen Khan (Manchu: ᡤᡝᠩᡤᡳᠶᡝᠨ
ᡥᠠᠨ, Möllendorff: genggiyen han, Abkai: genggiyen han, "bright khan") of the Later Jin dynasty (Manchu: ᠠᡳᠰᡳᠨ
ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ, Möllendorff: aisin gurun, Abkai: aisin gurun, 後金). Nurhaci then renounced the Ming overlordship with the Seven Grievances and launched his attack on the Ming dynasty and moved the capital to Mukden after his conquest of Liaodong. In 1635, his son and successor Hong Taiji changed the name of the Jurchen ethnic group (Manchu: ᠵᡠᡧᡝᠨ, Möllendorff: jušen, Abkai: juxen) to the Manchu. A year later, Hong Taiji proclaimed himself the emperor of the Qing dynasty (Manchu: ᡩᠠᡳᠴᡳᠩ
ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ, Möllendorff: daicing gurun, Abkai: daiqing gurun). Factors for the name change from Jurchen to Manchu include the fact that the term "Jurchen" had negative connotations since the Jurchens had been in a servile position vis a vis the Ming dynasty for hundreds of years, and it also referred to people of the "dependent class". The change was made to hide the fact that the ancestors of the Manchus, the Jianzhou Jurchens, had been ruled by the Chinese. The Qing dynasty carefully hid the two original editions of the books of "Qing Taizu Wu Huangdi Shilu" and the "Manzhou Shilu Tu" (Taizu Shilu Tu) in the Qing palace, forbidden from public view because they showed that the Ming dynasty had ruled the Manchu Aisin-Gioro family. In the Ming period, the Koreans of Joseon referred to the Jurchen inhabited lands north of the Korean peninsula, above the rivers Yalu and Tumen to be part of Ming China, as the "superior country" (sangguk) that they called Ming China. The Qing deliberately excluded references and information that showed the Jurchens (Manchus) as subservient to the Ming dynasty, from the History of Ming to hide their former subservient relationship to the Ming. Because of this, the Ming Veritable Records were not used as a source for content on the Jurchens during Ming rule in the History of Ming.

Hong Taiji created an effective political system for that time based on Han Chinese management methods, which lasted until the fall of the Qing Empire in the 20th century. In this sense, Hong Taiji is considered by historians as the true first emperor for the Qing dynasty. In 1636, Hong Taiji invaded Joseon Korea, as the latter did not accept that Hong Taiji had become emperor and refused to assist in operations against the Ming Dynasty, which still ruled much of China. When the Joseon dynasty surrendered in 1637, Hong Taiji succeeded in making them cut off relations with the Ming dynasty and force them to submit as a tributary state to the Qing dynasty. Also during this period, Hong Taiji took over Inner Mongolia, which had up until that point protected the northern border with China, in three wars, each of them victorious. From 1636 until 1644, he sent four major expeditions into the Amur region. In 1640 he completed the conquest of the Evenks, when he defeated and captured their leader Bombogor. By 1644, the entire region was under his control.

In 1644, the Ming capital, Beijing, was sacked by a peasant revolt led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt, who then proclaimed the establishment of the Shun dynasty. The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor, died by suicide by hanging himself when the city fell. When Li Zicheng moved against Ming general Wu Sangui, the latter allied with the Manchus and opened the Shanhai Pass to the Manchu army. After the Manchus defeated Li Zicheng, they established their capital in Beijing (Manchu: ᠪᡝᡤᡳᠩ, Möllendorff: beging, Abkai: beging) in the same year.

The Qing government distinguished between Han Bannermen and ordinary Han civilians. Han Bannermen were Han Chinese who defected to the Qing Empire before 1644 and joined the Eight Banners, thereby gaining social and legal privileges and acculturating to Manchu culture. So many Han defected to the Qing Empire that the ranks of the Eight Banners swelled, and ethnic Manchus became a minority within the Banners, making up only 16% in 1648, with Han Bannermen dominating at 75% and Mongol Bannermen making up the rest. It was this multi-ethnic, majority Han force in which Manchus were a minority that conquered China for the Qing Empire.

In 1632, to balance the massive number of Han women who entered the Manchu court, as well as to promote harmony between the two groups, Prince Yoto and Hong Taiji organized a mass marriage of Han Chinese officers and officials to Manchu women. To further promote ethnic harmony, a 1648 decree from the Shunzhi Emperor allowed Han Chinese civilian men to marry Manchu women from the Banners with the permission of the Board of Revenue (if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners) or the permission of their banner company captain (if they were unregistered commoners). Later in the dynasty these policies allowing intermarriage were done away with.

The Qing Empire ca. 1820

As a result of their conquest of Ming China, almost all the Manchus followed the prince regent Dorgon and the Shunzhi Emperor to Beijing and settled there. A few were sent to other places such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet to serve as garrison troops. 1,524 bannermen were in Manchuria at the time of the initial Manchu conquest. After a series of border conflicts with the Russians, the Qing emperors began to relocate Manchus to Manchuria, realizing its strategic importance. Throughout the Qing dynasty, Beijing was the center of the political, economic, and cultural spheres. As the Yongzheng Emperor noted, "Garrisons are the places of stationed works, Beijing is their homeland."

While the Manchu ruling elite increasingly adopted Han culture, the Qing imperial government recognized the importance of Manchu communities in Manchuria: both for the preservation of traditional Manchu values and for the stockpiling of military power to support the regime. The Qing emperors tried to protect the traditional way of life of the Manchus (as well as other tribal peoples) in central and northern Manchuria through a variety of means. Mainly, they restricted the migration of Han settlers to the region. This had to be balanced with practical needs, such as maintaining the defense of northern China against the Russians and the Mongols, supplying government farms with a skilled work force, and conducting trades—all of which still resulted in a continuous trickle of Han convicts, workers, and merchants to the northeast.

Han Chinese transfrontiersmen and other non-Jurchen origin people who joined the Later Jin early were put into the Manchu Banners instead of the Han Banners. They were known as baisin in Manchu. An example was the Tokoro Manchu clan in the Manchu banners, which claimed to be descended from a Han Chinese with the surname of Tao who had moved north from Zhejiang to Liaodong and joined the Jurchens before the Qing in the Ming Wanli emperor's era. The Han Chinese Banner Tong 佟 clan of Fushun in Liaoning falsely claimed to be related to the Jurchen Manchu Tunggiya 佟佳 clan of Jilin, attempting to get transferred to a Manchu banner in the reign of the Kangxi Emperor.

Select groups of Han Chinese bannermen were mass transferred into Manchu Banners by the Qing, changing their recorded ethnicity from Han Chinese to Manchu. Han Chinese bannermen of Tai Nikan (台尼堪, watchpost Chinese) and Fusi Nikan (撫順尼堪, Fushun Chinese) backgrounds transferred into the Manchu banners in 1740 by order of the Qianlong Emperor. Between 1618 and 1629, the Han Chinese from Liaodong who later became the Fushun Nikan and Tai Nikan defected to the Manchus. These clans continued to use their Han surnames and were marked as of Han origin on Qing lists of Manchu clans. The Fushun Nikan became Manjurified and the originally Han banner families of Wang Shixuan, Cai Yurong, Zu Dashou, Li Yongfang, Shi Tingzhu and Shang Kexi intermarried extensively with Manchu families.

A Manchu Bannerman in Guangzhou called Hequan illegally adopted a Han Chinese named Zhao Tinglu, the son of former Han bannerman Zhao Quan, and named him Quanheng so that he could benefit from his adopted son receiving a salary as a Banner soldier.

Commoner Manchu bannermen who were not nobility were called irgen, which meant common, in contrast to the Manchu nobility of the Eight Great Houses who held noble titles.

Manchu bannermen of the capital garrison in Beijing were said to be the worst militarily, unable to draw bows, unable to ride horses, and fight properly, and abandoning their Manchu culture.

Manchu bannermen from the Xi'an banner garrison were praised for maintaining Manchu culture by Kangxi in 1703. Xi'an garrison Manchus were said to retain Manchu culture far better than other Manchus at martial skills in the provincial garrisons, and they were able to draw their bows properly and perform cavalry archery, unlike Beijing Manchus. The Qianlong emperor received a memorial saying Xi'an Manchu bannermen still had martial skills, although not up to those in the past, in a 1737 memorial from Cimbu. By the 1780s, the military skills of Xi'an Manchu bannermen had dropped although they were regarded as the most militarily skilled provincial Manchu banner garrison. Manchu women from the Xi'an garrison often left the walled Manchu garrison. They went to hot springs outside the city and gained a bad reputation for their sexual behavior. A Manchu from Beijing, Sumurji, was shocked and disgusted by this after he was appointed Lieutenant General of the Manchu garrison of Xi'an and informed the Yongzheng Emperor. Han civilians and Manchu bannermen in Xi'an had bad relations, with the bannermen trying to steal at the markets. Manchu Lieutenant General Cimbru reported this to the Yongzheng Emperor in 1729. Governor Yue Rui of Shandong was then ordered by the Yongzheng to report any bannerman misbehavior and warned him not to cover it up in 1730 after Manchu bannermen were put in a quarter in Qingzhou. Manchu bannermen from the garrisons in Xi'an and Jingzhou fought in Xinjiang in the 1770s. Manchus from the Xi'an garrison fought in other campaigns against the Dzungars and Uyghurs throughout the 1690s and 18th century. In the 1720s, Jingzhou, Hangzhou, and Nanjing Manchu banner garrisons fought in Tibet.

For over 200 years, Han civilians and Manchu bannermen in Xi'an lived next to each other, but did not intermarry. Sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross wrote of his visit to Xi'an just before the Xinhai revolution:

In Sianfu the Tartar quarter is a dismal picture of crumbling walls, decay, indolence and squalor. On the big drill grounds you see the runways along which the horseman gallops and shoots arrows at a target while the Tartar military mandarins look on. These lazy bannermen were tried in the new army but proved flabby and good-for-nothing; they would break down on an ordinary twenty-mile march. Battening on their hereditary pensions they have given themselves up to sloth and vice, and their poor chest development, small weak muscles, and diminishing families foreshadow the early dying out of the stock. Where is there a better illustration of the truth that parasitism leads to degeneration!

— Edward Alsworth Ross

Ross spoke highly of the Han and Hui population of Xi'an, Shaanxi and Gansu, saying: "After a fortnight of mule litter we sight ancient yellow Sianfu, "the Western capital," with its third of a million souls. Within the fortified triple gate the facial mold abruptly changes and the refined intellectual type appears. Here and there faces of a Hellenic purity of feature are seen and beautiful children are not uncommon. These Chinese cities make one realize how the cream of the population gathers in the urban centers. Everywhere town opportunities have been a magnet for the élite of the open country."

The Qing dynasty altered its law on intermarriage between Han civilians and Manchu bannermen several times. Initially, the Qing allowed Han civilians to marry Manchu women. Then the Qing banned civilians from marrying women from the Eight Banners. In 1865, the Qing allowed Han civilian men to marry Manchu bannerwomen in all garrisons except the capital garrison of Beijing. No formal law limited marriage between people of different banners, but it was informally regulated by social status and custom. In northeastern China, including Heilongjiang and Liaoning, it was more common for Manchu women to marry Han men, since they were not subject to the same laws and institutional oversight as Manchus and Han elsewhere, including Beijing.

In the 1850s, large numbers of Manchu bannermen were sent to central China to fight the Taiping rebels. (For example, just the Heilongjiang province – which at the time included only the northern part of today's Heilongjiang – contributed 67,730 bannermen to the campaign, of whom only 10–20% survived). Those few who returned were demoralized and often ended up in opium addiction. In 1860, in the aftermath of the loss of Outer Manchuria, and with the imperial and provincial governments in deep financial trouble, parts of Manchuria became officially open to Chinese settlement; within a few decades, the Manchus became a minority in most Manchuria districts.

Modern times

Prince Zaitao dresses in modern reformed uniform of late Qing dynasty

Manchu woman, 1896

The majority of people living in inner Beijing during the Qing were Manchus and Mongol bannermen from the Eight Banners after they were moved there in 1644, since Han Chinese were expelled and not allowed to re-enter the inner part of the city. Only after the "Hundred Days' Reform", during the reign of the Guangxu Emperor, were Han allowed to enter inner Beijing.

Many Manchu Bannermen in Beijing supported the Boxers in the Boxer Rebellion and shared their anti-foreign sentiment. The Manchu Bannermen were devastated by the fighting during the First Sino-Japanese War. They conducted much of the fighting in the Boxer Rebellion, sustaining massive casualties followed by hardship. German Minister Clemens von Ketteler was assassinated by a Manchu. Thousands of Manchus fled south from Aigun during the Boxer Rebellion, their cattle and horses stolen by Russian Cossacks who razed their villages and homes. The Manchu clan system in Aigun was obliterated by the invaders.

By the 19th century, most Manchus in the city garrison spoke only Mandarin, and not Manchu, which distinguished them from their Han neighbors in southern China, who spoke other dialects. The Manchus' use of Beijing dialects made it relatively easy to recognize them. The Manchu Bannermen spoke northern Standard Chinese, instead of the local dialect. Manchus in the garrisons at Jingzhou and Guangzhou spoke Beijing Mandarin even though Cantonese was Guangzhou's common language. Their Beijing dialect distinguished bannermen at the Xi'an garrison from locals who spoke the Xi'an dialect. Bannermen took jobs as teachers, writing textbooks for learning Mandarin and instructing people in Mandarin. In Guangdong, Manchu Mandarin teacher Sun Yizun advised that the Yinyun Chanwei and Kangxi Zidian, dictionaries issued by the Qing government, were the correct guides to Mandarin pronunciation, rather than the pronunciation of the Beijing and Nanjing dialects.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intermarriage between Manchus and Han bannermen in the northeast increased as Manchu families were more willing to marry their daughters to sons from well off Han families to trade their ethnic status for financial status. Most intermarriage consisted of Han Bannermen marrying Manchus in areas like Aihun.

As the end of the Qing dynasty approached, Manchus were portrayed as outside colonizers by Chinese nationalists such as Sun Yat-sen, even though many reform-minded Manchu officials and military officers supported the Republican revolution he brought about. This portrayal dissipated somewhat after the 1911 revolution as the new Republic of China now sought to include Manchus within its national identity. However, the revolution still saw many massacres committed by revolutionaries against the Manchus, most notably in Jiading, Xi'an, and Yangzhou, resulting in at least 12,000 known deaths in these three cities alone. The revolution drastically sped up the political/economic decline of the Manchu population. To blend in, some Manchus switched to speaking the local dialect instead of Standard Chinese.

First flag used by Republican China. The yellow stripe symbolizes Manchus.

By the early years of the Republic of China, very few areas of China still had traditional Manchu populations. Among the few regions hosting such relatively traditional communities, and where the Manchu language was still widely spoken, were the Aigun (Manchu: ᠠᡳᡥᡡᠨ, Möllendorff: aihūn, Abkai: aihvn) District and the Qiqihar (Manchu: ᠴᡳᠴᡳᡤᠠᡵ, Möllendorff: cicigar, Abkai: qiqigar) District of Heilongjiang Province.

Fengtian clique soldiers in the 1920s

Until 1924, the Chinese government continued to pay stipends to Manchu bannermen, but many cut ties with their banners and adopted Han-style names to avoid persecution. The official total of Manchus fell by more than half during this period, as they obscured their ethnicity when asked. Exceptionally, in warlord Zhang Zuolin's reign in Manchuria, much better treatment was reported, with no particular persecution of Manchus. Qing emperor mausoleums were still allowed to be managed by Manchu guardsmen, as in the past. Many Manchus joined the Fengtian clique, such as Xi Qia, a member of the Qing dynasty's imperial clan.

Manchukuo

As a follow-up to the Mukden Incident, Manchukuo, a puppet state in Manchuria, was created by the Empire of Japan in 1932, which the deposed Last Emperor Puyi nominally ruled. Although the nation's name implied a Manchu affiliation, it was actually a new country incorporating all the ethnicities in Manchuria. It had a majority Han population and was opposed by many Manchus as well as people of other ethnicities who fought against Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Japanese Ueda Kyōsuke labeled all 30 million residents in Manchuria "Manchus", including Han Chinese. The Japanese-authored "Great Manchukuo" built upon Ueda's claim that all 30 million "Manchus" in Manchukuo had the right to independence, thereby justifying Manchukuo's secession from China. In 1942, the Japanese-authored Ten Year History of the Construction of Manchukuo emphasized the right of ethnic Japanese to the land of Manchukuo while attempting to delegitimize the Manchus' claim to Manchukuo as their native land, noting that most Manchus moved out during the Qing dynasty and returned only later.

People's Republic of China

In 1952, after the failure of both Manchukuo and the Nationalist government (KMT), the newborn People's Republic of China officially recognized the Manchu as one of the ethnic minorities as Mao Zedong had criticized the Han chauvinism that dominated the KMT. In the 1953 census, 2.5 million people identified themselves as Manchu. The Communist government also attempted to improve the treatment of Manchu people; some Manchu people who had hidden their ancestry during the period of KMT rule became willing to reveal it, such as the writer Lao She, who began to include Manchu characters in his fictional works in the 1950s. Between 1982 and 1990, the official count of Manchu people more than doubled from 4,299,159 to 9,821,180, making them China's fastest-growing ethnic minority, but this growth was due to people formerly registered as Han applying for official recognition as Manchu. Since the 1980s, thirteen Manchu autonomous counties have been created in Liaoning, Jilin, Hebei, and Heilongjiang.

The Eight Banners system is one of the most important ethnic identity of today's Manchu people. Manchus became more like an ethnic coalition which contains the descendants of Manchu bannermen and a large number of Manchu-assimilated Chinese and Mongol bannermen. However, Solon and Sibe Bannermen, who were considered as part of Eight Banner system under the Qing dynasty, were registered as independent ethnic groups by the PRC government as Daur, Evenk, Nanai, Oroqen, and Sibe.

Since the 1980s, after the Cultural Revolution, Manchu culture and language experienced a renaissance, including among Han Chinese. Manchu culture and language preservation is promoted by the Chinese Communist Party, and Manchus again became one of China's most socioeconomically advanced minorities. Manchus generally face little to no discrimination in their daily lives, except among Han nationalist conspiracy theorists, whom claim that Manchu elites occupy the CCP and, therefore, Manchus receive better treatment under the People's Republic of China.

Manchus were subjected to the same one-child policy and rules as the Han people. All Manchus, Koreans, Russians, Hui, and Mongols living in Inner Mongolia were subjected to restrictions on two children.

Population

Mainland China

Most Manchu people now live in Mainland China, with a population of 10,423,303, which is 8.19% of the ethnic minority population and 0.74% of China's total population. However, the modern population of Manchus has been artificially inflated very much, because Han Chinese of the Eight Banner System, including booi bondservants, are allowed to register as Manchu in modern China. Among the provincial regions, there are two provinces, Liaoning and Hebei, which have over 1,000,000 Manchu residents. Liaoning has 5,336,895 Manchu residents, which is 51.26% of the Manchu population and 12.20% provincial population; Hebei has 2,118,711 Manchu residents, which is 20.35% of the Manchu population and 70.80% of the provincial ethnic minorities. Manchus are the largest ethnic minority in Liaoning, Hebei, Heilongjiang, and Beijing; 2nd largest in Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Tianjin, Ningxia, Shaanxi, and Shanxi and 3rd largest in Henan, Shandong, and Anhui.

Distribution

Rank	Region	Total Population	Manchu	Percentage in Manchu Population	Percentage in the Population of Ethnic Minorities (%)	Regional Percentage of Population	Regional Rank of Ethnic Population
	Total	1,335,110,869	10,410,585	100	9.28	0.77
	Total (in all 31 provincial regions)	1,332,810,869	10,387,958	99.83	9.28	0.78
G1	Northeast	109,513,129	6,951,280	66.77	68.13	6.35
G2	North	164,823,663	3,002,873	28.84	32.38	1.82
G3	East	392,862,229	122,861	1.18	3.11	0.03
G4	South Central	375,984,133	120,424	1.16	0.39	0.03
G5	Northwest	96,646,530	82,135	0.79	0.40	0.08
G6	Southwest	192,981,185	57,785	0.56	0.15	0.03
1	Liaoning	43,746,323	5,336,895	51.26	80.34	12.20	2nd
2	Hebei	71,854,210	2,118,711	20.35	70.80	2.95	2nd
3	Jilin	27,452,815	866,365	8.32	39.64	3.16	3rd
4	Heilongjiang	38,313,991	748,020	7.19	54.41	1.95	2nd
5	Inner Mongolia	24,706,291	452,765	4.35	8.96	2.14	3rd
6	Beijing	19,612,368	336,032	3.23	41.94	1.71	2nd
7	Tianjin	12,938,693	83,624	0.80	25.23	0.65	3rd
8	Henan	94,029,939	55,493	0.53	4.95	0.06	4th
9	Shandong	95,792,719	46,521	0.45	6.41	0.05	4th
10	Guangdong	104,320,459	29,557	0.28	1.43	0.03	9th
11	Shanghai	23,019,196	25,165	0.24	9.11	0.11	5th
12	Ningxia	6,301,350	24,902	0.24	1.12	0.40	3rd
13	Guizhou	34,748,556	23,086	0.22	0.19	0.07	18th
14	Xinjiang	21,815,815	18,707	0.18	0.14	0.09	10th
15	Jiangsu	78,660,941	18,074	0.17	4.70	0.02	7th
16	Shaanxi	37,327,379	16,291	0.16	8.59	0.04	3rd
17	Sichuan	80,417,528	15,920	0.15	0.32	0.02	10th
18	Gansu	25,575,263	14,206	0.14	0.59	0.06	7th
19	Yunnan	45,966,766	13,490	0.13	0.09	0.03	24th
20	Hubei	57,237,727	12,899	0.12	0.52	0.02	6th
21	Shanxi	25,712,101	11,741	0.11	12.54	0.05	3rd
22	Zhejiang	54,426,891	11,271	0.11	0.93	0.02	13th
23	Guangxi	46,023,761	11,159	0.11	0.07	0.02	12th
24	Anhui	59,500,468	8,516	0.08	2.15	0.01	4th
25	Fujian	36,894,217	8,372	0.08	1.05	0.02	10th
26	Qinghai	5,626,723	8,029	0.08	0.30	0.14	7th
27	Hunan	65,700,762	7,566	0.07	0.12	0.01	9th
28	Jiangxi	44,567,797	4,942	0.05	2.95	0.01	6th
29	Chongqing	28,846,170	4,571	0.04	0.24	0.02	7th
30	Hainan	8,671,485	3,750	0.04	0.26	0.04	8th
31	Tibet	3,002,165	718	<0.01	0.03	0.02	11th
	Active Servicemen	2,300,000	22,627	0.24	23.46	1.05	2nd

Manchu autonomous regions

Manchu Autonomous County	Province	City
Qinglong Manchu Autonomous County	Hebei	Qinhuangdao
Fengning Manchu Autonomous County	Hebei	Chengde
Weichang Manchu and Mongol Autonomous County	Hebei	Chengde
Kuancheng Manchu Autonomous County	Hebei