Fletcher, Joseph. "Ch'ing Inner Asia c. 1800", In The Cambridge History of China, Vol.10, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part 1, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Fletcher, Joseph. "Ch'ing Inner Asia c. 1800", In The Cambridge History of China, Vol.10, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part 1, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

• There were three major changes that occurred in China in the 1700s: the establishment of a permanent European presence in the country, the doubling of China's territory, and the doubling the Han Chinese population (35).
• The long-range effects of the expansion of Chinese rule in Inner Asia has been the expansion of Han Chinese culture and influence in those region, this, however, was not the intent of the Qing dynasty. In fact, the Qing actively resisted Han Chinese migration into Central Asia and became aware of the administrative benefits of Han colonization only at the end of the 19th Century (36).
• Regular Han Chinese soldiers were not stationed in Inner Asia, which was instead garrisoned by Manchu, Uighur, Kazakh, or Mongol bannermen (37).
• Qing Inner Asia consisted of four areas: Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Each area had a different administrative structure, often incorporating a significant number of elements from the indigenous administration and given significant autonomy (37).
• Qing relations with its semi-colonial territories in Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang, as well as tributary states in the Himalayas, but beyond direct Chinese rule, were directed by a Court of Colonial Affairs in Beijing. Its knowledge of these tributary states beyond Tibet was, however, hazy at best (37-38).
• Apparently failing to recognize the military might of the Russian Empire, the Qing continued to give northern Manchu tribes significant autonomy, eventually leading to a situation where they could be convinced to join the Russians, who continued expansion into Eastern Siberia (38).
• The Qing Empire had some sort of an established relationship with Kazakh and Kyrgyz polities in the Altai mountains, as well as the Khanate of Qo'qon, who paid tribute and was paid a stipend and gifts of tea to keep peace on the western borders of Xinjiang (38).
• "The Ch'ing superstructure rarely interfered in the affairs of ordinary men, but, by its presence, held indigenous hierarchies in their positions of power and preserved, even rigidified, local institutions [sic]" (105).
• Qing possessions in Inner Asia did not generate significant imperial revenues, in fact they often operated at a net cost to the government in Beijing, but they provided the Qing Empire with secure and defensible borders that largely prevented the rise of any rival powers that could invade China. This ultimately proved insufficient to face off against Japanese, Russian, and British expansion, but it did safeguard China from conventional threats (106).

Manchuria:

• By the 1800s, Manchuria has becoming increasingly integrated into China proper, losing much of its distinctive Manchu character in the face of Han Chinese immigration. The Manchurian frontier provinces of Heillongjiang and Jilin were officially closed to Han immigration, but throughout the 19th Century, the Qing government frequently lacked the resources or political will to enforce these policies (39).
• The Qing policies of preserving the nomadic and Manchu character of Jilin and Heilongjiang were based on hopes of preserving a loyalist area from which to draw bannermen, maintain imperial traditions, and where the Manchus could potentially flee, as well as maintaining the government monopoly on the ginseng root, furs, pears, and gold found in the region (39).
• Each of these reasons to preserve the Manchu character of the frontier provinces had significantly weakened by 1800, either by a consolidation of the Qing government among the Han population, or by changing regional dynamics due to the rise of Russian power in the Far East (40).
• Local authorities in the Manchurian frontier essentially gave up, beginning to tax Han migrants instead of stopping them. By the late 1800s, the overwhelming majority of the urban population in Manchuria was Han, and Chinese had largely replaced Manchu as the lingua franca South of the Amur River (40).
• Manchuria was divided into three provinces, with the southernmost province of Mukden — modern-day Liaoning —  both a civil and military administration, while the two northern provinces had solely military governments. The military governors had control over regional bannermen, as well as directorship over autonomous tribal polities (42).
• Whereas most Manchu and Mongol inhabitants of Manchuria could be incorporated into the banner system, whereby they paid military service and received lands for upkeep, inhabitants North of the Amur River or those near the ocean were instead left autonomous and were connected to the Empire only through payment of tributes of furs and by receiving honors and titles from the Qing court (42-43).
• Most bannermen were Manchurian Manchus or Mongols, but the military elite were almost exclusively Manchus from Beijing and had received a Chinese education. There were some unsuccessful attempts to revitalize Manchu-language high culture, but the language increasingly became a formality in government (44).
• Most Chinese settlers in Manchuria were farmers, and they concentrated in the South, although urban centers began to develop by the 1800s and powerful merchants moved into the province during this period. Manchuria had sort of a frontier culture, with gambling common, laws lax, and sexual mores much looser that the rest of China (44-45).
• There was a significant underclass in Manchuria of exiled criminals. Disgraced officials were sent to Manchuria, but so were convicted felons, who were enslaved to the banners in Manchuria, with more severe crimes being sent further North. The bannermen were often too poor to care for their slaves, however, leading to slaves buying their freedom and becoming outlaws and prospectors on the frontier (46-47).
• This became a serious problem for the Qing government, which had to ban the manumission of slaves in 1810 and the exile of slaves to Manchuria in 1813. They later transferred slaves from bannermen to administrative officials, who were better equipped to control slaves (46).
• By the 1800s, even the two outer provinces were becoming inescapably sinicized, with the lands of banners being purchased by Chinese immigrants and immigrant merchants becoming more and more powerful. Manchus and other nomadic peoples recognized the superiority of Chinese industrial and agricultural techniques and became integrated into the Chinese economic sphere, later adopting Han Chinese customs and tastes (47).

Mongolia:

• By the turn of the 18th Century, nomadic power in Mongolia had been thoroughly broken and Mongols were a largely spent military force. There is evidence that the Mongol pastoralist economic was collapsing during this time, as Mongols increasingly turned to Siberian merchants for goods that they once produced themselves (48).
• The Qing had administrative control over the entirety of Mongolia, both through direct civilian administration in Outer Mongolia, and effective control over Inner Mongolia through a decentralized military government. Most important was the adoption of the Qing legal system, which governed most administrative issues (49).
• Mongol tribes were prevented from reunited into a challenge to Qing rule because they were divided into banners across traditional lines of allegiance, meaning that local administrators depended on the Qing for legitimacy, rather than traditional authority (51); they also depended on the Qing for their positions and pensions, which could be removed for disloyalty (52).
• The Qing established themselves as the caretakers and controllers of the Mongol Buddhist faith, establishing the highest Lama in Mongolia with his own monastery in Beijing, and making all other orthodox monasteries subject to his authority. Only these registered groups had tax-exempt status, although even heretical monasteries were largely ignored, and they flourished under Qing rule (52).
• Throughout the 1800s, monasteries grew and an astounding 30% to 65% of the male population may have been involved in monastic life by 1900. The monasteries reinvested their wealth into commercial activities and money-lending (53), and small urban centers began to grow up around them, populated by monks and Han merchants and artisans (54, 56).
• Prior to the late Qing period, Mongolia had had very limited commercial contact with the outside world, and no domestic merchant class. With the urbanization occurring in the 1800s, however, commerce became regularized and Chinese merchants successfully penetrated Mongol markets with their consumer goods. There was broad societal inclusion, with peasants getting consumer goods like tobacco or tea, and nobles increasingly demanding the same luxury items as the Qing elites (56).
• Monks and monasteries became huge consumers of Chinese luxury goods, especially as their tax revenues rose, fueling popular resentment, which blamed Han Chinese merchants for corrupting monastic life. Accordingly, warehouses were sporadically sacked and merchants beaten (56).
• The Qing government considered Han merchants a serious threat to its military reserves in Mongolia, and tried to force them to be licensed by the government and restricted intermarriage. Neither of these laws were successfully implemented, and Han traders remained a major part of the economy. Eventually, the government came to depend on the funds from trading licenses, actively encouraging Han merchants (57).
• The seasonal variations in the Mongol pastoral economy meant that Mongol consumption depended on credit from Han merchants, resulting in indebtedness when livestock died or because of high interest rates. Wealth increasingly became dominated by Han merchants and bankers, with indebted nobles eventually giving taxation rights directly to Han companies (57).
• Mongolian society has divided into nobles and peasants, and the traditional organization of these nomadic groups into banners ruled by nobility continued under the Qing. The indigenous Mongol aristocracy was incorporated into the Qing hierarchy of titles, in return for which they paid a tribute to the Qing, primarily of livestock and animal products (49-50).
• Mongol peasants had their grazing rights controlled by nobility and owed taxes and labor to that noble, who in turn tasked peasants with tasks for the Qing as part of his obligations. Taxes were usually made in livestock, replaced by silver in the 1800s, although extraordinary tributes were sometimes levied off specific luxury goods. They also performed menial tasks like manning postal stations and frontier posts for the Qing government (50).
• In order to limit the power of the Mongol nobility, the Qing had capped the number of peasants who owed taxes to the noble, called bondsmen, with other peasants only owing taxes and labor to the Qing. The line between these groups, was, however, blurry, with Mongol nobles manipulating records so that the wealthiest herders became bondsmen (50).
• There were also retainers for monasteries, a certain type of peasant who dedicated his revenue and labor towards supporting a shrine, monastery, or other religious institution. They were exempt from other taxation (51).
• During the Qing Empire, growing numbers of citizens became retainers as nobles transferred their own bondsmen onto the monasteries out of respect. This led to massively decreased agricultural productivity, as well as weakening Mongol nobles, who now had a much smaller tax base (53).

Xinjiang:

• The Qing administration in Xinjiang was entirely military under the command of a governor in Ili, who also technically exercised control over all civilian administrations and theoretically directed relations with Qo'qon, Toshkent, Buxoro, Gilgit, Badakhshan, Afghanistan, and Ladakh. In practice, the Qing government rarely interfered in local government (59).
• There were a number of military administrators throughout the province, along with between 10,000 and 23,000 permanently stationed garrison troops including both Manchus, other Turkic nomads, and Han Chinese. The garrisons were permanent installations including the families and possessions of the soldiers (59).
• The vast majority of the military garrison was based in the North in Dzungaria and the Ili Valley, and no permanent troops were stationed in the Altishahr of the Tarim Basin. Instead, military services here were tours of duty, and families were prohibited from settling. Other security was provided by native conscripts (60).
• The administration in Xinjiang was not self-supporting, with domestic tax revenue covering only around half of the 3 million taels of silver required for the annual upkeep of the armed forces. The remainder had to come from the Qing government's revenues in China proper (60-61).
• The Qing instituted a similar system of administration in Dzungaria as existed in Mongolia, organizing the local population into hereditary banners and sponsoring the Yellow Buddhist Church as a method of increasing its societal legitimacy (62).
• The area outside of the Dzungarian depression was ruled by Kazakhs in a tributary relationship to the Qing, but otherwise independent. They gave tribute to the Qing every three years, and in turn received the permission to winter in Qing territory and trade with the Qing government, supplying the army with horses (62-63).
• Many Kazakh polities that were tributaries of the Qing also had positions of patronage in the Russian Empire, apparently seeing no contradiction between their dual obligations (63).
• Contemporary accounts of the Kazakhs by Qing officials reveal that they had no idea what the fuck was going on over there; just, like, absolutely clueless (63-64).
• The Qing also maintained a tributary relationship with the Kyrgyz of the Altai range, giving an annual tribute of horses, and receiving the right to winter and trade in Kashgar. The Qing government had essentially no control or knowledge of the Kyrgyz (64).
• In an attempt to increase the productivity of northern Xinjiang, the government settled the Ili river valley with farmers from Altishahr, as well as military colonies of Han Chinese and Manchus. They also developed massive irrigation projects in an attempt to feed the garrisons (64-65).
• Starting in the mid-1700s, the Qing government began to settle large numbers of Han Chinese and Hui Chinese migrants in Dzungaria. Although originally a combination of exiles and garrison farmers, by 1800, the farmers were mainly civilian immigrants from the rest of China and reached the hundreds of thousands by the turn of the 20th Century, the vast majority of which were Hui (65-66).
• This influx of Chinese civilians created administrative issues for the military government of Xinjiang, and as a result almost all of the civilian communities in northern Xinjiang were administered by the Gansu province, who detached officials for that purpose (66).
• The population of Altishahr has mixed, especially in the West, which had a large population of Central Asian traders (70). Only around 300,000 peopled lived South of the Altai Shan during the Qing conquest of 1759, almost all in Altishahr, a number which had doubled by the 19th Century (69).
• Fruits and vegetables were the most common products, although the low population density and lack of available water meant that agriculture was unproductive compared to the rest of China. Farmers increasingly turned to cotton as a cash crop, as it was excepted by Qing tax collectors in lieu of coinage (72).
• The Qing government classified the Altishahrchi as either nobles, religious officials, or commoners  — although they generally took people at their word — of which only commoners paid taxes. Commoners had to pay 10% of their harvest to the Qing (73).
• Native officials were non-hereditary and appointed by the Qing (78), and received grants of tax-exempt land and government stipends for their service. They adopted the queue and Qing customs as a show of status and sophistication (79).
• Foreign subjects, of which there were many in the West, were also tax exempt (73). Soldiers manning the local garrisons and border posts on behalf of the Qing were also exempt from taxes (80).
• The taxation, landholding, and administrative practices of the Qing were virtually indistinguishable from those prior to the Qing conquest, and they generally left local administrators in charge of all matters not dealing with the military or taxation to support the military (74-76).
• The Qing government feared that incursions of Han Chinese traders into Altishahr, as was occurring in Mongolia and Manchuria, would provoke an uprising which would jeopardize the source of most military revenue in the province. Accordingly, they banned non-natives from immigrating to Altishahr and did not establish military colonies (76). They also segregated the Qing military and officials from the general population, creating separate walled garrison towns outside of Altishahri cities (76-77).
• Trade with neighboring polities was common in Xinjiang, with most exported goods being grown from China proper and then transported to Xinjiang for commerce with outsiders. Han and Hui Chinese were favored in this process, only paying 3.5% compared to 5% for foreigner traders and 10% for native Turkistani merchants (81-82).
• Han Chinese merchants were still excluded from Altishahr, meaning that trade often went through several intermediaries. these intra-Qing trades occurred in cities near the border between Altishahr and Dzungaria (82).
• Native merchants in Altishahr were heavily discriminated against both culturally and officially. All sorts of taxes and regulations were imposed on trade with Central Asia, including bribes and the requirement to purchase licenses. This led to the stagnation of trade and hindered what might have been a commercial revolution (83).
• The biggest beneficiaries of Qing trade policies were the inhabitants of the Farg'ona Valley under the Xan of Qo'qon, who gained a virtual monopoly on trade with Kashgar, the largest town in Altishahr. They exploited their relationship with the Qing government to receive exemptions from tariffs, making trade even more profitable (84-85).
• "By 1814 the Ch'ing authority in Eastern Turkestan was solidly ensconced, but every overtaxed peasant and artisan, every disadvantaged merchant, every beg who regretted the revenues that he passed along to the Manchus believed in the ultimate illegitimacy and impermanence of the idolaters' dominion. [...]  Sinkiang in the nineteenth century was to become the most rebellious territory in the Ch'ing empire [sic]" (90).

Tibet:

• Tibet enjoyed a period of tremendous autonomy, largely due to its inaccessibility, and by 1800 the Tibet government had reformed its bellicose past and was firmly committed to self-isolation (90-91). The total population was under 6 million, and under 4 million might have been subjects of the government in Lhasa (91).
• The landholding system was based on peasant smallholders growing grains. These peasants were then bound to local nobles, to whom they owed labor on the lands of the nobility (91).
• Tibet had technical control over Baltistan, but in practice had lost any control over that area in the 1300s. The government in Lhasa still controled Amdo, Kham, Bhutan, Ladakh, and Sikkim (92).
• The Dalai Lama's government in Lhasa had direct control over the taxation and administration of western Kham, Ü, and Tsang (95).
• The Tibetan government in Kham, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Ladakh was heavily decentralized towards local rulers. In Bhutan, Ladakh, and Kham, lay rulers coexisted with a powerful network of monastic orders that all formally paid respects to the Dalai Lama. In Bhutan, the governor was a monk, although he was still nobility. All of these rulers held power on the basis of tax farming on behalf of the government in Lhasa (93).
• Tibetan officials received no official income, instead they were expected to provide from the revenues of their hereditary estates, and allowed to keep all taxes in excess of the required amounts (97).
• During the infancy of the Dalai Lama, power was exercised by regents and administrators, who manipulated circumstances so that they dominated politics throughout the 19th Century (95). The role of the Dalai Lama was made largely ceremonial and religious, with most reincarnations showing little interest in politics (96).
• Originally, the power of the Dalai Lama was personal and mediated by a series of hereditary nobles across his territory. With the assistance of the Qing, however, by 1800 Tibetan administrators had gained the power to remove and appoint officials, although they were unsuccessful in forcing the government to allow non-nobility to hold office (96).
• The Dalai Lama appointed around 6 governing officials for each province, balanced between laymen and clergy, who were responsible for hearing cases and collecting taxes. They were frequently incompetent, often serving as absentee governors from estates near Lhasa (96).
• A small set of noble families with the largest estates increasingly began to dominate the upper echelons of government, with all but a few high-ranking officials coming from some families in Ü throughout the 1800s (98).
• Although the powerful monastic orders were in theory open to all of Tibet, widespread discrimination along with requirements that monks be self-supporting for all expenses, including extravagant celebratory banquets, restricted the higher ranks of monasteries to the nobility (99-100).
• Qing influence in Tibet was minimal, with the government represented by a handful of military officials and a small garrison of bannermen in Lhasa (100). The Qing emperor technically had discretion over the appointment of governors and distribution of titles, but this was never exercised (101).
• "From the Ch'ing point of view, the Dalai Lama was a mighty ecclesiastic and a holy being, but nonetheless the emperor's protege. From the Tibetan point of view, the emperor was merely the Lama's secular patron [sic]" (101).
• The Qing government did try to exercise power over the selection of the Dalai Lama, but faced backlash from the conservative nobility. The Qing demanded that the selection by carried out by lot using a gold urn given by the Qing Emperor, but the extent to which the Tibetans listened is debatable (101-102).
• The limited Qing presence in Tibet was further eroded by corruption and poor quality of administration. The Qing government failed to provide consistent funding, leading to the garrison becoming indebted to local usurers, and failed to rotate out the garrison troops, leading to intermarriage with Tibetan women and families that soldiers could not afford to feed (102).