Emperor of China
Throughout Chinese history, "Emperor" was the superlative title held by the monarchs of imperial China's various dynasties. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was the "Son of Heaven", an autocrat with the divine mandate to rule all under Heaven. Emperors were often worshipped posthumously under a secular imperial cult. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty, and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The emperor of China was an absolute monarch, though in the late Qing reforms plans were made to move the emperor to a constitutional monarch.
During the Han dynasty, Confucianism gained sanction as the official political theory. The absolute authority of the emperor came with a variety of governing duties and moral obligations; failure to uphold these was thought to remove the dynasty's Mandate of Heaven and to justify its overthrow. In practice, emperors sometimes avoided the strict rules of succession and dynasties' purported "failures" were detailed in official histories written by their successful replacements or even later dynasties. The power of the emperor was also limited by the imperial bureaucracy, which was staffed by scholar-officials, and eunuchs during some dynasties. An emperor was also constrained by filial obligations to his ancestors' policies and dynastic traditions, such as those first detailed in the Ming-era Huang-Ming Zuxun.
History
Origin
During the Western Zhou dynasty, Chinese vassal rulers with power over their particular fiefdoms served a strong central monarch. Following a brutal succession crisis and relocation of the royal capital, the power of the Zhou kings waned, and during the Eastern Zhou period, the regional lords overshadowed the king and began to usurp that title for themselves. In 221 BC, after the King of Qin completed the conquest of the various kingdoms of the Warring States period, he adopted a new title to reflect his prestige as a ruler greater than the rulers before him. He called himself "Shi Huangdi", or the 'First Emperor'. Before this, Huang was most commonly seen as a reverential epithet for a deceased ancestor, and Di was an apical ancestor, originally referring to the deified ancestors of the Shang kings. In the 3rd century BC, the two titles had not previously been used together. The emperor of China, like the Zhou kings before him, and the Shang kings before them, was most commonly referred to as Tianzi, who was divinely appointed to rule. The appellation Huangdi carried similar shades of meaning. Alternate English translations of the word include "The August Ancestor", "The Holy Ruler", or "The Divine Lord". On that account, some modern scholars translate the title as "thearch".On occasion, the father of the ascended emperor was still alive. Such an emperor was titled as the Taishang Huang. The practice was initiated by Qin Shi Huang, who gave the title as a posthumous name to his own father, as was already common for monarchs of any stratum of power. Liu Bang, who established the Han dynasty, was the first to become emperor while his father yet lived. It was said he granted the title during his father's life because he would not be done obeisance to by his own father, a commoner.
Owing to political fragmentation, over the centuries, it has not been uncommon to have numerous claimants to the title of "Son of Heaven". The Chinese political concept of the Mandate of Heaven essentially legitimized those claimants who emerged victorious. The proper list was considered those made by the official dynastic histories; the compilation of a history of the preceding dynasty was considered one of the hallmarks of legitimacy, along with symbols such as the Nine Ding or the Heirloom Seal of the Realm. As with the First Emperor, it remained very common to grant posthumous titles to the ancestors of the victors.
The Yuan and Qing dynasties were founded by successful invaders of different ethnic groups. As part of their rule over China, they also went through the culturally appropriate rituals of formally declaring a new dynasty and taking on the Chinese title of Huangdi, in addition to the titles of their respective people, especially in the case of the Yuan dynasty. Thus, Kublai Khan was simultaneously khagan of the Mongols and emperor of China.
End of the imperial system
In the 1900s, China made a series of reforms to modernise the government and military, adopting Japanese and German governance and laws. In 1911, the title of Prime Minister of the Imperial Cabinet was created to rule alongside the emperor, as part of an attempt to move China from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.Puyi, who had reigned as the Xuantong Emperor, abdicated on 12 February 1912, ending the Qing dynasty as well as the imperial tradition altogether, after more than 2100 years. Yuan Shikai, former President of the Republic of China, attempted to restore dynastic rule with himself as the Hongxian Emperor, however he abdicated the throne on 22 March 1916 after only 83 days, due to a revolt against his imperial rule. Puyi was briefly restored for 12 days during a coup in 1917 but was overthrown again shortly after. Although permitted to remain in the palace, he absconded to the Japanese concession in Tianjin in 1924. In 1934 he was installed as emperor of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state. In 1945, he was captured by the Red Army as a prisoner of war, where he was held in the Siberian city of Chita. In 1950, he was extradited to China and imprisoned in Fushun War Criminals Management Centre. He would be formally pardoned and released in 1959, working in a repair shop and as a researcher of literature and history until his death in 1967.
The current head of the House of Aisin-Gioro and hypothetical claimant to the throne is Jin Yuzhang. He has worked for various local councils on China, and has no interest in the restoration of monarchy.
Enumeration
Traditional political theory holds that there can only be one legitimate Son of Heaven at any given time. However, identifying the "legitimate" emperor during times of division is not always uncontroversial, and therefore the exact number of legitimate emperors depends on where one stands on a number of succession disputes. The two most notable such controversies are whether Cao Wei or Shu Han had legitimacy during the Three Kingdoms, and at what point the Song dynasty ceased to be the legitimate dynasty in favor of the Yuan dynasty. The Qing view, reported to Europe by the Jesuits, was that there had been 150 emperors from the First Emperor to the Kangxi Emperor. Adding the eight uncontroversial emperors that followed the Kangxi Emperor would give a grand total of 158 emperors from the First Emperor to Puyi.By one count, from the Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, there were a total 557 individuals who at one point or another claimed the title of Emperor, including several simultaneous claimants at various times. Some, such as Li Zicheng, Huang Chao, and Yuan Shu, declared themselves the emperors, Son of Heaven and founded their own empires as a rival government to challenge the legitimacy of and overthrow the existing emperor. Among the most famous emperors were Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty, emperors Gaozu, Han Wudi as well as Guangwu of the Han, Emperor Taizong of Tang of the Tang, the Hongwu Emperor and Yongle Emperor of the Ming, and the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing.
Power
The emperor's words were considered sacred edicts, and his written proclamations were called 'directives from above'. In theory, the emperor's orders were to be obeyed immediately. He was elevated above all commoners, nobility and members of the Imperial family. Addresses to the emperor were always to be formal and self-deprecatory, even by the closest of family members.In practice, however, the power of the emperor varied between different emperors and different dynasties. Generally, in the Chinese dynastic cycle, emperors founding a dynasty usually consolidated the empire through comparative autocracy—examples include Qin Shi Huang, emperors Gaozu and Guangwu of Han, Emperor Taizong of Tang, Kublai Khan of the Yuan, and the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing.
The usual method for widespread geographic power consolidation was to involve the whole family. From generation to generation, the bonds weakened between the branches of family established as local rulers in different areas. After a sufficient period of time, their loyalty could no longer be assured, and the taxes they collected sapped the imperial coffers. This led to situations like the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, who disenfranchised and annihilated the nobilities of virtually all imperial relatives whose forebears had been enfeoffed by his own ancestor, Gaozu.
Apart from a few very energetic monarchs, the emperor usually delegated the majority of decision making to the civil bureaucracy, the military, and in some periods the censorate. Paranoid emperors, like Emperor Wu of Han and the Ming's Hongwu Emperor, would cycle through high government officials rapidly, or simply leave top-ranking posts vacant, such that no one could threaten their power. During other reigns, certain officials in the civil bureaucracy wielded more power than the emperor himself.
Unlike Japanese emperors whom all belonged to a single dynasty, which could not be deposed through a change in the Mandate of Heaven due to being traditionally descended from Shinto goddess Amaterasu, Chinese dynasties could be deposed. Though Chinese emperors often developed imperial cults and fostered a cult of personality around themselves, they seldom claimed divine descent, for example Hongwu of Ming was born into a peasant family prior to seizing the throne.
The emperor's position, unless deposed in a rebellion, was always hereditary, usually by agnatic primogeniture. As a result, many emperors ascended the throne while still children. During minority reigns, the Empress Dowager, the emperor's mother, would usually possess significant political power, along with the male members of her birth family. In fact, the vast majority of female rulers throughout Chinese Imperial history came to power by ruling as regents on behalf of their sons; prominent examples include Empress Lü Zhi of the Han, as well as the empress dowagers Cixi and Ci'an during the Qing, who for a time ruled jointly as co-regents. Where Empresses Dowager were too weak to assume power, or her family too strongly opposed, court officials often seized control. Court eunuchs had a significant role in the power structure, as emperors often relied on a few of them as confidants, which gave them access to many court documents. In a few places, eunuchs wielded vast power; one of the most powerful eunuchs in Chinese history was Wei Zhongxian during the Ming. Occasionally, other nobles seized power as regents.
The actual area ruled by the emperor of China varied from dynasty to dynasty. In some cases, such as during the Southern Song dynasty, political power in East Asia was effectively split among several governments; nonetheless, the political fiction that there was but one ruler was maintained.