Chinese Empire

Imperial Succession in China: How Emperors Were Chosen

Of all the institutions of Chinese government, none was more perilous than the transfer of power from one emperor to the next. There was no fixed law of succession. The Confucian ideal of primogeniture — the eldest son of the principal wife inherits — was preached by the classics, but it was rarely observed in practice. Emperors could designate their heir, but they could also change their minds. Heirs apparent could be deposed, killed, or passed over. The new emperor might be a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, an adopted son, a grandson, or — in the unique case of Wu Zetian — a woman. The transfer might be smooth or catastrophic, and the moment between reigns was often the most dangerous in the political life of the empire.

This section examines the mechanics of imperial succession across two millennia. We discuss the role of the designated heir in the early dynasties, the slow emergence of primogeniture as a default, the role of the empress dowager as regent, the phenomenon of abdication both voluntary and forced, and the rare but spectacular cases of usurpation that founded new dynasties. The section also examines the long-term trend toward rule by boy-emperors dominated by their mothers or by regents, and the patterns of factional struggle that surrounded every succession.

The fullest account of one specific mechanism is given in our piece on how Chinese emperors were chosen. The crucial role of the empress dowager see our the role of the empress dowager. The world inside the palace, where most of the succession drama played out, is surveyed in the section on imperial court life, and the comprehensive overview of the institution is in the section on Chinese emperors.

The Problem of Succession in Imperial China

Why Succession Was So Dangerous

The Chinese emperor wielded supreme power. He was the source of all law, the commander of the armies, the high priest of the state cult, and the head of the imperial clan. There was no office above him, no parliament to override him, no church to excommunicate him. When an emperor died, therefore, the entire political order was suddenly vulnerable. The new emperor might be an infant, a child, an incompetent, a cruel man, or simply someone whose claim was disputed by powerful rivals. The interregnum between reigns was a moment of opportunity for ambitious ministers, powerful eunuchs, and ambitious imperial relatives.

The dangers were made worse by the lack of a settled law of succession. In medieval Europe, the Salic Law and similar traditions gave relatively clear rules for inheritance, and the church could mediate disputes. In China, no such system existed. The classics said that the eldest son of the principal wife should inherit, but they also said that an emperor could depose an incompetent heir, and they provided no clear procedure for what to do if the emperor died without a designation. The result was that every succession was, in practice, a fresh political struggle, and the loser usually lost his life as well as his claim.

The Cost of Unstable Succession

The cost of unstable succession can be measured in dynasties. The Qin fell because the Second Emperor was incompetent and the eunuch Zhao Gao staged a coup. The Western Han nearly collapsed in 180 BCE because the Empress Dowager Lü tried to enthrone her own family; only the coup of the Chen and Zhou clans restored the Liu line. The Eastern Han was dominated by a series of child emperors, regents, and eunuch factions, and the dynasty was eventually destroyed by the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 CE. The Three Kingdoms began with the forced abdication of the last Han emperor. The Sui fell because Emperor Yang’s succession was contested and the empire was exhausted by his wars. The Tang suffered the An Lushan Rebellion in 755 because Emperor Xuanzong had allowed his favourite concubine and her son to dominate the court. The Ming was riven by struggles between the legitimate heir and the imperial favourites, and the Qing faced repeated succession crises that weakened the dynasty in its last century.

The cumulative effect of these crises was a chronic instability that no dynasty fully resolved. The Chinese state proved extraordinarily resilient — it kept being reconstituted after each collapse — but every reconstitution was preceded by decades of civil war, and the pattern repeated itself at intervals of two to three centuries across the two-thousand-year span of the empire.

The Mechanisms of Succession

Designation by the Emperor

In theory, the most important mechanism was the designation of an heir by the reigning emperor. The heir might be a son, a brother, a nephew, or even a non-relative. The designated heir received the title of Crown Prince (太子, tàizǐ) and was formally presented to the court. The designation was supposed to settle the question, but in practice it often did not, because the emperor could change his mind, and powerful factions at court could intrigue against the heir.

The Hongwu emperor of the Ming, founder of the dynasty, designated his grandson the Jianwen emperor as his heir, bypassing several of his own sons. The result was the Jingnan Campaign of 1399–1402, in which the fourth son, the future Yongle emperor, launched a three-year civil war against his nephew and eventually seized the throne. The Kangxi emperor of the Qing kept the question of his heir open for decades, refusing to publish his choice. The result was an elaborate post-mortem struggle in which the designated heir’s rivals accused him of having altered the will. Designation, in other words, was necessary but not sufficient.

Primogeniture and Its Discontents

The principle of primogeniture — that the eldest legitimate son should inherit — was the Confucian ideal, and several dynasties tried to enshrine it formally. The Hongwu emperor of the Ming wrote a primogeniture rule into his ancestral instructions; the Kangxi emperor of the Qing tried to make the eldest son the default heir. But in practice primogeniture was honoured as often as it was broken.

The cases where primogeniture worked are notable precisely because they were unusual. The Kangxi-to-Yongzheng transition was nominally primogeniture (Yongzheng was the fourth son, but the elder sons had predeceased Kangxi or been passed over). The Qianlong-to-Jiaqing transition in 1796 was a straightforward father-to-son succession. The Han Wudi-to-Han Zhao transition in 87 BCE was a designated primogeniture that worked.

The cases where primogeniture failed are far more numerous. The Qin Shi Huang-to-Qin Er Shi transition of 210 BCE was technically primogeniture, but the Second Emperor was dominated by the eunuch Zhao Gao and the dynasty collapsed. The Yongle-to-Hongxi transition of 1424 was primogeniture, but Hongxi died within a year and was succeeded by his son Xuande, breaking the line. The Ming-to-Qing transition of 1644 was technically a contested succession in which the last Ming emperor’s suicide left a vacuum filled by the Manchus. The Tongzhi-to-Guangxu transition of 1875 was technically primogeniture, but the Guangxu emperor was chosen by Empress Dowager Cixi as a controllable child, not as the legitimate heir.

The Empress Dowager as Regent

The most consequential figure in many successions was the empress dowager, the emperor’s mother. When an emperor died and was succeeded by a minor son, the empress dowager usually became regent (攝政, shèzhèng), exercising sovereign power on behalf of the child. The arrangement was dangerous because the regent often became the real ruler, and the young emperor on reaching his majority sometimes had the regent killed in a counter-coup.

The pattern of female regency is one of the most distinctive features of Chinese imperial history. The Empress Dowager Lü dominated the early Western Han and nearly established a new dynasty. Empress Dowager Deng Sui dominated the Eastern Han in the late first century CE. Empress Dowager Wu — later Wu Zetian — dominated the late Tang and eventually took the throne in her own name. Empress Dowager Cixi dominated the late Qing for nearly fifty years. The full phenomenon is examined in our piece on the role of the empress dowager.

Abdication: Voluntary and Forced

The Chinese political tradition developed a unique concept of peaceful abdication (禪讓, shànràng) in favour of a more virtuous successor. The legendary examples of Emperor Yao yielding to Shun and Shun to Yu shaped the Chinese imagination, and the principle that a virtuous ruler should yield to a still more virtuous one remained a recurrent theme. In practice, however, almost every historical abdication was forced, and the formula was used by founders of new dynasties to legitimise their seizure of power.

Cao Pi forced the last Han emperor to abdicate in 220 CE, founding the Wei dynasty. Sima Yan forced the last Wei emperor to abdicate in 265, founding the Jin. The Sui founder Yang Jian forced the last Northern Zhou emperor to abdicate in 581. Zhao Kuangyin, founder of the Song, may have been the subject of a similar arrangement in 960. The Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang nominally accepted the abdication of the last Yuan claimant in 1368. And the last emperor, Puyi, abdicated in 1912 in a ceremony that explicitly invoked the ancient ideal of voluntary abdication, even though the actual handover was by force of arms.

The cases of genuinely voluntary abdication are few. The Jin Dynasty (265–420 CE) of the early medieval period was founded by a relatively bloodless transfer; the Yan and Chen of the south involved similar handovers; and the Qianlong emperor’s voluntary retirement in 1796, in favour of his son Jiaqing, is one of the rare modern examples. The tradition remained, however, an enduring element of Chinese political thought.

Usurpation and the Founding of New Dynasties

When a dynasty was exhausted and a powerful general or rebel leader had the means to seize the throne, the formula of abdication was used to clothe the takeover in legitimacy. The new ruler would publish a list of the old dynasty’s crimes, demonstrate that it had lost the Mandate of Heaven, and accept a “voluntary” abdication from the last legitimate ruler. The pattern was so common that historians have a specific term for it: the “borrowing of the Mandate” (假天命, jiǎ tiānmìng).

The most successful usurpations founded new dynasties that lasted centuries. The Sima family took the throne from the Wei in 265 and founded the Jin. The Liu Yu of the Liu Song took the throne from the Jin in 420. The Chen Baxian of the Chen took it from the Liang in 557. The Yang Jian of the Sui took it from the Northern Zhou in 581. The Zhu Wen of the Later Liang briefly took it from the Tang in 907. The Zhao Kuangyin of the Song took it from the Later Zhou in 960. The Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming took it from the Yuan in 1368. And the Aisin Gioro of the Qing took it from the Ming in 1644.

In every case, the formula of abdication preserved the principle that the transfer was legitimate, even though the actual mechanism was force. The Chinese political tradition, in other words, was pragmatic about the use of force but insistent on the ritual forms that made it legitimate.

Patterns of Factional Struggle

The Heir and His Rivals

Every designated heir had rivals, and every succession was accompanied by a struggle between the heir’s faction and the factions of the other sons or brothers. The Crown Prince of the early dynasties was a formal office, with his own household, his own officials, and a special place in court ritual. The position was coveted, but it was also dangerous. Crown Princes were deposed, killed, or forced to commit suicide with depressing regularity.

The cases are too numerous to list in full, but some examples illustrate the pattern. The Crown Prince Yinreng of the Kangxi emperor was twice imprisoned, deposed, and eventually died under house arrest. The Crown Prince Li Jiancheng of the Tang was killed by his brother Taizong in the Xuanwu Gate Incident. The Crown Prince Zhu Biao of the Hongwu emperor died before his father, opening the succession to a contest among the surviving brothers. The Crown Prince Yinzhen of the Kangxi emperor was one of many candidates, and his eventual succession was contested until the moment of the old emperor’s death.

The Role of Consorts and Their Families

The empress and her family were crucial actors in every succession. A powerful empress could ensure that her son was designated heir; a weak one could see her son passed over. The families of empresses and consorts — the 外戚, wàiqī, maternal relatives — were a permanent source of factional politics, especially during the minorities of boy-emperors. The Western Han was nearly destroyed by the Lü clan, the Eastern Han was plagued by the Dou, Deng, and Liang families, the Tang had to deal with the Wu and Wei clans, and the late Qing was dominated by the Yehenara clan of Empress Dowager Cixi.

The typical pattern was that an emperor would marry a woman from a powerful official family, and that her relatives would gain offices and influence. When the emperor died and a child succeeded, the maternal relatives would take over the regency, often displacing the imperial clan itself. The young emperor on reaching his majority would purge the maternal clan, often with great violence. The cycle was so common that Chinese historians had a name for it: the “crisis of the maternal relatives” (外戚之禍, wàiqī zhī huò).

The Eunuch Faction

The eunuch establishment of the inner court was another source of factional struggle. Eunuchs controlled access to the emperor, managed the palace communications, and sometimes commanded the imperial guards. The most powerful eunuchs — the eunuch directors of the Tang and Ming — could make or break emperors, and they often did.

The Tang eunuch Ma and Huo families effectively controlled the throne during the reigns of several child emperors in the late ninth century. The Ming eunuch Wang Zhi dominated the Chenghua emperor in the 1470s. The Ming eunuch Liu Jin dominated the Zhengde emperor in the early sixteenth century. The Ming eunuch Wei Zhongxian dominated the Tianqi emperor in the 1620s, and his faction slaughtered dozens of officials who opposed him. The role of the eunuch establishment in imperial politics is treated in imperial court life.

Boy-Emperors and the Crisis of the Late Empire

The frequency of boy-emperors tended to increase in the late phases of each dynasty, as the imperial family exhausted itself, the emperors died young, and the institutions that might have produced adult heirs collapsed. The Western Han, the Eastern Han, the Tang, the Song, the Ming, and the Qing all experienced long sequences of minority reigns in their later years. The boy-emperor system was not inherently unstable — the Kangxi emperor came to the throne at seven and became one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history — but it was vulnerable, and the late periods of dynasties were usually dominated by regents, empresses dowager, and eunuch factions.

The late Qing is the most spectacular case. The Xianfeng emperor died in 1861, leaving a five-year-old son, the Tongzhi emperor, and a regency dominated by eight senior officials and the boy’s mother, Empress Dowager Cixi. Cixi staged a coup within months of the regency, became the de facto ruler of China, and dominated the court for nearly fifty years. She arranged the selection of a controllable child as the next emperor — the Guangxu emperor — and when Guangxu attempted reforms in 1898, she staged a coup and placed him under house arrest for the rest of his life. The reign of Puyi in 1908–1912 was a final coda: a child enthroned at two, dominated by a regent, and removed by revolution. The pattern was very old; the crisis it expressed was very new.

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